As I may have mentioned before in this blog, I didn't want to go to university to begin with. I wanted to be a DJ (you know, the successful, happy version of Harry Chapin in WOLD. It was inspiring teachers (one, in particular) and really wonderful exciting material that led me very quickly to decide that I wanted to go on through a Bachelor's degree, then a Ph.D., then teach. I very quickly couldn't imagine myself doing anything else, particularly after having spent a summer as a full time disc jockey in a small Kansas town, a bit fish in a very small pond. It was fun, but not something I wanted to continue with after that summer.
I could very easily see where I might have made a different decision, however. I wonder about myself if I had decided to finish that undergrad degree and pursue something else. As it was I took a year off between undergrad and grad school and it was a really good break for me. Many of my colleagues did the same thing -- often for much longer. And we all have friends who decided by the time they completed a B.A. or similar degree that school in its myriad forms was no longer for them.
I have been thinking about this as we head toward graduation (one week from today). I have written several letters of recommendation for grad school, evaluations for job applicants, and a request from a colleague for information to update our info on graduates (where are they now), have all combined to lead me to consider the trajectory of students after they are no longer students and what the responsibility of a teacher is to students after they are gone.
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I encourage students to take a break between undergraduate and graduate school if they can manage it. We have traditional college-age students, many of whom have gone straight through from kindergarten to senior year without taking a break. Some want to go on to graduate school because they really have no idea what else they can do. Feeling that you don't want to do anything else is different from not knowing what else there might be, and I want the students to know that they want to be in grad school (and why) rather than not knowing what else might be out there.
This means that I am writing letters of recommendation sometimes five or seven years after a student graduates, and have to go back to reexamine grades and don't have papers to consider, etc.. The former student then needs to update me and it is important that I understand what he or she has done through the intervening years and why grad school is now in the picture. In saying that it seems like I need someone to jump through hoops after having said I value taking a few years off. I just want to be able to convincingly argue that things are purposeful and the person I am recommending will know why he or she is doing it and that person will follow through to completion of the degree program. I enjoy talking to former students after three or four or seven or eight years, learning what they have done and what they want to do now. They are interesting and creative in figuring out an appropriate way for them to channel their interests.
The advantage of the delay in going to grad school also means I do not have to change my mind about the letters I have already written. I have seen students "crash and burn" in their final semester (the second of two devoted to writing a research thesis) in ways that make me worry they can't really manage the stress in a graduate program, or at least are able to go straight from crashing and burning into a program without taking a break. It makes me doubt the positive things I have written about maturity, ability to manage adversity and criticism. I have only once told a student that I would not write another letter of recommendation to grad school for that person. It was unpleasant, but I did feel it needed to be said, as I wanted to be honest about the sort of letter I would write and that I didn't want to write one that expressed my uncertainty about someone's ability to complete a grad program. I wonder if someone who goes directly in after the horrible semester or senior year is well served by proceeding straight on into another academic program.
Some students do go into grad school for all the exciting reasons they can imagine. But there are lots of other things our grads have done, too. The gathering of info about our grads for the department blog has been wonderful. We have former students who are working artists showing in NY and Germany, running a spa and belly dance studio, building schoolrooms and science labs for the Peace Corps in Malawi, selling artwork on Etsy and writing romance novels. Others are finishing up a thesis in Middle East Studies at Tel Aviv University,completing a two year Art History fellowship in Rome, and serving as museum administrators and curators and teachers all over the world. They are marvelous creative men and women in their 20s and 30s and edging toward 40. Catching up with former students has been great. In fact, it is actually really exciting to me, because they are interesting and curious and adventurous. They are still young and developing their ideas and goals and their methods of reaching them. They are the future of art and culture and empathy. It is pretty cool to have been their teacher.