Somebody found this blog by Googling that phrase today.
No shit, Sherlock! Yes, your graduate students are unhappy. And you're just now figuring this out? You need to go read ALL of the posts over at 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School, then go read From Grad School to Happiness and the other post-academic blogs I've linked to in my blogroll, and then you need to come back over here and read my blog from the beginning to the present (though I do give you permission to skip some of the fluffy cat posts).
One of the many things wrong with graduate school is that too many professors view their graduate students through the lens of their own experiences as graduate students and subsequent paths to professorhood. While this may give you a warmfuzzy feeling of nostalgia, it doesn't make for having honest relationships with your graduate students today and can actually be harmful to them. in terms of preparing for both academic careers and nonacademic alternatives, if you base your guidance to them on the way things worked for you 30 years ago.
Case in point: A professor I had in graduate school used to frequently mention to us graduate students how ze had spent several years working in advertising before deciding to go to graduate school and pursue becoming a professor. Ze was fond of telling us how easy it was, as a newly graduated B.A. in English, to get hired as a copywriter for an ad agency, how ze came up with successful campaigns (one slogan is still being used by the client -- you'd recognize it!) , and how much money ze was making.
Ze gave all of this up because ze felt ze wanted to do something more meaningful with hir life than think up clever ways to dupe people into buying shit they didn't need. Humph. Noble aspirations, right? How many of my post-academic friends wouldn't kill for a job like this professor gave up? Luckily for hir, ze went to graduate school, "suffered" through the poverty of 6 years as a TA and adjunct cushioned by savings from the advertising job, and got hired in the early 80s onto the tenure track while still ABD.
This professor was smart and talented, but the times were different, too -- not just the academic job market but the nonacademic job market. Because today you can major in things like ... advertising (!) ... it's much harder to get hired for the kind of job ze had with a B.A. in mere English. And much, much harder if you compound your job search with the whole "overqualified/underqualified" shit us post-academics are dealing with.
So, in other words, telling graduate students they always have "other options" without encouraging them to prepare themselves for those options is disingenuous. It's you old professor types taking the narrative you've spun upon your own lives to explain the circumstances of your successful careers and comfortable lives and imposing it on the lives and careers of your graduate students. It's irresponsible to do so. Stop it!
Yes, your graduate students are responsible for making the decision to postpone money-making career objectives for the "life of the mind," but they also look up to you with somewhat rose-colored lenses, respect you, and seek to emulate you. A few years into the Ph.D. program, when their reality starts to bump up against the rosier narratives you represent, yes, they tend to get goddamned unhappy -- not to mention stressed about how they've fucked up their futures, frustrated by their increasingly limited options, depressed by their poverty, and generally messed up by the mindfuck that is graduate school.
And I'm telling you this as someone who basically, in a lot of ways, liked academe and wished I could have found a way to stay. You owe it to yourself to understand WHY your graduate students are so unhappy, and, if you care about the mentorship aspect of your job as a professor, you owe it to your students to help them figure out sustainable ways to cope with the realities of what academe has today become.
Showing posts with label graduate school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label graduate school. Show all posts
Friday, May 18, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
More on Having a Back-Up Plan
In my post to prospective graduate students the other day, I wrote about having a back-up plan if you go to graduate school rather than assuming you will get a tenure-track job. I want to emphasize how this isn't about success or failure but just plain common sense.
A while ago, I wrote about how I don't think comparing careers in academe to careers in the arts is particularly useful (look it up -- I'm too lazy to link). In one way, however, the comparison is useful, and that is in the wisdom of having a back-up plan. An elder cousin of mine had a long and very fine career as a symphony musician but had also earned an engineering degree. Even though he got the symphony job right out of college, he always said he was glad he had the engineering degree because what if something happened to his hands? What if he sliced a finger while cooking? What if he got really bad arthritis? What if he had a volleyball accident? None of those things happened, but if they had, he wouldn't have been able to play at the level required by his job and he always felt reassured by having that back-up plan.
My point is that shit happens and if you are in the kind of field where there are just so many factors that have to line up just right, you need a contingency plan in case one or more of those factors falls out of place. Even if you get a tenure-track job, for example, what would you do if, down the line, your partner gets a dream job on the other side of the country? You could live apart but you might not want to do that, and it isn't as if you'd just be able to walk into another professor job if you moved. Or, what if you need to take care of aging parents 1000 miles away? What if you get a tenure-track job but don't get tenure due to no fault of your own?
Like I said, shit happens.
Sometimes, academe seems more like this: When I was growing up, another musician kid I knew seemed to have everything going for her. I remember feeling a bit envious around the age of 18 because she was already well on her way to a musical career, without ever going to a college or conservatory, while I was still in school toiling away on a double major in English and music (boy, was I dumb for thinking English could be my back-up!). But there was an accident. Her violin got caught in the doors of a train. She tried to pull it out and became entangled in the strap on the case. The train dragged her for some 50 yards before passengers noticed, pulled the emergency alarm, and got the train to stop. She survived, but her legs were completely mangled and only after years and many painful surgeries was she able to walk again -- and only in a limited capacity. The good news, for her, was that her hands were OK and she could still play. And she has gone on to have a career as a concert violinist. But what if it had been her hands that were destroyed?
How many damaged people in academe do you know? How many people do you know who cling to their studies as if scholarship were the instrument of their soul?
A while ago, I wrote about how I don't think comparing careers in academe to careers in the arts is particularly useful (look it up -- I'm too lazy to link). In one way, however, the comparison is useful, and that is in the wisdom of having a back-up plan. An elder cousin of mine had a long and very fine career as a symphony musician but had also earned an engineering degree. Even though he got the symphony job right out of college, he always said he was glad he had the engineering degree because what if something happened to his hands? What if he sliced a finger while cooking? What if he got really bad arthritis? What if he had a volleyball accident? None of those things happened, but if they had, he wouldn't have been able to play at the level required by his job and he always felt reassured by having that back-up plan.
My point is that shit happens and if you are in the kind of field where there are just so many factors that have to line up just right, you need a contingency plan in case one or more of those factors falls out of place. Even if you get a tenure-track job, for example, what would you do if, down the line, your partner gets a dream job on the other side of the country? You could live apart but you might not want to do that, and it isn't as if you'd just be able to walk into another professor job if you moved. Or, what if you need to take care of aging parents 1000 miles away? What if you get a tenure-track job but don't get tenure due to no fault of your own?
Like I said, shit happens.
Sometimes, academe seems more like this: When I was growing up, another musician kid I knew seemed to have everything going for her. I remember feeling a bit envious around the age of 18 because she was already well on her way to a musical career, without ever going to a college or conservatory, while I was still in school toiling away on a double major in English and music (boy, was I dumb for thinking English could be my back-up!). But there was an accident. Her violin got caught in the doors of a train. She tried to pull it out and became entangled in the strap on the case. The train dragged her for some 50 yards before passengers noticed, pulled the emergency alarm, and got the train to stop. She survived, but her legs were completely mangled and only after years and many painful surgeries was she able to walk again -- and only in a limited capacity. The good news, for her, was that her hands were OK and she could still play. And she has gone on to have a career as a concert violinist. But what if it had been her hands that were destroyed?
How many damaged people in academe do you know? How many people do you know who cling to their studies as if scholarship were the instrument of their soul?
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Dear Prospective Graduate Students
I felt a little bad the other day when a prospective graduate student who blogs here fell, like the rest of you, for my April Fool's Day post about getting an interview for a tenure-track job. The fact that the prospect of getting an interview for a tenure-track job has become the stuff of jokes tells you something about the state of the profession. The fact that you all fell for it says something about how academe has programmed us to view such opportunities.
While it amuses me that you post-academics and other presumably rational adults fell for my fake post, I very much do NOT want to mislead idealistic, optimistic prospective graduate students who may have found their way here by searching the intertubes for stories affirming what they fully believe in their naive young hearts to be true: that is, if you work hard enough, set your goals high enough, follow your passion, please your advisers, and do everything right along the way, things will work out and you will have a career as a professor. After all, it's only the losers and fuck-ups who don't make it, right? And you, for sure, won't be one of them because you've done everything right so far! Why should graduate school and the path to professorhood be any different?
One of the criticisms by prospective and new graduate students of the graduate school naysayers -- naysayers, for example, such as the blogger and commenters over at 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School -- is their negativity. Those whiners and complainers, the critics say, need to just suck it up and shut up. Whoever said graduate school was supposed to be easy? You should expect to work hard. You should expect it to be competitive. You should expect to make sacrifices. And if you don't have the stomach to roll with the punches all the way to tenure-track professorland, you should leave and do something else with your life rather than complaining. Your bad experience with academe is your own fault, and you have nothing and no one to blame but your own negative attitude.
Here's the thing: I'm all for encouraging optimism and positivity. It's a heathier way to live, most of the time. But, unfortunately, academe these days is far, far from Dr. Pangloss's "best of all possible worlds." (or here if you don't feel like reading Voltaire right now). Negative emotions -- to the extent they do not lead to debilitating depression, suicide, or violence against others -- can be a normal and healthy reaction to a wrong or unfair or otherwise problematic situation. Some might even argue feelings of discontent are what lead to action and ultimately positive change and progress.
And graduate students have A LOT of very good reasons to feel discontent and anger, frustration and betrayal. But many of these reasons are evident to new or prospective graduate students only in the abstract since they have not yet had to confront them personally. It's easy to believe you would respond differently or make different choices when you have nothing to base your perspective on but undergraduate experiences of academic success and advisers who challenged you, showered you with praise when you met the challenges, and encouraged you in your aspirations to follow in their footsteps. Be especially wary of the influence these people have over you. They mean well and sincerely want you to become professors like them, but your success -- and getting into graduate school is the first milestone -- also validates their sense of professional (and, in some cases, personal) self-worth. Don't expect them to tell you the truth, either about what graduate school may have in store for you or about what awaits you after you finish -- if you finish, that is. They'll tell you their truth, but their truth will not very likely be yours.
If you feel that graduate school, right now, is your calling, I'm not going to be the one to tell you not to go. Maybe you have Deep Questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Maybe you need to spend some time exploring them before you can move on with your life, before you can perhaps expand your horizons to include other pursuits. Maybe graduate school is the only place for you right now ...
If you are a new or prospective graduate student, let me put this to you bluntly: From the get-go, assume you will NOT end up with a job as a professor. Even though there still are a few tenure-track jobs out there and recent Ph.D.s do get them, you should operate under the assumption you will NOT get one. EVER. There are several reasons you should do this, and they have nothing to do with whether you're good enough, smart enough, or assiduous and hard working enough to BE a professor. Rather, they have to do with the structural realities of higher ed and the unfortunate consequence that your future, beyond simply finishing your program, is NOT in your own hands:
1) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because you will have more motivation to prepare a back-up plan. Despite what your current advisers, blinded by your brilliance, may tell you, you NEED one, even if you never end up having to fall back on it. If you're not a trust fund brat or the spouse of someone who can support you indefinitely and you want to be assured you will be able to eat and pay your rent after the age of 30, you CANNOT afford to rely on optimism alone. The academic job market is fickle at best. Beyond writing a great dissertation, publishing a few articles, having strong recommendations, and teaching a class or two, even getting called for an interview is COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR CONTROL. When you're an undergrad, a clear correlation exists between how hard you work and how successful you are, including your ability to get into graduate school. That correlation does not exist between your success as a graduate student and your ability to get a job as a professor. You do not want to put in all the time and effort it takes to earn a Ph.D. -- no matter how much you enjoy the process -- only to find yourself 30+ years old and facing only two choices: another semester of adjuncting on three different campuses for barely enough money to keep your ass warm in winter or just plain unemployment.
2) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because you will have more freedom while you are "still in school" to make life and career choices that are the best choices for YOU rather than the choices you think you have to make in order to have a shot at a tenure-track job down the line. Simply completing the requirements to earn a Ph.D. -- coursework, exams, and dissertation -- is challenging and a real accomplishment if you can get through it. However, many graduate students put themselves under unnecessary additional pressures to publish multiple articles, present at conferences, and build up a teaching portfolio because they've internalized the message that doing these things will make them better job candidates. The reality is that beyond one peer-reviewed article and two or three semesters of teaching, what matters to a committee is how well they think you'll "fit" in their department. For the initial screening of candidates, they base "fit" on how you represent your research and teaching in your letter rather than what you've actually done. Since you don't know what "fit" means to any particular search committee, you have no idea of what they're looking for or what to say to make yourself "fit" it. I know this is hard to fathom at this point, but there are so many candidates these days so far exceeding the required qualifications that committees really have no choice. My point is that if you operate under the assumption that you WON'T get a tenure-track job, you will do "extra" things like publishing articles and presenting at conferences only if you want to and can afford to in terms of both time and money rather than because you think you have to. You'll save yourself, at the very least, one or two minor breakdowns.
3) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because it will allow you to create some very important distance between who you are as an academic and who you are as a person. Even as you are finishing up your undergrad program, to what degree is your sense of self-worth caught up in the quality of your academic work and the recognition you get for it? Be honest. It's not an easy question. If your answer is that a grade on a paper or a professor's praise or criticism can make or break your entire day, you should know that those feelings only get more intense in graduate school and beyond. A full professor at my Grad U confessed to me once that ze couldn't look at peer-reviewers' comments on articles ze had submitted to journals without having a drink first. Ze said even a "revise and resubmit" response, nevermind a rejection, would make hir depressed for weeks before ze could face the process of revising and resubmitting. Do you really want to subject yourself to this kind of emotional drama when you're 50? No, you don't. But if you go to graduate school to explore Deep Questions recognizing from the outset you might have to do something else to earn a living, you will focus on those Deep Questions rather than on what other people say about you. Your "career," whatever it may turn out to be, will be separate from your personhood. And your well-being will not be held hostage to how people react to your work, academic or otherwise.
If you follow this advice, make it through graduate school, and end up with a tenure-track job, great! Remember, all is grist for the mill. However, if -- as is much more likely despite your passion and brilliance -- you end up having to build up some other career for yourself, following this advice will prepare you much better to do so than conforming to academe's expectation that you put all your eggs in one basket.
While it amuses me that you post-academics and other presumably rational adults fell for my fake post, I very much do NOT want to mislead idealistic, optimistic prospective graduate students who may have found their way here by searching the intertubes for stories affirming what they fully believe in their naive young hearts to be true: that is, if you work hard enough, set your goals high enough, follow your passion, please your advisers, and do everything right along the way, things will work out and you will have a career as a professor. After all, it's only the losers and fuck-ups who don't make it, right? And you, for sure, won't be one of them because you've done everything right so far! Why should graduate school and the path to professorhood be any different?
One of the criticisms by prospective and new graduate students of the graduate school naysayers -- naysayers, for example, such as the blogger and commenters over at 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School -- is their negativity. Those whiners and complainers, the critics say, need to just suck it up and shut up. Whoever said graduate school was supposed to be easy? You should expect to work hard. You should expect it to be competitive. You should expect to make sacrifices. And if you don't have the stomach to roll with the punches all the way to tenure-track professorland, you should leave and do something else with your life rather than complaining. Your bad experience with academe is your own fault, and you have nothing and no one to blame but your own negative attitude.
Here's the thing: I'm all for encouraging optimism and positivity. It's a heathier way to live, most of the time. But, unfortunately, academe these days is far, far from Dr. Pangloss's "best of all possible worlds." (or here if you don't feel like reading Voltaire right now). Negative emotions -- to the extent they do not lead to debilitating depression, suicide, or violence against others -- can be a normal and healthy reaction to a wrong or unfair or otherwise problematic situation. Some might even argue feelings of discontent are what lead to action and ultimately positive change and progress.
And graduate students have A LOT of very good reasons to feel discontent and anger, frustration and betrayal. But many of these reasons are evident to new or prospective graduate students only in the abstract since they have not yet had to confront them personally. It's easy to believe you would respond differently or make different choices when you have nothing to base your perspective on but undergraduate experiences of academic success and advisers who challenged you, showered you with praise when you met the challenges, and encouraged you in your aspirations to follow in their footsteps. Be especially wary of the influence these people have over you. They mean well and sincerely want you to become professors like them, but your success -- and getting into graduate school is the first milestone -- also validates their sense of professional (and, in some cases, personal) self-worth. Don't expect them to tell you the truth, either about what graduate school may have in store for you or about what awaits you after you finish -- if you finish, that is. They'll tell you their truth, but their truth will not very likely be yours.
If you feel that graduate school, right now, is your calling, I'm not going to be the one to tell you not to go. Maybe you have Deep Questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Maybe you need to spend some time exploring them before you can move on with your life, before you can perhaps expand your horizons to include other pursuits. Maybe graduate school is the only place for you right now ...
If you are a new or prospective graduate student, let me put this to you bluntly: From the get-go, assume you will NOT end up with a job as a professor. Even though there still are a few tenure-track jobs out there and recent Ph.D.s do get them, you should operate under the assumption you will NOT get one. EVER. There are several reasons you should do this, and they have nothing to do with whether you're good enough, smart enough, or assiduous and hard working enough to BE a professor. Rather, they have to do with the structural realities of higher ed and the unfortunate consequence that your future, beyond simply finishing your program, is NOT in your own hands:
1) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because you will have more motivation to prepare a back-up plan. Despite what your current advisers, blinded by your brilliance, may tell you, you NEED one, even if you never end up having to fall back on it. If you're not a trust fund brat or the spouse of someone who can support you indefinitely and you want to be assured you will be able to eat and pay your rent after the age of 30, you CANNOT afford to rely on optimism alone. The academic job market is fickle at best. Beyond writing a great dissertation, publishing a few articles, having strong recommendations, and teaching a class or two, even getting called for an interview is COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR CONTROL. When you're an undergrad, a clear correlation exists between how hard you work and how successful you are, including your ability to get into graduate school. That correlation does not exist between your success as a graduate student and your ability to get a job as a professor. You do not want to put in all the time and effort it takes to earn a Ph.D. -- no matter how much you enjoy the process -- only to find yourself 30+ years old and facing only two choices: another semester of adjuncting on three different campuses for barely enough money to keep your ass warm in winter or just plain unemployment.
2) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because you will have more freedom while you are "still in school" to make life and career choices that are the best choices for YOU rather than the choices you think you have to make in order to have a shot at a tenure-track job down the line. Simply completing the requirements to earn a Ph.D. -- coursework, exams, and dissertation -- is challenging and a real accomplishment if you can get through it. However, many graduate students put themselves under unnecessary additional pressures to publish multiple articles, present at conferences, and build up a teaching portfolio because they've internalized the message that doing these things will make them better job candidates. The reality is that beyond one peer-reviewed article and two or three semesters of teaching, what matters to a committee is how well they think you'll "fit" in their department. For the initial screening of candidates, they base "fit" on how you represent your research and teaching in your letter rather than what you've actually done. Since you don't know what "fit" means to any particular search committee, you have no idea of what they're looking for or what to say to make yourself "fit" it. I know this is hard to fathom at this point, but there are so many candidates these days so far exceeding the required qualifications that committees really have no choice. My point is that if you operate under the assumption that you WON'T get a tenure-track job, you will do "extra" things like publishing articles and presenting at conferences only if you want to and can afford to in terms of both time and money rather than because you think you have to. You'll save yourself, at the very least, one or two minor breakdowns.
3) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because it will allow you to create some very important distance between who you are as an academic and who you are as a person. Even as you are finishing up your undergrad program, to what degree is your sense of self-worth caught up in the quality of your academic work and the recognition you get for it? Be honest. It's not an easy question. If your answer is that a grade on a paper or a professor's praise or criticism can make or break your entire day, you should know that those feelings only get more intense in graduate school and beyond. A full professor at my Grad U confessed to me once that ze couldn't look at peer-reviewers' comments on articles ze had submitted to journals without having a drink first. Ze said even a "revise and resubmit" response, nevermind a rejection, would make hir depressed for weeks before ze could face the process of revising and resubmitting. Do you really want to subject yourself to this kind of emotional drama when you're 50? No, you don't. But if you go to graduate school to explore Deep Questions recognizing from the outset you might have to do something else to earn a living, you will focus on those Deep Questions rather than on what other people say about you. Your "career," whatever it may turn out to be, will be separate from your personhood. And your well-being will not be held hostage to how people react to your work, academic or otherwise.
If you follow this advice, make it through graduate school, and end up with a tenure-track job, great! Remember, all is grist for the mill. However, if -- as is much more likely despite your passion and brilliance -- you end up having to build up some other career for yourself, following this advice will prepare you much better to do so than conforming to academe's expectation that you put all your eggs in one basket.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
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:
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.
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:
- Clearly, I do NOT have a tenure-track job. If I did, they'd already know about it.
- 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?
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.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
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!
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 |
Monday, January 30, 2012
Invitation to Help Develop Grad U Graduate Writing Website
The following found its way to my inbox today. I found it amusing. I thought you might, too:
Sorry, I'm rambling. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this seems like campus administrative bloat to me -- another attempt by overpaid campus managers to justify their existence (just reread the job title up there -- couldn't make that shit up if I tried). Such a resource for undergrads makes sense, and many such sites already exist, at Grad U and other institutions. But for graduate students? If you're a STEM person and your writing is so bad people can't understand you, you should hire a tutor and possibly an editor. You deserve to have to pay extra if you're that horrible. If you're in the humanities and you can't write, you probably should drop out long before you finish your diss and hit the job market ... because you will be TOAST. Burn your early diss drafts and maybe give business school a shot.
Maybe I'm being overly harsh and judgmental. Why not help graduate students? A website of writing resources that targets dissertation writing could be just the support some poor struggling ABD needs to get through to the end.
Except ... did it occur to Dr. Very Important Campus Administrator that, since I haven't adjuncted at Grad U in a year, I might have some other job, like, off campus and during normal business hours? How in the world would I be "available" to commute an hour each way for a one-hour focus group? And I should do this, even if I were still adjuncting or otherwise working on campus, as a form of "service," I suppose??
Hey, I got news for you, you high level college administrator types, "service" only counts if you're on the tenure track. Can we work on converting some of those adjunct positions maybe? In my old department, adjuncts outnumber tenure-track faculty 2 to 1. If you could do that and pay me, oh, roughly what I'm currently earning as a freakin' secretary, and offer, maybe, if not tenure, at least multi-year renewable contracts so I'd have some job security, I might consider coming back and doing for a living what you are here acknowledging I'm very good at.
Then I'd be happy to participate in your focus group ...
