Graduate School

I’ve always been happiest as a student.

When we moved to the UK, graduate school was only an option if I could pay international fees. I would have to wait three years before I could pay the more reasonable UK fees. Even then, it wouldn’t be the same as when I went to grad school in the States, where my fees were covered and I was paid a stipend.

After living here for three years, I started looking into funding opportunities. The first I found and applied for was in psychology, to study the life of artist Mary Barnes. It was an unusual and specific project, and I hadn’t come up with it. Still, I was enthusiastic about it, and even when I didn’t get it, I ordered a few books about Mary Barnes to learn more about her.

Then I found out about the Techne foundation. They work with nine different universities in and around London, and they fund studies in the humanities. Now I could design my own project, but the process of applying would be so different from the States. First, I had to pitch the project to professors, trying to find a supervisor for it. I basically had to cold-email professors at the nine universities, picking which ones to email based on their profiles on various websites, comparing their research interests to mine.