:LIB: alert I know but I'm in a pickle as I think about grad school. I already have a degree in poli sci and international relations that was slightly painful to get through with all the pro-IMF and :vote: rhetoric, but I enjoyed myself ultimately and it got me into a pseudo organizing role. Feeling stuck tho and I'm thinking of grad school, but I'm afraid any public policy or urban design track will just be neo liberal pablem to the max. And I'm concerned about becoming a little cog in the machine perpetuating this horrorshow we live in. But at the same time policy is fascinating and I love it so much and there's the shrimp brain part of me that thinks I could make a difference, no matter how small. Anyone else dealing with this?
Yes! No. Well, yes. I have a very similar story to you. Poli sci undergrad -- enjoyed the studies/hated the ideology-- organized a touch. But I got out of nearly all electoral work shortly after graduation and got into another line of work that would require me to eventually go to grad school anyways.
So now I'm tearing myself into little pieces trying to find a way to fit my new field with something resembling my old one, and trying to avoid the incredible :LIB: -ness of BOTH of them. The main thing holding me back from really going to grad school (besides money, time, etc.), is like yours -- becoming another enabler of capitalism's continuation. After having worked with my coworkers (whose broad trajectories I'd likely have to follow) for a bit, I've seen the belief in a better world and the very concept of community agency ripped away from them. Once they were "idealistic" (in the vernacular sense), but now they "accept reality" (again in the vernacular). It's like seeing Freire's pedagogy in reverse.
I reassure myself that I will be different -- but will I really? Does it even matter that I go through all that they did and think myself apart from them? Or will I just be trapped in my aloofness, acting no differently than any other enabler of the status quo?