500% me
this is increasingly relevant these days, and my twitter feed is FULL of phd students/candidates saying that universities shouldn’t even admit grad students who have any tiny ounce of desire/hope to become a professor one day. and while my prof told me, day one once i decided to pursue a phd, that i can’t do it thinking i’ll get a job – it still saddens me to be bombarded with “don’t do this. no really, do NOT do this. you are insane and stupid if you still want to do this” messages on a daily basis. now more than ever i feel like everything is pointless because my entire life/being is centered around school (as i want it to be). but i have to remember what my prof also told me from day one – that what matters is the work itself. i shouldn’t pursue a phd because it’ll lead to a TT job (or any job tbh); i should pursue it because i love the work (i.e., reading, researching, writing, and teaching), don’t want to stop doing the work, and want to spent the next 5-6 years immersed in the work. and currently (as i’m basically unable to perform intellectually/academically lol) that seems meaningless and futile to me, but idk. i have no choice but to try and cling to that. anyway.
You shouldn’t do a PhD – especially one in the humanities – for anyone or thing but yourself. That’s what I have come to realize during my time working on mine. I’ll be graduating this time next year and I am incredibly disillusioned with academia to the point where I am 98% sure I won’t be looking for a job within the Rhetoric/Disability Studies fields. So, I agree with the “every academic” (and have given that speech before) because everyone in my program seems almost brainwashed in the way that they are in complete denial to the possibility that they might not find a TT position when they graduate. They refused to consider alt-ac or industry jobs. But the fact is that there just aren’t enough TT jobs. People aren’t retiring. Most recent grads are stuck taking Visiting Professor gigs and are both publishing and perishing.
The only reason to do a PhD is because you have a burning desire to keep learning. What might come after should never be the motivating factor (though it seems it often is) because that way lies madness.
So, @englishgradinrepair ’s professor is right. Do it for you and do it for the work. Those PhD students and recent grads who are screaming from the rooftops not to do a PhD did theirs as a means to an end and became disillusioned when they realized the state of academia and that their career path post dissertation wasn’t as easy as we were led to believe it would be.
That’s not to say that you might not also become disillusioned during your program (I posted something just the other day about mine). But my disillusionment has to do with the people I work with, not academia itself. So I feel more secure in my ability to work through it. Because I am doing my dissertation for me and because the work (I feel) needs to be done. Not because I want a job.
Academia is soul sucking and can destroy you utterly and completely. If you choose to continue down that path make sure you aren’t placing unrealistic expectations on yourself (re: what is going to happen after graduation). Because grad school can also be wonderful and you will meet people who have the potential to be life long friends and allies along the way. It will test you and judge your worth. And it requires a good therapist/psychologist and a cat. But all things considered, I would probably do it over again simply because I don’t care about getting a job in academia after I graduate. I’m just overjoyed with having the chance to keep working on things I am passionate about for a few years.
And my psychiatrist has finally beat it into my head to stop worrying so much and to just enjoy the experience.
I feel like I have feelings about this but I also feel like these are really personal decisions and that we’re all adults and need to make our own choices. But if anybody wants to talk about academia I’m here, and will prob be here for a long time :/
I think I'm realizing by reading this how much this was my motivation for doing the PhD, and part of the catastrophic paradigm shift for me was realizing I kind of hate doing academic research. I love the process of it - finding a phenomenon, developing a hypothesis, collecting and analyzing data, and determining whether or not the data supports the hypothesis. But I learned in developing my Qualifying paper just how much academic research relies on 1) disingenuous interpretation of other people's work 2) making up a story to fit your findings even if they could he explained a thousand other ways. Then it became this horrifying realization that not only was the science I was being instructed in potentially flawed, but that all science might be this way, which meant this entire world was built on a foundation of lies. At that point my intrinsic motivation crumbled and I started looking for extrinsic motivation like the non-ac job market, which is never a good place to find a sense of validation or hope.
Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about why people do PhDs and why I started mine in the first place, and I think this has a lot to do with it.
That said, back to my dissertation draft lol I'm supposed to have a full version by the end of May 🙃 dear god please let me keep it together until then