Hmmmmm. Well, I guess it isn't exactly a surprise that just because you're a graduate student working on a dissertation you're necessarily a good writer. I can cut the STEM folks some slack in this area. They just need to write well enough to communicate their research. However, while I can't speak for the social sciences, it seems that the primary fields in which writing really matters are the humanities. In the humanities, because your work engages so closely with other written texts, what you have to say (your research) is intimately caught up in how you communicate it to others.Dear recent Ph.D.,
In Fall 2010, Dr. Very Important Campus Administrator established a Graduate Writing Task Force to devise a plan to enhance existing graduate writing resources and the quality of graduate student writing. The task force’s recommendations included the creation of a writing resources website that focuses on general resources, but also discipline-specific needs.
Because you were previously selected for Prestigious Graduate Fellowship and thus identified as an outstanding doctoral student who has acquired useful knowledge of the dissertation writing process, the Graduate School invites you to participate in a focus group that will help determine the design and content of the Graduate Writing Resources website. We anticipate convening the focus group sometime in February.
If you are willing and available to serve as a focus group member, please contact me by February 3.
Sincerely,Postdoctoral Associate for Graduate Education Administration
Sorry, I'm rambling. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this seems like campus administrative bloat to me -- another attempt by overpaid campus managers to justify their existence (just reread the job title up there -- couldn't make that shit up if I tried). Such a resource for undergrads makes sense, and many such sites already exist, at Grad U and other institutions. But for graduate students? If you're a STEM person and your writing is so bad people can't understand you, you should hire a tutor and possibly an editor. You deserve to have to pay extra if you're that horrible. If you're in the humanities and you can't write, you probably should drop out long before you finish your diss and hit the job market ... because you will be TOAST. Burn your early diss drafts and maybe give business school a shot.
Maybe I'm being overly harsh and judgmental. Why not help graduate students? A website of writing resources that targets dissertation writing could be just the support some poor struggling ABD needs to get through to the end.
Except ... did it occur to Dr. Very Important Campus Administrator that, since I haven't adjuncted at Grad U in a year, I might have some other job, like, off campus and during normal business hours? How in the world would I be "available" to commute an hour each way for a one-hour focus group? And I should do this, even if I were still adjuncting or otherwise working on campus, as a form of "service," I suppose??
Hey, I got news for you, you high level college administrator types, "service" only counts if you're on the tenure track. Can we work on converting some of those adjunct positions maybe? In my old department, adjuncts outnumber tenure-track faculty 2 to 1. If you could do that and pay me, oh, roughly what I'm currently earning as a freakin' secretary, and offer, maybe, if not tenure, at least multi-year renewable contracts so I'd have some job security, I might consider coming back and doing for a living what you are here acknowledging I'm very good at.
Then I'd be happy to participate in your focus group ...
Monday, December 19, 2011
Your Monday Funny (Er, Gallows Humor)
I can confirm this firsthand. When I was in graduate school, Peaches went through a stint of unemployment. I was teaching 3 classes, working on my dissertation, going to conferences, getting my first peer-reviewed article published ... the whole academic 9 yards. My entire monthly adjunct salary was ... not enough to cover our mortgage payments. You know how much Peaches got for sitting around all day playing computer games and waiting for recruiters to call? Enough to pay the mortgage. And the recruiters? They did call, and he got another job soon enough. Me? Well, you know the rest of my story ...
Monday, December 5, 2011
Shoulda Coulda Woulda
One thing us postacademics get really tired of hearing really quickly is some version of the following:
I just shake my head at both sides. Sure, the "I don't get it" crowd has a point, but, rationally speaking, if so many otherwise intelligent people are continuing to ignore obvious signs that graduate school is a trap, there must be more to it.
There IS more to it. Consider:
Prospective (and, indeed, current) graduate students get a lot of conflicting information and mixed messages they aren't really equipped to sort through. For example, the student might have read some articles in Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle (or any number of mainstream publications) that talk about the dearth of academic jobs and what a big waste it is getting a Ph.D. To a nonacademic with no graduate school inclinations like my acquaintance, this is both the only information they have and the only information they think they need to be able to pass judgment on someone like Crazy Friend.
But the aspiring student has a host of other information -- some of it quite personal -- to grapple with. There is the praise from undergraduate professors, some of it no doubt truly misleading the student to believe they are the "special" exception -- a standout even among those talented enough, passionate and committed enough, to be distinguished from the masses. Of course, this praise does nothing but perpetuate the myth of meritocracy. Even if your undergrad profs are right about your talent (and ... well-meaning as they might be, they're probably wrong), how good you are only matters when How Good You Are Matters matters more than How Well You Fit Based on the Frantic Review of 600 Candidates Right Before Finals (all of whom were similarly praised and encouraged by their undergrad profs years ago).
So, if students can depersonalize praise and be objective, they would less likely fall into the trap, but most people would have a hard time doing that -- and the naysayers would, too, if they were on the receiving end of this encouragement and had an interest in further academic pursuits.
Also, the strong interest in further academic pursuits itself leads even those not drunk on their undergrad advisers' praise to believe "facts" and "statistics" about job placement rates used by departments to promote their graduate programs. Speaking personally, this was one of the largest factors clouding my judgment. Since a few years had passed between the time I finished undergrad and started grad school, I had some distance (like acquaintance's Crazy Friend). Rather than overzealous praise, my own desire to succeed in a profession I cared about, coupled with more disciplined work habits and more general maturity than the typical 22-year-old entering a grad program, led me to choose a program that, while not the most prestigious, for one thing, had what appeared to be a very robust number of job placements.
In other words, I DID look at career prospects. The larger picture represented in the media told one story, but the program I'd been accepted to and looked forward to attending told another. And this was 10 years ago, when the kind of information readily available today to anyone with Internet access wasn't out there -- was either not collected (and, in many cases, still isn't) or was misrepresented (i.e. placements are meaningless unless you know how many others who started the program the same year have since either dropped out or are working as adjuncts). At the beginning and throughout my time as a graduate student, I repeatedly heard announcements of tenure-track job placements, along with yearly totals that seemed impressive .......... impressive, that is, until several years in I started observing how many others the department was simply retaining as adjuncts, with and without the Ph.D., and how many just walked away, just disappeared without a trace to become postacademics. My understanding of who adjuncts were -- and how many of them my own department employed -- was limited by my experience. During the first few years, I saw them as failures, if I saw them at all. Duh, why weren't they following all the CV-building advice I was and publishing and presenting at conferences? But later ... well, who knew there were so many? And who knew so many of them were there due to no lack of competence on their part? They were doing the same things junior faculty on the tenure track were doing (they had to in order to stay competitive for tenure track jobs elsewhere); the university simply wasn't acknowledging it.
A very large department like the one at Grad U depends on a significant degree of invisibility, whether deliberately reinforced or not, to make the kinds of claims it makes about job placement that allow them to recruit and retain people like me -- and probably like you, too.
To be fair, I don't hear this, personally, all that often. But just the other day, an acquaintance was telling me about a friend, somebody still in her 20s but gainfully employed as a journalist, who is seriously considering going for a Ph.D. in the humanities. "I just don't get it," my acquaintance (who does not have a higher ed background and never considered graduate school) says to me,If I were in your shoes, I NEVER would have made the mistake of going to graduate school. Everybody knows there are no jobs in academe, and nobody in their right mind should spend that much time, effort, and money on education and professional training that will NEVER pay off with a job. I just can't understand why so many otherwise smart people make such a stupid choice.
I keep pointing out to Crazy Friend there aren't any jobs and, like, why would she quit the job she already has and borrow money to go for a useless degree? That's just mind-warpingly unfathomable. Is Crazy Friend being willfully ignorant? As far as I can tell, you'd have to be. I really just don't get why people just shut themselves off from what they don't want to hear and believe. The facts are pretty stark.And there's no shortage of articles, news stories, and blogs telling everyone that cares to listen that going to graduate school in the humanities is a bad idea. Why don't people listen to reason? I told my friend not to go, but she won't listen. She wants to be a professor.
 | ||
| Via |
There IS more to it. Consider:
Prospective (and, indeed, current) graduate students get a lot of conflicting information and mixed messages they aren't really equipped to sort through. For example, the student might have read some articles in Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle (or any number of mainstream publications) that talk about the dearth of academic jobs and what a big waste it is getting a Ph.D. To a nonacademic with no graduate school inclinations like my acquaintance, this is both the only information they have and the only information they think they need to be able to pass judgment on someone like Crazy Friend.
But the aspiring student has a host of other information -- some of it quite personal -- to grapple with. There is the praise from undergraduate professors, some of it no doubt truly misleading the student to believe they are the "special" exception -- a standout even among those talented enough, passionate and committed enough, to be distinguished from the masses. Of course, this praise does nothing but perpetuate the myth of meritocracy. Even if your undergrad profs are right about your talent (and ... well-meaning as they might be, they're probably wrong), how good you are only matters when How Good You Are Matters matters more than How Well You Fit Based on the Frantic Review of 600 Candidates Right Before Finals (all of whom were similarly praised and encouraged by their undergrad profs years ago).
So, if students can depersonalize praise and be objective, they would less likely fall into the trap, but most people would have a hard time doing that -- and the naysayers would, too, if they were on the receiving end of this encouragement and had an interest in further academic pursuits.
Also, the strong interest in further academic pursuits itself leads even those not drunk on their undergrad advisers' praise to believe "facts" and "statistics" about job placement rates used by departments to promote their graduate programs. Speaking personally, this was one of the largest factors clouding my judgment. Since a few years had passed between the time I finished undergrad and started grad school, I had some distance (like acquaintance's Crazy Friend). Rather than overzealous praise, my own desire to succeed in a profession I cared about, coupled with more disciplined work habits and more general maturity than the typical 22-year-old entering a grad program, led me to choose a program that, while not the most prestigious, for one thing, had what appeared to be a very robust number of job placements.
In other words, I DID look at career prospects. The larger picture represented in the media told one story, but the program I'd been accepted to and looked forward to attending told another. And this was 10 years ago, when the kind of information readily available today to anyone with Internet access wasn't out there -- was either not collected (and, in many cases, still isn't) or was misrepresented (i.e. placements are meaningless unless you know how many others who started the program the same year have since either dropped out or are working as adjuncts). At the beginning and throughout my time as a graduate student, I repeatedly heard announcements of tenure-track job placements, along with yearly totals that seemed impressive .......... impressive, that is, until several years in I started observing how many others the department was simply retaining as adjuncts, with and without the Ph.D., and how many just walked away, just disappeared without a trace to become postacademics. My understanding of who adjuncts were -- and how many of them my own department employed -- was limited by my experience. During the first few years, I saw them as failures, if I saw them at all. Duh, why weren't they following all the CV-building advice I was and publishing and presenting at conferences? But later ... well, who knew there were so many? And who knew so many of them were there due to no lack of competence on their part? They were doing the same things junior faculty on the tenure track were doing (they had to in order to stay competitive for tenure track jobs elsewhere); the university simply wasn't acknowledging it.
A very large department like the one at Grad U depends on a significant degree of invisibility, whether deliberately reinforced or not, to make the kinds of claims it makes about job placement that allow them to recruit and retain people like me -- and probably like you, too.
* * * * *
There's a lot more to say on this subject, but this post is long enough for today. The bottom line is that there's a bigger picture the Shoulda Coulda Woulda naysayers outside academe aren't privy to. Take responsibility for your choices, but don't let anyone get away with telling you you're stupid for not doing your research before you got into this mess. It's more complicated than what some pundit writes for a general audience, however much truth she or he may tell.
Next time: Two very different ways of thinking about why academe NEEDS people who put their love for the pursuit of knowledge first and their best interests career-wise last ...
Thursday, October 13, 2011
You Room 19 Motherfuckers, Where Are You?
