It's My Life
I find myself in an interesting part of my journey to life beyond June 30th. Although my first choice is still to move to London on a work visa to teach, I have put a lot of thought and research into coming up with a plan B. One thing that has always been important to me is my own education. I've been wanting to go back to school to pursue my studies in Literacy. But to be honest with you, I'm at a point now that if I do go back to school I want to study something different. Don't get me wrong, Literacy and all of its components still appeal to me. However, if teaching in London doesn't work out I want to go back to study in the field of English.
English was my "concentration" area when I achieved my BS. It was kind of like a minor, and I have to say that I really excelled in my Literature classes. More than that, it was a throughly enjoyable time in my life. I loved reading about Shakespeare and Irish Literature in particular. One professor urged me to forget teaching and just go straight to my Masters and Ph.D studies based on the papers I had written for his classes. At that time I was only 20 and had tunnel vision straight into having my own classroom so I disregarded his advice. There have been so many times I thought about that decision and wondered how different my life would have been if I had pursued that path. But now I have a chance to take that shot, and I'm just as excited about this possibility as I am about teaching in London.
As much as I love London and the UK in general, there is one place that is even closer to my heart: Ireland. My first trip out of the country was to Ireland when I was a 16 year old fan of U2. Our high school had a trip to Ireland and somehow I convinced my parents to pay for it and to let me go without them! It helped that one of the chaperones was the mother of my best friend, and that my mother trusted this family with my life. But I kid you not, my parents were not the type to let me or my sisters do much without one of them there. I couldn't go to sleepovers or summer camp because of their hyper-vigilance. I still think God intervened and somehow put the right words in my mouth to persuade them to let me do this.
That trip was the beginning of my love affair with Ireland. I have returned four more times since then and each time have cried upon returning to the States. But like a lot of great loves there were some dark periods too. I developed a love/hate relationship with the country after falling in love with a man who was from Ireland. We were in our twenties and were on again/off again for about 5 years as his job took him all around the world. At the end of that roller coaster, I swore off all things Irish. Seriously, I stopped listening to Irish music (except for my beloved U2), stopped drinking tea regularly, and turned my nose up at more than one Irish American male. I had decided that if a guy was Irish that was equivalent to him being Italian (i.e. unreasonable, heartless, stubborn) which made him totally undateable. I think it was a good 7 or 8 years until I rediscovered my love of the country. On one of the 5 trips I took to Ireland, Trinity College was one of the stops. I remember seeing the Book of Kells and just being overwhelmed with the historic charm of the place. Walking through the campus felt so mystical. In the back of my mind I kept thinking how magical it would be to attend school there...which leads me directly to option 2.
In November Trinity College opens up applications for students entering their Masters programs starting in 2025. It is extremely difficult to get in but I have to give it a shot. I am still deciding which concentration I want to work on. I've narrowed it down to 3 programs in the English department: Children's Literature, Creative Writing, or Irish Literature. It will take one year to get the Masters, and the best part is that on the Student Visa, I can work part time if I need the extra money. One of the English department's professors told me that in order to get into their Ph.D program I would be better off taking a year to get the Masters (since the last time I was in school was in the late 1990s). It would give me the time to get to know the current research and be evidence of my potential for their Ph.D program. At this time I'm leaning towards Irish Literature with the intention of doing research on W.B. Yeats and his version of Irish folktales and myths. But don't quote me on that. One thing I have learned since I began this blog is flexibility is key. What is important is that I end up choosing something that I truly enjoy. Jon BonJovi sings about this type of choice.
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