In Passing

I met another leaver today. I went to a meeting involving a project Think Tank is working on in collaboration with some other groups. Two people came from one of the other groups. One had been working on the project for a long time. The other was introduced as an intern. I thought ze looked a bit old to be an intern -- maybe late twenties or early thirties. Ze seemed smart, too. Took a lot of notes.

Later, as we were leaving and chatting on the train, ze asked me how long I had been at Think Tank and how I ended up here. I told hir.

Turned out ze had just left academe recently. Interdisciplinary social sciences and cultural studies program. This internship was hir "escape." There are more of us out there than you might think, hiding out in the strangest places!

I was just about to tell hir about my blog when the subway train doors opened and I had to get off.

I'm sure well talk again.

Grad U Wants to Know What I'm Doing Now

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

I got an email from the department secretary the other day: "We are compiling data on people who completed the program within the past two years. (This is new. They never used to ask what happened to people.) What is your status now? At your earliest convenience, please let me know the organization you work for and your position title."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!

Two amusing assumptions there:

1. Clearly, I do NOT have a tenure-track job. If I did, they'd already know about it.
2. I am EMPLOYED. Somewhere. In a position with a title I'd be proud to share with them. WTF kind of crack are they smoking?

When I didn't reply, I got a second one. I suppose it would be helpful of me to let them know one of their former "stars" is doing scut work. But why would I do that?

They can Google me.

Perhaps the department secretary would like to trade jobs for a few weeks? Ze makes more money than I do. Ze ought to know how to Google someone.

Through the Looking Glass

Blogging, we commonly presume, carries with it a veracity similar to autobiography. Whether bloggers use real names, totally anonymous pseudonyms, or pseudonyms openly linked to real people, we attribute a subjective truth, at the very least, to the lives bloggers appear to represent.

Why is this? A persona is not a person, no matter how much or how little correlation exists, or that readers think exists.

At least with other kinds of writing, we respect distinctions: An autobiography is not the same as an autobiographical novel, which is not the same as a "regular" novel merely informed by the author's experiences. Nor, again, is a "regular" novel the same as an epistolary novel, with its deliberate gesture towards "real" people telling a "real" story through "their own" writings.

But we assume blogs are like diaries. Whether we know the authors as real people, think we know them, or have utterly no idea who they are, we read each entry believing its contents more like autobiography than fiction.  Yet, it is a persona, not a person, that speaks to us, a digital construction of an identity that develops and evolves with each new post.

Some graduate student has probably already written a dissertation entitled Blogging, Baudrillard, and Barthes: Authorial Simulacra and the Creation of Hyperreal Identities in Online Communities.

Barf. Don't worry. I won't take that any further. But, just as a thought experiment, consider the following:

What if you were to find out that "recent Ph.D." didn't have a Ph.D., didn't work at a think tank or as a secretary, and had never even gone to graduate school? What if "After Academe" were a work of fiction, invented by a stay-at-home mom who had once entertained aspirations of going to graduate school and becoming a professor and wanted to explore the "road not taken" as a means of finding consolation for her choices? She had considered writing a novel but found the immediacy and flexibility of blogging more appealing. Her husband has an important position at a think tank, and she sometimes helps out with administrative tasks.

What if you were to find out "recent Ph.D." was actually a tenured professor who, while always advising his undergraduates NOT to go to graduate school, saw his graduate students year after year -- many of them very talented and committed -- trying and failing repeatedly to get jobs, lingering on in the department as adjuncts? What if he felt terrible about this situation but couldn't speak openly about reforming the department, despite tenure, without being ostracized by other faculty and administrators? What if graduate students wouldn't listen when he told them to walk away because, for them, his position undermined his ethos, making them feel as if he simply thought they weren't good enough, a feeling that only reinforced their determination to prove him wrong? What if "After Academe" were a work of creative nonfiction this professor hoped would convince graduate students and other recent Ph.D.s, whom he could not otherwise reach, that they had other options? What if a former graduate student of his was now working at a think tank?


Of course, you can believe whatever you want to believe, but sometimes readers do raise questions about the real identity of "recent Ph.D." My answer is this: I am as "real" as you want me to be. And the "book" you ask about ... why would you treat it any differently than the blog? If I wrote a book, it would have to fit in a genre: autobiography, creative nonfiction, novel. I'd be an "author" and I'd "die" when you read my "text." Blogging is its own genre, but it can freely incorporate any number of others. And since a blog only ever is, as a text, incomplete, the author/persona retains an active role, disembodied but not dead.

