DONNA'S DECEMBERSHOMEABOUTMESHOPCROCHET READSSTYLE BLOGSCURRENTLY READINGCONTACT

July 11, 2011

Time to Hit the Books


Mornin'!

Cory and I had such a lovely anniversary trip to the city and I am so excited to share photos with you. Until then (probably later today/tomorrow), I'm here to talk about something else!

I have been mulling over graduate school for years. That's right, years.

My senior year of college was really amazing and I loved every moment. One of the last English courses the university requires you to complete is Literary Analysis. This is the class that everyone fears: extremely demanding and an unrelentless professor. Fortuately, I had a group of girls also going through the English--Secondary Education major with me, and we enrolled in the class together. This class was one of the best experiences of my educational career because I pushed myself further than I ever had before. I would read and research for hours and love every minute of it. This was the class that afforded me the opportunity to travel to San Francisco with a classmate and our professor to present research we conducted at a national research conferece. At the end of the course, my professor approached me about continuing the research I started on my topic with her over the summer and beginning the Graduate program for English that fall. At this time, I was a completely different person. I had plans after graduation that eliminated me from being able to stay in the area and I knew that I really wanted to teach. Even though I spent a lot of time turning this conversation in my mind, I decided to tell her no. I couldn't stay in Salisbury for another two years.

Since then, I've been struggling with graduate school. After my first year teaching I enrolled in a local college to complete a masters degree in Curriculum and Instruction for English. After two courses, I knew immediately the program wasn't for me. I didn't feel challenged and a lot of our course work seemed frivolous and redundant, so I stopped going.

Cory has always been supporting my desire to go back to school, and sometimes, even when I don't want to hear it, he encourages me to research various programs. Finally, we found one! This program is a pretty intense program (that will be years long) in Baltimore.

Right now, I'm a bit shy about sharing all the details of the program, the school, and everything else because I am so nervous about jinxing it!

Anyway, I am very excited for this program, but first I need to take the GRE and you know...
get accepted. I enrolled for the GRE this morning and will be taking it on September 24th. I plan on creating a study schedule for myself today and tomorrow and beginning while I'm on vacation this coming week.

I'll keep you posted with the studying and so forth. I just wanted to give you a little peek into my world and what I'm working on :)

xo,
Liz

4 comments:

  1. Hi there! I've been a reader for a while, but I'm terrible at commenting, but I wanted to tell you good luck! I can only imagine how exciting and terrifying graduate school is! I'm getting ready to start my last semester of undergrad in the fall, so grad school is in my near future also.

    I wish you the best of luck and good vibes for both the GRE and getting accepted. Don't give up or get discouraged if something comes along either.. if that program is worth it you should keep trying no matter how long it may take you to get in! :) But hopefully you don't have to deal with any of that!

    Allison

    ReplyDelete
  2. Congrats on the exciting plans! Something will certainly pan out for you in continuing your education. Looking forward to joining you here on your journey!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I hope you do well on your GRE! I have to take the GRE soon as well. But I need to learn more vocabulary words first.. I'm a math/science person. And seeing that you are making a study schedule made me remember (again) that I need to start learning words.. I hope your studying goes well!

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's exciting!! :) Yay! I'm going back to school in the fall to finally do the university thing (I did a year of college 5 years ago) - it took me a few years to toss around and finally make sure I really wanted to do it - which sounds like what you've done! Yay! My fingers are crossed for you. :)

    ReplyDelete