Upon Receiving an Acceptance Letter from a Master's Program

Bad photo of the opening line to a good book.

Okay, so the truth is, I got my acceptance like last week... and I don't entirely know what I intend to uncover or explore here but I thought it would be fun, certainly, to write a comparative piece to the real downer I wrote seemingly a year ago when I did not get into a masters program.

It has been a bit of a lighter semester compared to some of the drudgery of the last. I have been quite grateful that two of my major classes are almost entirely discussion-based. It's been the kind of learning where my 30+ years of social navigation have gifted me with a gift in being able to "talk" confidently even in the presence of others. I can speak my mind without too much nervousness, and I know I have a good head to think creatively around issues. This semester has me wading through the rich waters with "Critical and Historical Perspectives on Psychology". The kind of course (as some students like to describe it) where you're finally being taught that everything you've learned thus far in your degree is wrong.

Okay not wrong, per se, but certainly full of faults and weaknesses. It's here that a lot of young folks buckle a bit. They've been fed on endless memorization of the "right answer" to clearly defined questions. Suddenly they find every answer is, instead, a bigger and more challenging question. Welcome to the world my friends! Once your anxiety settles you can begin to learn that, indeed, there is no "wrong" answer, just perhaps, in this case, morally more wrong and ethically more right responses.

A real sign, found near the sinks in one of the bathrooms on campus.

My other class is on the Holocaust, particularly from a German literary and cinematic perspective. It's tough, but meaningful, introspection and reflection. My professor (a German immigrant himself) takes on a pretty harsh and critical stance. I don't blame him. He's not big on finding nuance and justification in the atrocious acts of those war criminals of history's darkest periods. And I'm not interested so much in alleviating the weight that they must carry, but as a psychology major, and perhaps as a humanist at heart, I just want to try and understand them. How are folks so profoundly misled, how is it that the spark of hatred so deadly, how can one human treat another human like an animal? What is this exploitable aspect of our nature that can turn so quickly to such inhumane acts? Are these seeds in me, too?

So that is why, perhaps, I have found some more fulfillment in my education as of late. Not that it often has anything to do with the specific expectations of "psychology" and rubrics... I learn for my own benefit. It is the work of prodding away at the itch that must ever be scratched, trying to find more complicated ways to ask and answer the question of "Why".

Chalk collection, from the basement classroom hall which finds most rooms empty.

So the good news, though, is that I have been accepted into a program called under that great name "Master". It looks like as early as the beginning of May, I will start "graduate work". Last year I tried to get into (early, without the full requirements being complete) a similar program available locally under the name Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy. Things didn't quite work out, but here I am now setting my sights on graduating from my undergrad with only a few weeks of study to go.

I have chosen for my diploma the term "Baccaleraureate" because it sounds archaic and silly, and education is a silly thing and can feel downright archaic at times.

I can already feel some of the naive optimism seeping in as I approach graduate school. When I finally took that precarious step away from my "career" in music shoppe retail, I thought internally that I would be finding some kind of new vocation as an academic. "These are my people!" I thought, though I soon realized as a mid-30s man I was in fact about to be surrounded by the largely young female world of undergraduate psychology. 21-year-old girls are not "my people" in more ways than one.

I am happy to say I have found and forged some friendships. Mostly the moment I stopped looking for them, expecting them, and simply became my usual amiable, supportive and silly self. I have, strangely, really enjoyed just encouraging others. De-escalating that internal tension that occurs when people take themselves, their work, and the obscure expectations of homework too seriously. I am not belittling the efforts of academics, but I am big on refocusing our appraisal of the internal value from the functions of the mind to the fluctuations of the heart. (Don't worry, I know this is a fallacy, and will report that my lowest grade in my undergrad was in a biology course).

The protestant work ethic, the far reaching fingers of capitalism, the reduction of self to account numbers and student IDs, has very much influenced our self worth. I struggle with it even while I pretend like I don't. We are what we can do, what we can produce, what we can be valued at, it seems so often.

This is both dumb and frustratingly true.

But you exist. Which is it's own miracle. We are led by the business of life, by the need to pay bills and buy stuff, that you must contribute to society in some professional capacity and then otherwise we are happy to leave you alone.

But I do wonder, and perhaps it is because I simply desire so much for it to be true that I push its belief on others, that we're missing out on the substance of life. The value of what cannot be counted. The real gift that is being given, or often, taken away.

So if I have any ambition as I enter a program called "Master of Psychotherapy and Spirituality" it is to value something a bit invisible, upon a cursory glance.

I have enjoyed a particular kind of interaction lately. I have a good knack for finding some kind of more personal detail or inquiry during what would otherwise be a real perfunctory interaction, and find myself fostering a more human connection. Two examples:

I was in need of sorting some paperwork out for my graduation etc, so a conversation with two folks at the administrative office initially was full of what forms needed to be filled and boxes needed to be checked. Briefly, we got aside about how this would mean my leaving the campus at the end of this semester. I mentioned my ongoing campus radio show and my connection to the arts and culture community in town. One of the staff perked up, mentioning a local musician that I might know, and it turned out I did quite well. Suddenly, we were having that pleasant, unexpectedly familiar kind of interaction that takes place when between strangers, you both know someone, or have some kind of interest in common beyond just familiarity with certain forms and formalities.

Second, I had a momentary interaction with one of my professors whom I noticed during our (entirely online) lectures often wore an Avro Arrow hat. A few weeks back, I had been at my barbers and overheard her speaking to the gentleman being shorn before me. Apparently, he had at one time been one of the folks working on this particular model of plane. I decided to speak to my professor (not about my concerns with our upcoming stats assignment) but about the hat he was wearing. Suddenly, he perked with delight, sharing a lifelong fascination with the thing, escalating even to his having built several models in his youth. Without prompting, he concluded our conversation by quite earnestly asking about me. It seems that by my showing a bit of personal interest in him, he felt seen, on a deeper level, and this led to him seeing me. He was suddenly asking with real genuine interest what my area of interest was, he wanted to hear about my master's and about my experience at the school.

I say all this, in a ramble of sorts, to highlight the power of seeing and being seen. The need for us to be curious about the real person beneath the job title, the degrees, the numbers. That is where the magic of human connection is found.

This is what I hope to mine, and dare I say, master, as I move into this next phase of becoming myself.

In Thomas Merton's wonderful collection of Essays, Love and Living he writes "Education in this sense means more than learning, and for such education, one is awarded no degree. One graduates by rising from the dead.”

Here's hopeful.