Grad School? Grad School.

 "You shouldn't go to grad school just because you don't know what to do next."

Yeah, okay. Sure. I know that, intellectually. It's partially why I took a whole gap year after grad school instead of working as a summer tech and leaping back into school in the fall. I didn't know if working in biology was really what I wanted to do. Could it just be another fleeting daydream? I needed to stick it out and see.

"The world is dying and I hate my body. Maybe I should go to grad school." -- Ben Lapidus

I decided, after my first field season, that I did want to work in biology permanently. I spoke to and observed experts in the field and knew I would need a master's degree to get a permanent job. I'm good at school. I knew I could do it. I just wasn't sure when. It would be fun to do some more seasonal work, travel the country, wait to put down roots.

But several factors pushed me to go ahead and get it done. First, two of the AmeriCorps I was working with decided to do go back for a master's themselves that year. Senate Bill 228 was a new initiative in West Virginia-- if you did so many AmeriCorps service terms in the state, then you could get so many semesters of free tuition at any public university in the state. It would be good to have friends going through the same things I was. Second, I was turning 23, and I knew I'd get booted off my parents' health insurance at 26. Might as well do it now while I don't have to pay for my own health insurance. Third, my grandparents were getting older. They let me live with them for free in undergrad, and I was sure they'd let me do it again for grad school. If I could get into a lab at my alma mater right then, I wouldn't have to worry about paying rent, either.

Fourth-- the embarrassing one-- I'd just had my heart ripped out and thrown on the fucking floor by a little rat man with a receding hairline. I could grieve and be miserable while working more temporary tech jobs, or I could grieve and be miserable while earning a master's degree (which I was told would make me miserable anyway.) It's certainly stupid to start a master's program out of spite for a man... but it wasn't my only reason.

I learned a lot of things about grad school from other biologists, but the main two were:

1) your advisor makes or breaks your grad school experience

and 2) they should be funding you to do research, not making you pay tuition. If a STEM graduate program ever tries to make you pay for your degree out of pocket, you should run like hell. So Senate Bill 228 is a nice thought, but it's for people pursuing an M.A. (classes) rather than an M.S. (research.)

I set up a meeting with my old undergraduate mentor, Pam. She was thrilled at the prospect of having me back in the lab. We met over Teams to go over details. She had funding for me and let me know much I would be making, paperwork and expectations for master's students, and graduate teaching position opportunities. She detailed the master's projects she had available for me to work on.

She had a project using DNA to study plant-pollinator interactions, and that one sparked my interest. When she went more in-depth on that one, I was sold. I got off the call and walked to the conference room, where my boss and one of my AmeriCorps friends were talking about her master's plans. "I'm going to study bees at Marshall!"