diagnosing the problem.

“I love New York in the fall. Makes me want to buy school supplies.” 

– Tom Hanks as Joe Fox in You’ve Got Mail

Well, Joe, this year I got to buy school supplies, and you know what? I’ve decided I prefer the buying to the actual using.

I was talking with a friend this past weekend about my grad school experience, and as our conversation progressed, it hit me that maybe it’s not that grad school isn’t for me; maybe it's that this particular program isn’t for me.

My graduate institution is nothing like my undergraduate university. I knew that going in. The class sizes, the one-on-one attention: I knew all that would be different at a larger school. But perhaps what I forgot was the university I selected also happens to be a research institution. That doesn’t mean every program is research-based, but many have that emphasis. And my poor little liberal arts heart can barely take it.

When people ask why I want a master’s degree, my answer is simple: I like to learn. I want to know things because I like the learning process, and I like delving in to subjects that matter to me. As an undergraduate, I was given every possibility to learn lots of things about lots of different subjects. I truly believe I received the best classical liberal arts education possible.

I wrongly assumed that a communications program would just be a continuation of that education. Instead, communications is a field not so much concerned with words but with the science and psychology behind the words.

Did you catch that?

Science.

Blech. I like to learn, but science? I gave up science when my mom sold my microscope in a yard sale.

Psychology? I can handle it in small doses. I even took a couple of classes in undergrad.

But please, I beg, give me my words. I don’t really care why you choose to say the things that you do. I just care about the words. The literature. The rhetoric.

See, what I want to be “when I grow up” changes daily.

But through all the years of changing occupations (teacher, restaurant owner, interior designer, graphic designer, journalist, editor, communications guru), there has been one constant.

I have always loved words.

Teaching, to me, is all about words, which ones you use and how you use them.

When I seriously considered opening my famous deli, Annie Banani’s (catchy, I know), I was more concerned with the names of the sandwiches than the actual cooking.

As an aspiring interior decorator, I developed my own pretend magazine, Bright Ideas. Sure, I cared about the interiors. But what I really wanted to make sure of was how the articles about those interiors were written.

Even as a graphic designer, I find myself drawn to the words used in the designs I create.

Words — specifically, how they come together to tell a story — are the reason I love journalism.

So maybe grad school isn’t the problem. Maybe it’s that I’m spending my days reading about theory and psychology and hypotheses, when I’d rather be reading about words. Authors. Literature.

Maybe I need to switch programs.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s time to put some serious thought into another dream.

Like becoming the next Kathleen Kelly.

Yep, that sounds about right.