December 17th, 2019

Looks Like I Made It!

I ended up with a decent semester. I made a B and a B+. In graduate school terms, that is just OK, but I’ll take it. I’m not quite out of the woods academically, but I’m doing my best.

The advising team is amazing and helping me navigate. I’ll be doing special topics in law and judicial politics next semester and then in the Fall of 2020, I’ll take two more classes and defend my paper and I will be finished. I made the decision about a year ago that I couldn’t take any more math and so I won’t be pursuing my PhD—in political science anyway.

My husband thinks I should do a PhD in English History. There can’t be any math in that!?

All in all, grad school has been a great experience. Many of my cohort have never met an involved conservative politico before and I’ve broken down a few stereotypes in that regard. I also find it comforting to find out that all the stereotypes about academia are not true. It’s true they lean left. It’s also true that they don’t see it. The truly see themselves as in the middle on issues. So it is intellectual honesty of a sort, but they need to get out into the real world a little more.

Living in a college town and working at a large university is not the real world. It’s a bubble, a very nice bubble, but a bubble nonetheless. And all you need to do is travel a few blocks outside of the bubble to see the real world.