Graduate school is some­thing I decided I want to attend over the past few years.

Given my degree in jour­nal­ism, with minors in polit­i­cal sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy, I have many options of where, and what, I want to study.

My rea­son for want­ing to attain a higher degree is not nec­es­sar­ily for a bet­ter job or a higher salary; the uni­ver­sity atmos­phere is some­thing I truly enjoy, and I want to con­tinue in that tra­di­tion for a few more years and pos­si­bly beyond.

Assessing this deci­sion through the lens of becom­ing a jour­nal­ist, I came across a wide range of advice from a large num­ber of peo­ple. Some said a higher degree is not nec­es­sary, some said to get a Masters in jour­nal­ism, and some said to spec­ify in a par­tic­u­lar field, such as polit­i­cal sci­ence. I was so twisted around with what the best choice was, as well as what I per­son­ally desired, that I have missed the dead­lines for most pro­grams start­ing next fall. This may have been one of the most ben­e­fi­cial instances of pro­cras­ti­na­tion in my life.

Deciding how grad school would ben­e­fit jour­nal­ism was ask­ing the wrong question.

Philosophy has always been a per­sonal pas­sion and some­thing I stud­ied as an under­grad because it hon­estly gave me enjoy­ment, and that was about the only rea­son I needed. I never really thought about actu­ally study­ing it for pro­fes­sional reasons.

When I went to dis­cuss this dilemma of whether or not to go to grad school, and whether or not phi­los­o­phy was a valid field of study, one of my pro­fes­sors, Dr. Aiken, lent me some help­ful advice. He told me what I was hav­ing was a clas­sic Epictetan moment.

He said some­thing along the lines of this: you can either get a degree in some­thing that may or may not get you a job and is in some­thing that you may not even truly enjoy, or you can study some­thing that your heart desires and will truly ful­fill you. The lat­ter here is the obvi­ous cor­rect choice.

So in the past few weeks, I decided a phi­los­o­phy degree is what I really want to obtain, and what comes after that can be what it may. Journalism is still on my radar. George Will is an exam­ple of a jour­nal­ist who stud­ied phi­los­o­phy as a stu­dent, and went on to be a very well-respected mem­ber of the media.

The uni­ver­sity will also be an option. I have enjoyed the intel­lec­tual ful­fill­ment and atmos­phere of a uni­ver­sity to an extent that has made me not want to leave. Getting a doc­tor­ate is a straight­for­ward step on the path to professorship.

Now that I have decided this, I still face the prob­lem of the missed dead­lines for the com­ing fall. Aiken also pointed some­thing out that I was not aware of: you don’t have to be accepted to a pro­gram to take classes toward a grad­u­ate degree.

This was incred­i­ble news for me because it means that I can spend the next year of my life tak­ing a few classes to decide if this is what I truly want with­out mak­ing any com­mit­ment to a pro­gram. When fall rolls around, I will have a more coher­ent idea of where I want to go in life.

As my senior year draws to a close and I fin­ish the last of my class projects, I look for­ward to a new stage in life. This is a con­scious choice, and one that is done out of a will to fol­low my desires. I urge you to do the same. n