Grad School

Something I never would have predicted after graduating from college has happened. I’m going to grad school. But not for writing.

Awhile ago, my therapist said to me (while I was complaining about how stretched thin I was,) “You spend so much time doing union work outside of your job. What if it was your job?”

I laughed at her because I knew I didn’t want to be a union rep and then forgot about it.

But since I’m so overly-involved in union work, I started seeing job postings for union jobs. And one in particular caught my attention. It was working at the intersection of the labor movement and the environmental justice movements. And it required a masters.

It inspired me to look more into what I liked about being involved in the labor movement. I liked researching and presenting on labor issues, working on big structural problems, and trying to make unions better at serving Black, Indigenous, and members of color. Despite my cynicism about the world, I really do believe that positive change is possible and that unions can play a big part in it. I started seeing more possibilities for working in the labor movement beyond being a staff rep (a truly important but stressful job).

So I applied for the Union Leadership and Activism masters program through University of Massachusetts, Amherst since I could do it while working. And I got in.

I’m still not exactly sure where this degree will take me, there’s a lot of different opportunities in the labor movement (as well as in organizations adjacent to it) to explore. But I realized that I’d reached the limits of my day job that I was good at but not that interested in and I wanted to have a job more in-line with my values.

The next two years will be tough, and I’m really hoping to stay writing through it.