So, I get to work today, and no one's in the office so I can listen to music (I hate listening through headphones, though probably sooner or later I'm just going to give in and get a really good pair).
I turn on Pandora, and "Sweet Jane" is the first thing that comes on. A a most excellent version, too, though not this one (couldn't find video for the version I heard):
And it reminded me of Room 19. And if there are any readers out there who know what the fuck I'm talking about -- and better yet, were there playing this shit and drinking 'til 3 in the morning all those shitty yet awesome nights -- drop me a line, OK? I don't miss grad school, but I do miss playing with you all.
I turn on Pandora, and "Sweet Jane" is the first thing that comes on. A a most excellent version, too, though not this one (couldn't find video for the version I heard):
And it reminded me of Room 19. And if there are any readers out there who know what the fuck I'm talking about -- and better yet, were there playing this shit and drinking 'til 3 in the morning all those shitty yet awesome nights -- drop me a line, OK? I don't miss grad school, but I do miss playing with you all.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Some Advice for Unhappy Grad Students, Disgruntled Adjunsts, and Other Would-Be Post-Academics
Wish somebody had apprised me of this shit once upon a time. Now I have a whole lot of catching up to do:
Graduate school is a trap; orchestrate your exit before you have to leave.
Lots of reasons lead us to graduate school and the pursuit of careers as academics. I'm not here to judge those. I had my own, and, if things were different, I'd be sticking around. But, whatever your reasons for entering and staying for however long you find it sustainable to stay, know that there's probably going to come a time when your options become "either leave academe or stay and be miserable." Nobody's going to tell you this except us crazily sane post-academics, and nobody's going to tell you what the best strategy for planning your exit is. But you need one -- even if you never end up using it, you'll be that much better prepared to advise your own students in the future.
Do your research on what post-academic life has to offer you; you're not going to end up a corporate bot unless you let yourself.
Whenever you do leave, you're probably going to dislike on some level whatever it is you end up doing, even if there are also some things you like -- heck, we all know it ain't like reading Great Books and thinking Deep Thoughts. Prepare for this inevitability by researching possible jobs and careers and acquiring skills and knowledge that will lead you to the greater likelihood of a job with more that you like than dislike (Currently, I am researching day trading, and I expect to be blogging about what I'm learning further, as I learn more -- wish I had done this earlier, like when I hit the dissertation dry spell and couldn't write for three months, 'cuz while there are things I like about my current job, I don't aim to be a secretary forever, and I think I could be really good at this day trading thing, something I never even considered before.).
Anyone that tells you that you're compromising your ideals by looking into alternative careers while still pursuing your academic goals? Tell hem to piss off. They're wrong.
That pretty much says it all. Most likely your adviser, well-meaning as ze might be, will tell you this. It may have been true in the past. It's not now. The only thing you're compromising by pursuing your academic goals WITHOUT looking into alternative careers is your own future -- and your capacity ever to support yourself without the help of your partner, family, loans, credit, or food stamps.
Don't get hung up on the academic job market.
It's just around the corner now. The MLA Job List for 2012-2013 is coming out in less than a month. Don't stress. Your academic career is out of your hands. If you're going on the tenure-track market (fuck postdocs and VAPs), just send out letters to the places you can imagine yourself working. If you can't see yourself working there, don't waste your time. Concentrate on presenting yourself well to the ones that make sense for you. If that's only 3, then only send out 3 letters. The rest is ... not up to you anyway, so don't sweat it. Send out those letters and CVs, go have yourself a nice drink, and forget about it. Odds are no one is going to call you. It'll be a pleasant surprise if they do. In the meantime, work on that alternate career, so that next semester you can tell your Scheduler of Adjuncts (who earns $95K) to pay you more or fuck off, because you have options.
Make some friends outside academe.
They'll really help you put things into perspective. Odds are, you'll find a few smart, funny, creative, totally cool people, and they'll help you see what you're missing out on by burying yourself in academe. Not that a career in academe might not still end up being an option, but life on the outside isn't what you thought it would be as the 22-year-old pseudo intellectual you once were, either. Let's face it, you might still love academic work, but you no longer burn with that dumbass, naive "hard, gemlike flame." Grow up and get to know the world around you. Might turn out to be just a little more interesting than the "life of the mind" -- that narrow little world inside your own head insulated from the outside by academe's musty corridors -- that's trapped you for the last decade. And, even if you end up winning the jobs lottery and staying in academe, you'll be that much better prepared to interact with and advise your students.
Graduate school is a trap; orchestrate your exit before you have to leave.
Lots of reasons lead us to graduate school and the pursuit of careers as academics. I'm not here to judge those. I had my own, and, if things were different, I'd be sticking around. But, whatever your reasons for entering and staying for however long you find it sustainable to stay, know that there's probably going to come a time when your options become "either leave academe or stay and be miserable." Nobody's going to tell you this except us crazily sane post-academics, and nobody's going to tell you what the best strategy for planning your exit is. But you need one -- even if you never end up using it, you'll be that much better prepared to advise your own students in the future.
Do your research on what post-academic life has to offer you; you're not going to end up a corporate bot unless you let yourself.
Whenever you do leave, you're probably going to dislike on some level whatever it is you end up doing, even if there are also some things you like -- heck, we all know it ain't like reading Great Books and thinking Deep Thoughts. Prepare for this inevitability by researching possible jobs and careers and acquiring skills and knowledge that will lead you to the greater likelihood of a job with more that you like than dislike (Currently, I am researching day trading, and I expect to be blogging about what I'm learning further, as I learn more -- wish I had done this earlier, like when I hit the dissertation dry spell and couldn't write for three months, 'cuz while there are things I like about my current job, I don't aim to be a secretary forever, and I think I could be really good at this day trading thing, something I never even considered before.).
Anyone that tells you that you're compromising your ideals by looking into alternative careers while still pursuing your academic goals? Tell hem to piss off. They're wrong.
That pretty much says it all. Most likely your adviser, well-meaning as ze might be, will tell you this. It may have been true in the past. It's not now. The only thing you're compromising by pursuing your academic goals WITHOUT looking into alternative careers is your own future -- and your capacity ever to support yourself without the help of your partner, family, loans, credit, or food stamps.
Don't get hung up on the academic job market.
It's just around the corner now. The MLA Job List for 2012-2013 is coming out in less than a month. Don't stress. Your academic career is out of your hands. If you're going on the tenure-track market (fuck postdocs and VAPs), just send out letters to the places you can imagine yourself working. If you can't see yourself working there, don't waste your time. Concentrate on presenting yourself well to the ones that make sense for you. If that's only 3, then only send out 3 letters. The rest is ... not up to you anyway, so don't sweat it. Send out those letters and CVs, go have yourself a nice drink, and forget about it. Odds are no one is going to call you. It'll be a pleasant surprise if they do. In the meantime, work on that alternate career, so that next semester you can tell your Scheduler of Adjuncts (who earns $95K) to pay you more or fuck off, because you have options.
Make some friends outside academe.
They'll really help you put things into perspective. Odds are, you'll find a few smart, funny, creative, totally cool people, and they'll help you see what you're missing out on by burying yourself in academe. Not that a career in academe might not still end up being an option, but life on the outside isn't what you thought it would be as the 22-year-old pseudo intellectual you once were, either. Let's face it, you might still love academic work, but you no longer burn with that dumbass, naive "hard, gemlike flame." Grow up and get to know the world around you. Might turn out to be just a little more interesting than the "life of the mind" -- that narrow little world inside your own head insulated from the outside by academe's musty corridors -- that's trapped you for the last decade. And, even if you end up winning the jobs lottery and staying in academe, you'll be that much better prepared to interact with and advise your students.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
The Kind of Departmental Job AnnouncementsThat Mislead Graduate Students
The following announcement was emailed by the department chair at Grad U to the entire department (apparently, somebody still thinks I'm "affiliated" enough to still be on this list). Except for names, places, and other identifying information, it is verbatim:
I'd get these e-mails and think to myself, "If Another Recent Ph.D. can do it, I can, too. I've seen Another Recent Ph.D.'s CV, and mine already looks as good and will look even better by the time I go on the market." This went on for years, and I did see their CVs very early in the process and looked at them as models for what I needed to do. During the first semester after my proposal was approved, I participated in a dissertation workshop, of which professionalization was a part. In the workshop, they SHOWED us the CVs of people who had gotten jobs (and whose congratulatory emails I remembered seeing) and said, "This is what your CV needs to look like to be competitive. If it does, you, too, will get a job." The irony is that, during my last year, as I was essentially done with everything but the defense and on the market ABD, that year's workshop leader asked if ze could use MY CV as a model!! I guess because this was 2009; after the recession hit, there just weren't enough examples from those who had ACTUALLY gotten jobs. And they used to only send out these acknowledgments when people got tenure-track appointments...no shit, again, we're in a downward spiral here...
But I digress.
There are some other misleading things about these emails, too. Related further to the "If You Do Everything Right" myth is the fact that sending out these announcements without also acknowledging how many ABDs and recent Ph.D.s went on the market and DIDN'T get jobs in a given year effectively reinforces the fiction that the job market is functional. It'd also be really great if they'd say how many job seekers were, in any given year, adjuncting at Grad U., waiting for things to improve, because, you know, "it's a bad year."
Srsly. Have you ever heard anyone say of the academic job market recently that it's NOT a "bad year"?
The other thing, now that they've started sending these acknowledgments out when people get non-tenure-track jobs, is that graduate students don't tend to read past the expression of optimism -- "Another Recent Ph.D. got a job! Wow, our department has a really great placement rate!! I have a decent shot." Which is exactly the message they're supposed to get -- the message that, to cite my previous post, keeps 'em runnin' and keeps the department's adjunct pool overflowing with desperate yet hopeful job seekers. Of course, graduate students should know enough to look around their departments and read between the lines and recognize that there's some information missing. But that's hard to do when information is not forthcoming and you don't really know a whole lot of your colleagues. Once I was done with my coursework and was "promoted" (Hahahahahahahaha!) from TA to adjunct, I knew fewer and fewer of my colleagues. By my last semester, I hardly knew anyone except the 4 people I shared an office with. It wasn't until I looked up the numbers for this post and this post that I realized I had 94 adjunct colleagues (and that's not counting TAs).
Again, I digress.
The ratio of job seekers who get jobs vs. those who don't needs to be publicly visible, otherwise these nice, congratulatory e-mails merely offer false hope -- again and again and again.
The other thing you might not pay attention to if you were reading this most recent email as a graduate student is that, while Another Recent Ph.D. might be happy enough, it really isn't such a hot job. Depending on your perspective, it might not be any better than sticking around and adjuncting.
While I'm not against going abroad for jobs, if that suits you, this a visiting appointment, which means that in one year -- or two or three, depending on the length of the contract and whether it can be renewed -- Another Recent Ph.D. is going to be on the market again. Even if ze likes the idea of taking a job at Unpronounceable University in Unpronounceable, Obscure Province of Very Far Away Asian Country, how does ze effectively conduct hir next job search from over there? Consider the cost of having to fly back for interviews and campus visits, if ze were lucky enough to get them. And consider the lack of research resources ze might have to contend with. How does the dissertation-to-book process go when you don't have adequate resources, not because, like me, you are no longer "affiliated" but because your affiliation doesn't come with much and you are literally thousands of miles away from a library that could meet your needs? How does not being able to make much progress on research and publication make you a better candidate when you have to go on the market the next time?
What happens to Another Recent Ph.D. when this appointment ends and ze finds hirself back in the states in a year or two or three with no tenure-track job, little progress on research and publications, and out of touch with whatever potential nonacademic job contacts ze might have had before ze left?
