Help, I'm trapped in an ivory tower! Or "what the fuck am i getting myself into with this academia stuff"

a year in sounds pretty early for prelims but i guess i don't know from prelims

our prelims were after the first year

our dept calls them comps even though we don’t have quals

Congrats dude!

thanks :)

Congrats!

thx :)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/the-homeless-crisis-is-getting-worse-in-america-s-richest-cities

L., who asked to go by her middle initial for fear of losing her job, couldn’t afford her apartment earlier this year after failing to cobble together enough teaching assignments at two community colleges. By July she’d exhausted her savings and turned to a local nonprofit called Safe Parking L.A., which outfits a handful of lots around the city with security guards, port-a-potties, Wi-Fi, and solar-powered electrical chargers. Sleeping in her car would allow her to save for a deposit on an apartment. On that night in late September, under basketball hoops owned by an Episcopal church in Koreatown, she was one of 16 people in 12 vehicles. Ten of them were female, two were children, and half were employed.

one of my students accidentally uploaded his IT homework to me instead of his philosophy homework - basic concepts about variables and assignment operators in python

so i graded it anyway and gave helpful comments

from this episode i have learned that i should probably be able to teach a freshman course in that department, sadly i lack the appropriate credential to be able to snag the work

idk reach out informally, philosophy is a better background for programming than computer science imo

lol i was doing that stuff when i was 12, i just gave up on it for a 'more meaningful' career path

ironically i took more credits in comp sci when i was an undergrad than i did on film (0), which is what i'm teaching about at the moment

Philosophy of film? What kind of stuff are you assigning?

no it's a thematic intro, meaning of life style stuff, as is the fashion, but half films half philosophy. just did some prepping last night for our last film, IKIRU, probably the most traditional on-subject choice of the semester.

had a kid say MISE EN SCENE in his homework the other week. can you believe that. mise en scene. i certainly didn't teach him to say it!

http://erinbartram.com/uncategorized/the-sublimated-grief-of-the-left-behind/

― ? (seandalai), Tuesday, February 13, 2018 5:45 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

:(

― pomenitul, Tuesday, February 13, 2018 6:14 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

She hasn't even arrived at the worst part yet.

: )

she has since founded a history magazine powered by NTT historians (who are paid for their work)

http://erinbartram.com/uncategorized/contingent-magazine/

:)))

i have grad cohort peers who quit, and grad cohort peers who graduated then quit, and loads now who have since been tenured, some deservedly so, some unaccountably so, and one who it must be said played the game with all due ambition and toil and can't nobody tell them nothing, and still, it's nice to see them signing up for workshops for stimulating lost creativity and for figuring out how to write and overcome blocks and be productive again, because even having all the comforts and advantages of a secure place within the ivory tower's walls means nothing, that shit just comes and goes for all too elusive reasons.

<gif of yosemite sam doing dance-rabbit etc, pistols blazing>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDr42dzsbAQ

A year and change out of academia, I feel a lot more relaxed and am better at my instrument(s) but also sometimes feel like I'm getting dumber, spend way too much time online, and actively seek out work in my second language to keep from getting bored. My carbon footprint is definitely worse.

naw dawg i'm getting dumber too and i'm still on the inside, pretty sure it's trump's fault

I've managed to get a hefty amount of stuff done since the beginning of my postdoc yet have never felt dumber or less in tune with my work.

after four years and change I'm finally getting as good at teaching in my third language as I was in my first, or maybe in some ways better because I can't rely on jokes and have to be sensitive to how to express things that I would brush over in English.

yeah things like that make me feel for my international students, what are they even getting if the jokes don't get through the native-fluency filter

yeah. I have so much more sympathy now for my non-native-speaker profs too (tbh most of them through undergrad & grad). they weren't usually funny but now I see why.

tbh now at least my masters courses are full of non-native-speaker students, so we're all working in our third or fourth languages. somehow it works?

naw dawg i'm getting dumber too and i'm still on the inside, pretty sure it's trump's fault

― j., mardi 15 octobre 2019 11:00 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Could just be age then

i'm on the inside and i'm dying

This was posted on the 00s tracks thread and, although my life isn't this adventurous, I think it goes some way towards explaining my overwhelming lack of motivation to apply for the five good tenure-track jobs that are currently advertised by the College Music Society: https://www.theonion.com/temp-hides-fun-fulfilling-life-from-rest-of-office-1819566599

Is there anyone ITT who got a PhD, left academia (couldn't get a job or other reasons), and now feels that going to grad school in the first place was a big waste of time?

On second thought I guess that is unlikely to have happened to anybody here, but I'd also be interested to hear anecdotes about other people it happened to (interested in knowing whether that sort of experience is possible/common, and what it feels like).

