The Journal: The MSc Experience

Ten years ago, the thought of me going to college was still something everyone was getting used to. I’d spent my entire school career evading work. Hated essays. Hated homework. I wanted to write, explore the world, and make art, and grades were the bane of my existence.

Plot twist: turns out I love school. I just hated the American school system. Go figure.

I’ve always been a project-based learner. Once I have an idea in my head, the research comes second-nature. I learn about my interests from bricks to big picture, from physiology to physics, and I don’t stop until the project is complete. It’s one of the reasons writing appeals to me on such a fundamental level: writers are literally unlimited in what we can explore. Most of what I look into never actually makes it on the page. (Thus the secret homepage, where I can show off a little of the background work.)

Basically, I was made for grad school.

I got accepted into undergrad on academic probation. Not joking. Took me a bit to realize I had to actually do the work, but once I got into the later years I really started to shine. I was able to follow my passions as academic pursuits, after a lifetime of being told I wasn’t allowed to do my own research or present my own opinions. (I’ll never forget a research paper in high school where I had points knocked off for “coming to my own conclusion”, as the teacher helpfully wrote in the margin. I know a number of wonderful schools and wonderful teachers, and after years working as an adult in the system I do understand the logic, I swear, but it is not a system made for flexibility, and as a student it failed me.)

Grad school, though? Grad school has been heaven.

I arrived in Scotland one year ago yesterday—exhausted, excited, and emotionally drained after leaving my entire life behind me. I’d left behind the organization I co-founded with a friend. I’d left behind a relationship of over a decade. I’d left my parents behind at the airport. I’d left behind my family, my country, and everything that felt safe, for a complete unknown. I’d also left behind a deep, dangerous depression. For a while, at that point, I had felt simultaneously adrift and claustrophobic. Lost and confined. I was leaving behind a labyrinthine plateau. A constricting void.

I arrived. A family friend picked me up at the airport (a beacon of security in an extremely unsure world) and dropped me off in my room.

In the year to come, of course, my home country would rapidly destabilize, my new country would do its best to follow suit, and a global pandemic would shake the human population as a whole to its core. Somehow, impossibly, this has still been one of the best years of my life.

As I sat in that new room and took the first breaths of fresh air, a long-dimming flame came back to life. For the first time in my life, professionally, I had more than freedom—I had challenge. I made fast and lifelong friends, each one of them brilliant and passionate, each one of them people I trust with my work and my confidence.

This yeah, I’ve had time to write. Time to work on whatever project my heart desires. Not only have I been allowed to follow my interests, it’s mandatory. I wrote an entire dissertation-length manuscript on pure accident over the course of the year, spurred by inspiration alone, and I’ve published more since lockdown started than the past three years combined.

It has been a long road to get to this place, but I will say this without shame: I am proud. I am happy. And I’m ready for what comes next.