Comments on: Would anything have kept you out of graduate school?

By: Considering going on to PhD | Jo VanEvery

Considering going on to PhD | Jo VanEvery — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:51:28 +0000

[...] her reply to Benton’s most recent installment, Julie from Escaping the Ivory Tower points out that even when made aware of the dire post-PhD situation, many students are not [...]

By: Thoroughly Educated

Thoroughly Educated — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:14:54 +0000

Julie, I have seem some success with encouraging students to do something else for a while, though I don’t have a lot of long-term data on outcomes. One year, a student I would have judged “Most Likely To Be Sucked Directly Into A PhD Program” took my advice and went to teach high school for a couple of years. He then entered a Master’s program, had a good time, and decided that was enough, at least for the moment. Which reminds me: in the years that I taught at a good but fairly no-name regional college, I often urged students who were dead-set on grad school to try a terminal MA first, on the theory that a name-brand MA would up their chances of getting into a first-rate PhD program if they found they absolutely couldn’t live without the PhD. I have mixed feelings about that advice, because it’s usually not possible to get funding for the MA, but on balance I think I’m in favor of the stand-alone MA as a way of lowering the opportunity cost of checking out the grad school experience.

By: Julie

Julie — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:05:42 +0000

Maartje, what an interesting journey! So much of graduate school really is a crucible in which to learn about yourself.

By: Julie

Julie — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:02:57 +0000

Thoroughly Educated, I take your point, and I think you’re right that many people won’t be dissuaded. Does encouraging them to do something else for a few years work? Do they take that break from school, and if they do, how does it affect their choices?

I loved graduate school, and I wish more people could have that experience without the assumption that the professoriate is the next obvious step, especially when fewer and fewer people get to live the dream.

By: Thoroughly Educated

Thoroughly Educated — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:53:03 +0000

I don’t think anything would have dissuaded me, and I try to keep that in mind when advising students who want to go to graduate school. I don’t tell them “don’t” – on the principle that, if they’re anything like me, they’ll respond by doing the opposite – but rather I insist they not go directly from undergrad. Do something else first, prove to yourself you can do something else, find out about different styles of work, get a life for a while, and then come back if you want to. Worst case scenario, you’ll be a better grad student when you come back. I took one year between undergrad and master’s and then four years between master’s and PhD, and now that I’m ready to leave academe, I’m VERY glad I have at least a distant memory of life “on the outside” to call on. But I do think if I had never taken the PhD route, I’d be at the same place, midlife-crisis-wise, except I’d be wanting IN instead of wanting OUT. I’d always have wondered about the PhD path not taken. I take that impulse seriously when I see it in my students.

By: Maartje

Maartje — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:59:48 +0000

I don’t think there’s anything anyone could’ve said within the timespan of my Master’s studies that could’ve dissuaded me from going for a PhD.

The groundwork for that decision was laid during my life. My father’s in academia, my mother has always felt slightly ‘less than’ because she wasn’t. I never had a healthy model of all the different kinds of jobs you could pursue, or that it’s possible to be en entrepreneur.

Apart from that, I always had the impression that learning and thinking were the only things I was good at, which is something I thought was only suitable for academia. (On top of that, I grew up with the idea that social behaviour and politics were something I sucked at, so that would rule out any non-academic work.)

I’m slowly realising what my strengths are, what my interests are, and that they’re wholly incompatible with my current job. Even if my boss was more supportive, the whole subject of my research is only vaguely interesting to me. I’d be enthralled if I read about it in a popular scientific magazine, but I’m not too hip on doing the research myself. Not a detail person.

And on top of that, my boss has been wholly UNsupportive of me, my working style and my needs for information. This makes an otherwise not-very-stimulating job into an excruciatingly frustrating one, although it’s slowly getting better emotion-wise now I see that I’m not actually SUPPOSED to be able to work at the top of my game in these circumstances.

But if anyone had told me three years ago I’d go through this deep unhappiness, I wouldn’t have believed it. And I would’ve signed up anyway. So I guess you’re right – starting was inevitable.

Not sure if finishing is equally inevitable, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing either.