third degree's the charm?
going for a third masters, crazy huh? my friends have told me to get another one, since i'll still be here for a few more years while i wait for nat to graduate. i don't know if they were being serious or joking.
to be honest, i have thought about it, and i was talking about it to nat last night. what area could i get it in?
1) children's librarian. well, my friends in my children's literature class found out i was not taking the course to fulfill the requirement for children's librarianship, but rather for fun. they said that they might make a librarian out of me. i must say, i do enjoy my children's literature course, and i think that it might be fun and interesting to work with kids and select books for children. i'm a little intimidated with all the knowledge some of my classmates possess and how i lack that knowledge.
2) education. i've always thought about teaching off and on, and i've mentioned it to my parents a few times of if i didn't major in CS, i might have gone into teaching. i have a few friends that are teachers, and i've heard it's hard work, but i think i might enjoy it. i enjoyed TAing my freshmen/sophomores in an intro to programming course for non-CS majors. i know that's a far cry from elementary or secondary education.
3) a combo of children's librarian and teacher. there's a program in LIS that allows you to get your teaching certificate (i think) and children's librarianship requirements so that you can work in a school library.
i notice a theme with kids. hmm. :)
i have a BS and MS in computer science, getting a MS in human factors, and possibly considereing a MS in a different area. i can see how the CS degrees compliment my human factors degree, but if i get another one, i feel it's totally unrelated. so basically, i'm a little bit scared to think about getting another masters. one of the reasons is because i feel VERY fickle, as if i have no idea of what i want to do with my life, and that i'll be fickle with my career (if i have one). second, i feel, even now, that my other degrees would be a "waste" in the sense that i didn't probably won't utilize them at all if i decide to go in a different area.
on the other hand, i might be more easily able to find a position if i take a long hiatus from work to be a stay-at-home-mom (which i'm thinking is pretty likely from when my kids are born to about high school).
anyways, i need to devote a some prayer to this, and see what the Lord's will is for more education in my life. :) i foresee that it will depend on 1) being able to get in and 2) ability to get funding.
i'd love to hear your thoughts as well. :)
posted by Ramona @ 4:11 PM
3 Comments:
There are two layers to education. There is the material itself; recursion, induction, context-free grammars, parsers, schedulers, a Zipf's law. There is also something greater. There is the knowing how to think critically, how to get a paper written, how to run a meeting, and all the more general things that help you succeed in your professional life.
I have an undergraduate degree in EE. At this point in my life, it's all gone. All the classes I took on signal processing and circuit theory have all dissolved into my grey matter. But I do not think it was a waste of time to get the BSEE. It got me to where I am today.
The same thing will happen with my PhD, if I ever get the dang thing. I will go on to be a professor, open a dance studio, or start a self-serve dog-wash. None of those things will need my mastery of computer science, but they will need the other things I learned here.
I hope this helps.
tlc
In addition to the other comments, I'd point out that your knowledge actually wouldn't be useless in a librarian or teaching job. Especially because there is so much that can be done to aid teaching with computers - if only the teachers and librarians knew what they were doing. In fact, I think the HCI/HF knowledge would actually help you to be a much better teacher than you would be otherwise.
A final nice thing about that type of job is that you would be able to work and stay at home with your kids because it is pretty typical for an elementary school librarian to only work part of the day (well, I guess I can't vouch for typical, but I've seen that before).
-DC
I'm also not "using" my undergraduate degrees - in fact I'm pretty fabulously not using them. Chemistry and math --> theology; "what a jump!" everyone says. At first I felt fickle and worried that that time had been wasted. And when professors would tell me that they were pleased to have me in the program because I had "the scientist's mindset" or some such I felt sort of icky, like I'd got in on false pretenses or something. What is the scientist's mindset, anyway? But now I realize that what you've learned forms your mind, your way of thinking and your approach to problems, so I can see what they mean. It's wonderful to have people with different mental backgrounds working together in an area. So if you want a third degree, I say go for it.
P.S.: tlc, a self-serve dog wash sounds completely awesome, but I'm still pulling for the dance studio.
-kb
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