Flashes of Panic

I’ve threatened to write about my continuing education saga before, but it’s beginning to come to a head here. I’ll start with background and immediate circumstances without getting in to doubts, hopes, fears, etc.

When I left my last job, one of the reasons I gave was that I wanted to go to grad school. That’s not quite the case; it would be more accurate to say that I was burned out in a job I thought I loved, I felt underqualified to do anything else, and I saw grad school as a way of gaining credentials. (This is not entirely unfounded; many jobs I’ve seen listed that look interesting require at least a master’s.)

I saw grad school as an impossibility for quite a while. As I’ve mentioned, I majored in Russian in college, and lack not only the motivation to continue in literature, but also the language skills. So that’s out. And due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances my sophomore year, I opted out of the computer-science double major, taking only three of the required ten (or so) courses. (I don’t weep too much over this, because I doubt I would have learned as much then as I fantasize now.) Then, at some point, a career-hopping friend pointed out that night school was a perfectly good way to get the missing courses and be ready for graduate school in CompSci.

Sure enough, there was Muhlenberg Evening College and they were offering calculus just that semester, and I got started picking up the missing math. (I wore a Muhlenberg hat for several years, mostly because I liked it, but also because it was fun to tweak my name-school-conscious family a bit.)

I lost a bit of momentum when I moved, because I expected that living in a college town I would have lots of options. Alas, that’s not the case. Apparently available night-school options come from being near a population center, not being near an education center; the “Continuing Education” offerings at UMass tend more towards “Math for Life” rather than mathematical statistics. (And, more of a problem, they tend to be offered during the work day.) I have repaired instead to the local state colleges and community colleges, trekking down to Westfield State College on a regular basis and eventually enrolling in a second BS program there.

Of course, now that I’ve enrolled, I’m running out of options again. They’re not offering the courses I need (big ones like Statistics, Algorithms, Data Structures, Intro Theory) in the time slots I can make (6 or later.) This spring I was unable to find a course scheduled anywhere in driving range that would be useful to me. This summer I’m considering taking the online Security course at WSC, even though I’ve already taken my required electives, because there are no other options, and it looks professionally interesting. (I seem to be going through the program backwards: I’ve already done most of the third year, but I can’t seem to get in the first and second year courses.)

I’m not really interested in spending ten years (at the rate I’m going) just getting ready to enter a two- or five-year graduate program. But I’m also not interested in leaving a perfectly good, interesting, and well-paying job to take classes full-time and unenrolled without any idea if I’ll be accepted into a graduate program on the other end. The momentum is ebbing again. Ever met someone who’s dropped out of night school?

I’m thinking, right now, about just applying for entry in fall ‘05 and hoping someone will take me and give me time (even unfunded) to pick up the courses I need. I’m not terribly optimistic about it, though. Maybe I should just pick up a few good certifications? It would be quicker and probably cheaper.

Now playing: Almost from All of Our Names by Sarah Harmer