Senior needing advice

Graduate School
1

Hi,
I’m currently a senior in my last semester at a mid-tier state school majoring in Classical Studies with a minor in History. I’ll graduate this December with between a 3.55-3.65 depending on my results from this semester.

I had always planned on joining the Navy after this semester as an officer for a few years to benefit from the loan repayment program, and I figured I would just figure out what I planned to do with my degree after that. I learned from my medical evaluation earlier this week that I will not be able to join the navy due to a previously unknown medical issue. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about what my next step will be, and I’m definitely thinking I’d like to keep going with school.

I was thinking about applying to a graduate program in Classical Archaeology(my current concentration), but as I look through the posts of folks on the internet, I’m starting to think I might have admissions issues. You see, I initially went to university for the first time at the ripe age of 17, immature and without motivation, the results were not spectacular. I got at 2.0 the first semester before going home, taking online classes and completely flaming out the second semester. I took a year off and slowly started back at a CC, and then after a year, transferred back to the university. Needless to say, my GPA wasn’t to hot, but the school offered an academic forgiveness program. They left the poor grades on the transcript, but don’t use them for GPA calculations since I met performance criteria after coming back. Since I came back 2 years ago, I have had a little over 3.8 GPA average.

How much will this hurt me? Should I even bother applying to grad school? I really don’t want to resign myself to office drone life.

2

Maybe you should work for a few years to repay some loans and sharpen up your focus.

3

Your old grades should not be a problem given the fact that you have done well in your recent academic history. However, it seems that you are going to graduate school simply because you have nothing better to do and that is definitely the wrong reason. I agree with @JustOneDad about this. Take a bit of time, work and then decide if a graduate degree is really the direction for you.

4

Well, I currently work part-time in an insurance office, and this type of job seems to be the only type of employment available to someone with my degree path outside of academia or teaching. One thing I am absolutely sure of is, I can not do this type of work for much longer, it makes me cringe whenever I see the door as I pull up to work. I definitely want to do something further with my education. If I were to take a break to work, does anyone have any recommendations for types of employment that might look good on a grad school app? I can’t take a break from school just to do an internship or the like because of my loans unfortunately.

5

First of all, don’t go to graduate school because you can’t figure out what to do next. That’s a waste of money and time. Classical archaeology is a particularly bad field to enter just because you don’t know what to do next, because archaeology is a really tough field to break into and most likely, you’ll make it back into an office - just with much more debt.

So you hate your current job. That doesn’t mean that you will hate every job ever, or every job that takes place in an office. (Also, most jobs occur in offices, which is why I am always amused when undergrads say they don’t want “office drone” life. Even archaeologists spend significant amount

Don’t look for employment that will look good on a graduate school app - first of all, because that’s a broad question that includes a lot of kinds of employment (depending on what you want to do), and second of all because you don’t seem to know what you want to do anyway. Instead, look for employment that you will enjoy or at least not hate. There’s so much in the social milieu out there that young employees should “follow their passion” or “do what they love,” but it’s all horrible advice. Work is work; very few people love it, and even people who are in fields that they really like don’t get excited to go to work every day. That’s why they call it work.

Read these articles:

[Don’t Follow Your Passion](The Secrets To Career Contentment: Don’t Follow Your Passion)
[“Do what you love” is not great advice]("do what you love" is not great advice — Ask a Manager)
[Why you shouldn’t follow your passion](why you shouldn’t follow your passion — Ask a Manager)

The goal should be to do work that feels relatively meaningful to you and that you enjoy somewhat - not necessarily because it matches up with a passion, but because you like the tasks that you do every day. And some people simply do work that they don’t actively hate, and that’s okay, too. You have a whole life - friends, hobbies, activities, weekends - to build love and passion around.

That said, if you want a PhD program in classical archaeology you usually need research experience, probably including at least one dig. If you don’t have that, then you’re probably not very competitive despite your GPA.

If you are aiming for an MA program in the field, your past indiscretions shouldn’t matter so much since your most recent grades are excellent. An MA program is a good way to get the research experience necessary to enter a PhD program (and also learn the languages you’ll need, since most programs in both the classics and archaeology require reading knowledge of two languages and most programs like to see you as pretty advanced in one and started another by the time you apply).