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

Yeah, I did guess it was the case before joining the lab based on her career stage/no reference to students beyond MA, and I realized then that it's a drawback - perhaps I just didn't realize how significant. I had good reasons to want to work with her. They are still valid - I just hope they're not overwhelmed by this other stuff. When I ask around, I get extremely positive things from people on the research side, and eye-rolling and it's-not-just-you looks on the social competence and keeping-on-top-of-things side. It's not that she's milking her students for ideas and not coming up with any herself; she has tons of ideas, and I'd rather she let us get on with ours and publish than only want to do her own thing. But she doesn't seem to want to *run* the lab or empower anyone else to do so, which means ideas get confused and no-one knows who's doing what.

I mean, I'm typing this calmly now because we just had a good meeting. But if you'd posted on Wednesday you would have got a response from me while sobbing and two whiskeys down. Still keeping a firm eye out for alternatives, but moving fast is not an option, and I need to do my research on the new prospects!

Sometimes an advisor can absorb new people and give them the freedom to find their own way if the lab is already well established. But with a new lab, someone has to take charge of nearly all the details big and small, and the advisor is the only person in the lab with enough experience to do that. But I'm glad to hear that things have been going better over the past few days. Anyway, keep doing what you're doing and keep your options open (cliched but true).

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/12/04/stanford-moves-ahead-plans-radically-change-humanities-doctoral-education

our doctoral program (humanities) only assures funding for five years now, as of this year, so we're already committed to this. article doesn't say what's special about Stanford's plan.

not sure why anyone would *want* to stay in grad school longer than that, but I've seen a lot of grad students drift in my time (obv they never get jobs in academia)

I've thought about developing our doctoral program into two tracks, one aimed at academic jobs (lol?) & the other at non-academic jobs, with the second requiring in the third and/or fourth summers a funded internship that the program finds for students. whether my colleagues will be open to that...

I think that is a good direction but there's sorta a mismatched incentive problem cause the depts that do it might be afraid of looking 'less academic'. stanford is a good place for stuff like this to happen because it doesn't have to risk looking non-academic it just looks stanfordy.

we don't have to worry about that either, as a university at least

I assure you Stanford philo would worry about looking less academic (having been "involved" there, let's say)

what sort of non-academic jobs do humanities phds tend to do?

excepting like international relations or whatever

yeah I can imagine I mean it still exists in the social world of academic philosophy. that's why the changes can only really come from above.

http://mylifeourhealth.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/golden-arches.jpg

no clue about english or lit or whatever

but if you do a thesis on global justice in the context of health care in a philo dept e.g. there are good paying "careers" in the health care industry

& actually our incentive is "getting jobs for our students", something we spend a lot of time worrying about

that doesn't really sound like philsophy? or is it applied moral philosophy

deems you must be thinking of the MPhil students

i'm thinking of the irish ones tbrr

applied ethics ⊆ philo

getting them academic jobs yeah, but getting them non-academic jobs? those are very different things

to me they're all jobs, jobs you wouldn't get w/o a Ph.D. as I said my colleagues may need convincing, but the newly shitism of the market is pushing ivory tower types a bit closer to the edge. & deans are paying attention too, which matters a lot

never having run a humanities department at a prestigious american university this is rather speculative but i'd guess a lot of them are loathe to think that their phd graduates couldn't even get a job at the university of cowfuck or whatever

getting a job at the university of cowfuck is fucking hard even for Princeton grads

I quit my PhD, btw. Seeing as academia was the only thing I ever displayed any aptitude for, I can now look forward to doing precisely nothing with the rest of my pitiful existence.

well yes, but i daresay they would rather not dwell on that xp

at my gf's prestigious american university the profs just don't mention the phd graduates

they just become non-people unless they make it big

why did you quit, Emily? Being in a similar field I'm kind of assuming a life of precisely nothing when I finish, whether that's avec PhD or not.

Mental health problems. Mostly depression, but agoraphobia-tinged anxiety doesn't really help when yr campus is 4 hours away by train. *sigh*

sorry emil.y that sucks (i mean, obv it sucks)

yeah, i'm sorry to hear that. have you thought about (or are you already) pursuing your academic interests in non-academic settings (blogs, independent publishing etc.)?

:(

I'm not really doing anything at the moment except being sad. I'm not motivated or confident enough at the moment to consider blogging, and I literally have not a clue how people enter independent publishing. People seem to just do things like that - where do they work out how? Who taught them these things? What lesson did I miss?

