Alex sends along this series of responses to the Pannapacker article, brimming with examples of the dreamy self-actualization nonsense I describe below. Those who accuse me of setting up straw men, I offer for your consideration:
"Yet I can say without blushing that my experience of life is infinitely richer for having spent the last seven years thinking as hard as I can among some of the smartest "suckers" I have ever met. For me, graduate study was like getting fitted with a second nervous system—I feel that much more acutely alive and responsive to the world. I will try to pass that vividness along to my students as long as this broken education system allows me to. In the end, I may well have to walk away from academia, but, if so, I suspect I'll feel more regret for those students than I will for myself."
Not only have you not even lived until you've received a PhD, students denied exposure to your amazing new grad school-induced vividness are lesser beings for the lack.
"Books make me happy and being able to talk about books for a living (even if that living is currently classifiable as below the poverty line) makes me happy, too...What's wrong with the pleasure of reading, of thinking, of learning new things about the world and how it works?...For now, I'll stick with my choice and accomplish the task of a doctoral degree which, if not always a pleasure, still affords satisfaction and pride in my own determination. I will continue my work because, as Stanley Fish puts it, "[t]he humanities are their own good," and to insist otherwise is to buy into the notion that the only education worthwhile is that which is instrumental."
I love ideas and books--except not always--but even if I don't always actually love them, I'm satisfied and proud of loving the idea of loving ideas and books, and of standing by that love.
"As Pannapacker says, we need to organize, raise awareness, and work against exploitation...And the struggle is not only for wages and conditions, but for thinking, teaching, and writing about our shared humanity. As the striking mill women of Lawrence, Mass., showed us in 1912, "hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses." Bread yes, but roses too."
!!!
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
You beat me to it, but yes, in the post where I need to add like one sentence before hitting "publish post," I do mention that these are examples of the mushiness you describe. However! I, at least, never said the mushiness didn't exist. It absolutely does, although my sense is that it's more commonly found among those who ultimately regret having gone, when the job they romantically imagined it would bring about doesn't come.
I don't know; so far I haven't found any examples of regret in this debate. The letters Slate chose to publish are all "Je ne regrette rien!" (The first use I've ever made of my own regrettable French course!)
I don't quite understand what's wrong with the quoted comments from grad students. They don't seem to be saying "anyone who doesn't go to grad school is deprived." They seem to be saying, "I'm really happy that I went to grad school."
Myself, I'm a guy filled with regrets about roads not taken in life, and I have plenty of grievances about grad school in particular and academia in general. I don't really expect ever to get a tenure track job, at least not at a place I'd like to be. I am, in some sense, a failure.
And yet my sentiments about grad school aren't all that different from the ones you quoted. Overall I feel, almost despite myself, that grad school was well worth the enormous costs. This makes me an odd duck, but I'm not sure it makes me deluded or sanctimonious. Certainly I wouldn't recommend grad school to everyone (and indeed, when students tell me they want to go to grad school I usually try to throw cold water on the idea) but that doesn't mean it wasn't the right choice for me. Chacun à son goût, as they might have said in your French course.
Vous êtes un canard bizarre?
I'm perfectly capable of making fun of the comments that you quoted, but I won't. I liked grad school at first, and then when I decided not to be an academic, I got dumped on for a while by a couple of members of the faculty and a few of my fellow grad students, and I felt like a complete failure for a few months (and worried about it off an on for a few years more), but I got over it, and now I'm glad I didn't become a professor (I would have been much happier at the time if I had never even considered it), but I don't regret having gotten a PhD. The degree was useful certification, and the training that went with the degree has proved to be very valuable in that tiny part of the real world that I've occupied.
Post a Comment