fancypants09

I'm going to try to keep this short because I need to head off to a meeting in about thirty minutes. Needless to say, more to follow later. 
 
rising_star, I've never considered myself naive with respect to the very real inequities involved in employment, be it academic or otherwise. I don't want to belabor the details regarding my own non-traditional path to going back to academia and to a doctoral program, but I think they bear repeating to address this charge of being naive about the realities of the market. I graduated from law school in 2009, right in the middle of the implosion at Wall Street caused by subprime mortgages. I was corporate counsel for one of the Global 500 companies for years. As I mentioned before, I've seen and experienced brutal competition to get and keep jobs. Having worked on major matters for my previous employer, I've also seen and experienced how the actions/decisions of a major multinational affects not only their bottom line, but the bottom line for hundreds of thousands of its employees worldwide, and the health of economies in which the multinational had significant presence. So yes, I'm familiar with extreme inequities and hyper-competition of job markets. 
 
What outrages me about the practice I described? Let me try to explain by way of example in the real world. Allowing a "superstar" in the field to accept a post doc and defer a TT position, is the equivalent of allowing a "superstar" banker to accept an internship at JP Morgan and defer employment at Goldman Sachs. It's just not done in the industry, even where there is fungibility of skills. The only other place I've seen somewhat similar practices is in the legal field where if an entry-level attorney for a firm got an offer to clerk for a judge, s/he would defer employment to go to the clerkship first. BUT in this instance the general practice of the firm is much like that of a school with a candidate who accepts but defers; the firm hires another associate to start in the place of the attorney who deferred. There is no such equivalent rule in the academic setting. And to me, if you are not outraged by this practice, you're much like my friend in thinking that (1) you will be that superstar to benefit from the rigged rules and/or (2) the adjunct situation will not apply to you. I'm not going to repeat the debates RE: adjuncting, but I am totally in agreement with the idea that the growing number of adjunct positions, and the growing inequities between adjuncts and TT academics, is unhealthy for all in academia. 
 
And VirtualMessage, I actually am aware of most of the other practices you described, but am not upset by them because they're the rules of the job jungle everywhere. 
 
Apologies for the disjointed message but hopefully more soon afterwards!

I'm going to try to keep this short because I need to head off to a meeting in about thirty minutes. Needless to say, more to follow later. 
 
rising_star, I've never considered myself naive with respect to the very real inequities involved in employment, be it academic or otherwise. I don't want to belabor the details regarding my own non-traditional path to going back to academia and to a doctoral program, but I think they bear repeating to address this charge of being naive about the realities of the market. I graduated from law school in 2009, right in the middle of the implosion at Wall Street caused by subprime mortgages. I was corporate counsel for one of the Global 500 companies for years. As I mentioned before, I've seen and experienced brutal competition to get and keep jobs. Having worked on major matters for my previous employer, I've also seen and experienced how the actions/decisions of a major multinational affects not only their bottom line, but the bottom line for hundreds of thousands of its employees worldwide, and the health of economies in which the multinational had significant presence. So yes, I'm familiar with extreme inequities and hyper-competition of job markets. 
 
What outrages me about the practice I described? Let me try to explain by way of example in the real world. Allowing a "superstar" in the field to accept a post doc and defer a TT position, is the equivalent of allowing a "superstar" banker to accept an internship at JP Morgan and defer employment at Goldman Sachs. It's just not done in the industry, even where there is fungibility of skills. The only other place I've seen somewhat similar practices is in the legal field where if an entry-level attorney for a firm got an offer to clerk for a judge, s/he would defer employment to go to the clerkship first. BUT in this instance the general practice of the firm is much like that of a school with a candidate who accepts but defers; the firm hires another associate to start in the place of the attorney who deferred. There is no such equivalent rule in the academic setting. And to me, if you are not outraged by this practice, you're much like my friend in thinking that (1) you will be that superstar to benefit from the rigged rules and/or (2) the adjunct situation will not apply to you. I'm not going to repeat the debates RE: adjuncting, but I am totally in agreement with the idea that the growing number of adjunct positions, and the growing inequities between adjuncts and TT academics, is unhealthy for all in academia. 
 
And VirtualMessage, I actually am aware of most of the other practices you described, but am not upset by them because they're the rules of the job jungle everywhere. 
 
Apologies for the disjointed message but hopefully more soon afterwards!