What if "recent Ph.D." is just a highly imaginative, clever, and creative undergraduate, contemplating graduate school but discouraged by what ze has heard? Ze would be just as happy, happier even, if ze could become a famous writer, inventing new literary forms, reaching wider audiences, cultivating "art for art's sake," but for now, ze finds hirself interning at a think tank, bored and overdosing on critical theory.

Won't you follow me through the looking glass? How much of me is you and vice versa?

Via

Aarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghh!

Just look at this:

Isn't he just the cutest? Ha! Don't be fooled!! Look at those demonic eyes. He's an evil bastard, I tell you. As Peaches was leaving for work this morning and I was just about to, SOMEBODY decided he had spring fever and made a mad dash for the door. Then this same SOMEBODY climbed the neighbors' 8 foot fence, dug holes in the garden, tried to down the bird feeder, and hissed at the neighbors' kitty watching enviously from the window. (Ironically, the neighbors put this fence up in the first place to keep the feral cats ... from digging holes in their garden and stalking the birds.)

Neither Peaches nor I could get in the yard to bring him back because there's a lock on the 8 foot tall gate and nobody was home. Eventually, the Evil Bastard wearied of the yard, dug his way out from under the fence, and bolted across the alley. Coaxing, treats, and catnip were all to no avail.

An hour went by. The Evil Bastard sang to the birds, ate grass, knocked over a trash can, scuffled with one of the ferals, and kept a minimum of 30 feet between himself and anything human.

What finally got him in?

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmeow!!!

I Just Got an E-mail Damning Me Today for Working at Think Tank. How Has Your Day Been?

Think Tank is caught up in a bit of a kerfluffle of late. I can't disclose anything specific, but, suffice it to say, ignorance abounds on both sides. Certain Think Tank "experts" are known widely for taking a contrarian view of Subject X. Other people who work here, myself included, as well as others who are politically further to the right, take the mainstream view and are somewhat embarrassed to be associated with the position and policies Think Tank promotes with regards to Subject X. We find it willfully ignorant.

But willful ignorance goes both ways. Really, when you send hate mail to people you don't know because you think the place they work -- which you know nothing about except unsubstantiated rumors you've read on partisan blogs -- is unequivocally Evil with a capital "E," what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Am I supposed to feel bad? Am I supposed to quit? My office doesn't even deal with Subject X.

Even if I am sympathetic to your views, how am I supposed to take you seriously when you send me a statement like this?

To all of you good people at [Think Tank],

I very sincerely hope and wish that you all experience a loss of someone close to your heart, who perished very young as a result of _______________, a major cause of _____________.

My 27 year old son, a former US Nuclear Navy Engineer, died unnecessarily from complications induced by ______________.

May your God forgive you.

I DAMN YOU.

Yeah, awesome. Fuck you, too, whoever you are. Great way to promote tolerance, understanding, and world peace.

Why Employers Should Hire PhDs

UPDATE: See below.

Several of my fellow post-academic bloggers have lately been expressing the frustrations they're currently experiencing as they search for nonacademic employment. A Post-Academic in NYC writes here about the problem of being perceived as overqualified. Unemployed PhD for Hire writes here about the problem of fit, which is a problem on the academic job market, too, but outside academe it's more concrete. For example, it's hard to re-brand yourself as a career changer when your highly "transferable skills don't match up to the competition who have EXACTLY the experience/training/skill set that organizations are looking for."

As I see it, these are problems of perception and stereotyping on the part of employers, rather than problems post-academics bring with them to the job search, but because the end result is that post-academics end up on unemployment instead of gainfully employed, these problems decidedly become theirs. Here's the thing, though: While most unemployed post-academics will eventually find jobs (Hang in there, guys! It really is just a matter of time!), the real losers are the employers who overlook smart, talented people who are potentially their most outstanding workers, people who have the greatest likelihood of progressing within the organization, and those with the highest probability of making important contributions. Remember, somebody will eventually hire these people and reap the benefits. Why not let it be you?

