<p>Most professors will remember you vaguely in a few years, but what you do is when you contact them, you write them a letter jogging their memory (“I was in your Materials of Basketweaving class in the Fall of 2013, and I visited your office hours a few times during the semester, during which we talked about the relationship between materials and techniques of basketweaving.”). If they agree to write you a recommendation letter, you will give them a package of materials to help them - drafts of your personal statement to a program, your CV that covers what you’ve done since you left their class, and information about the programs to which you are applying.</p>
<p>You can also ask your professors for recommendation letters right now and store them with a service like Interfolio. Your campus may also have a letter of recommendation storage/sending service that may be cheaper or free, so check that out first. The downside to this is that they will be generic letters not addressed to any specific program, but the upside is that professors write them while you are fresh in their memories.</p>
<p>I’m sure your senior thesis advisor will remember you. I finished my senior thesis nearly 6 years ago, and a few months ago my senior thesis adviser contacted me to let me know that one of her new thesis students was coming to my university for a summer program and asked if I might meet with her and chat about grad programs.</p>
<p>AS for the rest…well, remember that you may not ever NEED a graduate degree. Most people who go to college don’t get one, and have very long and productive careers without one. So when you go into your years of work and travel, don’t think “What grad degree should I get?” but “What is it that I would like to do with my life, and do I need a graduate degree to do that?” As you work, think about where you would like to be 2, 5, 10 years from where you are then. First figure out what you enjoy and what you like to do. It rarely comes to you in an epiphany, like “OMG I want to be a development officer!” It usually comes in pieces, like “Hey, I really like talking to rich donors who want to give money” and “It’s important to me to get people to give money to nonprofits I believe in” and “Going to development galas is such a huge perk of this job”. Sometimes it’s also about what you don’t like, like knowing that you hate isolating work in which you don’t talk to anyone every day or that you don’t want to travel around too much outside the office.</p>
<p>I caution you, however, against the thinking “I don’t want to be stuck at a cubicle/in an office, staring at a computer.” I hear so many undergrads say this, but then about 95% of the jobs they list involve doing just that. Nowadays almost everyone works in an office at a computer at least some of the time, even physicians and dentists, engineers, attorneys, and professors (which is the profession I hear people use most often when they say they don’t want to be stuck at a computer all day. I am always amused). Also, I think a lot of college students say that because they’ve never really done it before, OR because they think it’s going to feel like writing a paper for class. It doesn’t. But it’s true that in some jobs you do have more outside interaction than in others.</p>
<p>Look at the people who are doing what you would like to be doing. Set up informational interviews with them - this is an interview in which you ask them questions about their job duties and working at their organization (but you don’t ask them for a job). Do they have graduate degrees? If so, what are they in?</p>
<p>As a side note, you only need a PhD if you are planning a research career, or if you want a career in higher education administration (and for many of those positions you need a research career first).</p>
Also your job sounds awesome.</p>