^^ feeling this as of late

why did you quit, Emily? Being in a similar field I'm kind of assuming a life of precisely nothing when I finish, whether that's avec PhD or not.

― Shane Richie Junior (Merdeyeux), Friday, 7 December 2012 02:03 (38 minutes ago)

this is disheartening....do you really not think you can settle into academia after getting a phd? nb i don't really know that much about academic job market in the uk either

I'm probably in a slightly better position than most continental philosophy people tbh, in that with my area of research I could slide into cultural studies and that general milieu if work doesn't turn up in the five or so philosophy departments in the country that could conceivably want me. It seems that graduates in the last few years generally hover around picking up classes to teach here and there, which when you take preparation time into consideration probably works out as working for less than minimum wage. Also I've kinda found that I'm too anxiety-ridden to be a decent teacher, but being a bad teacher never got in the way of academic success eh.

The kinds of minutiae of networking skills that open up those opportunities are a bit of a mystery to me too, Emily. Nowadays having a Blog Presence appears to be a good route into the inner circles, though of course the easiest way to have a Blog Presence is to be a cliquey dick. But I dunno. There are good people doing good things. It can't be impossible!

american humanities departments are some of the most class-riddled messes in the country. family and connections grease advancement among champagne socialists in ways they'd rather not admit to themselves

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdrvmcLVu71qz74s5o1_500.jpg

I had to cancel grad school for another year. Being kicked out of my dad's house is expensive, so is fixing it up to please the city, who never cracked an architecture book in their self-righteous life.

It's sad, I was doing that academic work for my community, but it's clear from the complaints about the house that historic homes aren't that important to them.

When I do get to go to graduate school, I'll take my skills to another community. One where the leadership appreciates college and how hard it is.

End of the semeeeeeester, just one paper to go. Only one course next semester (was three for the current one), which means a ton of lab work, but at least I can get stuck in.

Also, I meant to say last week, I'm sorry about your situation, emil.y, and I hope that your uni was supporting you in any way it could (and maybe would again if things changed for you). I don't see my uni doing much for my housemate who is dealing with trying to stabilise mental health problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWoQWoRjfGs

Thanks, ljub. I didn't get very much support from my institution, but that was at least partially due to the fact of it being so far away - I couldn't get there to access any potential support networks because I was already too in need of support. And while I really liked my supervisor, he was terribly scatty and not always the best at replying when I did approach him with stuff I needed help with. Oh well, it's done now. *sigh*

i'm sorry for what happened to you e.mily. i have to say, this thread and other articles i have read make me terrified about applying to grad school in the humanities (literature). i love literature and even theory but i just don't know if i would be able to "cut it" at a prestigious program. i am not a competitive person and the amount of strategic positioning that seems necessary to get an academic job seems daunting, especially with how the market seems to be. idk why i posted here - i know i have to figure out whether to apply or not on my own - but i guess i just wanted to put my story out there, to see if anyone is in the same boat as me (terrified of applying but still somewhat loyal to my younger self who thought it was his destiny to become an english professor).

I am giving up on the whole "artistic" thing...I visited a department and it was too discouraging. They showed me work by really smart and "special" people and said, "do you have the talent, you haven't done this work in years!" I said I spent years preparing and studying and I thought I was perfect for that line of work.

I think I'll just do time in a furniture store or something or learn real estate. I mean I worked really hard and did all of that reading, but at the end of the day, you're just a number and putting together a portfolio takes a lot of time that I no longer have, plus my desktop broke....

i'm helping my friend who's prof asked her to write her own recommendation letter, any tips?

Find a better referee.

There is what seems to be some good advice here: http://theprofessorisin.com/2012/09/07/how-to-write-a-recommendation-letter/

Writing recs is as much a professorial duty as teaching classes imo; shame on those who do not consider it so. That said, a savvy rec-sender can set it all up (via a brief statement of purpose, well-done resume, and some bullet points to help make the recommender's job easy) for a lazy prof.

she was only asked to write it because she asked for the rec so close to the deadline, the prof will still see it & sculpt the final draft. thanks for the link ljubljana

On a scale of 1-10, how inappropriate is it for a professor to ask a lab manger (who is 22 with a undergrad degree) to rate applications to the PhD program?

Mostly depends on whether the prof is using the lab manager to filter out some of the applications, or as a second opinion on applications that the prof also examines and judges independently. If the latter case, it is merely unorthodox, if the former, then the prof is unforgivably lazy. Those applications represent a huge investment of effort.

Former case.