Thinking About a Postgrad? Here’s What I Wish We’d Considered First
The question came on a Tuesday evening, right after dinner. My daughter was stacking plates by the sink, and without turning around, she said, “I keep thinking I should do a master’s. Like, as soon as possible. Before I forget how to study.”
I knew that feeling. I’d felt it myself at her age—that restless pressure to keep moving, to keep proving I could climb the next academic rung before the window closed. I also knew that she had no real idea what she wanted to study, no sense of why she wanted the degree beyond a vague conviction that a bachelor’s wasn’t “enough.”
I put my mug down and asked her the same question I wish someone had asked me ten years earlier: “What do you actually want the degree to do for you?”
She laughed, a little uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I just feel like I should.”
That moment, more than any advice I could give, made me think about how often we pursue postgrad education for the wrong reasons. Not bad reasons, exactly. Just untested ones.
I applied to graduate school for reasons that sounded good on paper. I wanted job security. I wanted to be taken seriously. I wanted to prove to myself that I could handle a rigorous program. None of those things are shameful, but none of them held up well under real scrutiny. I spent two years and quite a lot of money earning a degree I never used professionally. I don’t regret the experience—I met people I still love, read things that changed how I think, and learned that I could produce work I didn’t know I was capable of. But if I’m honest, I’d tell you that I could have gotten most of that without the tuition bill and the year of my late twenties I spent in a fluorescent-lit carrel.
So when my daughter started circling the idea, I tried to do what I couldn’t do for myself back then. I asked her to slow down and treat the decision like a research project rather than a rescue mission.
We sat down one Saturday morning with coffee, and I walked her through what I’d learned. The first thing, I told her, is to find the actual people doing the work. Not the university’s marketing materials, not the glossy brochure testimonials—the real people. She rolled her eyes, but I made her do it anyway. Talk to three or four current students or recent grads from any program she was considering. Ask them three questions: What was your day-to-day routine like? What did you wish you’d known before starting? And knowing what you know now, would you do it again?
Those conversations shifted her thinking more than any rankings list ever could. One second-year student in a program she was excited about told her, “You’ll read about four hundred pages a week in the first semester. If you don’t love reading, it will crush you.” My daughter loves books but hates feeling forced to read them. That one sentence told her more about fit than any course catalogue.
The second thing I pushed her to do was to get specific about money. Not in a vague, “consider the cost” way. Actually sit down and add up tuition, fees, books, housing, lost wages, and the cost of interest on any loans she’d need. She’d been under the impression that a postgrad degree was “just one more year or two” of financial strain. When she saw the real number on paper, she went quiet for a while.
I told her that’s a good sign—numbness means the numbers have landed. A postgrad degree is rarely a neutral financial event. It’s an investment with a real risk of not paying off. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad choice. It means it deserves the same careful attention you’d give to buying a car or committing to a lease. Nobody signs those things without reading the fine print.
We also talked about timing. There’s this myth that you have to go straight from undergrad to grad school, or you’ll lose your academic edge. In my experience, the opposite is often true. The most focused, purposeful postgrad students I’ve known were the ones who worked for a year or two first. They’d saved a buffer. They’d tested the working world and sometimes discovered they wanted to escape it. They’d also learned what kind of work felt meaningful to them.
I shared the story of a former student of mine—I teach college English—who deferred her master’s for three years. She worked as a receptionist at a nonprofit, got promoted twice, and realized she wanted to move into program management. She went back for a postgrad degree in public policy with an actual career trajectory in mind. She was in her mid-twenties, paying for it in manageable chunks, and she was far more engaged in class than most of the 22-year-olds who’d arrived straight from undergrad with vague ambitions.
My daughter listened. She didn’t say much, which she does when she’s actually thinking rather than performing consideration. We didn’t resolve anything that morning. She still isn’t sure whether to apply this fall or wait.
What surprised me is that I’m okay with that. I’m not saying this to make a tidy point about patience. The truth is, I think the uncertainty is the necessary part. The question “should I get a postgrad degree” shouldn’t have a quick answer. If it does, you probably haven’t asked enough questions. The whole point of graduate education is that it’s supposed to dig you deeper into a subject, and you can’t responsibly dig until you know what you’re trying to find.
We’ve still got an open folder on the kitchen counter with program printouts, tuition spreadsheets, and a notepad where she’s written questions to ask future supervisors. Some days she’s convinced she’ll apply. Other days she talks about moving to Portland for a year instead and working on a farm.
Both of those seem fine to me now. I used to think deciding what to do after college was about making the right choice. The older I get, the more I believe it’s about making a choice you can live with, learning from it, and not pretending the road not taken would have been smooth. She’ll figure out which road is hers.
I just hope she asks herself the question I forgot to ask: not “what will this degree make me into,” but “who am I already, and does this step make sense for that person?”
She got up from the table and said, “I’ll think about it.” That’s the most honest answer anyone can give.
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