I went to college straight after high school, dabbling in music and science before earning an African History degree in 1997. Professors seemed to have a pretty good life, so I thought I’d go ahead and get a Ph.D. in African History and then teach, research and write to my heart’s content.
First, though, I wanted to see a bit of the world. I joined the U.S. Peace Corps in hopes of going to Africa and experiencing some of the places I’d read about. I planned to save the world. (Naiveté is so charming, isn’t it?) The government had other ideas, though, so I ended up teaching English as a Foreign Language in a small village in Turkmenistan, Central Asia instead.
By the time I left Turkmenistan, despite my best efforts, the world still seemed to be in trouble. Peace Corps opened my sheltered middle-class American eyes to appalling human rights abuses, the plight of refugees, and environmental degradation on an unimaginable scale. I made up my mind to get a degree in International and Environmental Law from the University of Washington rather than going to graduate school in history.
Law school was an ordeal for me. The coursework was usually difficult, and almost always uninteresting. Even the electives in environmental and international law left me cold; how I envied the marine biologists who joined us for a course in maritime environmental law! I finished my law degree in 2002, since a completed J.D. would look much better on a resume than dropping out would, and then I began to look for a job with non-profit environmental organizations. It pretty quickly became apparent that I was either over- or under-qualified for the jobs that were out there; employers wanted a secretarial assistant with a high school diploma, or a seasoned legal advocate with seven-plus years’ experience in a non-profit.
I felt completely adrift, and my education loans would be coming due soon. I needed to either get a real job or go back to school and try again. With the latter in mind, I approached the Ecology Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder and asked them what it would take to get a Master’s Degree in Ecology or Environmental Biology, given my irrelevant background in history and the law. They were very encouraging and sketched out a program whereby I could finish the science series prerequisites I needed and get the Master’s courses done in four years. While I was considering this plan, I got an offer to teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in South Korea. I was on a plane to Seoul two weeks later.
What I intended to be a one- or two-year stint in Korea stretched into four, the last two of which I spent teaching at a university. It was a good-paying job with excellent benefits and I was able to chip away at my debt. The subject of EFL seemed less than thrilling to me, though. (“OK, everyone, today we are going to practice talking about the weather…”) I spent a lot of my free time turning over different options in my head: Should I get an environmental science degree? Become a science journalist? Teach high school history?
In the end, I decided to go back to Plan A from 10 years earlier. I applied to African History Ph.D. programs. Today, I am thrilled to report that I am a history Ph.D. student in Boston. My dissertation work on East African national parks will include legal aspects as well as ecological themes, so none of my previous studies were a complete waste (as I sometimes feared).
It was a long road, full of switchbacks and what appeared to be dead ends, but finally I feel that I am right where I want to be, studying subjects that fascinate me. Who knows what the job market will be like when I finish five or six years from now, but for the time being, life is good! With a little luck and a lot of persistence, anyone can get the education they need to find a truly fun and fulfilling career. So if you are considering returning to school later in life, I say “Go for it!” and the best of luck to you!
Visit Kallie's Asian History site at About.com.
