Prior to arriving at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I had spent the last seven years running an English tutoring organization called Superior English Tutoring that specializes in small-group conversation refinement sessions for advanced, non-native English speakers. That sentence is my answer to the oft-encountered “What do you do?” question, but it hardly summarizes my intellectual identity. I’m also deeply interested in exploring how educators can help build learner capacity in terms of confidence, motivation, and risk-taking, as well as other subjects ranging from adult developmental psychology to moral leadership. Given my breadth of interests, the option to cross-register into courses offered by other schools – whether at Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, or MIT – was a major attraction for me as I considered, and eventually committed to, pursuing graduate study at HGSE, which has thus far been the ideal learning environment for a heterogeneous thinker like myself. (I’m not getting paid to type this; I really mean it!)
In the process of developing your application, you may hear, read, or realize upon your own reflection that graduate school is not only a time to achieve “mastery” in a specific area (quotes here are to undermine the connotation of completion this word may carry; obviously education never ends!), but also to delve further into your curiosities regardless of how germane they may seem to future job prospects. To this latter end, cross-registering is a great way to gain exposure to different sets of knowledge and styles of pedagogy.
I’m currently cross-registered in one course at MIT called Entrepreneurial Negotiation. I found this course in the course catalog from a key word search for “negotiation” – MANY results came up –after I had to drop HGSE’s very popular (and wonderful, I’ve heard from new friends) negotiation seminar, which conflicted with another class that I was fully set on taking. Once I saw that the course was available for cross-registration, I checked to see if instructor permission was required. In most cases, this would mean emailing the professor explaining why you think you deserve a seat in the class. It wasn’t, so all I had to do was add the course to my Crimson Cart and was good to go.
Aside from the logistical concern of finding out where exactly your cross-registered course will be held – this won’t be an issue with your HGSE coursework, which will by and large take place within a small, easily navigable trio of neighboring buildings – some schools, like HBS and MIT, require separate registration in their respective systems. This extra layer of administrative red tape can be a pain to deal with when so much is happening right at the beginning of school, but it’s definitely worth the hassle. Luckily in my case, the Entrepreneurial Negotiation TF was very helpful and responsive via email, so finalizing my registration was relatively painless.
When considering which courses to take, some alumni advised me to take care of course requirements first then branch out into other schools in the spring semester or January term. This makes sense, however there might be certain courses only offered in the fall that you might really want to take, so do your due diligence and consider fall and spring options in relation to each other before finalizing your course schedule.
Blog Written by Patrick Bubul. Photo written by Patrick Bubul.
Hi, Patrick Bubul here! I spent the first 18 years of my life just outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania before moving to the greater Boston area in 2005 to begin my undergrad at Boston College, where I majored in English. I’ve been in the Boston area ever since despite flirting with moving to New York City every single year. (I’m finally beginning to comfortably say that Boston is home.) I’m in the human development and psychology program primarily to learn more about the psychology of confidence, risk-taking, and novice status as it pertains to non-native English speakers, although I’m quite happily finding that my academic experiences thus far at HGSE have been taking me in new and unexpected directions. Prior to starting my Ed.M. this fall, I was running — and am still running — an English tutoring business that focuses on helping advanced speakers of other languages refine their conversation skills. I’m also a word nerd, a basketball lover, a guitar player, and a proud chihuahua dad.
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