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

(I think j. is basically right, though. This seems like the sort of thing where, if there are jobs teaching the subject, you might not need an MA in media literacy anyway.)

j: I share and agree with all of those concerns, but let me argue anyway: I literally could not get into a single computer-oriented grad program, and would not want to anyway because coding of any sort baffles and angers me. In a different world teaching high school would be awesome, but with NLCB/test-giving/basicallyfuckteachers being the stated policy of both parties for the foreseeable future, I can't imagine teaching unless I was teaching exactly what I wanted to study. I see this as, at the very least, a chance to do grad level work and prove, both to myself and potential future schools, that I can excel at it. I see very few other paths to post-secondary education for me, and despite how much I sucked at it when I was very young, drunk, and stoned, I really like school and I like this particular subject a lot.

Sund4r: Ideally university students, but having been in a relationship with a professor (whose four degrees and impeccable grades/work just barely got her a professorship), I know that that is completely impossible at this point in my life. That said, I like teaching kids and think I would be pretty good at it, especially if it was a subject that I care about and feel is important for people to learn at an early age.

I want to be clear without being overly negative: my transcripts and resume suck. I've bounced from city to city, doing mostly work in either unrelated fields or in film production, which at this point I want to actively avoid. I'm not in the position, right now, to convince anyone to let me teach anything. I can see that changing, however, if I do good work in a program like this. I know there are better degrees/schools, but I don't know how on earth I would convince them to let me in.

(p.s. thank you for giving learned advice and letting me argue with it)

n, i was actually thinking of fields like what i guess is called 'instructional design', under the auspices of or related to programs in education or pedagogy. they appear to be connected to the webification of higher (and presumably lower) education, and as far as i know they wouldn't involve the development (coding and such) side of computers so much as the implementation-and-applications side, in an environment that is going to involve a lot of video and audio media, the internet, etc.

So would you be able to work full time in the media center and also work on the MA and have 100% of tuition reimbursed? If so, and you're up for a ton of work,
I see no reason not to do it.

So happy this awful semester is almost over. Breadth requirement courses I hate + disastrous course I'm TAing + total lack of any intellectual or personal stimulation = serious disappointment.

j: I'm still uncomfortable, as I'm kind of a half-assed neo-luddite, but that doesn't sound completely terrible. I appreciate the thought and will ask around about similar programs. The other thing, though, is that, unless it was Portland and I had people moving with me, I do not want to relocate for at least a few years. My family and friends are here, parts of my life that I went without for a long time. Whatever St. Louis has to offer is what I'm looking at.

silby: No tuition benefit now, but if you believe my boss (I don't tbh), there will be sometime soon. However, the amount of work doesn't at all scare me. I'm basically one level above work-study students at this point, so no one would have any problem with me doing coursework while I'm on the clock, and even if they didn't, it's an easy job and I have plenty of free time currently.

i am a fully-funded phd student in a humanities subject and have realized i probably do not want the life of an academic. i do not know what else i would do, do not know if there are any better alternatives, and everyone else seems to be omgsograteful for the opportunity. i do not know where to turn. i love this subject, but i don't know if i want to know QUITE SO MUCH about it, and i do not have time for my boyfriend, friends, cooking, life, etc. lately i have found i have forgotten how to talk to people. instead i just talk at them and feel as though i have to have some original thesis on everyday topics before they can be considered interesting conversation. i get blank stares and i know i am just becoming more and more of a caricature. i am a bit drunk right now, yes, but i will not regret posting this as i do not have a reputation to uphold here as some of you seem to. xoxo.

some options:

(a) take the pay and the opportunity for sanctuary from 'life' and learn about things you want to, if you don't 'succeed', so what, you're in charge

(b) get a little official success (i.e. finish) and get out, start the rest of your life being able to point to a serious accomplishment that few people can point to

(c) get out now and capitalize on your insight into the importance of actual life

Are you still doing coursework now? I'll just add to that excellent summary that if you haven't got to the dissertation yet, it's worth keeping in mind that a PhD dissertation is a pretty serious commitment and requires quite a high level of self-motivation and (obv) solitary work. In the humanities at this time, the chance of all of this leading to a career in the field is not terribly high. It might be worth considering whether you will be able to make the commitment. You could start looking at other options now while you still have the security of grad funding and wait until you have something to leave for?

eaumaille, ime it gets better! students are young & feel the need to impress in convo, & their lives outside work feel unique: you feel like you need to build bridges in convo. but we age & then our lives all converge more (snowflakes melt) & we're more sure of who we are & then convos feel more natural.

