During my second year of graduate school, my boyfriend casually remarked that he wanted his future wife to stay at home with their children. My jaw literally dropped. I was both astounded and appalled. He couldn’t be serious. We had just had our first big discussion about the future of our relationship, and it was clear to both of us that we would be getting married. The only detail to decide was the timing — I had suggested the summer after we both advanced to candidacy, so that we could be married by the time we went on the job market.
.</p><p>Slowly my attitude began to change. The initial shock and horror melted away as I contemplated a future in which I didn’t have to work. This was a luxury I had never even considered.</p><p>But wouldn’t I be bored? Surely I’d be bored. Trapped in the house with no adult interaction, and then waking up twenty years later with no marketable skills when I could finally start working. Who would want to hire a PhD who’d been out of the field for so long that there would be no way for her to catch up?</p><p>Despite these doubts, my heart continued to soften to the idea. I loved kids and had always hoped for a large family. In fact, I had worked in childcare for the past several summers and had wanted to be a teacher since I was in school. Now I began to discern how my past experiences had actually been priming me for motherhood. One of my best friends at our new home was a stay-at-home mom who taught at a community college on the weekends. I began to contemplate this and other flexible career options that would allow me to care for our children while still keeping a foot in my field.</p><h2>The Reaction</h2><p>I was six months pregnant when I defended my dissertation. When people asked me about my plans after graduation, I was always intentionally enthusiastic in telling them that I was going to stay at home and raise our baby. My confidence and joy were usually enough to deflect the surprised, “So you’re not doing anything with your degree?” That accusation did come, but thankfully it was never uttered maliciously. It was more of a wondrous tone, when the aunt or church member or neighbor couldn’t quite grasp why a smart young woman would get her PhD and not do anything with it. I didn’t really mind. After all, I had been there myself.</p><p>I had come to realize, however, that I would be using my degree. Not the specific subject matter, of course, but graduate school is about much more than your thesis topic. Graduate school teaches you how to research, how to ask good questions and find solid answers — essentially graduate school teaches you how to think. </p><p>I had learned how much I loved research, and you should have seen the extent to which I researched childbirth and parenting! There’s a vast amount of information out there, and I loved digging beneath it to find the actual studies, using the skills I’d honed in graduate school to skim and read critically and ultimately conclude what was best for our family. Thanks to this, I was incredibly confident as a new mother.</p><p>I believe that one of the greatest lessons you learn in graduate school is perseverance -- plugging along towards your long-term goal. It’s important to persevere when things fall apart, whether you’re dealing with a major wrench in your research or a child’s major meltdown in the grocery store. Perseverance comes in handy when you do the same mundane activities day in and day out, whether that be tedious data analysis or reading the same book for the thirty-seventh time that day. Perseverance is necessary when dealing with difficult people, whether you’re calling your flaky advisor for the fifth time or reminding your toddler of the rules for the fifth time.</p><p>I came to realize that I would use the skills I’d honed in graduate school. It’s almost impossible not to. Even after I recognized that graduate school was not a waste of my time, I knew that some people would think it was a waste of money. In particular, people outside of academia would assume that I had a large amount of student loans. But like so many doctoral students, I was paid to go to school (not much, of course, but enough to get by) and thanks to good scholarships and generous parents, I had made it to this point free of debt.</p><h2>The Real Question</h2><p>Questions about whether graduate school was a waste of time or money are certainly valid. But there is one question much more important than that: what is Jesus calling you to do?</p><p>It was abundantly clear to me that graduate school was God’s plan for me. Now I’ve moved into a different season. It’s not what everyone is called to do. It’s not what I expected to be doing. And it’s wonderful. I don’t know how many times I have thanked both my husband and the Lord for getting me here.</p><p>At two years into this, I haven’t been bored yet. Lonely, yes — but then God provided me with friends. Challenged, yes — but then God reminded me of that perseverance and brought me through. I have been able to take on a variety of other projects that I would not have been able to tackle if working outside the home, from domestic pursuits to leading an organization in our archdiocese. </p><p>I was recently offered an opportunity to do some online teaching for a Master’s level program. It was the opportunity I had been holding out for since I’d first accepted the idea of being an at-home mom. Yet now that it was within my grasp, I was not at peace with it. So with a large gulp, I passed on it. It was time for me to practice trust. If the Lord wants me to work in my field of study, He will provide me with another opportunity to do so. Right now He is not calling me to that. And I want to be where He wants me to be.</p><p>Am I wasting my education? I don’t think so, but the question really is immaterial to me at this point. The important question is, am I following where I am being called? Right now I can answer yes. And thanks to that, I can let the question of waste just roll off my back.</p></body></html>)
