When you go back to grad school, you contend with how to fit your current life into a school schedule. Sometimes it means breaking up with someone or seeing them less. Sometimes it means not cooking as much or eating out a lot. Sometimes it means working less or not at all. Erin faced these issues as she returned to graduate school to get an MPH. Would she continue working full time while she was in school, so that she continued to get the much needed experience that jobs would look for after she finished school? Such a choice would impact everything from her relationship to her grades. In order to make it all work she had to renegotiate her understanding of success.
After being out of school for almost six years, I went back to school to pursue my Masters in Public Health in the Fall of 2012. At the time, I was working full-time in a demanding (emotionally and time-wise) job in a busy community health clinic downtown. When I first enrolled and looked at classes, I briefly considered going to school half-time, in what would equate to about a three-year plan—two classes/term. Thinking more seriously about what that would entail—a full extra year with three vs. two!—I decided to try to see what full-time looked like from the beginning and registered full-time for three classes. To be honest, my desire to go to school was less out of interest to be a student and more out of a desire to earn credentials that would allow me to move up at my job and perhaps even pursue more advanced employment options. In spite of entering grad school full-time, I was also reluctant to cut back my hours at work for a few reasons. Based on feedback I’d gotten from people I knew who had gone through my program while working, I anticipated a moderate load of coursework that would be challenging but not impossible for folks who worked full-time. Lucky for me, the program made it easy to do this, too, with many classes offered in the evenings. The thing that most weighed on me, though, was perusing through job postings aimed at MPH graduates, all of which wanted, “three or more years experience in the field.” If I stopped working and just went to school, I wouldn’t quite hit that mark and would also have a gap in my employment history to explain. So, I took a deep breath, cut my hours back to about 30/week, and started my full-time public health courseload.
Much of what has happened since has been a blur: long nights skimming articles and cranking out papers, amazing and inspired group study sessions with classmates I am so fortunate to have met in my program, showing up to work alternatively exhausted from being so busy but also energized because my schoolwork compliments my job so well, and taking things one day at a time– only to realize yet another quarter has somehow flown by! I am very glad that I decided to go full-time because, at this point, being almost done, I totally see the light at the end of the tunnel and it feels amazing. This process has definitely not been easy in any way and has involved more sacrifice than I was initially prepared for. I have skimped on everything from eating to time with my partner to sleep in order to make what feels like about 30 hours of work between school and my job fit into a 24 hour day. I have become a master at preparing slow-cooker meals overnight (cooking while sleeping= genius!) and speed-reading on MAX rides. More importantly, I have had to negotiate and renegotiate with myself exactly what, “success,” means to me, realizing it’s not about getting perfect grades in all my classes, or even slam-dunking everything I am charged with at work. Instead, I try to be forgiving, and tell myself I am earning an “A” in life by getting through each day, passing my classes, and holding up what I am responsible for at work. The moments where I recognize that I am actually learning some really innovative ideas, that I am now a part of a community that cares about the same things that I do, and where I see magical opportunities to apply a concept I have been exposed to in a class in the way I do something at work are simply added bonuses that make all this struggle feel totally worthwhile and fuels another day forward.