In no particular order, here are some specific reasons why employers should hire PhDs:

They will work for food.
OK, this is not literally true. You do have to pay them a salary. However, since they have been working for so little for so long, you can probably get away with offering them less than the person they're replacing was earning. To a former adjunct whose salary has been $20K for the last 8 years, $40K looks pretty good, even if the person who previously held the position was making $50K (that is, as long as your post-academics do not know this, but why should they?). Now, your post-academics will eventually wise up to things and you'll have to give them more money or they'll leave, but you can certainly save a little in the short-term. And, eventually, you will want to pay them more in order to keep them because they will be doing a good job. Even if you give them a raise, you might still be paying them less than their predecessors. All around, it's a good deal!

UPDATE: I feel compelled to tell you I am speaking only partially ironically here. In fact, given your salary history, it is very likely your first nonacademic employer will lowball an offer. While some positions do have fixed, non-negotiable salaries, this is the exception rather than the rule. You can and should negotiate. Know what the salary range is for that job type in your location. If you get an offer that seems low, it probably is. Probably, it is less that your predecessor was getting. Within reason, ask for more. Trust me, that $5-$8K means A LOT more to you than it does to your would-be employer. You will get taken advantage of if you are too naive to look out for yourself. And this has longer term consequences. If you start making $40K when you could have started at $48-$50K, this will impact what you're offered for your next "next" job. And you can't afford this because you have a lot of lost time to make up for.

They are flexible and adaptable.
It must seem ideal to HR folks to find an "exact" match for an open position, someone who's done exactly the same job somewhere else but for whatever reason wants to change jobs. Score! This person would hit the ground running. You'd have to invest very little in training. Why would you NOT choose this person over a post-academic? You'd have to be crazy, right? Wrong. As great as it might seem at the outset, let's consider the long-term, a year or two or three or ten down the line. Do you want a robot who can only do EXACTLY the same thing over and over and over again? No! We all know policies and procedures change. We know that technology changes. We know upheaval in the ranks of the higher-ups means doing things differently for the plebes, and sooner or later, there's always a change at the top. Somebody who ONLY knows how to do EXACTLY the job you hire them for in the short-term will likely be much less able to roll with the punches. In fact, that may be why this person is looking for a new job in the first place. By contrast, your PhDs may require a little extra patience and training at the beginning but down the line they will be much more flexible and able to use that new software or write those documents in the new and improved way or figure out how to complete whatever new task or project it is you need them to. Why? Because their expertise isn't just in their subject knowledge. Their expertise is learning itself. Since the most important thing you learn in graduate school is how to learn, your post-academics are a major asset to a growing, thriving, evolving organization.

They are risk takers.
It takes guts to walk away from a career you've put the kind of effort and energy into that most post-academics have put into becoming professors. It takes guts to expose yourself to the unknowns of the nonacademic job market. It takes guts to work at getting a foothold by applying for entry-level jobs your undergraduate students are likelier to get interviews for than you are. It takes guts to turn your back on the work you love for the sake of your integrity, your sanity, and the chance to put poverty behind you. Risk takers are an asset to almost any industry. They are good at looking ahead and will do what they think is right and lead others to do the same. They innovate, whether we're talking about more efficient administrative procedures or better ways of building team cooperation or strategies for improving an organization's operations and progress. Do you want to hire people who are just good at doing the same thing over and over and over again? No, you want those who are forward thinking and embrace change.

They are resourceful, responsible, and capable of doing the job with minimal supervision.
PhD candidates, over the course of the many years it takes to complete the dissertation, may meet with their advisers and/or other committee members only a few times a year. Some advisers give virtually no feedback other than a thumbs up or thumbs down on any particular chapter. To get to the end of the process and successfully defend a dissertation, someone with a PhD had to draw upon unfathomable intellectual and emotional resources and take responsibility for doing whatever it took to get to the end of the project. When an adviser says, "This chapter doesn't work for me. Fix it," without saying what's wrong with it or how to fix it, a PhD candidate heads back to the library, back to the prose of the chapter itself, back to the logic that apparently didn't hold up under scrutiny, and figures out how to fix it.

They are good at problem solving.
In addition to the above paragraph, which is also an example of problem solving, curiosity and inquiry lead to research that answers questions or resolves problems. Moreover, having spent time as teachers, they've had to deal with student behavioral problems, like plagiarism, and pedagogical problems, like getting apathetic students to engage with the subject and participate in class discussions. Often, they've had to do these things with minimal support from supervisors.

