Samantha Folkchurch has done it again and given us a lovely drawing:
And I adore her work and she has a great handle on the contrast between hopeful and reality.
But I must talk about the first panel, wherein a smiling grad student receives her PhD and goes on to try to save the world.
Please tell me: do these people really exist? Are there grad students who get through the whole process of coursework, theses, exams, and the dissertation having NEVER questioned their intentions, the process, the hierarchy??
Who think, seriously, that their work on super-concentrated subsections of basketweaving are really going to have any sort of positive effect on the world?
I mean, I just can't fathom anyone looking at the enormous amount of academic bull shit right in the face and thinking 8 years in: Man, grad school was SUCH an awesome idea!! I can't wait to use all these extra letters after my name for GOOOOOOD!!! Those undergrads are going to LOVE having me as a prof!
CM: tell me. Tell me no one can go through this process believing in their original goals. Are your grad students optimists when they graduate?
Depends on what you mean by optimistic, and it depends on what you mean by original goals. I've beaten all the idealism out of them with the whip I keep behind my desk by that point, so I doubt any of them think that they are going to change the world, or even the discipline. But I also doubt any of them really thought going in that they were going to be the greatest scholar of basketry ever. They probably had some inchoate set of ideas about what it meant to be a scholar of basketry, but I doubt they amounted to much in the way of goals that they, or anyone else, took too seriously. If they did, it would mean they were earnest, and I would never accept an earnest student.
ReplyDeleteOn a more serious note, you have to have at least a little bit of optimism to take a run at the job market. Otherwise why the fuck would you do it? And as far as original goals go, I tell them from day one that their goal is to write a presentable dissertation, and that after that we'll see what happens. So, yeah, if they are holding their sheepskin, then by definition they've reached their original goal.
The way I read the panel was not that grad students are idealistic little shits, but rather that when you are coming out of grad school you still don't quite understand (even if you tell yourself that you do) that the light at the end of the tunnel is actually a train that is about to run you over. I can tell you, for example, that winning the competition by getting an fte tenure-stream job can be a seriously mixed bag that involves a series of compromises you can't even imagine right now; but until you experience it for yourself, you won't fully get it.
I graduated because they made me. I knew my job prospects were better in grad school than in the real world. Sure being a grad assistant doesn't pay well, but at least it was a job.
ReplyDeleteThat may be how they look at the -beginning- of grad school...
ReplyDeleteWell, I was, but it was the mid-1990s. Didn't take long to have the crap kicked out of me on the market.
ReplyDeleteI know a PhD student who, at least, seems to have a "front" of optimism, goodness and light, and so on. I think that's just how she is, naturally. Although she is involved with many issues on a volunteer basis, I really wonder if she sees what's going on around her.
ReplyDeleteI DO think that someday she'll hit reality fragging hard and it will not be pleasant.