I found out yesterday that I have been accepted into a PhD program for University of Manitoba. Here are my first initial thoughts:
Excitement! Excited to be going back to graduate school. I have a master’s degree, so this is not the first time that I have been in graduate school.
Relief. I seriously wanted to leave the United States by 2025, so this gives me a feasible route to leave in about 6 months from this being published.
Shock. I don’t know how to handle that I might actually be the first openly Black trans person studying this specific area in psychology. Quantitative Psychology has a lengthy track of excluding both Black folks and Indigenous folks. I tried finding some other Black trans folks in the area, but Google, ResearchGate, and DuckDuckGo turned up empty.
Surprisingly, I am not too concerned about finances as long as I am fully funded. I’ve lived in poverty before and 2022 was the only year that I did not live in poverty. I know how to handle poverty and tight budgets. This is not my time being poor.
Worry. Landlord has ghosted me and I’m still fighting Xfinity on cancelling my internet despite calling to have it cancelled and then going into the store to cancel it again. They have sent emails confirming that I have cancelled service and I was on a month to month basis, but its still showing it as active. As far as my landlord goes, they are refusing to break down the charges and are refusing any communication so that I can know why they are charging me.
Relief yet again. I opted to not have health insurance because I am leaving my position in a few months and need to save as much money as possible. Canada mandates that you have health insurance as a student and the basic graduate health plan is around $1050 CAD a year. I can easily make that much via tutoring, teaching assistant, or being an instructor for a course.
Relief, this time on political issues. Most of my Canadian friends have been horrified at the apathy United States residents have on Jan 6th. I genuinely do not think the 2024 elections will go without issue. Whether that’s a 2nd attempt at overthrowing the government, an increase in screaming voter fraud without evidence, more racial and transgender violence, or something else, I don’t know.
Excitement once again. I will try to see if they let me also study a course based master’s in mathematics program with a focus on Algebra. The reason for that would be to sharpen my mathematical skills, have a broader range of positions that I can apply to after graduation, be able to keep up with the most mathematically intense parts of quantitative psychology, be able to contribute to mathematical research, and that I am interested in learning more mathematics.
So, what I will be doing over the next few weeks will be looking over requirements again, getting a sense of what courses to take my first year, looking further into the mathematics professors that I have interest in, asking questions about how things will go first semester, and getting my stuff set up for graduate school. I cannot wait!
Originally posted on https://medium.com/@merlinstar/initial-thoughts-on-being-accepted-into-a-phd-program-35c315e7fbd5
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