Back to adjunctland.
I do hope things work out better for Another Recent Ph.D. I don't know hir personally, but I wish hir the best of luck with hir new job. Unfortunately, the odds are against hir. One thing is for sure, however: We will only find out if ze, in a year or two or three, moves on to another non-adjunct -- possibly tenure-track but not necessarily -- job, at which point, Polite and Encouraging but Clueless Department Chair will send out another nice message. But if ze ends up adjuncting or working as a secretary or unemployed in her parents' basement? We'll never know.
And that is just plain misleadingly unfair to graduate students who have the right to know -- from the people they ought to be able to trust -- what the profession they are hoping to enter holds in store for them, no matter how good they are and no matter how hard they try.
Dear Colleagues:
I am delighted to announce that Another Recent Ph.D. has received an appointment as a visiting faculty member in the Appropriate Department at Unpronounceable University in Unpronounceable, Obscure Province of Far Away Asian Country. In July, Another Recent Ph.D. successfully defended hir dissertation, "Something or Another in Particular Genre, 18XX-19XX." Hir committee consisted of Charismatic Believer in Academe (chair), Boring Defender of the Status Quo, Diss Director of Your Humble Blogger, and Professor from Some Other Department.
Congratulations to Another Recent Ph.D. and hir advisors!
Best,
Your Polite and Encouraging but Clueless Department ChairNow, I'm not saying there's anything particularly wrong with the announcement itself. Indeed, it's a nice gesture that such a large department publicly acknowledges the successes of its graduates. At the same time, it was emails just such as this that I received all throughout my time as a graduate student that reinforced my belief in the "If You Do Everything Right..." myth.
I'd get these e-mails and think to myself, "If Another Recent Ph.D. can do it, I can, too. I've seen Another Recent Ph.D.'s CV, and mine already looks as good and will look even better by the time I go on the market." This went on for years, and I did see their CVs very early in the process and looked at them as models for what I needed to do. During the first semester after my proposal was approved, I participated in a dissertation workshop, of which professionalization was a part. In the workshop, they SHOWED us the CVs of people who had gotten jobs (and whose congratulatory emails I remembered seeing) and said, "This is what your CV needs to look like to be competitive. If it does, you, too, will get a job." The irony is that, during my last year, as I was essentially done with everything but the defense and on the market ABD, that year's workshop leader asked if ze could use MY CV as a model!! I guess because this was 2009; after the recession hit, there just weren't enough examples from those who had ACTUALLY gotten jobs. And they used to only send out these acknowledgments when people got tenure-track appointments...no shit, again, we're in a downward spiral here...
But I digress.
There are some other misleading things about these emails, too. Related further to the "If You Do Everything Right" myth is the fact that sending out these announcements without also acknowledging how many ABDs and recent Ph.D.s went on the market and DIDN'T get jobs in a given year effectively reinforces the fiction that the job market is functional. It'd also be really great if they'd say how many job seekers were, in any given year, adjuncting at Grad U., waiting for things to improve, because, you know, "it's a bad year."
Srsly. Have you ever heard anyone say of the academic job market recently that it's NOT a "bad year"?
The other thing, now that they've started sending these acknowledgments out when people get non-tenure-track jobs, is that graduate students don't tend to read past the expression of optimism -- "Another Recent Ph.D. got a job! Wow, our department has a really great placement rate!! I have a decent shot." Which is exactly the message they're supposed to get -- the message that, to cite my previous post, keeps 'em runnin' and keeps the department's adjunct pool overflowing with desperate yet hopeful job seekers. Of course, graduate students should know enough to look around their departments and read between the lines and recognize that there's some information missing. But that's hard to do when information is not forthcoming and you don't really know a whole lot of your colleagues. Once I was done with my coursework and was "promoted" (Hahahahahahahaha!) from TA to adjunct, I knew fewer and fewer of my colleagues. By my last semester, I hardly knew anyone except the 4 people I shared an office with. It wasn't until I looked up the numbers for this post and this post that I realized I had 94 adjunct colleagues (and that's not counting TAs).
Again, I digress.
The ratio of job seekers who get jobs vs. those who don't needs to be publicly visible, otherwise these nice, congratulatory e-mails merely offer false hope -- again and again and again.
* * * * *
The other thing you might not pay attention to if you were reading this most recent email as a graduate student is that, while Another Recent Ph.D. might be happy enough, it really isn't such a hot job. Depending on your perspective, it might not be any better than sticking around and adjuncting.
While I'm not against going abroad for jobs, if that suits you, this a visiting appointment, which means that in one year -- or two or three, depending on the length of the contract and whether it can be renewed -- Another Recent Ph.D. is going to be on the market again. Even if ze likes the idea of taking a job at Unpronounceable University in Unpronounceable, Obscure Province of Very Far Away Asian Country, how does ze effectively conduct hir next job search from over there? Consider the cost of having to fly back for interviews and campus visits, if ze were lucky enough to get them. And consider the lack of research resources ze might have to contend with. How does the dissertation-to-book process go when you don't have adequate resources, not because, like me, you are no longer "affiliated" but because your affiliation doesn't come with much and you are literally thousands of miles away from a library that could meet your needs? How does not being able to make much progress on research and publication make you a better candidate when you have to go on the market the next time?
What happens to Another Recent Ph.D. when this appointment ends and ze finds hirself back in the states in a year or two or three with no tenure-track job, little progress on research and publications, and out of touch with whatever potential nonacademic job contacts ze might have had before ze left?
Back to adjunctland.
I do hope things work out better for Another Recent Ph.D. I don't know hir personally, but I wish hir the best of luck with hir new job. Unfortunately, the odds are against hir. One thing is for sure, however: We will only find out if ze, in a year or two or three, moves on to another non-adjunct -- possibly tenure-track but not necessarily -- job, at which point, Polite and Encouraging but Clueless Department Chair will send out another nice message. But if ze ends up adjuncting or working as a secretary or unemployed in her parents' basement? We'll never know.
And that is just plain misleadingly unfair to graduate students who have the right to know -- from the people they ought to be able to trust -- what the profession they are hoping to enter holds in store for them, no matter how good they are and no matter how hard they try.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
More Rat Corpses
Eh, the title was a warning you were going to get another image like this one. So, if you clicked and are now disgusted by this new one I almost stepped on today, it's your own fault:
Really, I don't know why I am taking pictures of dead rats and posting them on my blog. This latest one I'm finding even more revolting to look at than the first one I posted. I think it's bigger. It was only about half a block from where the other one was, and I'm going to get to watch it decompose all week unless I take a different route. Just like the other one.
Is there something metaphoric here? The first time I blogged about a dead rat, I wrote that, having left academe, I was finding myself looking down at grim, ratty reality rather than up at academe'sidealistic fantasies and self-aggrandizing delusions er self-deceiving fictions or -- what is the phrase I'm looking for here? Hairy ass Life of the mind or something like that...??
But, really, academics are no less subject to the rat race than anyone else. If anything, more so. Run run run run run. But where are you running to? A tenure track job? Heh. Not if you don't already have one. Promotion? Sure, go for it if you're already tt -- but, really, if you're tt, do you have a choice? And while tenure and promotion will certainly make your life at least a little better in terms of salary and job security, what about the future of the profession? In the long run, if those who have tenure now don't work harder to use the privilege of their position to both preserve and reform the profession, there won't be anything but adjuncts a generation from now.
Run run run run run.
There's been a lot of buzz this week about William Pannapacker's latest take on fixing graduate school in the humanities. (go to my previous post for the link if you haven't read it already -- I'm too lazy to link again), especially about how the "satisfaction" of doing work you like is supposed to compensate for exploitation -- for using people for scut work and then disposing of them before they've had a chance to prove their merit, for taking advantage of their over-motivated willingness to do "satisfying" work for a pittance only to close doors as soon as they've earned the credentials to walk through them, for being worse in so many ways than the rat race so many graduate students think they're escaping through the Ivory Tower.
Run run run run run.
So often when I think of academe these days, I'm reminded of the title character in Ellison's Invisible Man. Specifically, I'm reminded of the scene in the first chapter when he dreams about his grandfather and the briefcase with the sealed letter, supposedly a letter of recommendation. His grandfather tells him to open it. Inside there's just another sealed letter. He opens that one. And there's another. Eventually, he opens the last one. It says, "To Whom It May Concern ... Keep This N----- Boy Running."
And, if I've run too far astray from rats, there's also the opening scene from Native Son, in which Bigger Thomas kills the rat in his family's apartment only then to use its corpse to torment his sister:
The meaning? Let me quote from one of our students' favorite sources for explanification of those awful, mean, tough, long books we (in my case, used to) assign:
Run run run run run run run run run.
Academe traps us like the rats that inhabit so many decrepit grad student basement offices (and I've seen 'em, too -- big fat ones that stink when they die under couches and no one notices for a few days).
Until you realize you're a rat and there's nowhere left to go but out.
Stay tuned for updates, kids! It's gonna be real hot here this week, and that corpse is gonna be REAL pretty to look at by Friday.
Is there something metaphoric here? The first time I blogged about a dead rat, I wrote that, having left academe, I was finding myself looking down at grim, ratty reality rather than up at academe's
But, really, academics are no less subject to the rat race than anyone else. If anything, more so. Run run run run run. But where are you running to? A tenure track job? Heh. Not if you don't already have one. Promotion? Sure, go for it if you're already tt -- but, really, if you're tt, do you have a choice? And while tenure and promotion will certainly make your life at least a little better in terms of salary and job security, what about the future of the profession? In the long run, if those who have tenure now don't work harder to use the privilege of their position to both preserve and reform the profession, there won't be anything but adjuncts a generation from now.
Run run run run run.
There's been a lot of buzz this week about William Pannapacker's latest take on fixing graduate school in the humanities. (go to my previous post for the link if you haven't read it already -- I'm too lazy to link again), especially about how the "satisfaction" of doing work you like is supposed to compensate for exploitation -- for using people for scut work and then disposing of them before they've had a chance to prove their merit, for taking advantage of their over-motivated willingness to do "satisfying" work for a pittance only to close doors as soon as they've earned the credentials to walk through them, for being worse in so many ways than the rat race so many graduate students think they're escaping through the Ivory Tower.
Run run run run run.
So often when I think of academe these days, I'm reminded of the title character in Ellison's Invisible Man. Specifically, I'm reminded of the scene in the first chapter when he dreams about his grandfather and the briefcase with the sealed letter, supposedly a letter of recommendation. His grandfather tells him to open it. Inside there's just another sealed letter. He opens that one. And there's another. Eventually, he opens the last one. It says, "To Whom It May Concern ... Keep This N----- Boy Running."
And, if I've run too far astray from rats, there's also the opening scene from Native Son, in which Bigger Thomas kills the rat in his family's apartment only then to use its corpse to torment his sister:
 | ||
| Via |
Symbolically, the rat is as "trapped" in the apartment as the family is; both are eating nutritionally deficient "garbage," none may escape and both are ultimately vulnerable to vicious murder.Well, OK, so I'm exaggerating. Of course, it isn't as bad today to be an aspiring academic as it was to be black and poor in mid-twentieth-century Chicago. But you get my point.
Run run run run run run run run run.
Academe traps us like the rats that inhabit so many decrepit grad student basement offices (and I've seen 'em, too -- big fat ones that stink when they die under couches and no one notices for a few days).
Until you realize you're a rat and there's nowhere left to go but out.
