Courtesy The Rumpus: the NYT on "What is a Master's Degree Worth." I never went to grad school myself; not really. Seven years after getting my bachelor's from the Univ. of Texas in Film Criticism, I did go for a year to San Francisco State to get my California teaching credential so I could be a high school teacher; and at the same time I talked myself into a graduate poetry seminar given by a generous professor who, I think, figured that having some non-majors in his class might liven things up a bit. I got something out of that class, but I don't think they got much out of me being there. But anyway: going to a teacher certification course and taking a graduate poetry seminar on the side are not the same thing as going to grad school.

There are two reasons I never went to grad school, both of them good ones, in their way. First of all, I did not understand what graduate school was until it was pretty much too late. I went through four years of undergraduate education at the University of Texas, and there were these people called grad students that were Teaching Assistants in some of the classes. But I didn't understand what they were really doing there. From my perspective it seemed like the main reason they were there was to do shit work for the professors and throw their weight around -- not unlike my experience of the Explorer Scouts who were the camp counselors at the Boy Scout camp I had gone to as a kid. And that perception of them was true as far as it went; but I did not get that they were there to do anything like scholarship or to establish academic careers of their own. I didn't even know what that meant.

In fact, seven years later, when I went to a teaching credential program at San Francisco State University, I still didn't know what it meant to go to grad school. Because applying for the credential program had been so easy, and hanging around the college was such a treat after having worked full time for the last seven years, I thought I might want to make it more of a regular part of my life, so I applied (I thought) to be a graduate student in English. Not because I wanted to be a graduate student, really, but because I wanted to take the courses that graduate students could take, courses in literature which I had entirely missed by getting my bachelor's degree in film criticism.

But applying for grad school didn't turn out to be as simple as applying for the teaching credential program had been. About six weeks after sending in my application and $25 check, instead of a letter granting me permission to sign up for English courses, I got back a letter listing all the different pieces of the application I had neglected to send in, such as letters of recommendation and an essay telling why I wanted to be a graduate student. Mystified by these requirements, I let the whole matter drop (and I never got back my $25). Because I didn't want to be a graduate student; I wanted to take literature courses.

The other, and more important, reason why I never became a graduate student lies in my experience of the grad students when I was an undergraduate. Like I said, they liked to throw their weight around, and this was enough to discourage me. One day early in the last year of my undergraduate experience, I stuck my head into the office of my favorite professor in the film criticism department, Tom Schatz (who still teaches there) to ask him about something. He also happened to be the graduate student advisor at the time, and he asked, "Mark, did you ever think about becoming a graduate student?"

"No," I said flatly. "No offense, but no way do I want to do that."

Surprised by my response, he asked, "What? Why not?"

"Because all the grad students are jerks," I said. "Louis, Greg -- those guys are assholes. I would never want to be like them." This is the way I thought back then.

He laughed and said, "Look. Come in -- close the door -- come in. Have a seat." And for the next ten minutes he tried to explain that being an asshole was not really what being a grad student was about. But I was unmoved.

Looking back, I can see how immature I was at the time, and how my naive and simplistic notions about what grad school was meant I really wasn't ready to be a graduate student. At the time -- and really until I was in my mid-30s -- my actual maturity lagged my calendar age by three or four years. Even though I was a good writer and understood a lot about movies -- which I guess are the reasons he graciously asked me -- I was nowhere near ready to be an adult. And I think you have to be somewhat of an adult to be a grad student, or at least to do well at what (I now understand) grad students are there to do.

You also have to be an adult to be a high school teacher, and it was only when I got my teaching credential at age 27 that I actually realized I had to stop being quite so much of an adolescent and start thinking of myself as an adult -- at least relative to the students.

So it actually makes sense that I applied (albeit ineffectively) for grad school right at the time I decided to think of myself as an adult. Judging by the failure of my application, I still had no idea what it meant to be a grad student. It would have helped if someone had explained it to me. And somebody had, several years before, but I was not ready to hear it.

I still haven't taken those courses in literature, and my reading is still spotty. I've read a lot of Hemingway and Henry Miller, a lot of Flannery O'Connor and Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, a lot of William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound, but no Dickens, Hardy, or Faulkner, no Henry James or D.H. Lawrence. Sometimes I feel embarrassed by the gaps in my education. (Even my stripper girlfriend was shocked that I had not read Dickens. But she had gone to Boston College.) And I know I'd be a better writer if I had read them, or if I'd gotten at least a bachelor's degree in English.

Now, I feel, there isn't enough time. I could read Faulkner this year -- or I could read 2666, and I'd rather read the latter. At this point I think reading the contemporary (albeit dead) Bolaño will help my writing more than Faulkner could. Fans of Faulkner are welcome to disagree.

For another perspective, read The Secret Diary of a Prisoner in the Creative Writing Gulag.