: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?
This advice is for the US and similar systems.
I recommend against grad school that you have to pay for unless you're truly passionate about it and you find a great advisor who's good to their students. You can drop the passion part if it's paid like STEM usually is, that can be developed with a good PI but is not worth the timesink if you're not paid.
A STEM PhD will usually pay you and tuition for classes. And if you don't want to keep going after 2 years of classes, you can exit Ruth a free Master's degree.
If you're unpaid and not that into it, the imposter syndrome, accumulating debt, and generally poor structures of grad school labor standards will be stressful without much payoff. And God help you if you get a surprise bad advisor.
Good point