* * * * *
Stay tuned for updates, kids! It's gonna be real hot here this week, and that corpse is gonna be REAL pretty to look at by Friday.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
5 Myths About the Academic Job Market
JC's recent post about the "exciting opportunity" he was invited to apply for (one-year VAP position in Bumblefuck teaching 4/4) reminds me of how prevalent myths about the academic job market are, despite the fact that some of us are starting to wake up, smell the proverbial coffee, and point out publicly that the emperor has no clothes (and is butt ugly, too, and, yes, I know I'm mixing all sorts of metaphors and running on my sentences, but it's Saturday morning and I get to do that sort of thing -- because it's my blog!).
Anyhoo, the following 5 nyths about the academic job market are myths I wholeheartedly believed throughout graduate school, all the way until the very end, when I finally started to wise up and pay attention to what was happening to me and my colleagues rather than to what people said was supposed to happen:
Myth #1: If you do everything right, you will get a job.
This is an especially egregious myth to perpetuate among smart, highly motivated, highly ambitious graduate students. The idea is that if you write a stellar dissertation, publish at least one (preferrably more) full-length, peer-reviewed articles before hitting the market, teach a ton, present at a dozen conferences, win awards, and receive the highest accolades from your committee, then a job awaits you, even while you are still ABD.
This is bull$hit through and through. Every adviser, well meaning as they might be, will point to someone for whom this was true and tell their newest protégé(e) to follow so-and-so's example, and a job, too, will follow. What they neglect to say is that, for every person who did everything right and got a job, there are at least two or three others who also DID EVERYTHING RIGHT and DIDN'T get a job.
Most advisers don't perpetuate this myth maliciously -- they really do mean well and want to see their students go on to get tenure-track jobs and be successful. But they have selective memories. Confronting the truth would be painful and would probably also force them to confront some perhaps even uglier truths about contingent faculty in their own departments and the intimate relationship between the lack of "good" jobs and the overuse of adjuncts.
Myth #2: If you are willing to go anywhere and everywhere, a job awaits you.
While it is true that you increase your chances of finding a job by applying to everything and anything you might be remotely qualified for, doing so is no garauntee that a job will come of it. Again, for every person who applies for a hundred jobs in a given year, lands 2 interviews and 1 job (at teaching intensive regional college in Bumblefuck), there are countless others who did the same thing and got nothing. They're adjuncting or VAPing again and waiting to go through the whole application process all over again. Is it worth it? That's up to you, but, at the very least, don't believe that just because you're willing to go anywhere and everywhere and apply to a hundred jobs -- most of whch aren't even a good match for you -- year after year that eventually all your hard work will pay off. Odds are it won't.
Myth #3: Spending years taking VAP and postdoc positions will eventually pay off.
In most professions, having more experience is a good thing. In academe, most people have enough teaching experience by the time they go on the market the first time. As long as you can prove that you can independently design a syllabus and manage a class, which is clear from your having taught multiple classes during multiple semesters as an adjunct while you were ABD, you have enough experience for any committee considering your application. Year after year beyond that doesn't add up to anything and won't improve your odds. If you want to move across the country to take a VAP position because it pays better than your current adjunct gig and you haven't yet decided to throw in the towel, go for it, but don't believe you're making yourself a better candidate for the next go-around on the market.
Myth #4: The people who do end up with tenure-track jobs do so because they have the very best credentials.
See Myth #1. While it is certainly true that those who do get jobs are highly qualified, just because you got one doesn't mean you have better credentials than those who didn't. Committees narrow down their applications to the most highly qualified and choose to interview -- and ultimately hire -- those they believe would be the best "fit" for their department. You have no control over how "fit" is subjectively determined by each individual committee and, other than trying to style your letter to the job ad and the department's online description, you have no control over making yourself that one person who "fits" best -- and in some cases, while you might be good at the job, you really might not be the best "fit" and, should they hire you because you were clever enough to make yourself seem like the best "fit," you could well end up miserable.
Myth #5: Spending time working on a back-up plan is a waste of time and will interfere with the time you need to spend on making yourself the very best candidate for academic jobs.
As Myths #1-4 illustrate, putting all your eggs in one basket is just plain stupid. Spending 8-10 years in graduate school gives you more than enough time to build up your CV AND work on a back-up plan. Once you're done with your coursework, use your tuition remission to bank some practical skills. Just take a class here or there -- say, in accounting or technical writing or the language you studied just barely enough to pass the language exam. Or, once you have "enough" teaching experience, get some other type of job. My current job is a perfect example of the kind of job a graduate student could do "full-time" and still have time to work on the dissertation. I have more free time now than I had while I was teaching, I'm making nearly twice as much money (albeit still not much in the grand scheme of things), and I'm building a skill set that is actually marketable in the "real world" (my job type at a different kind of organization -- larger and for-profit -- pays quite well, but no one would have hired me in that context without the experience I'm now gaining). It's much better to do this while you're still a graduate student -- and, yes, you do have the time to pursue your academic goals at the same time you're working on having other options besides adjuncting when that first academic job search doesn't pan out. You have, literally, EIGHT TO TEN YEARS!!
Anyhoo, the following 5 nyths about the academic job market are myths I wholeheartedly believed throughout graduate school, all the way until the very end, when I finally started to wise up and pay attention to what was happening to me and my colleagues rather than to what people said was supposed to happen:
Myth #1: If you do everything right, you will get a job.
This is an especially egregious myth to perpetuate among smart, highly motivated, highly ambitious graduate students. The idea is that if you write a stellar dissertation, publish at least one (preferrably more) full-length, peer-reviewed articles before hitting the market, teach a ton, present at a dozen conferences, win awards, and receive the highest accolades from your committee, then a job awaits you, even while you are still ABD.
This is bull$hit through and through. Every adviser, well meaning as they might be, will point to someone for whom this was true and tell their newest protégé(e) to follow so-and-so's example, and a job, too, will follow. What they neglect to say is that, for every person who did everything right and got a job, there are at least two or three others who also DID EVERYTHING RIGHT and DIDN'T get a job.
Most advisers don't perpetuate this myth maliciously -- they really do mean well and want to see their students go on to get tenure-track jobs and be successful. But they have selective memories. Confronting the truth would be painful and would probably also force them to confront some perhaps even uglier truths about contingent faculty in their own departments and the intimate relationship between the lack of "good" jobs and the overuse of adjuncts.
Myth #2: If you are willing to go anywhere and everywhere, a job awaits you.
While it is true that you increase your chances of finding a job by applying to everything and anything you might be remotely qualified for, doing so is no garauntee that a job will come of it. Again, for every person who applies for a hundred jobs in a given year, lands 2 interviews and 1 job (at teaching intensive regional college in Bumblefuck), there are countless others who did the same thing and got nothing. They're adjuncting or VAPing again and waiting to go through the whole application process all over again. Is it worth it? That's up to you, but, at the very least, don't believe that just because you're willing to go anywhere and everywhere and apply to a hundred jobs -- most of whch aren't even a good match for you -- year after year that eventually all your hard work will pay off. Odds are it won't.
Myth #3: Spending years taking VAP and postdoc positions will eventually pay off.
In most professions, having more experience is a good thing. In academe, most people have enough teaching experience by the time they go on the market the first time. As long as you can prove that you can independently design a syllabus and manage a class, which is clear from your having taught multiple classes during multiple semesters as an adjunct while you were ABD, you have enough experience for any committee considering your application. Year after year beyond that doesn't add up to anything and won't improve your odds. If you want to move across the country to take a VAP position because it pays better than your current adjunct gig and you haven't yet decided to throw in the towel, go for it, but don't believe you're making yourself a better candidate for the next go-around on the market.
Myth #4: The people who do end up with tenure-track jobs do so because they have the very best credentials.
See Myth #1. While it is certainly true that those who do get jobs are highly qualified, just because you got one doesn't mean you have better credentials than those who didn't. Committees narrow down their applications to the most highly qualified and choose to interview -- and ultimately hire -- those they believe would be the best "fit" for their department. You have no control over how "fit" is subjectively determined by each individual committee and, other than trying to style your letter to the job ad and the department's online description, you have no control over making yourself that one person who "fits" best -- and in some cases, while you might be good at the job, you really might not be the best "fit" and, should they hire you because you were clever enough to make yourself seem like the best "fit," you could well end up miserable.
Myth #5: Spending time working on a back-up plan is a waste of time and will interfere with the time you need to spend on making yourself the very best candidate for academic jobs.
As Myths #1-4 illustrate, putting all your eggs in one basket is just plain stupid. Spending 8-10 years in graduate school gives you more than enough time to build up your CV AND work on a back-up plan. Once you're done with your coursework, use your tuition remission to bank some practical skills. Just take a class here or there -- say, in accounting or technical writing or the language you studied just barely enough to pass the language exam. Or, once you have "enough" teaching experience, get some other type of job. My current job is a perfect example of the kind of job a graduate student could do "full-time" and still have time to work on the dissertation. I have more free time now than I had while I was teaching, I'm making nearly twice as much money (albeit still not much in the grand scheme of things), and I'm building a skill set that is actually marketable in the "real world" (my job type at a different kind of organization -- larger and for-profit -- pays quite well, but no one would have hired me in that context without the experience I'm now gaining). It's much better to do this while you're still a graduate student -- and, yes, you do have the time to pursue your academic goals at the same time you're working on having other options besides adjuncting when that first academic job search doesn't pan out. You have, literally, EIGHT TO TEN YEARS!!
Monday, June 20, 2011
Idealism Gone Wrong
Exactly a year ago, I was deep in the middle of teaching a summer session course.
I'd been offered it last-minute, of course, a week and a half before summer session started. It was an upper-level course -- a survey but restricted to majors. It covered a period of about 400 years, only half of which fell within my field of primary expertise. Hence, I had about a week and a half to cobble together a syllabus, through only half of which I might be able to offer students something resembling the educational experience they deserved. And even when one is working within familiar territory, a week and a half is hardly enough time to put together a truly thoughtful syllabus for a course one has not taught before.
Scheduler of Adjuncts didn't care about quality, though, only about staffing the class. Only seven students enrolled initially, but the department chose to run it anyway (normally such a class would require at least twelve) because six of the seven were paying out-of-state tuition, which meant that one-and-a-half of them covered my adjunct salary and the university could pocket the rest.
I didn't really want to take on the class, but I needed the money. I didn't have a tenure-track job lined up for the fall, didn't know if I'd be offered any classes (or how many) to teach as an adjunct in the fall, and had no other summer work lined up but an SAT prep gig that didn't pay enough to cover my expenses for the summer.
Commencement, at which I newly became "recent Ph.D." was the last week in May. It felt good for a day, upon which family and friends reveled in pomp and circumstance, while I sweated in ridiculous regalia, posed for pictures, and later consumed a ridiculous abundance of good whiskey. Then it was back to prepping for the class that should have just been cancelled -- or at least scheduled a month or two earlier (oh, wait, it was, but the second most highly paid professor in the department decided ze was too busy, well into May, to be bothered with such responsibilities).
But I digress. I pulled a syllabus together, ordered books, and generally got my shit together in order not to embarrass myself and, at the very least, to offer the students something that made them feel like the class was "worth it."
I shouldn't have worried too much, though. Six of the seven students were there to earn credit they needed to graduate the following year -- and that was pretty much all. They did the readings, wrote the papers, talked more or less enough to fill the time in class, and were more or less glad to get on with their summers when the class ended. They helped a class that should never have been turn out OK, for which I am grateful, but we need say no more about them. They are not my subject.
