For me, future me, and my mama.

The Great Post-Grad Ponderation.

In Thoughts. on January 23, 2012 at 9:05 pm

“So, what are you going to do with your communication studies degree?  Communicate?!” [cue I’m-so-funny-and-original laugh]

Seriously?  Seriously.

Most days out of the year, that quip doesn’t really bother me and is about as hurtful as a five-year old telling me I can’t eat a slice of his mud pie.  Wom-wom.  Life goes on.

Since graduation, though, I have been mulling over more deeply what it is exactly that I should be doing with my education.  Shoot.  Since beginning to pay back my student loans, I better have something pretty darn incredible to share in return for selling my soul to Sallie Mae…hmm, and you would think a communication studies major would be able to communicate it best.

Well, all these thoughts bring me back to the beginning of my journey in choosing a major, which was actually more of a process of elimination.  Save for chemistry, math, and physics, which had zero chance from the get-go, I thoughtfully considered majoring in it all; for back then, I was under the misconception that a successful life consisted of a degree in a “real” area of study with eventually some distinguishing initials behind my name.  I mean, come on, communication is what the University of Hawaii football players studied…“studied.”

However, while the future projections of my field were not as prescribed as others, I was drawn to this particular discipline because it helped and encouraged me to hone in on solidifying step 1—myself.  

Charles Spurgeon put it like so in his piece “The Minister’s Self-Watch,”

“We are in a certain sense, our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order…It will be vain for me to stock my library, or organize societies, or project schemes, if I neglect the culture of myself; for books, and agencies, and systems, are only remotely the instruments of my holy calling” (Lectures To My Students, 7).

Thanks, Charlie.

On that account, I am my own tool and will be as useful as I know myself.  Now, I’m certain many of you didn’t know who I was four years ago; but if I am being completely honest, I didn’t know who I was back then too.  Be that as it may, education works in very sneaky and counterintuitive ways and has a tendency to leave the student hungrier than when he first came.  Thus returning to the original question of what I am going to do with my degree, well, I am going to take it and learn some more because that’s what my education has taught me, inspired in me, and made of me. For to this day, it continues to toy with my thoughts and make me do things I would have never done left to my former self.  It has created a monster of a working mind and cultivated a daringly inquisitive soul.  It has messed me up to the very core…and I, most gladly, would have it no other way.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.  Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”  -Rumi

  1. i love your blog, i have it in my rss reader and always like new things coming up from it.

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    ouija board 2 February 2012 at 11am

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