Advice needed

[jun_inohara]

Okay, esteemed friend's list, I'm looking for a bit of advice from the lot of you. As many of you may know, I've been thinking about grad school. For a while, I was thinking of applying to University of Illinois' (Champaign/Urbana) East Asian Languages and Cultures Masters program. But I've just heard that the EALC department there is in the

Comments

[ivy_ink]

The question I have to ask is, what do you want to do with your career

[scalplock]

I agree with Meru in that it would be cool if you could get in initially and then transfer into the new program. I'm guessing they wouldn't have a problem with it. Perhaps there's an adviser there that you could kind of confirm that with?

And Ivy had a good point about waiting a semester to apply... or is it a once a year deadline thingy? Even so, you could wait a year if you wanted and get a temporary job in the meantime. (I'm totally planning on doing it again when I come back til I can find a more permanent job. I want to work in a deli!) It sounds like an amazing program!

[skygawker]

It seems like people who know more about teaching degrees than I do have already given you useful advice, so I'll just throw in that if it were a matter of waiting two years doing not much at all, I'd say get started immediately with the grad school. (You can do an application in 3 months! I'm doing one in two weeks -- admittedly for a certificate program, not a degree program, but still, you can do it!) But if you have something valuable/interesting to do in the meantime, then that changes things. I think the key to not getting post-JET blues is to keep busy doing SOMETHING that furthers your goal.

And also to remember that neither answer is perfect, nor is either going to prove a huge mistake. Looking back (and also looking at myself now...) I notice that I personally waste a lot of time and energy trying to pick the best choice in the mindset that ONE of them is surely a mistake and I just have to figure out which one that is. But you could have two winning paths here! One just might win a little more than the other. ;)

[mochibuni]

Is U of I the only university you want to go to? Have you explored other university programs? Would you consider getting your masters out of state, then perhaps returning and maybe being able to get on board with UI's program as an instructor two years from now?

[ashkestral]

I know my school encouraged undergrads to get their masters somewhere else to avoid "school inbreeding" <-- their term!

I'd second the "what are you planning to do with the degree". The one thing I've found in the workforce is that experience counts for more than education at most jobs.