Tales of a College Student

My first two semesters of grad school

Given the current situation of the world, I picked an interesting time to start graduate school. Luckily my program was going to be online regardless of the state of the world. After finishing my bachelor's degree in May, I didn't want to waste any time. I wanted to keep going and continue my education while I had the motivation to do so. All of my professors kept telling me to be prepared because graduate school was the hardest time of their lives. Naturally, like anyone else I figured it would not be that bad. Needless to say, I was hardheaded and expected this to be easy. 

After my summer semester of taking English grammar because my master's is in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESOL). I was struggling immensely with the workload and concepts in the class. My professor told me that being in graduate school was like being dropped into the deep ocean with no life preserver or boat to save myself. I completely agree. Instead of writing scholarly essays, you create projects that you will use in your future careers. Everything I learned these past four years can not help me at all achieve my master's. It is the weirdest thing because I worked so hard to achieve my bachelor's degree. However, none of this information can help me because it is no longer writing an essay and finding sources that support my argument. Now I have to be the scholarly source that other people use to support their arguments. I have to create projects that I will use in my future classroom. This is my experience of course with my master's degree, and each program will be different. 

This semester my projects were me creating projects that I will use in my future classroom. I created one project where I designed my own language assessment. This is a PowerPoint presentation where if I created my own assessment (test) what it would consist of. The point of this project was to create a test, but my future English as a Second Language (ESL) students wouldn't be able to know it was a test. It is something at the current moment I am still working on. I also had to write a literary review which is where you take sources and explain the problem only through the author's viewpoint. Mine opinion is not allowed in this and this is to help me train my students how to find the problem in the TESOL community. Lastly, I had to create a project that was based on an interactive PowerPoint presentation around a concept I learned. This concept was the elephant and the rider and how it relates to language learning. I had to explain what this PowerPoint would consist of and how it would relate to language learning. This had to be something that I could use in my future classroom. Naturally, I did not make a PowerPoint for this assignment because my professor wanted me to explain what project I would create and why.

This information is significant because these are the struggles I have faced during my first two semesters of graduate school. I have learned a lot and I took one class my first semester and three my second semester. These classes take a lot of time and effort because it is based on weekly assignments. They are usually due at the same time every single week. The professors are flexible because most students are teaching full-time or part-time while studying as well. YOU MUST interact with the professors for them to know if you need extra time. The assignments are almost the same every week and you will know ahead of time what will be due when. My best advice to students going to graduate school is to take your time with your assignments and try to stay organized. Do your best to not miss an assignment because that will drop your grade. At my school, I am only allowed one C and no grade lower than a C, or I will be kicked out. Try to remember this and turn every assignment in. Try your best to stay in contact with the professors because they want to see you succeed. I wish you all the best!