the hard questions

I’m sure you’re all waiting with baited breath to hear about my decision regarding graduate school. And I’ve (almost) made the decision. I’ve got one more thing to do before it’s final, and I’m doing it tomorrow. So barring something rather extreme happening tomorrow, my decision is made.

I’m staying here.

Most of you, in the comments on my previous post about graduate school, said “go to LA! you’ll do great!” And you’re right, I would do great; I’d make friends, I’d do well in the program, I’d enjoy the lovely weather, and I’d have an adventure. And I’d graduate with an MPP from UCLA after two years. Exciting! I know.

But I’m not doing it. Instead I’m going to graduate in two years with an MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation from CIIS. And let me be clear: I am not doing this because it is the safer option. I am not doing it because it’s more comfortable to stay here, or because it’s easier not to push myself. In fact, it is probably the less safe option. It would be easier to just go with UCLA because it’s more socially normal. Because, you know, who in her right mind turns down a fellowship from a highly regarded university to pay to attend an unheard-of social justice program?

I do. And I swear to you I am in my right mind.

I am not choosing CIIS just because it allows me to stay in San Francisco, though that is appealing, to be sure. And if it had been the other way around — leave San Francisco to go to CIIS, stay in San Francisco to attend highly regarded university with a fellowship — I probably would have made the opposite decision, no questions asked. I would’ve stayed and attended said Highly Regarded University. No questions asked.

But having to make the decision that was actually in front of me really forced me to ask questions, and I’m glad, because I probably would’ve neglected to ask them otherwise. Because they’re tough questions, and I tend to like to ignore tough questions. I’m very good at evading things that force me to look at what I want, because so often, I don’t really know. But this time I had to. And these are the questions I asked:

What do I want out of my life?

and

How will I get there?

What do I want out of my life? I want happiness. Obviously. I want to be doing work that fulfills and inspires me. I want to be doing work that reminds me, when the alarm clock goes off, that, oh yes, I do actually want to get out of bed. More specifically, I want to be doing work in which I have autonomy, can use creativity, and in which my whole self is embraced as having relevance to the work I do. I want to be doing work that is for the greater social good, and no it is not because I’m a young idealist who wants to change the world, it is because I know that that is the kind of work that makes me care. I want to be doing work in which I am a decision-maker. I want to be doing work that stimulates my mind, challenges me every day, and connects me with others. I want to be doing work that completes my life, rather than work that takes away from my life. That’s the work I’m doing now, and I never want to be there again. I sit at work sometimes and wonder how people can do the work they do and take themselves seriously as human beings. I never want to wonder that again in relation to the work I’m doing. Never.

I also want to be doing work that draws on my strengths. I’m good at connecting with people in a genuine way. I’m good at organizing (understatement of the day), good at logical thinking (have I ever mentioned here that my favorite class as an undergraduate was Symbolic Logic?). I love writing, especially about things that relate to queer identities, gender, social identities, social justice, and my personal experiences with all of these things.

And though I’m not an expert on careers or anything, I look at all of that above and I think that maybe, just maybe, I ought to be a professor. Boring, I know, because that’s what both of my parents did, and don’t you think I could be a bit more creative than that? And also, ouch, because it’s so hard to get a tenure track job these days, and all that. Plus I have all sorts of qualms about the academic industrial complex, as I like to call it, which I won’t go into right now because I’ll potentially have the rest of my life to do just that. But it would be a job that would allow me to pursue my research interests, connect with people, write, be challenged. And get summers off (score!). (Did I forget to mention that as one of the things I want out of life?) But anyway regardless of whether I actually become a professor, that’s the kind of lifestyle I can envision for myself.

And how do I get there? Well, I’d need a Ph.D. And I’m a whole lot more likely to end up in a Ph.D. program from an MA than from an MPP. Not to mention that classes in the MA program are more academic (“Critical History of the Human Sciences,” “Reading and Writing Culture”) than the professionally-oriented classes in the MPP program (“Management Challenges and Tools for the Nonprofit Sector”). And also not to mention that I love the mission of CIIS’s MA program: to facilitate self-reflection on our own cultural presuppositions as a prerequisite for sustained engagement with the realities of difference and culture, and to focus on practices of creative intervention by developing skills in intercultural communication, critical social analysis, emancipatory research, strategic thinking, and alliance building.

That is something that will get me out of bed in the morning. And it’s scary to go this route, for sure — as one of the professors told me in one of our several long conversations about what this degree would enable me to do, it is taking a risk. But the risk is not the program itself. The program itself is highly reputable in the world of academic social justice and human rights. The risk, she said, is in forcing myself to confront privilege. That is not something I can take lightly. But it is something that, deep down, I know is right for me.

Tomorrow, I will sit in on a seminar at the institute. And if it feels right to me, I’m all in.