I will be finished in China in June of 2010. Time is going fast, and it is about time to start thinking about what I want to do afterwards. Although I am really enjoying life in the real world, it is becoming pretty clear that grad school is going to be something I’ll need to do. Since Dopers are a smart bunch and have given me some great advice in the past, I thought I’d turn to you. I don’t have a lot of coherent thoughts about this, but maybe you can still give me some good advice.
Background I have a film and digital media degree from UC Santa Cruz. I graduated with honors in my major and my college, and have all-around excellent evaluations of my coursework. I spend two years in the Peace Corps teaching computer science and English in a small village high school. I am now with the Peace Corps teaching university level English in China. I speak decent French and will hopefully speak decent Mandarin, though I’d probably need to take some courses if I really wanted to say I speak them. I’ve never done anything particularly spectacular, but I could get some solid recommendations. I haven’t taken the GRE, but tend to do in the higher-middle on standardized tests. I’d imagine I’d get a decent score but not a mind-blowing one. So I’ve got some stuff going for me, but I’m not a huge overachiever.
Goals This is the hard part. I still don’t know what I want to do. I like teaching well enough, but don’t feel particularly drawn to it. And it looks like I could start teaching easy enough without a graduate degree. I love working internationally. The idea of working in the world of NGOs is pretty appealing. I’d like to stick with the non-evil side of things. I’d really like to go back to Africa. It seems like something having to do with Sino-African relations would be an obvious field (and a growing one) but it’s not something I’m crazy interested in. Really I want to see the world, have adventures, and hopefully help people.
Some kind of international studies thing seems like a good bet- but do these really get anyone jobs? I’m not going to be all that young when I’m done, so it’d be nice to have something that prepares me to go into a career level job. Would a combined international studies/MBA be useful? Or something else all together? I know I’m way too unfocused to be doing this, but I gotta choose something at some point, don’t I?
I feel like if I am going to go to grad school, I might as well go all out. A program like this one at Yale seems pretty badass, but I doubt I could make it in. I am eligable for some cool programs through Peace Corps Fellows USA. But I’ve just started thinking about this now and haven’t done any research at all, really.
Any advice from you all?