To PhD or not to PhD?
That is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of five-plus years of grad school.
Or to take arms against this binding commitment, and by going for an MA, end it.
To go for MA, two years and no more, and by two years to say we avoid
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That doctoral students are heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To go for MA, perchance to continue on.
Ay, there's the rub. For in that MA program, what possibilities may come
When we have finished our graduate thesis and may give us cause to continue.
There's the respect that eases the calamity of so long a study.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The professor's grades, the undergrads' inexperience,
The pangs of writing a dissertation, the committee's delay,
The difficulties of Higher Learning, and the spurns
That patient merit of the postgraduate takes
When she herself might her doctorate make
With a few more years? What would MA students do
To grunt and sweat under a weary load,
But that the dread of something after graduation,
That undiscovered country from whose bourne
Few return successful, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear the academic track that we have
Than fly to another that we know not of.
Thus indecision makes cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of going for an MA
Is sicklied o'er with the allure of the PhD.
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn away
And lose the name of action.
But soft you now, the fair admissions office.
In thy judgments be all my accomplishments remembered.
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Graduate school had better be worth all this.