Why I Regret My Masters Degree

Have you ever been on one of those never ending drives where at some point you go into autopilot? You're just sort of coasting until you realize that you may have missed your exit and suddenly the environment feels distorted. Your GPS is buffering or maybe you’ve lost signal altogether. It’s dark, it’s late, you’re exhausted, and now you find yourself incredibly lost.

For me, this is how it feels to navigate my current situation. One minute you feel like you’re on the right path and you’ve done everything you can to prepare for the journey. You know exactly how long this trip will be, which turns to take, how much money you’ll need and then you’re off! However, with most road trips, things don’t always go according to plan. Sometimes you experience a flat tire or your phone dies and your car charger refuses to do it’s one job.

No matter how well you’ve prepped, one thing is always bound to go wrong.

I experienced this first hand when I made the decision to attend graduate school. At the time, this felt like the right choice for me. I had decided that I wanted a career in academia and the only way to follow that path was to have an advanced degree.

While in grad school, I felt like I had found a calling in writing. I was getting the instant gratification that I craved and when I presented my equivalent of a dissertation at the end of those two years, I received an A and much-needed praise from my professors.

I felt like I was walking on air. I loved telling people that I was a graduate student and mentioning the conferences I got to attend and what projects I was working on. It felt like I had everything figured out and I liked the way people looked at me when I told them about earning my M.A.

Not long after graduation is when things started to fall apart. If you aren’t familiar with the world of academia, then you might not be aware of the nuances that come with the career. The first and major one being that it is extremely difficult to find and secure a full-time job within the field. You tend to start off as an adjunct, which means that you’re a part-time instructor and you’re contracted from semester to semester. In higher education, students tend to drop out after the first semester meaning that there’s less classes available to teach in the spring. When I was an adjunct, I never knew if I would have a job for the following semester.

Additionally, when you’re an adjunct, you're paid per credit hour. One class is normally three credit hours and as an adjunct you teach about 1-4 classes. However, if your classes end up having a low enrollment it’s possible to have it cut a week or two before the semester starts. My first semester teaching, I had a class cut from me during the first week of school because only three students had enrolled in it. That means I had three credit hours of pay cut from my paycheck for that semester, which at the time was half of my income for the job.

On the bright side, I did have winter and summer break. However, since I wasn't working during those breaks, I wasn't receiving any pay during that time. My savings had to go toward covering rent during those months.

Since the money for the job was so unstable, I had to take on part-time jobs that would allow me to work around my teaching schedule. I took work at other colleges in the area, but most of the time this meant I was teaching during the day and then working part-time at night. I also tutored in between the two. Not to mention that these part-time jobs were hourly and I didn’t get paid on holidays or snow days. Still, they were at colleges so I thought I was paying my dues and working my way up.

I realized that it might be difficult to find full-time work with only my M.A. so I applied for PhD programs during that first semester of working. If you’re reading this, you can probably assume that I didn’t get into any programs and you’re right. Around this time, I was struggling to pay rent with the $20,000 I was making a year between three jobs and was realizing that I might have to leave my field.

Heartbreaking is an understatement when I talk about this time in my life. It hurts to know that you spent years of your life working toward something that just isn’t going to work out. Since then, I feel like I’ve just been spiraling trying to find a new career. I became stuck because my degree wasn’t useful outside of academia.

Also, my teaching and tutoring experience was difficult to translate into an office job and I lacked the basic qualifications for many entry level positions. I had an interviewer once tell me that they were worried I wouldn’t be able to sit for 8 hours because my previous jobs involved a lot of standing and running around.

I did finally land a full-time staff job at a college that I enjoyed and was leading me in a better direction. Then, after about a year and a half, I moved out of state (a post for another time) and got thrown back to the starting line.

At this point I’m debating if I should go back to school for something else, but then I wonder if that’s worth increasing my debt. Even a trade school or boot camp would still cost thousands of dollars and dry up all of my savings. Is it really worth it?

I’m telling you, dear reader, all of this not to lament on my professional failures, but to connect with anyone who might be dealing with a similar situation. At the time of writing this, I’m 29 and terrified that this is all my life has to offer. Yet, I take responsibility for my shortcomings. I should have researched my degree further before committing. I should have looked at my options more closely or talked to a an academic advisor more often.

I should have known what the job market would entail before throwing away money that my family did not have on a degree that would hinder my career instead of helping it.

The problem is that during grad school you’re surrounded by academics who made it and they’re passionate about what they do so they want you to be excited about the field too and join them. One of my parents is even a full-time, tenured professor so it never even occurred to me how few full-time jobs were available. I was living in this bubble and was too naïve to look beyond it.

This post is getting long and I wish I had a happy ending to tack onto it to encourage anyone reading, but I don’t. It’s been four years since graduating and I’ve survived, but I wouldn’t say I'm thriving or even "happy". I’m still struggling immensely with what I want to do with my life. Sure, I have my little dream of writing all day and selling my art (if I ever improve, but practice makes perfect). I also still want to do a podcast because I think I’m interesting enough to listen to for an hour every week.

But those are just daydreams that I can maybe turn into hobbies, but only a source of income if I’m very, very lucky. From my past experiences, I’d say I’m not one of those people where things just sort of fall into place for them. I think few people are and I also understand that I come from a place of privilege in many other ways. So I guess I should just stop complaining.

I guess the moral of the story is that things don’t always work out and sometimes we have to switch gears. When we get lost on that highway, do we go back the way we came and try the route again? Do we call someone for help or try to utilize the resources available to us? We’re not going to be stuck on the side of the road forever, but those moments when lost feel like ages.

And they’re frustrating moments where you sometimes just need to rest your head on the steering wheel and cry for a minute.

It’s easy to think you’re the only one getting lost when cars keep whizzing past you, so sure of where they’re headed. If you’re going through a period of being lost while everyone else around you seems to have found what they're looking for then I hope this post resonated with you.

I don’t know if it will be another four years of this *gestures vaguely*, but I know that I need to keep searching and striving for something. I can’t keep wishing that things could be different, but I can’t continuously punish myself either. I need to give myself a little grace and a little push. From there, I just hope that I land on something soft.