The following is an essay I wrote for LAMBDA, UNC's LGBT Publication, as an alumni guest writer. I'm not sure if they're going to publish it - but I thought it would be a nice addition here either way:

As a Masters student in Human Sexuality at San Francisco State University, I had imagined our first reading assignment to be from the work of Foucault or Judith Butler or maybe even Alfred Kinsey. So you can imagine my surprise when, at the graduate student orientation, the Director of the program distributed the first Xeroxed reading - a speech given by Mark Danner to graduating students of the Department of English at the University of California at Berkeley in May 2005. Its title: "What Are You Going to Do with That?"

As the Director pointed out, this question will echo in our ears for years to come. It is the very same question that filled my parents' eyes when I told them where I was applying to graduate school. I heard it time and time again when I told fellow graduating seniors at UNC my post-graduation plans. Here in San Francisco, when I'm at a bar talking to a cute young gay men (and there are so many of them here), he will inevitably give a chuckle and ask, "So are you here to find fieldwork tonight?"

While the young man's question was certainly engaging, it is not the reason I find myself attending SFSU. When I helped junior Alice Newton and others to create the GLBT-Straight Alliance in the spring of 2002, I did not know that I was setting myself up for a series of decisions that would deeply affect my life. It was because of my involvement with them that I took classes like Sherryl Kleinman's "Sex and Gender in Society" (SOCI 24) and Karen Booth's "Transnational Queer Politics" (now WMST 102). Because of my membership, I was able to start a conference on LGBT issues and hear such amazing, moving speakers as Urvashi Vaid, Mandy Carter, Suzanne Pharr, Nomi Lamm, and countless others. These women impacted me deeply and shook my values to the core.

Had I not been involved in the GLBT-SA, I could be doing something entirely boring today like accounting or cell biology. However, the ordinary was not an option anymore. It is at least very difficult, in my mind, to have read great works of feminist theory and continue on to such things. Likewise, it seems downright impossible to me to have taken a class from Sherryl Kleinman and find yourself dreaming peacefully of a life dedicated to Corporate Law. Nor is it possible, at least in my eyes, to read a book by bell hooks and ever look at the world with the same eyes again.

Feminism is just one tool that can give you the thick, horn-rimmed glasses it so often takes to see clearly in America. Once you find yourself with not just one, but many of these critical tools, you too will find yourself losing sleep at night. This very crisis characterized my senior year at UNC-Chapel Hill. As a graduate of the Department of Political Science, the obvious choice for me was to take the LSAT and apply to a series of Law Schools I probably never could have gotten into. Having never been a fan of the obvious, I sought out the Master of Arts in Human Sexuality Program here at San Francisco State. It called to me in a way that other options did not.

Many of you are probably wondering what graduate school is like, though, and not how I came to be here. I cannot easily answer that because my program is just one out of hundreds of options. I will, however, tell you a bit about this Masters Program. Masters programs are generally two years long, and this one is not an exception. I am taking three courses this semester: "Socio-Cultural Foundations in Human Sexuality", "Research Methods in Human Sexuality," and a class titled "Sexuality and the Internet." The first two are required for everyone in the program. The first course provides new students with a history of sexuality in America and a theoretical foundation for the field of Human Sexuality. The second is a crash course in the many ways Human Sexuality researchers chose to do their research – including interviews, ethnography, observation, and surveys. The third course is an elective. All three classes meet once a week on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday from 4:10 PM -- 6:55 PM. It is a great schedule.

You spend your first year in the program developing a research plan to be executed in your second year of study. This is a somewhat flexible schedule, but most students follow it. Some examples of research topics that second-year students are looking at include anything from burlesque dancers in San Francisco to the effects of online racism on black gay and bisexual men. I am not yet sure of my own research topic.

Finally, to answer the question posed by the title of this essay, there are many options for those who chose to dedicate their life to the study of Human Sexuality. Some students in the program will go on to a PhD program (sociology and anthropology being the most common) and from there will probably teach at a University. Others are interested in policy and hope to work for a "thinktank" like, for example, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Policy Institute in New York. At least one student hopes to go on to law school and then do advocacy for LGBT people in the legal realm. More possibilities remain from reproductive rights advocates to sexual health educators.

Though I do not yet know my precise destination, I do ultimately know what I will do with my Master of Arts degree. I know that, whatever I end up doing, I will be working to make equality a reality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans. I may be lobbying to pass a piece of pro-LGBT legislation in California. Or I might be designing a public health campaign aimed at squashing new HIV infections. Who knows -- many years from now, I might even be teaching a sociology class on sexuality at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Whatever the case, I know exactly what I'm going to do with "that." It's the how that gets sticky.