I just returned from a weeklong conference in my area & had a great time, gave a couple of talks, made new friends, spent time with old friends. It gets better.

Plus you come to know not only how little you know about your area, but also how little others in your area do too! There's no mastery. So then there is space for other things in your life.

Yes, maybe I need to give it time. I feel plenty disciplined, just worried about how long I can keep it up and if it even matters in the long run. Of course it doesn't help that I feel out of place in the environment...being from Hicksville, KY, and not primed for this from my early years.

Being from Hicksville is a great way to motivate yourself though: fuck the city snobs, we run this town. It's the great American story!

fwiw I didn't know what college was until I was 17, & didn't know what grad school was until I was a junior in college. & now I'm a tenured faculty member! you catch up worldly-wise quickly enough with the urbane snobs : go to art museums, have wine with faculty, travel a bit, & you've got this basics. Culturally most faculty just want to talk politics à la The Nation; it's easy to catch up.

thanks. i think i am still just laboring under the illusion that i can "keep my options open" forever, and am fearful of devoting so many years to such a tiny field and set of skills. research papers all start to feel like a repetition of the same formulae/rhetorical structures. for now it's ok, but forever? of course there are ways to challenge oneself to think in new ways within one's field, but i need to find 'em. i am grateful for any glimmers of excitement i feel about this work, but they tend to fizzle out very quickly. social adjustment is hard, esp. since i have extroverted tendencies and feel like somewhat of an outlier here in that regard as well.

eaumaille I was so convinced that you were my gf that I had to ask her if she had started posting

as an outsider culturally in academia I've avoided the rhetorical & thematic monotony by nature: what "everyone" is into bores me, & I don't write like them. I'd recommend finding a project that lets you work that way; otherwise it's just hard to stay motivated.

wrt extrovertedness (is that a word?): travel! conferences are great for that, & it's one of the keys to making it in this profession

Extroversion(, since you asked).

Euler, did you encounter any pushback when you started writing differently to others?

I had people tell me I'd have a hard time getting a job & getting tenure. but I had an advantage: my training is in both math & philosophy, & philosophers use math skill as a proxy for general intellectual & even philosophical skill. so if you can't tell if someone is philosophically "good" or not, or even are unsure about their non-mainstream work, but they've published original research in math, then you can trust that they know what they're doing.

They might still have a hard time getting a tenure-track job.

sure, I'm just saying that I had a point in my favor, and that worries about "weirdness" can be mitigated by other evidence of competencies that are broadly acknowledged to signify quality

oh man, eaumaille, i remember that feeling. i left. fwiw in case you end up going this way, leaving isn't exactly easy, but things get better eventually. academic writing was just not a thing i could motivate myself to do enough of, at the end of the day. i regret the years of my life i spent stalling out on my dissertation; i think i would have been better at teaching college students than i am at my current job (it's easier, for one thing); i sometimes read things my friends who stayed in are writing and feel relief that i don't have to produce work of that nature at the pace that they do; i feel like the way i talk marks me as a big weirdo in my current work context and i honestly can't tell if that's just the way i talk or if ph.d. school permanently warped me. it's a mixed bag if you leave, but i think for me it was necessary. i never would have gotten an academic job.

I know a few people who attended grad school. One of them did a Ph.D in English literature and is now a prof in New Mexico; he said none of his Ph.D friends got a job teaching. He also said had he not started before the whole recession thing (though he did not study in the States) he would not have pursued grad school and would not recommend it.

Truth be told, getting a Ph.D in the arts only really is good for teaching, and even then, those jobs are becoming hard to find in highly desirable cities. One of my profs who had just gotten her Ph.D from UCLA would hop from city to city because her contracts were short.

I'm not trying to suggest anything about anyone. This is purely anecdotal: I always thought it interesting that despite receiving very high marks in my undergrad studies, I was never approached by anyone to pursue graduate studies, whereas I knew of others who under performed who were invited into grad school. In retrospect, I think these people had one thing in common: they did not have opinions of their own, agreed with the profs most of the time, or were not opinionated. I was the complete opposite. I always spoke out against my profs, ensured their logic was sound and called them out on dubious claims, which are known to happen in the world of the arts. When speaking in private to one of my profs, I remember she told me, 'Why are you even in university?' I told her I felt I could still learn valuable things from participating in the social norm that has become the middle-class in learning institutions. More of a meta observation, on my part.

