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You know what I'm over? Totally and completely over? Because it's negative cant about grad school/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
academics_anon scaremongering.
1. Why Apply At All
The process of applying for graduate school has thus far largely consisted of people telling me, via their books and to my face in interviews, that I oughtn't. This stems not from any particular quality in me or lack thereof, but from a deep general skepticism about the process. 'Are you aware it's difficult?', as if anything worth doing was renowned for being easy. 'Has it occurred to you that it's expensive?', as though anyone living through the recession who has even the slightest need to care isn't painfully conscious of costs. 'Do you know teaching doesn't pay much?' Really? Well, perhaps there's still an unWAGed footballer left in the world. I'll just do that instead then, I'm sure it will provide me with immense intellectual satisfaction and represent the best possible use of myself.
In elementary school, when every dewey thing wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up, smart-alec classmates reminded her that sometimes cute puppies needed put down. Inevitably, name-ending-in-y would give up her dream on the spot. Attempting to coax similar tearful renunciations out of would-be graduate students, however, seems ill-judged. The imaginary people these cautions are designed to save seem impossible naive, and the obvious cautions themselves not far behind.
Perhaps the most interesting barricade yet was thrown up by a professor at King's, who suggested that my work needn't necessarily be conducted in an academic context. What is up with his lack of faith in this means of learning and gaining accreditation? As far as I can see the PhD program is a system intended to turn some sloppy thinking, writing and research into something informed, solid, considered, aware of its context, and structured, and to make you much better at managing your time in order to produce said writing. Perhaps you could get the same effects by working entirely without guidance and institutional structure for the same period of time, without the potential career benefits of a formal title at the end of it. If so, kudos to you. But there are practical reasons not to want to go the (even harder, even lonelier, even more bereft of resources than traditional programs) autodidactic route.
And I can't help feeling that these complaints wouldn't have exactly the same 'why should you bother?' shape if I were a guy my age. I am a young person who is good at writing and thinking. I would like to become better, because I feel this honing, followed by a career spent challenging myself in this way and teaching others to develop their skill-sets and knowledge levels, represents the best possible use of my particular talents and life. I will be a better academic, teacher, creative writer and social justice activist with this training. What is so fucking hard to grasp about that? What is so fucking wrong with it?
2. The Recession!PhD
Some PhDs aren't employed in their field! You're going into debt now? Some PhDs don't make much! There are 300 people applying for every job!
Cry me a mother-fucking river.
You know who else isn't employed in their 'chosen field' right now? It's the people who aren't employed at-fucking-all. They have debt too. If there aren't university positions for fresh PhDs to pick from at first, there's editing academic publications. There's good high-school work. You're not left for dead because you're not a professor at Cambridge right off the bat. Believe it or not these are actual transferable skills--more so than my paralegal work in the US has proven to be. And that 300 people thing is EVERYWHERE. I crawl over that pile for shitty 'zero hours contract' part-time secretarial work. At least this will be for something I actually want to do/that pays bills.
What ELSE is one to do now? You think people my age are *super employable*? You think that outside of academia there's a candyland of job opportunities and pools of money to roll in? Everyone knows 20somethings don't have families to support, and they only want to hire a *very few* hideously over-qualified people for nothing to do the jobs of several people. Frequently that leads to under-employing an experienced industry person. In this pool, other than a few 'lucky' slave-driven fresh-off-the-uni-boat types, a lot of graduates are going without jobs. Hell yes I'll take the frankly comparatively reasonable UK PhD debt burden, which I'd assume to work towards a decently paying career I want, over years of scraping for any work that compensates me enough to make it worth doing it. I've given up on Odd Jobs after a string of 'I can get away with anything right now because there are ten people queuing for your shitty job' rip offs, disappointments, poor hours, and low pay coupled with high transport costs has shown these positions to be actually financially damaging. God help me if I were properly working class.
People who complain that academia pays nooothing in the UK are... kind of whining. I'm not saying this couldn't be better, but a starting salary of like 30,000 pounds? Is not nothing. Not to pain-weigh, but that's not poverty. In fact about five years of it, budgeted very carefully indeed, will pay off the worst graduate!uni debts I can incur here, should I not get any scholarships and should salary remain constant for that period. Paid off loan debts by about 33, 35, ready to think about kids? Sounds fine. Not ideal, but fine.
