{"id":1267,"date":"2004-10-13T15:50:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-13T14:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/2004\/10\/13\/why-i-went-to-grad-schoo\/"},"modified":"2015-06-19T00:25:54","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T23:25:54","slug":"why-i-went-to-grad-schoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/2004\/10\/13\/why-i-went-to-grad-schoo\/","title":{"rendered":"why i went to grad school"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I went to grad school in order to learn to write new kinds of music, to be part of a music community, to have access to the resources of an academic institution, to spend some time away from CA hoping I could solve my (personal) problems by getting some distance.<\/p>\n<p>I feel really happy.  All these terrible things happened in the last 2.5 years, but there&#8217;s a sense of inevitability that I have about them.  And the &#8220;if it doesn&#8217;t kill you, it makes you stronger&#8221; thing . . .  I can see how many of the good thigns that are happeneing now would not have happened without the bad events happening first.<\/p>\n<p>So, given that my grad school goals are working out so fabulously well so far (ask me about this again the week that my thesis is due), I&#8217;m wondering what I should do afterwards.  More school?  It would help me get an academic job (god help me).  An academic job is good because it means a steady pay check, health insurance, access to the resources of an academic institution (I&#8217;m talking equipment, concert hall, library, etc) and the chance to warp young minds.   There is also the possibility of doing exchange programs.  I could go to Germany next fall.  Then I could apply for a Dutch thing after that.  Bouncing around Europe is cool because it enables travel, would expose me to other ideas about music and is just generally cool.  It&#8217;s a bit more uncertain and bohemian.  If I spend two years in euopre and then three years in a doctoral program, I&#8217;ll be 34 when I start looking to be a professor or a lecturer.  <em>If<\/em> I want to have a kid, well, that would be a good time to have one, I guess.  Timing, desire to be a bohemian all at odds.  My mom started trying to have kids at 36, had a lot of health issues related to that and was 38 when I was born and 40 when my brother was born.  That&#8217;s kinda too old.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m thinking about this stuff now because I want to have a plan.  I don&#8217;t want to think &#8220;i should have done more bohemian stuff when I had the chance&#8221; or &#8220;gosh, I wanted a kid, but now it&#8217;s too late.&#8221;  I mean, I know you can adopt forever, but there&#8217;s other age issues that I definitely saw in my childhood.  Also, when people say &#8220;where do you see yourself in five years?&#8221;  I can say, &#8220;well, hopefully, I&#8217;ll be finishing up my DMA\/PhD and applying for professorships.&#8221;<br \/>\nOf course, nothing ever goes according to plan, but it&#8217;s nice to have one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went to grad school in order to learn to write new kinds of music, to be part of a music community, to have access to the resources of an academic institution, to spend some time away from CA hoping I could solve my (personal) problems by getting some distance. I feel really happy. All &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/2004\/10\/13\/why-i-went-to-grad-schoo\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">why i went to grad school<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3517,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1267\/revisions\/3517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}