what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff

haha i have trouble reading those letters! had a rec written weeks ago and the guy attached the letter to an email to me and i still haven't read it. even though i know it's very good.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2010/01/educationalattainment.png

fml

gonna fucken treasure my half-percent

max, i'm guesing that factors in loss of earnings from loan payments? or is that the type of work taken with advanced degrees forgoes income from more profitable jobs elsewhere?

finding it hard to credit those as absolute figures, certainly.

i think they mean a person with a doctoral degree made 10% more in 1999 than in 2008, it's not decline in the same individual's earnings. right?

ok, got you.

so in real income terms the higher qualifications are becoming less of a relative advantage over time?

oic now

I take it that the meaning of that chart hinges on what "real" means in "real mean earnings".

earnings are real mean lately ; )

that is a microsoft graphs-authored chart i found on a blog post and thought might validate my "decision" to not apply to grad school

man I'll tell you though that when the doctoral life is good, it's very very good.

well it would be more helpful to look at the mean earnings of people with grad degrees over bachelors but since i think u prob want some liberal arts degree maybe it would be just too depressing :/

oh wow ppl are making relatively less now than ten years ago when the economy wasn't in the shitter

well people with bachelor's degrees and master's degrees are making relatively more..........

"relatively more" lol

i mean just sayin that plotting the change in earnings isn't as useful for grad school or no grad school decision making as, say:

difference in earnings between levels of educational accomplishment v. difference in cost (both $$/time) for achieving levels of education

and that only holds water if you're making your educational decisions based on earning potential, which anyone considering an advanced degree in the humanities likely isn't doing

i make all decisions based on my earning potential

no, you should do it for the sweet robes:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/05/14/us/18obama2blog.jpg

from my alma mater (I didn't buy the robes b/c lol @ $2,000 but my mom said she would buy them (before she knew the cost); one day I'll take her up on it).

i thought the school you teach at pays for those when you get tenure, guess it depends on the school

Bear in mind the period encapsulates a time where there has been an expansion in the number of advanced degrees that lead to less lucrative outcomes. (MFAs, english literature phds etc.). There's also be a massive expansion in MBAs at the lower end in the spectrum.

but at the end of the day, greater supply means prices will fall.

They rent them for you if you want to wear them at graduation or convocation, though you still have to pay a bit each time. At least it's been that way at the two places I've taught since grad school.

OKAY:

so i get back from a little relaxation, did a bit of writing (project specific) over the period...

and i found out that A ROUGH DRAFT OF MY THESIS IS DUE TO MY COMMITTEE TODAY.

and i though i had two more weeks.

wtf, thanks for being explicit with deadlines, shit-ass janky grad school.

*thought

dude! can u swing it?

i mean, luckily, this is only the 'preliminary' meeting in two weeks. i'm supposed to have approximately 60 pages by may 1st. right now, i probably have half of that? of clean and polished stuff. since i believe i'm able to add more, or at least give explanation to why my thesis is so thin, i should be okay.

still, i'm like scrambling through notebooks, going through my illustrator archives (some of the stuff is more concrete poetry), and racking my brain like wo right now.

wait what do you need by today?

well i'd hope that if nobody told you, the deadline isn't important to them either...guess that depends on other people being decent and not flakes though.

i need a rough draft of the thesis. which can mean 'really rough.' but in the next two weeks, the whole thing is going to change. so i'm sort of like, "uhhhh, why do i need this to be done now?" especially since my committee is made up of people whose lives are so busy that they probably won't really do much but skim it until the final review, which is in the last week of april.

that said, my thesis committee consists of three heavy hitters whose work and lives i respect a lot, and i don't want them to think i'm some slacker.

that seems annoyingly administrative. good luck.

Man this applying to grad school is pretty tough... I'm worried what it will be like when I'm actually in it.

less stressful, imo! then you just get to start applying for grants.

my problem at the moment is that i have so much going on outside of my program that it's difficult to focus on what i need to be doing. on top of the thesis (which is lol poetry, yeah):

- i'm writing these fake 'translations' of an invented japanese gay man for this anthology.
- i'm acting in a joe brainard play that goes up on the 22nd.
- i'm getting ready for a deejay gig that is also on the 22nd.
- i'm writing actively for XLR8R magazine, which involves insane emailing and constant connectedness.
- i'm writing my own (somehow very popular again) music blog.

i ain't giving shit up for no motherfucking thesis, either, except for nights of drunken debauchery, which is probably best for my hurting liver anyway.

FWIW, University of Windsor pays sessionals $5500/course (a bit low for Ontario) and you do get (good) benefits after teaching for a year. A full-time course load is a shitload of work but it does afford a reasonable living. It's not at all secure (and I'm not f/t in my second year here) but it is also a long way from being "below minimum wage".

just finished laying out the rough draft. now to do a SHITLOAD of photocopying, after a shower and a smoke.

i am getting wasted tonight, btw.

congrats!

http://www.polperro.co.uk/FireworksAnimated.gif

indeed, congrats!

this is juddering to a gruesome, premature conclusion, and the realisation that i have wasted my life, my parents' money, and my own abilities

fuck

I wonder if that is a better or worse feeling than wasting your own money.

I'm thinking maybe better?

the rest, as they say, is unemployability

guilt & regret = bigger waste of time then even grad school

last semester already o_O

Yikes:
http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846/

reality check (there are no shortage of these, esp. for people considering the humanities):

http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846

As things stand, I can only identify a few circumstances under which one might reasonably consider going to graduate school in the humanities:

* You are independently wealthy, and you have no need to earn a living for yourself or provide for anyone else.
* You come from that small class of well-connected people in academe who will be able to find a place for you somewhere.
* You can rely on a partner to provide all of the income and benefits needed by your household.
* You are earning a credential for a position that you already hold — such as a high-school teacher — and your employer is paying for it.

Those are the only people who can safely undertake doctoral education in the humanities. Everyone else who does so is taking an enormous personal risk, the full consequences of which they cannot assess because they do not understand how the academic-labor system works and will not listen to people who try to tell them.

― caek, Tuesday, November 24, 2009 5:48 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark

http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the-Huma/44846/

Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go

― chartres (goole), Thursday, January 7, 2010 1:20 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark