In the words of Rogers and Hammerstein, let’s start from the very beginning. And a very good place to start in this new Master’s series is by sharing why I decided to pursue a Master’s in France in the first place. Admittedly, that’s a two-fold question: why pursue my Master’s and why in France? So I’ll give you a two-fold answer.
Why did I decide to pursue my Master’s degree?
I was ready to move on from being a language assistant
If this post is your first introduction to my blog: hi, my name is Danielle and I first moved to France around 4 years ago to teach English. It was one of the best decisions of my life. Aside from what it did for me on a personal growth level, I genuinely liked my job. I loved the students (even if they could be difficult at times), I loved my colleagues, and I’m genuinely proud of the work I did as a language assistant. However, in the grand scheme of my life, teaching English wasn’t what I wanted to do with it. So after two years, I felt as though I had gotten everything I could get from that job and was ready to redirect back into the career I really wanted to pursue: journalism. And I felt that a Master’s degree was the best way to do that.
I thought a Master’s degree was a necessary step for my career
In a previous life – and I’ve had many – I was working in journalism in Jamaica, even though it wasn’t what I had studied at university. How that came to be is a very long but interesting story that I won’t rehash here. In retrospect, I know that my work experience was more valuable than any degree. However at the time, I was chasing academic validation. So I felt that I needed to get a journalism degree to affirm my professional experience and call myself a journalist. This quest for academic validation and desire to pivot back into the career I wanted culminated somewhere between my first and second year as a language assistant, when I was starting to question what I would do next. And to make a long story short (or to save it for another blog post if you want it) things aligned for me to do my master’s the following school year.
For anyone who’s reading this who isn’t from Jamaica, the million-dollar question may be why not go back home and continue studying? Unfortunately, that option didn’t exist. At the time when I was looking into doing a Master’s degree (and before when it was still a passing fancy) Jamaica didn’t have any graduate programmes in journalism. Possibly in communications or marketing, but that’s not what I wanted to study. And while I’d like to believe that things have since changed, I know of several Jamaican journalists who are Chevening Scholars, so they went to study in the UK. Therefore, I’m inclined to think they haven’t changed all that much. That being said, I’ve known for a while that if I really wanted to pursue graduate studies, I’d have to look beyond Jamaica’s borders.
But why France? Why not the US or the UK or any other country in Europe? Why not somewhere that speaks English?
The truth?
I did look into other options in Europe. Given that I knew my language skills wouldn’t be enough to enroll in a traditional French journalism school (complete with competitive entrance exams), I had to broaden my outlook. On the other hand, I enjoyed my life in France. I was slowly starting to figure things out here. I had an established administrative foundation here. I was building a community here. And at the time, the idea of starting over somewhere else wasn’t appealing to me. So while I was considering my wider options, I was hoping for the opportunity to stay in France.
Have you ever considered pursuing a Master’s abroad? I’d love to hear other people’s stories and learn what motivated them to study in another country.
