Grad School

I've mentioned this to a number of people who regularly read my blog, though I've never really posted about it here, but I've been thinking for a while about going to grad school. When I graduated from Wisconsin I didn't have any real idea what I wanted to do besides traveling, but I think that living in China has changed that. I really do enjoy teaching, not every aspect of it, but the overall experience, especially at the college level. But I don't want to do what I'm doing now forever. For one thing with making no money is OK for now, at some point I'd like to make at least a little money. Another thing is that while I like teaching, teaching English specifically isn't that interesting to me. I actually got the idea for what to do from Ken who mentioned years ago, this might have been during my first year in China actually, that he was thinking about applying to graduate school for international relations. It had never occurred to me that was something people went to graduate school for, but over time the idea has stuck with me. International relations combines my love of traveling and seeing new things with my interest in politics. Living in China for these years would definitely help me with grad school in this field, or any possible job afterwords. If I went all the way through to a PhD it would also be something I'm much more interested in both researching and teaching. So I've started looking into programs and studying for the GRE, which I would take in the late summer. That means that I'll probably spend the next year in Guangzhou, which I'm liking a lot, and then be back in the US for a few years. I'd like to even be back in DC, since there are a ton of really good program there, but who knows. I just wanted to share with you some of my plans for the future.