It’s expensive, time consuming, and risky… so is it right for you?
The following piece is by Duncan Watts (author of Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age and Everything is Obvious *Once You Know the Answer: How Common Sense Fails Us) and is excerpted from Should I Go to Grad School?, an essay collection featuring more than 40 essays by writers, artists, academics, actors, and other creative types about the decision to go to — or avoid — grad school.
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Just over 20 years ago, I left my job as an officer in the Royal Australian Navy, said good-bye to my family and friends, and hopped on a plane in Sydney toward the United States to start at a Ph.D. program at Cornell University.
At the time, I didn't know a single person in the country that was to become my home, or for that matter, anyone who had ever studied in the U.S. I barely even knew anything about Cornell. This was 1993 — still the pre-internet era — so the extent of my knowledge was a one-page write-up in one of those college guides they used to have in libraries and whatever the admissions office had sent with my acceptance letter. I remember some — one telling me that the campus was beautiful and that the winters were long (both true, as it turns out), but that was about it. I didn't even know what classes I would be taking.
I was only 22 at the time, still young enough to make major life decisions without thinking too much about them. But as I hugged my sister and my best friend good-bye that day at the airport, the enormity of what I was doing finally hit me. I'm a big guy — 6-foot-2 and more than 200 pounds — and I thought I'd been through some tough moments during my years in the Navy, but this was more than I had bargained for. I broke down and cried like a baby, right there in front of hundreds of people in the passport line. I remember feeling horribly embarrassed, but I couldn't help it. I was leaving my whole life behind and I had no idea where I was going, how long I was going for, or what I would do when I got there.
What on earth had I been thinking?
To be honest, I'm not actually sure. It certainly wasn't that I had my heart set on an academic career. During my undergraduate training at the Australian Defence Force Academy, I'd found myself more inspired by the military officers than by my academic instructors, so the idea of becoming a professor wasn't terribly appealing. At the same time, a navy career didn't seem in the cards for me, either. In the final year of my degree in physics, I had stumbled on chaos theory, which at the time had felt like the next big thing in science, and I ended up writing my honors thesis about it. The navy, however, had no interest in chaos theory or in letting me do research of any kind. I also wasn't able to go to sea on account of my bad eyesight, so I was stuck doing mostly administrative jobs.
Grad school seemed like the obvious way out of this rut. But there were two problems. First, the navy didn't send officers to Ph.D. programs, especially not officers who had only just completed their first degree, so there was a good chance they wouldn't let me go no matter where I got in. And second, I had to get in somewhere.
Oxford had always been a vague dream of mine, but in order to afford it I had to win a scholarship, which effectively meant winning a Rhodes. I applied two years in a row, both times reaching the final round only to fall short. The second year, however, I also applied to some U.S. schools, which I'd chosen by looking at the addresses of the authors that I'd run across in my thesis research. Cornell was one of them. Given how little I knew about the place, I had always assumed I had less chance of getting into Cornell than Oxford. But a few weeks after missing out on the Rhodes for the second time, I got a surprise letter in the mail telling me that I had been accepted to Cornell's Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. It wasn't my first choice by any stretch, but I figured it would have to do, so I went to my boss with the news that I wanted to go to the U.S. for grad school. Even then it was a long process — I remember the commodore in charge of Navy personnel asking me why I would possibly want to go and get a Ph.D. when I already had the best job in the world. In the end, however, they were surprisingly understanding, and they let me go.
It didn't exactly get off to a great start.
Cornell, if you're not familiar, is a big university in a small town called Ithaca, N.Y., about four and a half hours north of New York City. The campus is as beautiful as I had been told, but it's also pretty intimidating for a newcomer, and very isolated. I didn't know a soul when I arrived, and phone calls back to Australia cost more than a dollar per minute, which on my stipend meant that I couldn't afford to call home more than once a month or so. I remember feeling incredibly lonely.
My program also had some surprises in store for me. For one, I had to teach introductory mechanics, a class I'd never taken myself. Being engineers, all my classmates had taken it, so I was already behind the curve. I also didn't realize how many mandatory courses I would have to take on topics that had nothing to do with my actual interests. And worst of all, the chaos theory people whom I'd been looking forward to studying with had all left the department.
So here I was in a strange place with no friends, taking courses I didn't like and teaching courses I didn't understand, feeling totally overwhelmed and wondering how I had managed to misjudge things so badly. The only reason I didn't head straight back home was sheer stubbornness and pride. But I did seriously consider leaving Cornell, even going as far as to apply to a program at MIT that I thought would be a better fit.
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