I Should Go to Grad School

Two of my kids are graduating from college in the spring. So, they’re in the process of applying to grad school. (Luke in chemistry, and Ariel in math.)

So they’ve been working on everything from personal statements, which are the equivalent of why-you-want-me-in-your-program, to curricula vitae, which is everything-I’ve-ever-done-that’s-vaguely-relevant to why-you-want-me-in-your-program. And, of course, they’ve taken the GRE.

And they’ve been getting emails. Luke’s are from chemistry departments. Ariel’s getting spammed. Recently, she got an email from the University of Colorado encouraging her to apply to their Quantitative Biology program. She said, “Shoot me now,” even though they were offering buckets of money. Matt said, “Does that mean you’d be counting sheep?” Ariel moaned about another program wanting to use her for her math skills. As a parent, that doesn’t sound so bad to me—not when there are buckets of money involved. I wish someone would want to use my mad math skills.

Lately, Ariel’s been getting lots emails from engineering programs. They all start, “Congratulations on your interest in graduate engineering.” She now talks back to the spam—“I never, ever said I was interested in engineering.” I said, “Well, at least, they don’t want you for your math skills. They want you because you’re a girl. Diversity.” I wonder if they’d give her buckets of money. Maybe I should apply to grad school. I could do Quantitative English. I’d love to be paid to count poems.