The disclaimer is I don't like schools; universities to a certain extent, as well. The reason I went to one and got good marks was because I knew I would eventually want to speak out against the current model, and I know it helps my perspective to say I've experienced what a university has to 'offer'. I think most, especially when talking about the arts, have been affected by attrition. I've had debates with a couple of my profs (I'm talking hours of discussion) about the quality of a humanities and arts education. It's funny how the dynamics change when you're talking to a tenured prof or an Emeritus as opposed to an associate professor. Adjunct instructors are somewhere in between depending on their motives.

Now, as j mentioned (11 years ago?), the sciences, especially applied sciences, are a totally different beast. And I think they are more beneficial in the practical world--but it also depends on your motive for attending university.

And just so we're clear, I'm not trying to say I'm saying some new, revolutionary idea, just some regular person. And as Twain said way before our times:

Never let your schooling interfere with your education.

getting a Ph.D in the arts only really is good for teaching, and even then, those jobs are becoming hard to find in highly desirable cities.

They are hard to find even in undesirable cities.

iatee - is your gf a graduate student? not surprising we sound similar, as you often realize what an echo chamber your department is when you talk to other students. funny, though.

euler - yes, i would like to travel, and for the first time i may have the means to. small grants are available for conferences, but i'm not sure i have anything conference-worthy yet. also, i have to say i've been disappointed by the few i've attended, because, although i like learning about other people's work, it all seemed tied together by some very superficial unifying theme. i understand the practical purpose of this - everyone is studying something different (part of the point), but conferences also need to be inclusive so people can re-purpose their papers and avoid constantly writing new ones. (also, less cynically, i suppose you could say inclusiveness is in the spirit of the thing.) i mostly wound up feeling, though, like no productive conversations were had and no common ground was covered at all. genuine collaboration seems to be missing everywhere in my field, especially as people become increasingly specialized. the specialization used to have a clear purpose, it seems - now "saying something vaguely new" seems to be all the justification required. there are those rare moments when my deep and natural intuitions about the material i am studying (always my starting point) fortuitously converge with some new point of discovery. those are some of the happiest moments i experience. but they are unfortunately punctuated by long periods of horriblehorriblehorrible misery.

c##### (too lazy to c/p): yes, my thoughts on school have changed quite a bit since starting a PhD. (not that this is anything like "school" as i've ever experienced it.) surprised to hear that certain people you know were approached by faculty about becoming scholars. in my experience, lots of professors have felt it their duty to warn the academically talented to avoid an increasingly limited and exclusive profession.

Most faculty members I know who are under 50, do not recommend grad school. I was going to say "including myself" but my contract's up.

If you can pull off grad school with minimal/no debt and it is something you really dig, why not? The debt issue changes my opinion considerably. I was fortunate to do my first tour of grad school with funding (including a stipend I could live on), and even though I did not ultimately end up on the original path (Ph.D. --> postdoc --> associate prof --> tenure)--and in fact "dropped out" with an M.S. instead of Ph.D., I do not regret it at all.

Had I gone into debt for the same experience, I think I *would* have regrets.

Oh yeah, if you get enough funding, it can even basically be a 4-year job, better than many contracts you could get. I don't discourage it in those sorts of instances.

^^^^I know folks who made their Ph.D. programs a TEN YEAR full-time job (on which they raised childrens!). Average in my field was 7 years.

And fwiw (not much), once I was a corporate whore in a position to hire ppl for all sorts of jobs, having *any* master's degree (if it was in addition to solid, relevant work experience) was a big plus for a job candidate, and moved salary offers upward.

People got funding for 10 years?

Biomedical research assistance ships--cheaper even than a Chinese postdoctoral.