Yes, things could and should be better, and the US tenure scrabble is more desperate and sad than the UK one, but I think a LOT of the 'omg I have to be poor for years' moping comes from people whose parents were well-paid professionals, and who remember The Life Their Parents Had as it was in their *late teens*, right before they left the nest, rather than as it was in their own early childhoods, when their parents were struggling to make partner etc. and sometimes they really had to scrimp. That sort of fish-eye lens makes people unfairly judge themselves based on an unrealistic standard of accomplishment-for-this-stage-in-life and to feel that they and the places they work for come up wanting. Plus, given the recession and a generation's changing standards, you sort of have to accept that you probably won't be in your mom and dad's position at this age. My mom had her second child at this point, years-wise. My dad was about to hear he was going to have his first. They owned houses and cars and had decently paying Real Jobs. I don't know anyone in a similar position in my generation, because the people who've started their families young have sacrificed some of those other things, and no one's quite so Adult financially because they've had less opportunity to be. The easy-credit home-loans that facilitated my parents' rapid ascent into a higher tax-bracket aren't around.
The only way to not be part of the recession's Lost Generation, difficult as this is and as much as privilege counts in accomplishing it, is to attempt to plough through the lack of opportunities so you don't get fucked all over again when the recession's over. If recession!kids lack 'experience', younger people will leap-frog over them by getting a consistent string of jobs because times are better and they have immaculate 'normal-looking' CVs that make HR people breathe a sigh of relief because it's the sort of document they know how to deal with. So hell, if you can do it, why NOT make yourself formally qualified right now? You may hurt through your thirties and forties, but eventually boomers will free up positions and you'll do all right. It's a long game, but at least you're playing. The educational system will expand further as society comes to grips with the fait accompli that education is now a prerequisite for a base-line level of middle-class citizenship rather than a job-qualification as such, and as people have money to pay for that again.
3. How else is my UK visa going to work?
A real worry for me (but seemingly not legitimate, say smug application books, very comfortably). I could get the one-year leaver visa, but for what job? I could get married, but again, how would I keep myself? Applying's had little result re: securing me actual employment thus far. At least the universities I'm applying to have firmly promised teaching next year, and potential office work this year.
academics_anon scaremongering.1. Why Apply At All
The process of applying for graduate school has thus far largely consisted of people telling me, via their books and to my face in interviews, that I oughtn't. This stems not from any particular quality in me or lack thereof, but from a deep general skepticism about the process. 'Are you aware it's difficult?', as if anything worth doing was renowned for being easy. 'Has it occurred to you that it's expensive?', as though anyone living through the recession who has even the slightest need to care isn't painfully conscious of costs. 'Do you know teaching doesn't pay much?' Really? Well, perhaps there's still an unWAGed footballer left in the world. I'll just do that instead then, I'm sure it will provide me with immense intellectual satisfaction and represent the best possible use of myself.
In elementary school, when every dewey thing wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up, smart-alec classmates reminded her that sometimes cute puppies needed put down. Inevitably, name-ending-in-y would give up her dream on the spot. Attempting to coax similar tearful renunciations out of would-be graduate students, however, seems ill-judged. The imaginary people these cautions are designed to save seem impossible naive, and the obvious cautions themselves not far behind.
Perhaps the most interesting barricade yet was thrown up by a professor at King's, who suggested that my work needn't necessarily be conducted in an academic context. What is up with his lack of faith in this means of learning and gaining accreditation? As far as I can see the PhD program is a system intended to turn some sloppy thinking, writing and research into something informed, solid, considered, aware of its context, and structured, and to make you much better at managing your time in order to produce said writing. Perhaps you could get the same effects by working entirely without guidance and institutional structure for the same period of time, without the potential career benefits of a formal title at the end of it. If so, kudos to you. But there are practical reasons not to want to go the (even harder, even lonelier, even more bereft of resources than traditional programs) autodidactic route.
And I can't help feeling that these complaints wouldn't have exactly the same 'why should you bother?' shape if I were a guy my age. I am a young person who is good at writing and thinking. I would like to become better, because I feel this honing, followed by a career spent challenging myself in this way and teaching others to develop their skill-sets and knowledge levels, represents the best possible use of my particular talents and life. I will be a better academic, teacher, creative writer and social justice activist with this training. What is so fucking hard to grasp about that? What is so fucking wrong with it?
