I know nothing about grad school; is it for me?

Based on what you say here, it sounds like grad school is probably not for you at this time. Caveat, there are two kinds of "grad school": professional degrees and academic degrees. -Professional degrees are things like medical doctor, lawyer (JD), business management (MBA), social worker, etc. Professional degrees don't give you a stipend to be a student, instead people take loans to do them, and the program is meant to prepare you for a well-paying job (so you can afford to pay back the loans, theoretically). -Academic degrees, which is what you would get in anthro - these (Masters degrees or PhDs) prepare you to be an expert in the field - which generally means you'd be looking at jobs teaching or researching in a university setting, although with some academic degrees like mathematics or biology there are jobs outside the university. The rest of what I say here applies to academic degrees. I sympathize with loving school and wanting to keep up the aspects you enjoy! But grad school is not that, I'm afraid. PhD programs (in the humanities, and I imagine in anthro) are oriented toward producing people who will be professors, and this generally means solitary researchers who are the world expert on one excruciatingly narrow topic. It doesn't (usually, in the humanities anyway) mean collaboration, or broad interests, and it does mean a ton of time alone in the library, and endless reading, writing and presenting your own ideas at conferences. 1) I know grad school is crazy expensive, but I have some idea that many schools actually pay students to go there and pay them stipends as well? Is this true? Yes, good PhD programs will pay students a small stipend and the students will usually work as teaching assistants. These stipends are usually meant for single people in their 20s to live on, so they are low low low (many grad students are on food stamps), and they often require that you not take other paying work at the same time. 2) I have depended 100% on federal school loans for undergrad; can you get them for grad as well? I am unemployed and have no money at all for school. You should not take out loans to get a graduate degree, unless the degree is something like an MD that will greatly increase your earning power. PhDs generally do not increase your earning power in that way, and unless you know for sure your field is an exception you shouldn't take loans to cover it. Masters' can sometimes increase your earning power, for example in many public sector jobs you would get an automatic pay increase for having one. In that case it might make sense to take loans if you know the pay increase would let you pay off the loan quickly. 3) What does grad school consist of? Classes or just researching and writing? I'm good at writing but I detest it. It's so HARD! I also do way better collaborating with others, but does grad school demand more independent work? Depends on the field. Typically in the US, for a Masters degree you'd do a couple of years of coursework and then a big final paper, and for a PhD you'd do a couple of years of coursework and then qualifying exams then a dissertation, which is a large solo research and writing project that takes 3+ (sometimes 6+!) years. Getting a PhD is all about getting you to be an independent scholar/expert in your very very narrow bit of your field, so research is very much a you-are-the-captain-of-your-own-ship thing. 4) Will my age be a problem? I would be on the far side of mid-50s by the time I would finish a program, with not much working time left (not that I can afford to retire; I imagine working for a long, long time). Will schools hesitate to accept me because of this? Don't know. 5) Does a masters have any value in liberal arts, especially anthro? Or must I get a Ph.D? And how much longer would that take? Value for what? That is the question. What do you want this degree to allow you to do? In my opinion, it's only worth doing if the degree will let you get a specific kind of promotion/job that otherwise you wouldn't be able to get. It's not worth doing out of a general sense that learning is fun or that more school is always better. Your time is precious and your healthy earning years are precious, do not waste them without having a very clear plan. If you have no savings, I would strongly strongly urge you to get a job to build savings. It's scary to leave college because the way forward is not clear, and your degree title will not match up to a job title. But it's important to forge ahead through this period of uncertainty and really think about jobs that will fit your strengths and then pursue those jobs with persistence. If a job requires a master's, that's the time to think about how you can fit one in. But as a general rule, don't do a grad degree unless it will play a role in a clear career plan.

I have a PhD in anthropology. To answer your questions as briefly as possible: 1) I know grad school is crazy expensive, but I have some idea that many schools actually pay students to go there and pay them stipends as well? Is this true? Yes, most PhD students in anthropology will have "funding" which means that their tuition is paid, along with a small amount to live on (a stipend), often in exchange for part-time work for the department as a teaching assistant or research assistant. Pursuing a PhD in anthropology is not really compatible with a full-time "real world" job. 2) I have depended 100% on federal school loans for undergrad; can you get them for grad as well? I am unemployed and have no money at all for school. You can get loans for grad school to cover tuition, etc. and living expenses not covered by your funding package. It's a bad idea, though. 3) What does grad school consist of? Classes or just researching and writing? I'm good at writing but I detest it. It's so HARD! I also do way better collaborating with others, but does grad school demand more independent work? A PhD program in anthropology consists of a few years of coursework (which will include a lot of writing) followed by a period of field research and finally writing a dissertation. If you are in physical anthropology or archaeology you'll usually wind up being part of a larger team, but you'll be expected to identify some particular topic of research within the larger project, figure out how to conduct research on it, and do the write-up independently. A PhD program in anthropology is intended to train you to be an independent faculty member and/or independent researcher. Writing is a major part of it, and will continue to be a major part of your career. 4) Will my age be a problem? I would be on the far side of mid-50s by the time I would finish a program, with not much working time left (not that I can afford to retire; I imagine working for a long, long time). Will schools hesitate to accept me because of this? Yes, your age will be a problem: not because graduate programs have it in for older students, but because their goal for their students is to have them graduate and become anthropology professors and/or researchers, and then you are supposed to get your own crop of trainees that you train in the discipline and so on and so forth. It's like perpetuating a lineage: faculty want to beget more faculty, who beget more faculty. And it costs the department money to train a graduate student, so departments want to see a return on their investment. Since the earliest you could enter a PhD program would be Fall 2015, you will be in your early 60s by the time you finish. You are just not a good investment for them. 5) Does a masters have any value in liberal arts, especially anthro? Or must I get a Ph.D? And how much longer would that take? Holding a master's in anthro is not of that much value. There are some positions for field archaeologists with MAs. An MA takes 2-3 years, and a PhD another 3+ years. A large number of graduate students in anthropology enter a PhD program directly following undergraduate and do a combined MA/PhD that typically takes at least 6 years. In addition to all the other reasons that would lead me to advise you against pursuing a graduate degree in anthro, the icing on the cake is the fact that the job market sucks. Even if you have gone through undergrad getting straight As and being the smartest student in the class, when you get to a PhD program you will find yourself surrounded by a cohort of other straight-A students who are even smarter than that, playing this sick game of musical chairs where you've got only one chair (a tenure-track university teaching job) for every 3 players in the game.

I am unemployed and have no money at all for school. This is a splendid reason not to go to graduate school. Do not incur debt for lifestyle. Even if you had the money, I do not think you would enjoy graduate school. I attended graduate school in a history department, and 100% of my grades for most classes was determined by writing. The form of this writing was usually a single term paper due at the end of the semester, although I had one class where we had a few shorter papers. This was all solo work, by the way. There were no group projects for collaboration. And then of course is the final thesis paper to get your degree. It is hard for me to imagine that life in the anthropology department would be much different. I think you could expect to write a lot by yourself i.e. something that you detest and find hard. If you love learning new stuff, I get it. My hobby is studying. But, you can do that free of charge or for very little expense. Your undergraduate degree should have trained you to read, research, and evaluate anthropological scholarship, so go continue your education for a buck-fifty in library late charges rather than incur more debt. I know I feel that I have learned a lot more academically since I left school than when I was in it.

I absolutely LOVE going to classes and learning new stuff. I love the idea of continuing to be a student Do not go to grad school. You will be doing things you don't enjoy every day, surrounded by people who get to do the thing you love which you are excluded from. It's pretty much all writing papers, preparation for a career of writing papers and trying to get them accepted so you don't get fired for not publishing enough papers. It's a badly paid job whose only reading involves teaching yourself what you need to do the work, while you want to sit in classes and grow as a human being by discovering more wonders in the world of learning for learning's sake. I don't know what the future path is for people who want to continue being true university students. I spent 10 years in grad school looking for that and never found it.

I agree with everyone else that full-time grad school isn't a great fit for you right now. I think the fact that you "detest" writing would make it a miserable time. One option for you since you have a love of learning is to go work for a university. At the one I work for, I can take classes for free. Many of my colleagues have worked on degrees while working. One is working on a BA, another guy did a Master's, and my other friend is working on a PhD. Others just take a class here or there because they love learning like you do! Is it sometimes hard to balance the load- yeah! But our bosses have been very supportive of us taking classes because they are all professors and value the acquisition of knowledge.

In some US states you can audit college classes for free at state universities once you reach a certain age, 60 in some. I have a 90+ year old friend who does this, she buys all the books, goes to all the classes, participates in discussions, but she does not write papers or take exams. She loves doing this. Yes, you can get federal subsidized loans for grad school. But you probably don't want to be paying those loans off for the rest of your life. A masters in the humanities is generally not worth much in terms of job prospects and going for a PhD would be very unlikely to lead to a college teaching job at your age. I'm just being realistic, I'm a bit older than you, and I have some graduate degrees. Feel free to memail me.

You could get a master's in education and teach. You sound like you'd be an amazing teacher. Jobs in anthropology are hard to come by, but some government agencies hire them, a GIS graduate certificate, which most people do online, is helpful. Have you any experience doing archaeological surveys? There is good money in doing that on a contract basis and it would help finance grad school as it is typically short term work with lodging and per diem provided. Research oriented graduate programs are very individually directed and rely on writing. If you don't like those things it might not be a good fit, plus your job prospects are not that much better unless you plan to stay in academia.

If you know nothing about grad school, it probably is not for you. Sorry. Loving the idea of continuing to be a student is one of the worst possible reasons to go to grad school. Grad school is not an extension of the undergraduate experience; it is very focused training in a particular area, usually as preparation for a particular career track. If you are not dedicated to pursuing a career track for which grad school is a prerequisite or a very advantageous launch pad, then it does not make sense to go to grad school.

I'm sort of dating someone who is in his 40's and in grad school. However, he's there because he's spent the past 7 years gradually getting more and more interested in his particular field and this is the full-on, all-hands-on-deck, "this is what I want to do with my life absolutely and no one is going to stop me" commitment to His Life Goal. And he is being worked like crazy (we unfortunately are not going to be able to see each other for the next few MONTHS because his schedule is that overloaded), so if he wasn't THAT committed to this course of study he'd probably be killed from stress alone. In your case, though, it sounds like you just like "being in school" and "learning things", and don't really have any Large Life Plan in mind. So grad school may not be the best idea. But - continuing education programs are perfect for people like you. Or lectures and classes offered by a nearby natural history museum. Or - here in Brooklyn we have some oddball little thing called the http://brooklynbrainery.com/ which is just a sort of "we like taking classes about all sorts of weird stuff" club; maybe a similar sort of club near you would appeal. (It's certainly scratched my own "I like to learn things" itch.)