Grad school

For the past few months I've been trying to figure out what I want to do for grad school. I know, without a doubt, I do not want to enter the job market upon graduation. I'm not ready, period. Andy is the type of person who can handle it right after graduation, but we're very different. My whole life has been dedicated to academic pursuits, and it's going to be hard for me to transition out of that. So I guess I'm just putting the whole thing off as long as possible. =P

So, I've been listing possible grad school programs. Here's the short list of my interests:

Technology law - SU's law school offers a joint program with the School of Information Studies, my current school, so that in three years of continuous study I could obtain both a JD and MS.

Information management - I thought for a long time that this was definitely what I was going to do, but now I'm growing tired of constant management classes. I'm learning that I prefer the technology side of information studies, but it's too late for me to switch to computer science as an undergrad, plus I like that my degree will be more marketable.

Information science - telecommunications/networking - This is a possibility, but I'm iffy about it without doing it next to the law degree.

Graphic/web design - This has been my favorite hobby since the end of elementary school. Any hobby I can keep up with for that long must be good for me. The only reason I don't do it more often is lack of time, thanks to school and everything else.

Marriage and family therapy - I've always had a strong interest in this, and I think it's one of a very, very small number of careers I'd actually be happy with. But I wouldn't be able to do anything (that would make me happy) with it unless I continued on to get a PhD, and that may be more work than I'm up to.


I feel pressured to make a decision, since most of those possibilities would require either taking the GRE or LSAT, and at least for the LSAT, it must be taken by December 2006 at the very latest. Consider that I will probably need to take it more than once, and that means I need to start studying like... Between now and Christmas.

My preference changes from day to day. Today I'm most interested in the graphic/web design option, probably because today is my Design of Internet Services class day. It's probably also because I was discouraged about the lack of programs for it in colleges that I'd be actually interested in attending, until I discovered this. That sounds like it may be exactly what I'm looking for. I seriously considered Newhouse as an undergrad, and IST only won by a small margin. I've put in a request for information, as the site doesn't seem to say whether or not the fact that I'm not a current Newhouse/communications in general student will hurt my chances of acceptance, but I doubt it will.

It's strange to think about the fact that my student career will extend from 1987/8 to 2009 or later.