I’m not sure I made the wrong decision to do it given what I knew at the time. I use the skills I picked up every day and the credential has opened doors for me. And I enjoyed the life for a while.

But I didn’t enjoy it for as long as I persisted. And I could have picked up the skills I’ve gone on to use much quicker and cheaper some other way than 5 years of grad school and 2 postdocs.

I'm not quite through yet but I certainly don't regret writing my doctoral thesis, which was something I needed to get out of my system anyway.

i have not left, but i have been stuck in adjunct hell for a long time now. it's hard to imagine being regretful, but i started attending college when i was in high school, and then got a head start on grad school when i was in college, and then switched programs and schools to really begin grad school, so all along i did not feel like i was making life-economic choices against various opportunity costs, but just doing what i wanted within the framework i mostly already existed in. in significant ways i feel like doing all this has brought me 'nothing', but i value the imponderable totality of ways it has affected my intellectual and personal development.

on the other hand, the longer i am stuck being exploited, and i see how 'far behind' it is putting me in life with regard to things that it is hard for a person not to value conventionally to some degree (economic security and financial independence mainly, and what flows from those, like the respect of romantic partners and the reciprocal attitudes that class-neighbors extend to one another), the more i am apprehensive that a huge wave of regret is coming over the horizon someday to drown me, once my values decisively shift and i confront the reality that academia has deprived me of the (fundamentally materialistic as well as socially-valuable) materials of a life.

I often second-guess my choice of MA programme and my decision to accept parental support, which I'd sworn off years earlier, to do a PhD right after; not getting funding was a sign that I wasn't ready and at least needed a year or two out to build skills and a portfolio and/or eplore other options. But, no, I don't ever really wish I had just started working at a desk job at 22 or something. (I did have those kinds of doubts for a while, until I realized I was willing to leave a f/t desk job to move halfway across the country to teach one course because I liked that so much better.)

loving the phd so far (3 years in)

just doing what i wanted within the framework i mostly already existed in

this really speaks to me because when i reflect back on my decision to go to grad school it was just a combination of enjoying it and inertia.

i am given to huge waves of regret over academia (i sometimes think my life would be objectively much better if I had not gotten a phd, or at least not a phd in english) but then I am careful to remind myself that the things that are bad about my life are due at least as much to my character and all the other bad choices i tend to make (or not make, as it were).

a close friend went to law school, routinely works 80 hour weeks, is essentially suicidally miserable at his job and regrets his career path....but i think "well at least he has a career!"

Maybe more to VC's question, I do have an old friend who did a PhD in sociology and has been consistently working as a sessional (adjunct) at the local uni where we both did our undergrads for years. He seemed to get a decent course load every year, and owns a house (way out in the boonies) and supports a kid with his spouse, but has been incredibly bitter the whole time. This fall, he has started law school.

Another friend has become completely disenchanted with academia and his entire field of study, blames his PhD for ruining his marriage and financial situation, and seems to constantly share right-wing links on social media now. Last I heard, he was applying to teacher's college and hoped to teach a different subject than the one he studied at the high school level.

So I don't think the experience is uncommon.

ryan i think you should have business cards made up that say R Y A N on the front and on the back 'published author'

"man about town"

a close friend went to law school, routinely works 80 hour weeks, is essentially suicidally miserable at his job and regrets his career path....but i think "well at least he has a career!"

― ryan, Friday, October 25, 2019 11:12 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe im still too young or canadian but the avoiding having a career part seems like feature not bug? i tend to think, this might be less fun when it becomes more like a career

it's never really like a career, for better or for worse, though I have colleagues who wear coats and ties to convince themselves (or their parents) that it is like a career. me, I just don't wear pants and work 16 hours a day, best of all worlds

i get stressed during the intense workload stress periods (run-up to deadlines) then *really* enjoy the first couple weeks of relative chillness after a deadline passes. but then i get restless and sign myself up for another deadline. gives me an excuse to turn down social obligations

We don't do careers in Canada.

Does Canada not have the Protestant work ethic?

It seems like "don't expect to make a career out of it" may be the best advice to give someone considering getting into academia... yet apparently it is impossible (speaking as a US grad student) to get through grad school without constantly being reminded that one is being prepared for an academic career!

the opportunity cost alone makes it hard to justify as anything but career prep

Does Canada not have the Protestant work ethic?

If you're American, no, thank Christ. If you're European, very much so, yes.

what if you're quebecois

About the same tbh.

Ha, I was just kind of riffing on flopson's post tbh but maybe there is a cultural difference?

there might be some cultural difference but maybe more the employer provided health care thing

also sorry i didn’t mean to be dismissive about the adjuncting /no stable employment struggle. however i think ryans lawyer friends life stinks ass