Having recently felt pressured into forging some sort of long-term professional goal for myself, I weighed all the options and decided last weekend that I am going to go back to school. Unfortunately for my lazy ass, graduate school is a shit-ton of work, even before you get there - studying for the GRE, sitting the GRE, collecting references, writing statements of intent, gathering writing samples, and on and on and on… it’s a bit exhausting really. I think grad schools intentionally make the application process this diffcult, as as way to weed out the slackers: if you can’t make it through, you’ll never survive in school.

I, unfortunately, haven’t even completed Phase 1, which is “Finding a School and a Program of Study.” I know that I want to study Russian, and I’d love to lecture at university to the younger kids (freshman/sophomore age)… but part of me also wants to focus on a historical/cultural aspect, as opposed to straight linguistics, and maybe do an area studies program. I think my problem is that I have no objective. I need to know what I actually want to do before I attempt to do it. I can’t write a statement of purpose without a purpose. I think I’ll go talk to one of my old Russian profs tomorrow, and attempt to sort out the objective, as well as the program of study and the school to study at. Plus, I can collect references while I’m there. Kill five birds with one stone kinda thing.

Today (and every other night this week), I will be dilligently studying for the GRE. I plan to take it in December, as I have to have all application materials in to prospective schools by the end of December/early January to be eligible for fellowships and assistantships. That gives me approximately 11 weeks to study, take the test, write my essays, get my references, and fill out applications and submit them to schools. Oh, and then I have to find a way to pay for it. Because $60,000 is quite a chunk of cash.

It appears I will also need to spend the next few weeks looking for my resolve, too, as it seems to have momentarily slipped upon seeing all those zeros. o_O