I Was Laid Off, and It Became an Opportunity to Chase My Dream Career

One Wednesday in January, during our check-in, I jokingly told my manager that if I were laid off, I would finally apply to grad school. Six days later, I found myself affected by companywide layoffs and abruptly unemployed after three years in public relations.

I started a career in PR simply because it paid the bills. When it suddenly didn’t, I knew it was time to try for grad school and finally pursue my dream career in academia and research in the field of Internet studies.

There was one major problem: I had only three weeks to apply to grad school before the deadline. Thanks to my unemployment, I focused all my energy on my grad school applications. I was accepted into every program I applied to, and now, I’m finally on the right path.

Treating applications like a full-time job

Getting laid off hurt, but it gave me the luxury of time I wouldn’t have had were I at work. Every day, I spent hours working on my statements of purpose and collecting application information for the programs I intended to apply to.

Less than a month before this, my days were spent drafting press releases, so I quickly needed to relearn everything about academic essays and applications.

My daily routine soon became sitting at my desk with Word documents open, writing essays, and researching MA programs. During breaks, I would hunt for jobs and complete paperwork related to unemployment insurance. At times, it felt like I hadn’t really stopped working at all — just changed my focus.

Anxiety sometimes got the better of me

I completed undergrad in 2020 and had only been sporadically in touch with my professors since then. Working up the courage to ask for letters of recommendation from two professors proved to be a major hurdle for me.

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I knew that I was asking a lot, and that the people I asked were well within their rights to refuse. I was jumping from PR into a totally different field, one outside my recommenders’ wheelhouses. They all had less than a month to draft and submit their letters, which is a remarkably tight turnaround. I reminded myself that the worst they could say was no (if they responded at all), and that recommendations were a part of being an academic or a manager.

Each recommender readily agreed to write a letter, and they all met the deadlines I provided them, which I am forever thankful for.

Additionally, applying to top-tier domestic and international programs felt like I was reaching too high when I had been laid off only weeks before. Even though these programs were perfect fits for my intended research, I still felt intense self-doubt, especially when telling my recommenders, friends, and family that I was applying to such prestigious programs.

Hoping for the best

I downplayed applications as a side project while looking for a new PR job. When applications went out, I kept my excitement in check. I refreshed application pages for status updates daily, and I braced myself for rejections each time.

I didn’t let myself hope for anything until the first acceptance came in, one from an international school, but even then, I thought it was a one-off.

One month later, I received an offer from a school that I had thought about since high school, with a scholarship attached. That’s when it finally sank in that I had done what I thought was impossible. Offers kept arriving, and, before I knew it, I was in a position of getting to choose which program I wanted to attend.

The way I applied to grad school wasn’t typical, and it came with an immense amount of stress. In the end, it was worth it, and I finally feel like I’m on the track I wanted to be on all along.