The seventh person who had initially enrolled already had a college degree. And a law degree. And, ten years since graduating from college, was gainfully employed at a law firm.
And ze thought ze wanted to go to graduate school.
Because ze had Deep Questions that couldn't answered anywhere else. Because Academe represented a Beacon of Light and Hope that cast the Enlightenment that comes through living the Life of the Mind upon the Intellectual Darkness of day-to-day drudgery at the law firm.
Really, ze was too old and experienced not to have known better. But the Life of the Mind was calling, and ze had signed up for my course as a kind of refresher and also because ze had attended an undergrad program that didn't have traditional majors (actually, an excellent program, but, alas, such consequences!), like English, and so ze was seeking, through my badly planned, half-assed, last-minute excuse for a class, an immersion in the discipline, a true experience of Intellectual Inquiry through the study of Great Literature, an introduction to the Great Gods of Theory, a journey towards Wisdom in the Word. Indeed, ze burned with a hard, gemlike flame.
Our conversation went something like this:
I'm not sure there was a course being offered that summer that was what ze was really looking for -- or that graduate school, more generally, would have given hir what ze wanted.
Self-interest, self-absorption, self-aggrandisement, self-deception, self-delusion. Academe encourages these qualities by mislabelling them idealism and commitment to "the life of the mind."
I'm not saying I'm any better than this student. I fell into the same trap a decade ago -- had a career as a high school teacher, had a gainfully employed partner, ignored the signs of a sick sad academic world because my Intellecktaulle Interests took precednece.
Why do so many people keep falling into this trap over and over and over and over again? Doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results? Isn't that the definition of insanity?
I'd been offered it last-minute, of course, a week and a half before summer session started. It was an upper-level course -- a survey but restricted to majors. It covered a period of about 400 years, only half of which fell within my field of primary expertise. Hence, I had about a week and a half to cobble together a syllabus, through only half of which I might be able to offer students something resembling the educational experience they deserved. And even when one is working within familiar territory, a week and a half is hardly enough time to put together a truly thoughtful syllabus for a course one has not taught before.
Scheduler of Adjuncts didn't care about quality, though, only about staffing the class. Only seven students enrolled initially, but the department chose to run it anyway (normally such a class would require at least twelve) because six of the seven were paying out-of-state tuition, which meant that one-and-a-half of them covered my adjunct salary and the university could pocket the rest.
I didn't really want to take on the class, but I needed the money. I didn't have a tenure-track job lined up for the fall, didn't know if I'd be offered any classes (or how many) to teach as an adjunct in the fall, and had no other summer work lined up but an SAT prep gig that didn't pay enough to cover my expenses for the summer.
Commencement, at which I newly became "recent Ph.D." was the last week in May. It felt good for a day, upon which family and friends reveled in pomp and circumstance, while I sweated in ridiculous regalia, posed for pictures, and later consumed a ridiculous abundance of good whiskey. Then it was back to prepping for the class that should have just been cancelled -- or at least scheduled a month or two earlier (oh, wait, it was, but the second most highly paid professor in the department decided ze was too busy, well into May, to be bothered with such responsibilities).
But I digress. I pulled a syllabus together, ordered books, and generally got my shit together in order not to embarrass myself and, at the very least, to offer the students something that made them feel like the class was "worth it."
I shouldn't have worried too much, though. Six of the seven students were there to earn credit they needed to graduate the following year -- and that was pretty much all. They did the readings, wrote the papers, talked more or less enough to fill the time in class, and were more or less glad to get on with their summers when the class ended. They helped a class that should never have been turn out OK, for which I am grateful, but we need say no more about them. They are not my subject.
The seventh person who had initially enrolled already had a college degree. And a law degree. And, ten years since graduating from college, was gainfully employed at a law firm.
And ze thought ze wanted to go to graduate school.
Because ze had Deep Questions that couldn't answered anywhere else. Because Academe represented a Beacon of Light and Hope that cast the Enlightenment that comes through living the Life of the Mind upon the Intellectual Darkness of day-to-day drudgery at the law firm.
Really, ze was too old and experienced not to have known better. But the Life of the Mind was calling, and ze had signed up for my course as a kind of refresher and also because ze had attended an undergrad program that didn't have traditional majors (actually, an excellent program, but, alas, such consequences!), like English, and so ze was seeking, through my badly planned, half-assed, last-minute excuse for a class, an immersion in the discipline, a true experience of Intellectual Inquiry through the study of Great Literature, an introduction to the Great Gods of Theory, a journey towards Wisdom in the Word. Indeed, ze burned with a hard, gemlike flame.
Our conversation went something like this:
Student (after first class, clearly beneath hir intellectual functioning): "Do you think this is the right course for me?"And so ze withdrew. I was sincere in saying that I would have loved having hir in class -- ze had a lot to contribute. But the class wasn't what ze was looking for, and I felt an obligation to disclose at least a glimpse of how things really are to someone aiming to throw away a career ze already had for a naive ideal.
Me: "Well, I don't know. You have a college degree already, and a law degree. Why are you taking an undergraduate course?"
Student: "I felt I needed to take an English course to enhance my knowledge of the Discipline before applying to Graduate School. I also feel I need to prove to Admissions Committees that I'm serious. Because, you know, in my program we didn't have majors, and I need to prove that, for sure, Literary Studies is the Right Field. Because I'm working as a lawyer, not doing what an English Major would do. And because I've never taken an English course."
Me: "How can you be so sure you want to get a Ph.D. in English when you've never taken an English course?"
Student: "Because it is in my blood. Because I have burning Intellectual Questions, and I feel that English is the field most suited to answering them. I want to be a Professor."
Me: "Having burning intellectual questions is great, but you already have a career. And you don't need to go to graduate school to pursue your intellectual interests. You already have enough education to know how to learn on your own. And do you know how few professor jobs there are? Most 'professors' just end up doing what I'm doing, teaching semester-by-semester, course-by-course, not having enough time to prep their classes, much less pursue Deep Intellectual Concerns. And never having enough money. I'm pretty sure you're better off as a lawyer."
Student: 'IknowIknowIknow. I've read all the 'stay away' articles. I've read Thomas H. Benton. I've read Marc Bousquet. But I know this is really for me. That I'm meant for it. If there are not jobs when I graduate, I can always go back to lawyering, or I can teach high school. Or I can just be an adjunct, because my spouse is a lawyer, too, and ze makes even more than I do. So, it's just irrelevant, the job market."
Me: "The job market is irrelevant?"
Student: "Well, for me it is."
Me: "For fear of spewing cliches, you do know that 'no man is an island,' right? I mean, the job market may not be relevant to you, but it is for most of the rest of us. And the reason we're having this conversation -- you wanted to know if this summer class is the right one to nurture your intellectual curiosity -- well, the reason I would say it's not the right course for you is that it will not be the kind of intellectually stimulating course you may be expecting. It may not be what you're expecting at all, and the reason is directly tied to the academic job market and, more broadly, the labor structure of higher ed. I wish I could tell you differently, but I'd be lying. Honestly, I'd love to have you in class --and I hope you'll stay -- but you'll be wasting your tuition."
Student: "Oh.................but, you know, I thought so-and-so was teaching this course. Ze has a really impressive scholarly profile. I wanted to Learn from hir..........Why are you teaching this class?"
Me: "An explanation at this point would be futile. I'm telling you these things because I think the next generation of academics has a responsibility to be concerned about the state of the profession they are entering, not just their own Intellectual Interests. I wouldn't say that no one should go to graduate school, but if all you care about is yourself and your own 'interests', well.....what about your future colleagues? What about your future students? Your choices indirectly but ultimately affect their working conditions and quality of education. Those things should matter to all of us, above and beyond our petty individual interests. Because what do those interests matter, if the learning community of which we are a part falls apart?"
Student: "I don't like you. You're scaring me. I'm not taking your class. Who can I talk to in this department that will tell me what I want to hear?"
Me: "Over there. There's the door. Many people here, unfortunately, will tell you exactly what you want to hear."
* * * * *
I'm not sure there was a course being offered that summer that was what ze was really looking for -- or that graduate school, more generally, would have given hir what ze wanted.
Self-interest, self-absorption, self-aggrandisement, self-deception, self-delusion. Academe encourages these qualities by mislabelling them idealism and commitment to "the life of the mind."
I'm not saying I'm any better than this student. I fell into the same trap a decade ago -- had a career as a high school teacher, had a gainfully employed partner, ignored the signs of a sick sad academic world because my Intellecktaulle Interests took precednece.
Why do so many people keep falling into this trap over and over and over and over again? Doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results? Isn't that the definition of insanity?
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Question for Readers
Is it worthwhile getting a Ph.D. if your only options are A) working as an adjunct or B) leaving academe for some other kind of work?
Especially if you've experienced significant financial hardship along the way (and if remaining an adjunct would cause you significant financial hardship), is it worth it to spend time and effort getting the Ph.D. if you cannot, in the end, no matter how talented and smart you are, achieve the career goal you started out with?
The Economist says no. Thomas H. Benton has been saying no for a long time. This NYU guy says yes, but I think there are some serious flaws with his argument, starting with the fact that his point-of-view is that of the university --specifically, that of the professor of graduate students and someone serving on the graduate admissions committee--and that the interests he represents are those of the university and NOT of the students. Sure, it's great for universities, at least in the short term, to have an abundance of graduate students and recent Ph.D.s willing to work as serfs, believing if they stick it out long enough--if they can prove themselves good enough--that a tenure-track job will come along eventually and make it all worth it. But that argument doesn't do a very good job of representing the interests of graduate students or recent Ph.D.s....
My answer is complicated, and readers will have to wait to read it. But in the meantime, share your thoughts, whether you have a Ph.D. or not, whether you're on the tenure track or not!
If it's worth it, what makes it so? If not, why not?
Especially if you've experienced significant financial hardship along the way (and if remaining an adjunct would cause you significant financial hardship), is it worth it to spend time and effort getting the Ph.D. if you cannot, in the end, no matter how talented and smart you are, achieve the career goal you started out with?
The Economist says no. Thomas H. Benton has been saying no for a long time. This NYU guy says yes, but I think there are some serious flaws with his argument, starting with the fact that his point-of-view is that of the university --specifically, that of the professor of graduate students and someone serving on the graduate admissions committee--and that the interests he represents are those of the university and NOT of the students. Sure, it's great for universities, at least in the short term, to have an abundance of graduate students and recent Ph.D.s willing to work as serfs, believing if they stick it out long enough--if they can prove themselves good enough--that a tenure-track job will come along eventually and make it all worth it. But that argument doesn't do a very good job of representing the interests of graduate students or recent Ph.D.s....
My answer is complicated, and readers will have to wait to read it. But in the meantime, share your thoughts, whether you have a Ph.D. or not, whether you're on the tenure track or not!
If it's worth it, what makes it so? If not, why not?
 | |||
| Via |
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
We Are All Waldo
Back in my hootenany days, one of our perennial favorite songs to cover was "The Gift" by The Velvet Underground. That's some sick shit, friends! Waldo's girlfriend leaves him supposedly just for the summer, pledging fidelity while she's away. He has doubts:
But we were also grad students and adjuncts, some of us many years into an entanglement with academe that some have already described as a bad relationship -- you know, abandoning yourself to an abusive partner who doesn't give a shit about you but whom you've convinced yourself you love no matter what, for whom you would move across the country despite their infidelity, for whom you would sacrifice your well-being and your rage at their exploits just so that they might let you stay a little longer.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Not altogether unlike the advice Tenured Radical offered up yesterday and today that launched a $hitstorm of righteous rage from commenters.
