Taking up Graduate Studies?

Whenever someone asks me whether it is worth to take up graduate studies my answer is always "it depends".

It is graduation season. There are probably some of those graduates, particularly those who excelled academically to be considering taking up a master's degree, and those who finished their master's, a doctoral degree. There are also those students who did not really excel in the college academics thinking of pursuing a graduate degree to add a feather on their cap.

BUT, that's all caps, graduate school is not for everyone. But, again it depends on the same factors that a student intending to pursue graduate studies should really be thinking over. Gloss over these points to check your self if you are really up to it:

1. Do you have a career track in mind where advance knowledge will be required, more than what a college education could provide?

2. Do you have a specific course of interest in which you are really good at and you are truly willing to learn more about?

3. Do you have a particular school (not a diploma mill) where you would be accepted for the course that you intend to take?

4. Do you have the resources (i.e. money, time, support, transportation, knowledge sources) that will enable you to complete graduate studies?

5. Do you have the skills to grasp vast knowledge crunched in so little time, and the savvy to read beyond the required readings or what you're professor have read so far?

6. Do you have the patience to deal with intolerable professors who think they know everything and you don't until they drift away and ask you a question you will have to think of for days?

7. Do you have the social skills to cope with the varying traits of your possible classmates, who would argue better than you, or just stare at you when you extrapolate on things they did not learn of, or a group mate who loves free rides in your collaborative works?

8. Do you enjoy learning on your own because you want your points or arguments supported with empirical knowledge so that you can contribute to the existing knowledge in the world?

9. Do you believe that there are truths, and several sides and angles to a truth you might be needing to debunk or question later on?

10. Is it merely the degree that you want or the learning experience that goes with pursuing the degree?

When I took my Masters in Arts, we were more than twenty, only four in batch had really completed the degree. When I took my MBA we were 18, none finished on the time allotted for us to complete, though I manage to complete all academic works. When enrolled for my PhD, there were 10 of us who applied for the program, five got in, only two of us taking the comprehensive exam soon, two got out of the program, one needs three semesters more to complete the course requirement.

In a bachelor's degree, a student learns concepts. In a master degree the learner tests concepts of the theories and principles that were learned in college. In obtaining a PhD degree, the learner to become a philosopher must argue his way to contribute a concept to the existing body of human knowledge.

It depends where one takes his degree from. My training in the PhD in Communication program of the University of the Philippines did not only enable me to become a researcher, as we have to write a full research equivalent to that of a college or master's thesis every term in every course. Likewise, it opened my nut head to a wide horizon of the field and multiple disciplines that converge in understanding the phenomenon of communication. Further, the learning experience granted me expertise in understanding the context and intricacies of my profession.

I finished my Master's coursework in two years, but it took me seven years to finally bring to my field a knowledge from my labor and thinking. It took me four trimesters to finish the coursework for my supposed MBA degree, which I started the same time I was in my last year of my MA. I completed my PhD course work in two years and a semester. My goal is to pass my dissertation within the next school year. I am not in a hurry, I just don't want to waste time and spend more over time. Don't ask me about the grades, because you'll be in disbelief to brand me merely air headed. But I managed an excellent standing between 1.0 to 1.25, in all those.

Graduate studies is not for everyone. I am not through with it yet, but I have overcome so far. It is something one needs to plan about, really think about, aspire for perhaps, but more importantly work hard for. Taking graduate studies is a choice that goes with a commitment, sleepless nights, stressful days, gruelling paper works, mountain high readings. But it is all worth it, if you have it there inside you what is required for it.