Comments on: Jumping Ship

By: Marie Brennan

Marie Brennan — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:51:16 +0000

I knew my degree would feed back into my fiction, but that isn’t why I came to get it, if that makes any sense. I feel like that would have been unfair to my grad school and also WAY cost-ineffective. But I did think it was good to aim for a degree that would be compatible with the fiction.

Now, mind you, I do feel a little guilty, because it’s a little bit like “I’ve gotten what I REALLY came for, so now I’m bailing.”

By: chrisweuve

chrisweuve — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:23:02 +0000

Thanks for the very timely post. I understand the entire idea of trying to decide if you want a degree badly enough. I’m just finishing up a masters (20 years after starting one that remains incomplete), and am trying to decide if I want to do a humanities PhD, or return to a previous job. Both have the potential to inspire a lot of fiction, which would be a major purpose of either one. But which one to choose?

By: Joe Iriarte

Joe Iriarte — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:52:55 +0000

“And if I decide down the road that I really regret not having gotten that doctorate, it’s not like the bridge has been burned; I can always go back and finish . . . if I want to.”

As someone else who left academia without the paper at the end, let me mention that my university had a recency of credit requirement, which stated that after six years, my prior credits stopped counting toward my degree. If you haven’t already, you might want to check and see if yours has a similar rule in place.