turned off

It would seem that after approximately twenty minutes re-researching graduate schools and programs, I am fed up.

This does not bode well for my future career in academia. You know, the one that I so violently shook off 1.4 years ago when I ditched all thoughts of graduate school in exchange for snowshoeing and (ahhh) hiking.

Trouble is, I keep coming back to it. March of 2008 I was set on applying for Fall 2009 admission. Only three months later, I said "screw that sh*t" (ahem, in a most composed and academic fashion) for the idea of expatriating and getting my hands dirty (probably very literally) serving underprivileged communities in third world countries (this the idea most currently in the works). Still, oh classrooms and research and theses!--I can't get you off my mind! I get lured back into the tantalizing prospect of incorporating words like "heteronormativization" into my everyday vocabulary, and using "culturally sanctioned" as an adverbial modifying phrase to describe concepts like "binary systems" or "phobias constructed on a false matrix of exclusivity". Ha. But seriously.

So I start researching again: graduate certificates, M.S.W.s, M.A.s, M.Ed.s, M.S.es, whatevers.
To be completely truthful: it is the suggestion of snobbery that turns me away, each time. The obsessions with prestige, the competitions for "best-ranking program," the requirements of already having an M.A. (for some graduate certificates), etc. And it's never more than a suggestion, to be sure. Subtlety is a well-learned skill of the prestigious...and pretentious.

To be short, there is something so repulsive about the entitlement that (traditionally) accompanies successive degrees that I continue to turn away. I wanna be able to use those big words, and I'm almost very nearly seduced by the prospect that I have, on multiple occasions, began the application process. And although I recognize that I eventually would need another degree to have the career I'd love to pursue, I (at this point) cannot bring myself to ...what I feel, if I examine it honestly: sell out.

So I'm back to here, and here, and here.

Suggestions on how to slake my grad-school-lust, or how, if I ever get admitted and enrolled to a program, to hold in humility my understanding and efforts at changing the world, remembering that I don't know everything (or much) are welcome. (Read: "halp!")

At this point, however, I feel pretty screwed.