The quarter-life crisis

Many people went back to school this week. A year from now, I likewise hope to go back to school.

My life is fine, but it's not where I would have liked it to be at this point. Here I am, thirty years old, living with my parents, single as ever, aging out of the YSA ward at the end of the year. I'm a published author with a bachelor's degree, yet I'm working every Saturday for low pay in no air conditioning, and some of my coworkers are in high school! I've applied to many jobs and interviewed for several, but no permanent jobs have hired me. I'm going back to Sundance this fall, but that's not my ideal either. (Since This Is the Place goes on hiatus, I will make ten times as much at Sundance!)

I never felt that I needed a master's degree. I learned what I needed to know about editing in college, and I hoped to remain an editor. I heard that master's programs in editing weren't any better than BYU's editing minor.

At one point, probably four years ago, my boss at the Church History Library suggested that I could go get a master's degree in history. But why would I do that? I was already an editor, and history was literally my worst subject in high school and college.

In the past, I looked up the requirements for grad school, but it requires a lot of planning in advance. Like, a year or more. So it couldn't really just be a backup plan; you have to be committed. Also, you have to take the GRE, and those math problems looked tricky. So I just disregarded the notion.

In June, I was preparing an elders quorum lesson, and I was thinking how I value education and learning. I heard a voice say, "If you value education, why don't you go to grad school?" I didn't like that question. I don't need it, I thought, and I brushed it aside.

That night I attended the Mormon Miracle Pageant. I was analyzing it as an amateur Mormon historian. And I heard a voice say, "You know, you don't have to be an amateur."

The next day, I looked at requirements for grad school, and I realized that all of them were very doable. I need to submit letters of recommendation, but I have people who would write them for me. I need to submit writing samples, and I'm a published author. I need to pay tuition, but I have enough money saved that I can afford it. The most daunting of all might be the GRE, but I have enough downtime at This Is the Place that I can easily study for it.

So I am in the process of applying to grad school at the University of Utah to get an MS in history. My three choices for letters of recommendation have agreed to write them; I have drafted my statement of purpose and am waiting for feedback from a colleague; I take the GRE on September 17.

I sure will be glad when the GRE is over. I'm tired of practicing from GRE prep books at work when I could be reading academic books instead. I'm especially tired of taking practice tests on my days off. The verbal is easy enough for me, but the math is where I struggle. The math itself isn't hard, but I have to wrap my head around understanding the problems and figuring out how to solve them. Never in my life have I seen questions that look like these questions. I took a practice test on my day off, and my brain was fried from the math. Then I made zucchini soup. I was multiplying the recipe by 1.5, and I was messing up the fractions. I blame it on the test.

I'm only applying to the U because I'm not committed enough to go anywhere else. This way, I can keep living at home and keep working at This Is the Place, if I so choose.

Now, I know that history is the most stereotypically useless degree you can get. But I'm hoping that a master's degree in anything will give me extra skills, credentials, and marketability. I hope to remain primarily an editor. I choose history for several reasons, but among the major reasons are that I'm already published in history, the people who would give me letters of recommendation are (mostly) in history, and I hope it will help me with my Pioneer Day book.

As I said earlier, history was my worst subject. I only got a 2 on the AP US History exam, and my lowest grade in college was in history. (Back in 2012, I had some less-than-flattering things to say about historians.)

But I think part of why I disliked history is that history as taught in schools tends to be centered around wars. Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam War. And I find military history very boring. I had fun writing the footnotes for The Saints Abroad, but my least-favorite footnotes were about the Crimean War. When we talk about World War II, I know that D-Day and Normandy are essential, but I am much more interested in victory gardens and radio programs.

I derive pleasure from combing through old newspapers and magazines, getting a glimpse into life of the past. The political and military stories bore me, but the historical annals are full of interesting and fascinating anecdotes and stories. That's what I hope to get into when I start school next year.