In addition to the question of “how do I explain the two year gap in my resume that was largely caused by mental illness” I’m stuck wondering how I’m going to pay for grad school if I even get in.
I had assumed that being broke would allow me to get grants and scholarships based on financial need. Unfortunately, the financial aid game is different from undergraduate. There are no grants from the government. Independent scholarships seem hard to find for what I want to do and schools make it rather confusing on how to apply for the ones that they offer.
I’m trying to get together a list of scholarships offered on the basis of mental illness or for wanting to work in mental health. So far, I’ve found incredibly few.
I don’t know how I’m going to finance grad school. I was hoping that it would provide a way of riding out the recession, to at least be doing something productive while being unemployed, but now I’m not sure. I don’t want to find myself a few years older, in huge debt, with just as little work experience as I did before I got my Master’s.
Beyond online research, my next idea is to try contacting mental health organizations and seeing if I really need a Master’s degree for what I want to do (while also seeing if such a position really exists). I’ve always intended to go to graduate school, the question is when.
I hate doing informational interviews as I’ve had such bad experiences with them. I’m also still extremely uneasy about talking to people that I view as important to my educational and career goals. I worry before, during, and after talking to them and generally drive my self-esteem into the ground. I could probably use a therapist to work through this. My intake isn’t for a month though and I don’t know how long it’ll take to be assigned a therapist. Then I have to hope that the therapist will be competent… And off I go :-/