2. The Recession!PhD
Some PhDs aren't employed in their field! You're going into debt now? Some PhDs don't make much! There are 300 people applying for every job!
Cry me a mother-fucking river.
You know who else isn't employed in their 'chosen field' right now? It's the people who aren't employed at-fucking-all. They have debt too. If there aren't university positions for fresh PhDs to pick from at first, there's editing academic publications. There's good high-school work. You're not left for dead because you're not a professor at Cambridge right off the bat. Believe it or not these are actual transferable skills--more so than my paralegal work in the US has proven to be. And that 300 people thing is EVERYWHERE. I crawl over that pile for shitty 'zero hours contract' part-time secretarial work. At least this will be for something I actually want to do/that pays bills.
What ELSE is one to do now? You think people my age are *super employable*? You think that outside of academia there's a candyland of job opportunities and pools of money to roll in? Everyone knows 20somethings don't have families to support, and they only want to hire a *very few* hideously over-qualified people for nothing to do the jobs of several people. Frequently that leads to under-employing an experienced industry person. In this pool, other than a few 'lucky' slave-driven fresh-off-the-uni-boat types, a lot of graduates are going without jobs. Hell yes I'll take the frankly comparatively reasonable UK PhD debt burden, which I'd assume to work towards a decently paying career I want, over years of scraping for any work that compensates me enough to make it worth doing it. I've given up on Odd Jobs after a string of 'I can get away with anything right now because there are ten people queuing for your shitty job' rip offs, disappointments, poor hours, and low pay coupled with high transport costs has shown these positions to be actually financially damaging. God help me if I were properly working class.
People who complain that academia pays nooothing in the UK are... kind of whining. I'm not saying this couldn't be better, but a starting salary of like 30,000 pounds? Is not nothing. Not to pain-weigh, but that's not poverty. In fact about five years of it, budgeted very carefully indeed, will pay off the worst graduate!uni debts I can incur here, should I not get any scholarships and should salary remain constant for that period. Paid off loan debts by about 33, 35, ready to think about kids? Sounds fine. Not ideal, but fine.
Yes, things could and should be better, and the US tenure scrabble is more desperate and sad than the UK one, but I think a LOT of the 'omg I have to be poor for years' moping comes from people whose parents were well-paid professionals, and who remember The Life Their Parents Had as it was in their *late teens*, right before they left the nest, rather than as it was in their own early childhoods, when their parents were struggling to make partner etc. and sometimes they really had to scrimp. That sort of fish-eye lens makes people unfairly judge themselves based on an unrealistic standard of accomplishment-for-this-stage-in-life and to feel that they and the places they work for come up wanting. Plus, given the recession and a generation's changing standards, you sort of have to accept that you probably won't be in your mom and dad's position at this age. My mom had her second child at this point, years-wise. My dad was about to hear he was going to have his first. They owned houses and cars and had decently paying Real Jobs. I don't know anyone in a similar position in my generation, because the people who've started their families young have sacrificed some of those other things, and no one's quite so Adult financially because they've had less opportunity to be. The easy-credit home-loans that facilitated my parents' rapid ascent into a higher tax-bracket aren't around.
The only way to not be part of the recession's Lost Generation, difficult as this is and as much as privilege counts in accomplishing it, is to attempt to plough through the lack of opportunities so you don't get fucked all over again when the recession's over. If recession!kids lack 'experience', younger people will leap-frog over them by getting a consistent string of jobs because times are better and they have immaculate 'normal-looking' CVs that make HR people breathe a sigh of relief because it's the sort of document they know how to deal with. So hell, if you can do it, why NOT make yourself formally qualified right now? You may hurt through your thirties and forties, but eventually boomers will free up positions and you'll do all right. It's a long game, but at least you're playing. The educational system will expand further as society comes to grips with the fait accompli that education is now a prerequisite for a base-line level of middle-class citizenship rather than a job-qualification as such, and as people have money to pay for that again.
3. How else is my UK visa going to work?
A real worry for me (but seemingly not legitimate, say smug application books, very comfortably). I could get the one-year leaver visa, but for what job? I could get married, but again, how would I keep myself? Applying's had little result re: securing me actual employment thus far. At least the universities I'm applying to have firmly promised teaching next year, and potential office work this year.
