Graduate student education

So this week I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do once I graduate with this masters degree in sexuality studies. In thinking about that, I start to wonder what the ‘do’ would look like. Do I want to go for a PhD? Some sort of post grad fellowship? Or try and start working in the field? Keeping in mind each of these potential avenues, and the fact that they are of course not mutually exclusive or related in any linear sense, what role does ‘sex ed’ play in each of them? In each of these capacities, I think that I want my place in them to reflect a need for sexuality education to also occur outside of the K-12 classroom.

When I think about pursuing a PhD, I think about being both a product of sexuality education and the ways that with a PhD, and the research and teaching I’d be doing, how I could influence and change the field of sexuality. I’ve been living and doing sexuality education in one way or another for my whole life, and this is the point where I can potentially have more of an influence on the current conversations around sexuality education. As a naïve grad student, I do hope that I can have some positive impact on the academy, and translate that to the future of my own ways of teaching, writing, and researching.

What about a fellowship of some sort, a program that uses a combination of classroom and practical experience that doesn’t require a 6+ year commitment? I wonder if I’ll be better equipped to work in the ‘real world’ when I have concrete opportunities to apply theory and knowledge to practical situations. Would something like this help me decide if academia is right for me, sort of like a stepping stone? But then, what does that say about privileging a certain type of education and experience?

I could just skip the anxiety inducing application process altogether and find a job, introducing a whole new set of challenges. I’d love to do some sort of research and teaching combination where I’m actually sharing the work I’d be doing, like workshops or writing outside of academic journals. I like to think that this is one way sexuality education can be something that occurs outside a specific type of classroom at one point in someone’s life.

Can I do a combination of these things? Is there something else I haven’t figured out yet to help me get to wherever it is that I’m going? I certainly don’t have answers to any of these questions yet, and maybe that’s ok. The point being, I’m trying to recognize that sex ed doesn’t stop after those awkward lectures in high school, and that maybe being a grad student in a program dominated by research has more to do with sexuality education than I let myself believe. Professors are shaping us (and vice versa) and we’re educating each other, all in an effort to then go out as another batch of educators, formally or informally. It’s scary, but also empowering, to think that the people making the decisions about sexuality education and policy were at one point, students like me.