abaya

Thanks again to all of you. These are incredible responses... I appreciate your sincerity and honesty. I would not say that the anthropology has ceased to give me joy. I still love hearing people's stories, especially immigrants', and that is what I came to grad school to work on. But I never expected it to become so... formulaic. Maybe I was naive about that, I don't know... but I never thought that "the study of people" would involve so many pages and pages of numbers and analysis. It just made the whole subject dead to me, after some years.

I came from a literary background and stumbled into anthropology, and the only reason I started grad school was because I didn't have to pay for it (Lasereth, I'm in anthropology--which in fact, would not get me a huge pay jump when I start working, unless you know something that I don't--but the benefit is that in the liberal arts, most MA/PhD programs are paid for because you work as a teaching assistant for the department.)--and I said to myself then, "I'll stick it out for the first 2 years, to get the MA, and after that point... if the funding stops, then I'll walk away with a free MA." So I suppose that has always been in the back of my head, too. I didn't come into grad school with a blazing passion to become a professor and do research for the rest of my life... I came in with a minimum commitment to see if I could make a career out of this, but if I didn't like it, I would give myself room to change directions.

So, thing is, it's hard to change when you're so deeply embedded in a system, that it's basically all or nothing. I have quit many things where I have invested a lot of energy... that has never been a problem for me. The regret is not so much my own, but guilt over what other people have done for me to get there (and guilt that I have so much opportunity, and would be wasting it--the Lasereth view)--that's strong, and it's something that I have struggled with in several other areas of my life. Much of my life is lived in debt to others' sacrifices for me to have these opportunities--and I think, after 30 years, that's starting to come to a head. (Iceland is one HUGE case in point--my father's death before I was born.)

Punkmusicfan: I'm right in the middle of that "lots of time and thinking" that you're talking about. That's what I'm coming to TFP for, to get some objective advice. Tippler, there is some part of me that still loves the core of anthropology--studying people--and that will never change, no matter what career I end up in. But the baggage of what that requires, at a professional level... that's what I'm evaluating here. A degree in anthropology is really not going to give me a huge boost on any salary scale, believe me--it's not engineering. The one thing I can see myself doing with the degree is working with immigrant populations--but I don't want to walk in with a PhD and be placed at some supervisory level, far away from the people. I want to be on the ground, face to face, listening to people... not sitting up high, determining policy and never seeing how it shakes out.

So maybe I wouldn't end up in some corporation, shooting for management--but I could see myself working for a non-profit or NGO, and engaging with the people on a daily basis. I really need to feel that I've contributed to individual people's lives, in order to go home feeling successful. The question is whether I need a PhD for that kind of work.

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran