Open Buddha

I filled out an application today for the Master of Arts in Humanities at
California State University, Dominguez Hills.
This is an accredited MA program at one of the CSU schools outside of Los
Angeles. They've been doing this for 30 years this year and are part of the
California State University system so accrediting is fairly solid.

This isn't my first choice for a program. I kept hoping the
Naropa would reinstitute their MA in
Buddhist Studies that they almost started a year ago but it doesn't seem
like it is happening. The CSU program is actually relatively cheap ($5K over a
couple of years) and it will have me write a master's thesis on an approved
topic of my choice. I'll end the program with an accredited MA and a thesis to
show for it (along with the education, one supposes).

I was actually accepted to this program back in 1995 when I was only a couple
of years out of the university but life situations caused me to decide to wait
to start taking classes at that time. That was within a year of my getting into
the tech industry and getting married for the first time.

I'm still trying to figure out a good way to learn at least basic Tibetan as
well but it looks like self-teaching might be the only real option. With the
full-time job that I have and an MA program along with getting married and
having my daughter, I might be full up on stuff for a couple of years. With any
luck and some work, I'll be done with my degree in about two years if I work at
it a bit.

Assuming that I get accepted, I'll start classes in January. Since this is a
distance program, it's mostly reading and writing papers, which I was always
fairly good at so I'm not worried about doing that end of it at all. It's more a
matter of keeping focus over the next year or two.

I have some ideas for thesis topics within History or Philosophy relating to
Western Esotericism so it should be interesting.