Desire for two MAs: Public Policy and Philology

In my continuing goal to be a Renaissance Woman I have come up against some problems. First and foremost is my inability to do math. Ever. Even my basic grant writing addition needs proof reading. I don’t think teaching Vlada how to add counts. Do puns outweigh math?

However, I think Public Policy is sufficiently different from chalk pastel proficiency and cooking like jazz. It also seems like a genuinely useful thing. No matter how much I love art, I know I am not Oscar Wilde and I just don’t have the cohones to pull an all or nothing dive into becoming a professional writer without some sort of back up.

To boot, I am not, I have found, completely fulfilled by good artistic expression. It’s no bloody wonder kids like Van Gogh and Baudelaire were drunks. They were consumed by something not wholly respected, needed, wanted by humanity.

My sociology 101 professor said it best: “No one calls a sociologist at 2 in the morning with an emergency. No. You call your plumber.”

The fact that me mate n me got his number and called him with some drunken conundrum at 2 in the morning and he loved it—and will always love us for doing so—proves that soft sciences and arts just don’t fuel one of those Marxist Needs of Man. Creation, yes, it fulfills that one. But it does not give a person adequate reason for existing. At least, not if one thinks as much about these things as artists tend to.

So, I looked at my dad and sister and thought, I can be an engineer. Tried. That math thing though. It’ll kick your ass every time. I am a good leader of engineers, but to get to that point you really ought to have been an engineer at some point. Or, be a leader in some other field and shift in.

I’m already in a first hand experience with public policy of a sort. My mother, who, mentally I am more naturally like than Dad and Kelsie, is currently following an MA in Public Policy at American University. She gives me a text book or two every once in a while. She had me Skype into her classroom to meet some of her colleagues. It’s fascinating stuff and the people in it seemed genuinely likable and capable. Like a nice blend of politicians and social workers. A definite plus over my short lived forays into nursing and politics.

Would it be too much like a family legacy to follow so directly? Do I have to re-assess what I think of family businesses?

So, that’s one Masters degree I desire. Others I want are for poetry or something like it, but I have this stubborn scorn for MFA programs. If you are an artist you create art. If you need a teacher to spur you into it, you fail. The only MFA program I’d ever enter is at the New School in NY for the connections it would lend me. However, that is just not bloody likely.

What I could use though, is a Masters in Philology. This is a tool for poets, and would have far fewer smarmy arty types trying to posture as Hemingway or some Indie rocker and his limp dick guitar solos. Both sexy – right?

But I’ll get back to that once I’ve gotten to a certain level. I’m just getting to the mindset where I know I can conquer grad school. If I’d gone straight out of undergrad I’d have failed for sure. If I start now, I’ll fiscally fail for sure. Dreams, they are dreams, these educations. This is what Natalia said. Renata said: “Philology! That’s what my Master’s is in!!”