hmmm

[textualdeviance]

So, I'm thinking about going back to school and getting another degree. I thought for a while about maybe doing law school (or, if I wanted to just skip all that, just get paralegal training) but I think I'd rather do something else. (Ideally, I'd like to finish my music degree, but I know that's never going to happen so long as I have tiny, deformed hands and can't play piano.) I think it would also do me good to get a few more English classes under my belt, particularly some work in fiction writing, so I can polish up the work I'm doing there.

However, I think in terms of a degree, I think I want to focus in a social science area (that overall subject being such a pet of mine), but I can't quite decide which area. I minored in Psych the first time around, so I could probably finish a degree in that pretty quickly, but I've discovered a bit more of a jones for bigger-picture stuff lately. It seems, maybe my strongest area of interest is Cultural Anthropology. However, I've noticed most of the programs I've seen for that focus on non-Western cultures. I'm rather more fascinated by the idea of studying Western subcultures, and I'm a little wary about Anthro being perhaps uncomfortably Euro-centric, in that they might be focusing on "exotic" cultures, as if Western culture were somehow the "normal" thing, and everything else was some strange creature to be studied in a petrie dish.

Sociology, perhaps, could be a better alternative. I might be able to find a women's studies program somewhere, too, although if I'm going to do that, I'd rather find a school that has a gender studies concentration, which covers feminism and glbt issues, etc., rather than just women's issues. Or maybe I can find an interdisciplinary Social Science degree somewhere. That might be cool.

In any case, I need to be sure to find a school that's somewhere nearby. If I have to, I don't mind living elsewhere for a few days a week while I'm in classes, but I'd like it to be no more than a couple of hours away from Seattle, so Mike and I can still see each other. Doing a portion of it through distance learning would be good, too-- get some of the simple stuff out of the way quickly that way, instead of having to sit in a classroom every week listening to someone drone on, when I've already read the entire textbook (can you tell I never meshed well in a traditional school environment? :) ) I also need a school that's friendly to older students. I don't want to be stuck in a class full of 20 year olds all wondering what the hell Gramma is doing there.

Anyone have any ideas?

Comments

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

I think it kind of depends on the school. The place I got my first degree from was definitely an older-student-friendly college. It was urban, without a lot of student housing, and the average age was 28. It had next to no extracurricular activities, no sports teams, no Greek system, no student government. The point to being there was to be in class and get your degree, not to socialize and get drunk and go to parties. It was an ideal situation for me because I didn't go to a traditional high school, either. I went to an alternative school which allowed me to set my own pace (which was nice, as it let me graduate in 2 1/2 years.) School-as-social-life never worked for me. I've never gotten along with my peers. So if I do this, I really want to do it somewhere where I'm not going to get sneered at by some c-average sorority bitch who thinks she's all that because her daddy is paying her way through a marketing major. The last thing I need is to get into another status- and class-heavy environment.