People ask me a lot what grad school is like
The more I reflect on this past year as a graduate student, the more I’m convinced that academia is a roach motel. It’s designed to attract marginalized people, folks of little means, folks who differ, folks who aspire to be more than society wants them to be with an ever-increasing list of sparkling promises:
Jobs, Career Potential, Health Care, Food and Housing Security, Meaning, Power, Understanding, Community
Once we’re inside, it becomes clear that those promises are empty shells. We are provided work in ways that conflicts with our work schedule, or with wages below survival levels. The promise of careers afterwards has been disproven so many times it’s hardly worth mentioning. Housing is provided, but only at significantly above market price and often with a waiting list. The increasingly common campus food bank only operates during course hours, and runs out of food within 15 minutes each day. Health care is subsidized only at a level sustainable for healthy youth - for a chronically ill trans person such as myself there is no relief. “LGBTQ counselors and physicians” are provided just enough training to tolerate me existence when I say I’m trans, but repeatedly fail to understand my body. Moreover, our insurance leaves so much of the specialist fees, whom I have to see regularly, at my expense.
Moreover, these promises are really sticky traps. Even superficial, the small taste of what the rest of the world does not provide for us keeps us here - how else can we survive?
But we’re not supposed to. Our diversity is valued only so far as it brings return value to our departments - through grant funding, through prestige, through our knowledge and labor. We are not here to change the system, as many of us come to do. We are here to provide a labor, at our own cost, and then vanish.
