on grad school

I'm having one of those "what shall i do with my life days?"

be forewarned.

Most of my good friends have graduated, a few are in grad school. Thats great, its beautiful, its nice seeing the young black ladies getting the education.

Do i want to go to grad school?

I'm not in love with academia. I dont worship scholars. i dont speak jargon. I don't like arguing with people, because i generaly don't care and dont expect them to change their mind. Im wondering when all this work by scholars will actually fall out of the ivory towers and land in the ghettos that these large universities reside in. Not in a symbolic way, but in a very real way thats meaningful to the people who are studied/examined and interoggated for their experieces for the sake of being a case study in someones book. Books are nice(espcially since i want to work in the library/archive field), largely inaccesible but nice. I'm tired of books/papers/works with two titles that include'examining the role of'', 'redefining','reexamining','looking at','interrogating', the discourse' etc etc. Perhaps the most salient reason would be that i hate writing papers.

Disclaimer: now im not trying to suggest that grad students worship scholar dieties, speak jargon or that their work is insignificant- i think the opposite. I like grad students, in fact, i think women in grad school are sexy.

now the flip side of this is that i actually enjoy school and i love learning . Unfortunately for me, one might not be able to tell that by my transcripts. Grad school sounds appetizing, like a sizzling plate of shrimps. It sounds prestigous, smart, intelligent all that shit. It makes me sound as if im living up to my academic potential. It kinda looks like fun. Like on some ' all- my-cool-friends-are- in-grad-school-so-i-wanna-go too' type shit. I want to talk about how much my cohort sucks, how much i love Dr. so&so's work, how i'm a grad student becaue i suck at life. I want to laugh at professors(like corny white people humor), go to conferences and be affiliated with a school. I want that shit on my resume. I pretty much want to go for all the wrong reasons.

And then theres the allusion that it may somehow open up better job opportunites in my (insert yet-to-be-determined profession here) future. Lately i've been reading some books(yeah- the ones i said earlier were useless) about black people and the climate for jobs. The raging black middle class that i not-so-secretly want to be part of and despise for making me feel like i want to be part of it . Oh how the real world sucks. I've been working since i was 14-i love getting that paycheck and im off topic.

But in conclusion,i want to go to grad school for shallow reasons; i doubt my grades will allow me to do that; i need to find a job that i love(thats another blog entry);It will help my self-esteem to appear smart because I'm scared and insecure; I might feel naked without a post grad degree; trying to improve society outside of the academy, with the academy's help and most importantly, grad school nerds are hot and i want to holla at them and sound intelligent..

So yeah, this is me thinking aloud again. This ain't anything new, or unique.. just ones of those days
(uh oh- sounds like im apologizing *sisterfire leaders begin to beat me on the head with candles*). In the meantime i need to focus on part 1 of grad school-

graduating from Spelman.

(p.s. the reasons i wanted to go to Spelman is a far bigger farce, so embarrising that even shamless alii will not publish them)