Last week I accepted admittance to the University of Michigan’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education. This is sort of the culmination of two-plus years of soul searching about career stuff, and my goals have changed subtly since I first applied there. My original purpose was to become an on-campus career advisor, and that’s still a reasonable goal. However, lately I’ve been thinking of this step less as professional school to prepare me for a different “real world” career, and more as an excuse to get me within arm’s reach of academia.
The Michigan program is good for that, because it seems to be more research-oriented than a masters in student affairs. My trip to Ann Arbor in March was good for opening my mind to this direction, because I got to speak with at least one of the professors about his research. It’s also conceivable that this could be a step toward realizing my sometimes-flirtation with getting a sociology PhD and going into that discipline. Certainly higher education plays a great role in societal change, and I expect to be able to take one or more grad-level soc. courses while I’m in the higher ed program.
So I’m pretty excited about starting this fall! Just need to find an internship.
I figured this blog needed an update…. other than school, not too much of note is going on. Alabama Christian Freaks is planning a sock drive for Birmingham’s homeless on June 6; I’ll update that link in the header with some info. I’m grinding a lot of poker tournaments and lamenting that the working world sees playing poker seriously as maybe a half-step up from being incarcerated in respectability. It’s silly, really. I’m making money applying my quantitative skills, in some ways managing a small business, but because I don’t show up in a cubicle every morning at 9:00 it’s not valid. Oh well, hopefully going to school will smooth over all that.