Hi,
So, I am an undergraduate student in discipline whatever and I'm graduating within a year. My senior thesis advisor thinks that graduate school is a real option for me. I am truly fascinated by my discipline and I have a natural knack for it. I feel incredibly lucky that a main interest of mine matches up with a natural talent I have.
One problem is that I have many strong interests outside of this discipline. My personality is such that I really am an aspiring "polymath." And many of these interests are in direct contradiction with doing graduate school. For example, I am interested in (frugal) travel. But, a PhD would mean 7-9 years of being locked down to one location.
But the biggest problem of all is that I will be working my ass off most all of the time. This means that all of my other interests that have been sitting on the backburner since beginning my undergraduate degree (or even high school!), will stay there.
My question is this: how do I deal with having a strong passion for this discipline, and the opportunity to study it at the highest level for the better part of a decade -- at the expense of all of my other interests -- vs. getting a less rigorous job that I am less interested in, and being able to do the countless things that I've been wanting to.
How do I make this decision? What if I pass on graduate school and in five years ultimately realize that it's what I should've done? I do see that I could take some time (a year or two) to do some of these things I've been wanting to do, but, I'm afraid that I would enjoy the freedom of being out of school too much to want to go back.
Lastly, it's not just that I would be too busy with school to do other things. It's also that I would be too busy with school to enjoy my life to its fullest extent. I am consistently happier during summer break than I am in the heart of the school year. But maybe that's because I know school is on the horizon. It's just very hard to weigh out this decision.
Thanks for any thoughts
Submitted May 25, 2017 at 12:20AM by honestasker http://ift.tt/2qeceLg