They are smart.
Hiring a Ph.D. doesn't guarantee brilliance. Probably, you're not getting the next Albert Einstein. But you are getting somebody who came up with a research project independently and had the mental wherewithal to carry it out successfully. Content expertise aside (and, really, you don't care about the subject of their dissertation), completion of the project says this person, at the very least, has functional frontal lobes. While many job listings for general, merely-need-basic-capacity-to-think-to-succeed positions specify "B.A. preferred," the B.A., these days, no longer guarantees that someone actually does have a fully operational brain (as a former college instructor, I speak from experience!).

 They get stuff done.
 Ever wonder what it's like to undertake a major research project independently, work on it (or the preparation leading up to it) every day for the better part of a decade, prep to teach three classes  every week, grade 100 papers or exams every 2 weeks, prepare to present your work publicly at conferences you travel to 2-3 times a year, and submit your work to peer-reviewed journals -- all while earning a salary of around $20K? Yeah, I didn't think so. If you need stuff done, your PhD will get it done, more than likely at warp speed.

Lastly, let's not forget they are also steadfast and reliable (it took them a decade, give or take, of sisyphean toil to get where they are now, without any promise of rewards at the end except completion of a project very few people will ever know about), have integrity (it would have been easier to have just forged the damn diploma!(, and will immeasurably bolster your self-esteem by validating your choice NOT to pursue a PhD yourself!


So, what are you waiting for? Go out and hire a PhD today!

17th century handwritten doctoral diploma

For the Love of Words

No wonder so many nonacademic employers view post-academics with distrust when it comes to writing. Even though academics produce a lot of prose, they tend to bloat it with static verbs and meaningless filler. How else do you get a sentence like the following from a scholarly article about a novel:

Many _______________ argue, then, that it is not so much the difference between ________ and _________ that is at fault in our _____________, as the way in which that difference has been used as a justification for __________________________.

You and I have both read much, MUCH worse (remember the academic sentence generator from this old post?), but this sentence reads like a template. I left out identifying words, but you could fill in almost anything in those blanks and plunk it down in the literature review in your article.

ZzzzzZZZZzzzzzzZZZzz. How boring! I'm asleep already and there are another thirty pages to go. In case you are wondering, I'm reading the article to catch up on where the "field" is at before writing the paper for that stupid conference I'm supposed to present at next month. (Note: I have NOT reserved a hotel room or booked a flight yet. What does that tell you?)

Really, I am still engaged with the subject of my paper and have read a handful of sources that have kept my attention. Nonetheless, I cannot escape bad academic writing. It abounds. It makes me embarrassed for my discipline. True, we taught something resembling templates in the freshman comp classes at Grad U to help students understand the rhetorical moves writers and speakers make, but the goal, after they'd practiced using the templates, was to have them make those same rhetorical moves in their own ways, to speak in their own voices.

It may have gone out of fashion in academe, but I still believe you cannot separate content from form. We are what we eat. You are what you speak.

I hope those of us who've had the clarity of mind to leave academe will also leave our bad habits behind. Outside academe, if you can write about complex things in clear and concise language, without reductively treating your subject yet without wasting words, you can call yourself a writer, people will respect you, and they will read what you write. Inside academe, unfortunately, everybody is a "writer," whether anyone reads what you write or not, and if you can obscure simplicity in arcane and turgid language, muddling your subject and bloating your sentences, then you can call yourself not only a writer but a scholar, too!

Haha. Ahem. Hmmmmph.

I love words. Have I mentioned that before? Not everyone in  academe does, especially literature people. Some of them hate words. Don't ask me what they're doing in academe. In some cases, it's their only opportunity to posture at being hipster intellectuals, carrying around heavy books, wearing black, drinking too much, chain smoking, looking down on everything and everyone. Or, at the opposite end, you have the frumpy dumpies. The ones who forget their glasses in the freezer and wear mismatched socks. They NEED something obscure to hide behind. Or be buried under.

*     *     *     *     *

But I love nekkid words, my peoplz, sexxxy and unruly words!!! I love words that misbehave with grace, words that tumble like Olympic gymnasts, flip and twirl and cartwheel and balance perfectly, even upside down.

I love free and easy words dancing beneath my fingers, appearing on my screen and yours all at once!

(That's where you're supposed to say "Awwwwwwwww, we love you, too, recent Ph.D.!")

Happy Valentine's Day, friends! Here's some luuuuuv art from the streets of Crapitol City: