I Was Being Groomed to Become a Ph.D. in German Linguistics (But I Wasn’t Doing it For Me)

Photo by william santos on Unsplash

During my fourth year as an undergraduate, I applied for a full-year scholarship to work on my Master’s thesis in Siegen, Germany.

The day the letter arrived, I knew: I was awarded a prestigious scholarship of $10,000 (a huge sum at the time) for a year abroad from 1992 to 1993. My thesis proposal, which won me…