Master of my own education

Monday, October 31, 2005

Anyone who happened to be with me on June 3, 2002 in Oxford might have either a better or a worse chance of understanding where I am now. June 3rd I staggered, exhausted, from the Examination Schools into a cobbled street where people known to me as my friends doused me with cheap champagne,tied balloons to my collar and promptly walked me off to drink lots while I babbled a bit about Aristotle...

What pray tell, was such an event for? I had finished my Final exams at Oxford. I had completed my undergraduate education! Hooray! And as I said then and indeed for several months, I was academically exhausted. Grad school? Gimmie a break.

So why am I now in Grad school? 3 years later (has it been that long?!) I'm starting a Master's. And it isn't even in Classics! What happened?

Well, God works in mysterious ways and looking back, the Plan is always so beautifully crafted, if only you were able to recognise it at the time. In September 2002, I started my first job at the Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Studies as the Junior Dean of Students. This was a study abroad program for students from American universities and colleges to come study in Oxford. My job was to make sure they were happy, healthy, well adjusted people who didn't burn the building down. They became a set of great new friends who challenged and taught me, and I hope they learned half as much from me during the year as I did from them. In my spare time, I was volunteering with the museum education program and doing some teaching at my old high school. At the end of the year, I decided it was time to return to the USA and managed to find a job for myself working as a Student Recruiter for the CMRS. Perfect! I could use my talents from my own experience of studying in England, and share with students here. In that position, I traveled to difference colleges and universities, meeting with different people there to talk about my program. I talked with students, attended fairs, prepared them for departure and eventually handed them over to the staff in the UK. I learned a lot about study abroad and how it works, but I missed the interaction that I had with the students. I wanted to be one of the people I was meeting with. I started talking to them and asking how they got into their position, looking at different qualifications and job descriptions. I got really excited! And that's when I started looking into graduate school.

Having not studied in the US since I was 13, the American education system was pretty different and there was a lot I didn't understand. Not just the practicalities, but the deeper sense of why these things matter and what the goals were. How to work with students and institutions, and particularly, how international education worked with the USA. Not just for future jobs, but for my own knowledge and understanding, I needed a MA in Higher Education.

Higher Education is anything past high school. So college, university, professional training, etc. I'm not training to be able to teach in Higher Ed, that would be a faculty job requiring me to get a PhD in Classics or something. I'm training to be able to work in Higher Ed in any of the variety of jobs in an institution that *aren't* faculty. For example, Study abroad, international programs, exchange students, etc. ;-)

God provided me with all sorts of experiences that have brought me here, and every one of them has been valuable in some way. And here I am! My first semester in the MA program in Higher Education at the Center for Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan, the number 1 ranking program in the country for years running. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited.