Accepting What I Don't Want

You know what's really frustrating? When people keep trying to push the benefits of something you aren't interested in. The university keeps sending me information on scholarships for graduate school and they won't stop. I know what you're thinking - what kind of problem is that? Let me explain:

First of all, I'm not going to graduate school immediately after undergraduate. Originally, my life plan had me going straight into grad school, just to get it over with. But then real life intervened and the plan kind of fell apart. So, I decided, for a couple of reasons, that I would go out and work for a year or two before going to grad school. Right now, I'm planning on getting my master's degree in international affairs, but I'm not sure what concentration I want to do. There's also still a tiny crevice in the back of my mind that is considering law school, but that's a whole other story. And practically speaking, I have no time during my undergraduate career to study for and take the GRE/LSAT. But I think the real reason I want to put off grad school is that I don't think I could handle another two to three years of school.

Upon graduation, I will have packed so much into these four years that I honestly do not think I could deal with two more years of exams and papers and grades. I know, everyone keeps telling me to appreciate college because life certainly doesn't get easier in the real world, but I think I just need some time out of academia to figure out what I really want to do with my life. You know, I really hate doing that, admitting that I don't know what I want to do. When I do, it makes me feel weak or unprepared. I really don't know why I only feel comfortable when I've got a plan. It's not that I'm against spontaneity, I'd just rather know what's going on/be in control of what's going on. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that it's okay to not know everything.

Anyways, back to the scholarship thing. I've been to a couple of grad school scholarship sessions, one before I finalized my grad school decision, and one after. However, the latter event appeared to be a leadership and scholarship event, though it basically gave me the same exact scholarship information as the first one. There were a bunch of scholarship reps there and every time they talked to me, I had to tell them I wasn't going straight to grad school, and as you saw above, that's not the easiest thing for me to say, especially when almost every one of my friends is going straight to grad school. I guess it almost makes me feel dumb, in a way, to say that I'm not going directly to grad school. I almost want to blurt out my GPA along with that statement, just to show people that I am actually smart. Call it insecurity or whatever, but I like I said earlier, admitting that I don't know what I want to do anymore makes me feel like I'm not as good as everyone around me.

But, back to the point of this post. I got the impression that the scholarships were for people going directly to grad school, so even if I were to get a scholarship, I wouldn't be able to use it. People kept telling me some scholarships can be deferred, but that still doesn't address the main concern I have with all this pesky scholarship business, which is the research aspect that comes along with many of them.

I've found that I don't really like doing research. I have a legitimate basis for that feeling, because one of the many things I'm doing as an undergraduate is research, albeit team research, but we're still investigating something and writing a 150 page thesis. The whole thing is just very frustrating for me. And seeing as doing research involves dealing with unexpected changes, which as we all know I don't handle quite well, I walk out of many of our team meetings frustrated on a good day and angry on a bad day.

It seems to me that you pour years of your time and effort into a research project, and for what? The thesis is shelved into the annals of the university library or a journal database, where some slacker college student researching a paper for a class he has no interest in stumbles upon your findings the night before the paper is due, turns to a random page, pulls the most intellectual sounding quote he finds, inserts into his paper (properly attributed of course) and moves on, not pausing for a minute to even learn the title of your research.

Call me cynical, but I just don't like to spend my time doing something unless I know what it's purpose is. I also know I'm grossly underestimating the value of academic research here, and that without academic research, there would be no progress or innovation, but it's just that I want to do something with my time and with my life that will make an immediate, observable difference.

This leads me to something else I've been dying to write about, which is how I seriously don't know what want to do anymore. But seeing as this post has already become waaaay to long and rambly, I'll save that for another post.