(^^^racist? Quite true, though)

Ok sorry, on typing on phone-- grad students, whatever their province, we're cheaper than postdocs from certain countries overseas, particularly China, which allowed the travel for postdoctoral training in the US.

iatee - is your gf a graduate student? not surprising we sound similar, as you often realize what an echo chamber your department is when you talk to other students. funny, though.

not only is she a humanities grad student but eaumaille is totally the type of screenname she uses online

To be clear, I also don't discourage it in the case of professional programmes or certain practical options (e.g. accompanying). I've actually not ruled out doing an MLS as a 2-year job myself.

sigh. yes, i have 5 years of funding, even a 6th if i wanted it. i should probably just stop complaining, because you're right, basically a five-year contract. the question is what happens afterwards. but maybe that's always going to be a question.

You could start planning for that: thinking about what transferable skills you have or could develop? Are there practical applications to the material you're studying?

"could you develop"

Ha, OK: " .... e.g. thinking... develop. Are..."

well, i speak a few foreign languages but i'm not developing them much in my program. and the material i'm studying honestly has no practical application, especially the way it's presented in my department...we pride ourselves on studying something with no practical application, that does not and NEED NOT HAVE ANY END BEYOND ITSELF, etc. etc. (yeah, lit people are annoying, but truth be told, practicality is the wrong way to think about it, and being "impractical" doesn't equate to having no value, etc etc.) but i know you were referring to applicability on the job market, not the value of the field. yeah, honestly, there's the whole superior communication skillz thing..probably something to avoid mentioning in job apps if it's now being parodied by the onion, and hard to demonstrate as requiring 5+ years off the job market to attain. not sure. considering taking a year off to explore some options, but it'd probably be assumed that i'd leave.

i read somewhere recently that the most common time to quit is right before starting the dissertation (or after a few false starts). and that sounds about right.

im pretty sure i would have given up even before that. i was pretty disillusioned and bored with grad school by the time i got to my phd program (had already done a masters and was disappointed with the experience, but applied to phd programs more out of inertia than anything else) but i got lucky and happened to find a prof at my program who really got me excited about these things for their own sake again. it's been a very good experience in that respect, though i doubt i'll have much to show for it in the way of a career when it's all said and done.

Because I have zero background in human development (despite bachelors and masters in biological sciences), I am having to read a human development text in advance of starting classes next month.

Why oh why oh why is this thing chock full of stock photos of babies and families? It adds zero academic content, and instead makes the thing look and feel like a high school text. At least a high school text would have been provided to me for FREE, and this thing cost me sixty bucks USED.

The actual content and writing is OK, if rather more basic than I would expect at the grad level, but ugh the design is killing me.

LOOK AT THIS PICTURE OF AN AFRICAN AMERICAN FAMILY HAVING A PICNIC AND GRANDMA IS THERE OH WOW

eaumaille, can you get involved in grant writing? like NEA proposals e.g.? or find a private foundation that supports people in your area? one career venue is to work with those grant or foundation agencies, & it helps to have some experience there before applying

Yeah, and at some agencies you can have a lot of involvement in shaping the grant portfolio, others less so. Get the right agency and it can be a way more satisfying career than you might think (though there's a certain level of bureaucratic bullshit to put up at every agency... but then, where isn't there?)

xp Q - there's a lot of this about in psych, and it make me wince. It makes me take the text less seriously than I otherwise would.

yeah if you're really averse to bureaucratic bullshit, academia's not your place

grant writing actually sounds sort of promising. i can look into it? i've applied for a few positions before, most of them eventually filled by people who had held similar positions before. but i've thought about it.

i guess the common thing to emerge from people's comments is that there needs to be something going on "on the side." just the impression of working toward something else will be helpful. i need some secret delight...for at least the next few months.

this is difficult, because in may ways i've grown tremendously since starting graduate school. i've done well in a challenging program, but i've also seen how little it matters. even in a field where my "skills" are apparently recognized, it seems like i could do everything right and still end up unhappy and unemployed, which shows me how little control i have in the grand scheme of things. in a sense, that's been the most valuable thing to learn. it's an unfortunate truth of being a humanities academic, but it's also kind of a good thing to learn for life, and something i feel like i may be realizing too late.

so much work. can only do so much. what i do doesn't really matter in the end.
so much work. can only do so much. what i do doesn't really matter in the end.
so much work. can only do so much. what i do doesn't really matter in the end.

**as i trudge along til 3 am for the third night in a row**

i need some secret delight...for at least the next few months.

hah hah, i thought being in grad school and studying what you loved and not having to work doing something you hate was the secret delight. : (