Graduate? You think school’s over?

Graduate? You think school’s over?

Jacob Higgins

Columnist

When someone asks you what your plans are after you get your first undergraduate degree, the first response that goes to your head isn’t very likely to be “I want to stay in college.” Most of the time, a college graduate is content with a Bachelor’s degree and moves on to find some sort of job opportunity that, with luck, relates to that degree. 

Yet, there are a few people who want to take their education further. For these graduate students, it means taking more classes, learning more material, having less free time, and pretty much setting life aside for a while. 

But not all is gloom and doom for us. I personally just recently started my graduate career, and so far I’m quite enjoying myself. In fact, the life of a graduate student here at McNeese is fairly similar to that of an undergraduate, at least on the surface. I take classes and do my coursework, I have a job on campus tutoring and teaching students, and I still get to hang out with my friends every so often. Of course, the classes are harder and the material is more complicated, but the classes are also smaller, and there’s a lot of room for personal interaction with professors and other students. It’s especially nice that just about everyone in my department is friendly; we’re like one big happy family.

Naturally, some things take a bit of getting used to. I arrive on campus every day at about 8:30, but my classes are only on Tuesday and Thursday, and don’t start until 2 pm. The rest of my time is spent on homework or preparing material for the class that I am student teaching; it’s quite an irregular schedule to adjust to when you’re used to taking four to six classes in varying subjects. However, it makes for an interesting experience.

The thing about graduate students is that this is what we wanted: a new challenge, learning new concepts and ideas. Well, maybe not so much on the loss of a social life, but this really hasn’t become a problem for me just yet. I’m learning to better manage my time, and I can honestly say that I’m interested in every single course that I’m taking. Then again, I’ve enjoyed the college experience since my freshman year. Perhaps it’s just me, and perhaps it’s because I’m still very early in my graduate career, but I have no regrets about my decision to stay here.