I'm going to try to keep this short because I need to head off to a meeting in about thirty minutes. Needless to say, more to follow later. 
 
rising_star, I've never considered myself naive with respect to the very real inequities involved in employment, be it academic or otherwise. I don't want to belabor the details regarding my own non-traditional path to going back to academia and to a doctoral program, but I think they bear repeating to address this charge of being naive about the realities of the market. I graduated from law school in 2009, right in the middle of the implosion at Wall Street caused by subprime mortgages. I was corporate counsel for one of the Global 500 companies for years. As I mentioned before, I've seen and experienced brutal competition to get and keep jobs. Having worked on major matters for my previous employer, I've also seen and experienced how the actions/decisions of a major multinational affects not only their bottom line, but the bottom line for hundreds of thousands of its employees worldwide, and the health of economies in which the multinational had significant presence. So yes, I'm familiar with extreme inequities and hyper-competition of job markets. 
 
What outrages me about the practice I described? Let me try to explain by way of example in the real world. Allowing a "superstar" in the field to accept a post doc and defer a TT position, is the equivalent of allowing a "superstar" banker to accept an internship at JP Morgan and defer employment at Goldman Sachs. It's just not done in the industry, even where there is fungibility of skills. The only other place I've seen somewhat similar practices is in the legal field where if an entry-level attorney for a firm got an offer to clerk for a judge, s/he would defer employment to go to the clerkship first. BUT in this instance the general practice of the firm is much like that of a school with a candidate who accepts but defers; the firm hires another associate to start in the place of the attorney who deferred. There is no such equivalent rule in the academic setting. And to me, if you are not outraged by this practice, you're much like my friend in thinking that (1) you will be that superstar to benefit from the rigged rules and/or (2) the adjunct situation will not apply to you. I'm not going to repeat the debates RE: adjuncting, but I am totally in agreement with the idea that the growing number of adjunct positions, and the growing inequities between adjuncts and TT academics, is unhealthy for all in academia. 
 
And VirtualMessage, I actually am aware of most of the other practices you described, but am not upset by them because they're the rules of the job jungle everywhere. 
 
Apologies for the disjointed message but hopefully more soon afterwards!

Hello all, I'm back! It's been very hectic since I submitted my acceptance, so I've been relatively quiet as of late. But today I had a conversation with a friend who is currently pursuing her PhD in the social sciences in the US, and had to share it with GC folks for discussion. 
 
My friend goes to a top program in her field and just obtained ABD status. She was talking about recent trends in the academic job market for her field as she is aiming to go on the market in 2017. Our conversation confirmed the trend that many GCers here have noted in other threads---that even the competition for post-doc positions are increasingly fierce because many applicants are applying to those and TT positions at the same time. I was not prepared for what she then told me next: In her field, top candidates who get offers for both a prestigious TT position and a post doc will accept the post doc and defer the TT position until after the completion of the post doc. The TT position is technically filled, but with no one to actually start handling the teaching load until said superstar finishes his/her post doc and joins the faculty there full time. 
 
I was absolutely furious when I heard this. How is this practice condoned in a profession where there is a scarcity in positions and an abundance of non-fungible talent? Deferring a TT position isn't like deferring school; that vacancy is gone the moment you accept the offer, and the school cannot "take in" someone else from the applicant pool to fill that spot. And it's absolutely sick because I could immediately sense that these deferrals would give universities the justification of hiring adjuncts to cover the teaching. 
 
I was also deeply saddened and troubled by the fact that my friend didn't see the adjunct issue at all, simply because she doesn't see herself as someone who would even have to consider the possibility of adjuncting. She thought my concern arose from the fact that the candidate who deferred was somehow cheating the school that gave her the TT position out of obligations tied to that position and said that the deferral contracts generally entail the work that the candidate does during the post doc to be counted as if s/he had done them at the TT institution so that the institution would be able to claim credit for the research. 
 
Again, how is this outrageous "winner takes all" practice allowed? Why does the system tolerate the definition of "success" as one academic trampling on the career prospects of another? And mind you, I worked in corporate for the last four years so I've seen and experienced my share of rigged systems and hyper-competition, but this is a new type of greed to me...
 
Sorry this was more of a personal rant than anything else, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks GCers!

Hello all, I'm back! It's been very hectic since I submitted my acceptance, so I've been relatively quiet as of late. But today I had a conversation with a friend who is currently pursuing her PhD in the social sciences in the US, and had to share it with GC folks for discussion. 
 
My friend goes to a top program in her field and just obtained ABD status. She was talking about recent trends in the academic job market for her field as she is aiming to go on the market in 2017. Our conversation confirmed the trend that many GCers here have noted in other threads---that even the competition for post-doc positions are increasingly fierce because many applicants are applying to those and TT positions at the same time. I was not prepared for what she then told me next: In her field, top candidates who get offers for both a prestigious TT position and a post doc will accept the post doc and defer the TT position until after the completion of the post doc. The TT position is technically filled, but with no one to actually start handling the teaching load until said superstar finishes his/her post doc and joins the faculty there full time. 
 