Hmmm. Imagine telling Waldo to "get a grip"! True, Waldo's a dumb schmuck and could use some sensible advice, but if you've spent any serious time on the adjunct track recently, as I have, you know where Waldo's coming from. You've been there. And TR's advice ain't the advice he needs -- or that we need, as deceptively sensible as it may sound (indeed, did sound even to me at first) on the surface.
Anger. Cultivate it. Nurse it like a good whiskey ('cuz you won't be buying any of that except on credit).
And get out while you can, friends, because once you pack yourself up in that box, you're depending on other people -- people who don't care about you, who hold you in contempt, who don't appreciate what you unwillingly do to enable their privilege because you feel you have no other choice in the pursuit of a career you imagined would be more than just a job -- you are depending on them to set you free.
They don't love you, not any more than Marsha loved Waldo. And they'd just as soon stab you in the head, too, even if they didn't realize quite what they were doing.
Here's the song. Sorry no video -- none of the live performances I could find sounded as good as this version (turn it up nice 'n loud):
Visions of Marsha's faithlessness haunted him. Daytime fantasies of sexual abandon permeated his thoughts. And the thing was they wouldn't really understand how she really was. He, Waldo alone, understood this.Lacking good communication on her end, he decides to pack himself up in a cardboard box and ship himself to her because "he had made her smile, and she needed him." The box arrives as she's with a friend discussing her casual exploits with another guy the night before. Waldo's quivering with excitement inside the box, but Marsha's just pissed off that she's having trouble opening it. She goes for a box cutter, which her friend, Sheila, then stabs
through the middle of the package, through the middle of the masking tape, through the cardboard through the cushioning and (thud) right through Waldo Jeffers' head, which split slightly and caused little rhythmic arcs of red to pulsate gently in the morning sun.Poor Waldo (complete lyrics here). When we used to play this song, taking perverse and angry pleasure in it, I used to think it was just a form of venting over our collective romantic failures.
But we were also grad students and adjuncts, some of us many years into an entanglement with academe that some have already described as a bad relationship -- you know, abandoning yourself to an abusive partner who doesn't give a shit about you but whom you've convinced yourself you love no matter what, for whom you would move across the country despite their infidelity, for whom you would sacrifice your well-being and your rage at their exploits just so that they might let you stay a little longer.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Not altogether unlike the advice Tenured Radical offered up yesterday and today that launched a $hitstorm of righteous rage from commenters.
Hmmm. Imagine telling Waldo to "get a grip"! True, Waldo's a dumb schmuck and could use some sensible advice, but if you've spent any serious time on the adjunct track recently, as I have, you know where Waldo's coming from. You've been there. And TR's advice ain't the advice he needs -- or that we need, as deceptively sensible as it may sound (indeed, did sound even to me at first) on the surface.
Anger. Cultivate it. Nurse it like a good whiskey ('cuz you won't be buying any of that except on credit).
And get out while you can, friends, because once you pack yourself up in that box, you're depending on other people -- people who don't care about you, who hold you in contempt, who don't appreciate what you unwillingly do to enable their privilege because you feel you have no other choice in the pursuit of a career you imagined would be more than just a job -- you are depending on them to set you free.
They don't love you, not any more than Marsha loved Waldo. And they'd just as soon stab you in the head, too, even if they didn't realize quite what they were doing.
Here's the song. Sorry no video -- none of the live performances I could find sounded as good as this version (turn it up nice 'n loud):
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Sex, Drugs, and...
Ha, got your attention, didn't I? Well, since I'm not going to write about the first two sins of this unholy trinity, even under the pseudo anonymity of the blog, let me tell you about my rock and roll adventures this weekend.
First off, as a classically trained flutist, I grew up listening to this guy:
And he is pretty amazing, but as time passed, after I'd spent years and years learning the technique and repetoire -- and after I had more or less given up on the possibility of a career as a musician, I began to expand my musical horizons.
Notably, I joined a bunch of musically inclined members of my grad school cohort who got together now and then for "hootenanies." We had vocals, guitars, bass, occasionally drums, and me, and we'd jam out on bad renditions of Bob Dylan songs and similarly inspired folk rock classics, which got louder, crappier, and more fun the drunker we got -- all taking place late into the night in the decrepit basement designated by the English department as the grad student lounge and redesignated by us as "The Happiest Place on Earth" (yes, there really was a sign on the door, near the pile of cigarette butts, that said that).
Anyhoo, besides being a useful outlet for venting grad school frustrations, I learned through my hootenany years, something about how to improvise. After all the rigors of my classical training, it was so refreshing to play music we were essentially creating together in the moment. Even though we played mostly covers, I didn't know them -- and most didn't have flute parts anyway. I'd just play by ear and invent as we went along. You know how you always tell your students in writing or language classes how they have to learn the rules before they can break them? It's true in music, too. My classical training gave me the technique I needed to do this well, to play "outside the box," and to make music with anyone, anywhere. As much satisfaction as I got from the challgenges of learning the classical repetoire, nothing matches the sheer pleasure of making music in the moment with your friends and for your friends -- and, well, just plain rocking out, like this guy, my new flute hero, does:
(Seriously, he is the master of flute rock -- check out his other stuff, if you don't know it!)
Flash forward to this weekend (there's much of Recent's musical history intervening, but you've got enough back story for the moment). Today I had the opportunity to play a studio gig, something I haven't done in a really long time (and never under these circumstances). One of my current bandmates invited me to a state-of-the-art recording session. A folk rock group needed flute on one track. I'd never heard the song before, never met any of the other musicians (except my bandmate), never heard their stuff, but I showed up, listened while they finished laying down some of the other parts, and then just jumped in and did my thing. I nailed it in one take, all improv! We did a few more, just for variety, to see what would work best with the final vocals, and then we shook hands and parted ways, me with $50 for less than an hour'sfun work.
I'd trade my Ph.D. for the opportunity to make my living as a musician.
Who knows what the future may bring?
First off, as a classically trained flutist, I grew up listening to this guy:
And he is pretty amazing, but as time passed, after I'd spent years and years learning the technique and repetoire -- and after I had more or less given up on the possibility of a career as a musician, I began to expand my musical horizons.
Notably, I joined a bunch of musically inclined members of my grad school cohort who got together now and then for "hootenanies." We had vocals, guitars, bass, occasionally drums, and me, and we'd jam out on bad renditions of Bob Dylan songs and similarly inspired folk rock classics, which got louder, crappier, and more fun the drunker we got -- all taking place late into the night in the decrepit basement designated by the English department as the grad student lounge and redesignated by us as "The Happiest Place on Earth" (yes, there really was a sign on the door, near the pile of cigarette butts, that said that).
Anyhoo, besides being a useful outlet for venting grad school frustrations, I learned through my hootenany years, something about how to improvise. After all the rigors of my classical training, it was so refreshing to play music we were essentially creating together in the moment. Even though we played mostly covers, I didn't know them -- and most didn't have flute parts anyway. I'd just play by ear and invent as we went along. You know how you always tell your students in writing or language classes how they have to learn the rules before they can break them? It's true in music, too. My classical training gave me the technique I needed to do this well, to play "outside the box," and to make music with anyone, anywhere. As much satisfaction as I got from the challgenges of learning the classical repetoire, nothing matches the sheer pleasure of making music in the moment with your friends and for your friends -- and, well, just plain rocking out, like this guy, my new flute hero, does:
(Seriously, he is the master of flute rock -- check out his other stuff, if you don't know it!)
Flash forward to this weekend (there's much of Recent's musical history intervening, but you've got enough back story for the moment). Today I had the opportunity to play a studio gig, something I haven't done in a really long time (and never under these circumstances). One of my current bandmates invited me to a state-of-the-art recording session. A folk rock group needed flute on one track. I'd never heard the song before, never met any of the other musicians (except my bandmate), never heard their stuff, but I showed up, listened while they finished laying down some of the other parts, and then just jumped in and did my thing. I nailed it in one take, all improv! We did a few more, just for variety, to see what would work best with the final vocals, and then we shook hands and parted ways, me with $50 for less than an hour's
I'd trade my Ph.D. for the opportunity to make my living as a musician.
Who knows what the future may bring?
Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Most Important Thing You Learn in Graduate School Is Learning How to Learn (Or, Is it?)
If I don’t get fired for being technologically (or otherwise) incompetent the first week, this job may turn out to be OK, at least for the time being.
In my post earlier today, I mentioned that I had some fears about this job. One of them is my woefully behind-the-times tech knowledge. You see, in academe, nobody really cares all that much if you’re using an old (i.e. 2003) version of Office to write your articles, prep for class, keep your gradebook, or whatever, as long as you get your teaching and writing done. Nobody cares if you’ve ever dealt with the calendar function in Outlook, or ever used Outlook at all, as long as you more or less show up when and where you’re supposed to and more or less keep up with your e-mail correspondence. Nobody cares if you’re still using Windows XP or that you’ve never owned a laptop, nor does anyone care that you don’t ever use your old and very basic cellphone, much less whether you have a fancy new one, like a Blackberry or the latest iPhone.
In the nonacademic world, people do care. Of course, there are academic technophiles, but I am not one of them. I learn new software and how to use new devices only on an as-needed basis. Dear readers, I don’t even really give a crap about how the technology running this blog works, as long as I know just enough to cast my words out upon the interwebs (there will be no bells and whistles or fancy gadgets running here) for your reading pleasure. But, as the technophiles among you already know, technology changes. People who work in offices tend to keep up with these changes as a matter of course. In my new role, I will be using a laptop, with Windows 7 and Office 2007 on it, and I have been assigned a Blackberry (although I probably won’t have to use that very often). In my training session today, I was a bit overwhelmed. My tasks are not all that difficult, but it is Very Important that they get done – done promptly and done right. I am essentially the Joan Harris of this office, part executive secretary and part office manager (although the office itself is much, much smaller than the one Joan runs and in a less glamorous industry than advertising). If I screw up the calendar, Very Important Person misses Very Important Meeting. If I screw up travel arrangements, Very Important Person ends up in the wrong city without a car and misses Very Important Conference. If I screw up the expense reports or invoices, people don’t get reimbursed for travel and purchases or, in some cases, paid at all. I still don’t even know where to find all the stuff I need to use in these new MS applications, and I am kind of seriously freaking out.
Now, if you’re still reading, you may be wondering, “Why the frack did they hire this person who is so clearly technologically inept?” The answer is that I have a Ph.D. in English (!) and therefore ought to be able to figure out anything I don’t already know (!!?). How awesome is that?
Truthfully, I don’t think they realize just how utterly incompetent I am, but my boss was an undergraduate English major who had seriously considered going on for a Ph.D. and becoming a professor but wisely thought better of it. The other person who interviewed me, as well as the person I am replacing, were also both English majors and both currently write fiction. The colleague has published a novel. So, it was a good interview. We talked about writing. And critical theory (seriously, we did!), not secretary stuff.
They are going to be sorely disappointed and, if they do end up firing me, will probably never hire a Ph.D. again (sorry, fellow post academics, that I may end up leaving a very bad impression of us on the nonacademic world).
In fact, there is actually more (of a personally idiosyncratic nature) to the story of my technological ineptitude, at least when it comes to laptops and Blackberries, which speaks to the differences between working in academic vs. nonacademic environments, but I will save that for another post. Perhaps tomorrow, after my second and last training day and the Fancy Lunch to be held for the person I am to replace.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)