I was absolutely furious when I heard this. How is this practice condoned in a profession where there is a scarcity in positions and an abundance of non-fungible talent? Deferring a TT position isn't like deferring school; that vacancy is gone the moment you accept the offer, and the school cannot "take in" someone else from the applicant pool to fill that spot. And it's absolutely sick because I could immediately sense that these deferrals would give universities the justification of hiring adjuncts to cover the teaching. 
 
I was also deeply saddened and troubled by the fact that my friend didn't see the adjunct issue at all, simply because she doesn't see herself as someone who would even have to consider the possibility of adjuncting. She thought my concern arose from the fact that the candidate who deferred was somehow cheating the school that gave her the TT position out of obligations tied to that position and said that the deferral contracts generally entail the work that the candidate does during the post doc to be counted as if s/he had done them at the TT institution so that the institution would be able to claim credit for the research. 
 
Again, how is this outrageous "winner takes all" practice allowed? Why does the system tolerate the definition of "success" as one academic trampling on the career prospects of another? And mind you, I worked in corporate for the last four years so I've seen and experienced my share of rigged systems and hyper-competition, but this is a new type of greed to me...
 
Sorry this was more of a personal rant than anything else, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks GCers!

Do you have a writing sample with that grapples with an interesting research question and makes a clear intervention on a current critical conversation? That's the kind of research experience I think PhD programs are looking for.

One advice I got at the time from then PhD student friends that helped me: Only go if you are absolutely sure that this is the path you want to take. An MA or working in a completely unrelated field may help you gauge whether the PhD is the right path for you.

I love this thread so much!! Thanks to all the GCers for the love. And for the waitlisters still waiting to hear, please keep us updated, we are here to support you ❤️❤️

I love this thread so much!! Thanks to all the GCers for the love. And for the waitlisters still waiting to hear, please keep us updated, we are here to support you ❤️❤️

Alright folks. After a few days of agonizing over the Harvard waitlist, I decided to take myself off of it and commit to UCLA. I realized that I would choose UCLA even if I did get off the waitlist. I know it's not the same as declining an acceptance offer, but guys, I just turned down Harvard, and it feels...weird but awesome. 

Wonderful, breaking news: Stanford just made me an offer. Yipppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee doesn't even cover it!
 
Good luck to everyone waiting. IT CAN HAPPEN!

I really wish we could all hang out in one room and drink some cocoa while we wait for the last minute offers to come in. I can't imagine what you all are feeling! Sending unicorn and leprechaun vibes to all still waiting!
 

Great oh so great! Also heading to UCLA though not in the English department.

Great oh so great! Also heading to UCLA though not in the English department.

Friends,please dont make farewell speeches so soon.A few more days to go and few more offers to turn down and probably lady luck might shine on a few more of us   gradcafe has been fantastic though

Yay second careerists!!! Congratulations and good luck with the move

Congrats 1Q84!!!!!!!!!

Alright folks. After a few days of agonizing over the Harvard waitlist, I decided to take myself off of it and commit to UCLA. I realized that I would choose UCLA even if I did get off the waitlist. I know it's not the same as declining an acceptance offer, but guys, I just turned down Harvard, and it feels...weird but awesome. 

One advice I got at the time from then PhD student friends that helped me: Only go if you are absolutely sure that this is the path you want to take. An MA or working in a completely unrelated field may help you gauge whether the PhD is the right path for you.

USC just emailed. I'm. in. 
 

 
Actually crying real tears right now as I sit in a pile of books. 

If anyone else is waiting for Comp Lit at Harvard, I talked to the DGS today. She said the committee just needs to wait for one more admitted student to decline, then they'll reach the spot where they can start pulling from the waitlist!
 
I'm so excited

Alright folks. After a few days of agonizing over the Harvard waitlist, I decided to take myself off of it and commit to UCLA. I realized that I would choose UCLA even if I did get off the waitlist. I know it's not the same as declining an acceptance offer, but guys, I just turned down Harvard, and it feels...weird but awesome. 

Alright folks. After a few days of agonizing over the Harvard waitlist, I decided to take myself off of it and commit to UCLA. I realized that I would choose UCLA even if I did get off the waitlist. I know it's not the same as declining an acceptance offer, but guys, I just turned down Harvard, and it feels...weird but awesome. 

Alright folks. After a few days of agonizing over the Harvard waitlist, I decided to take myself off of it and commit to UCLA. I realized that I would choose UCLA even if I did get off the waitlist. I know it's not the same as declining an acceptance offer, but guys, I just turned down Harvard, and it feels...weird but awesome. 

Alright folks. After a few days of agonizing over the Harvard waitlist, I decided to take myself off of it and commit to UCLA. I realized that I would choose UCLA even if I did get off the waitlist. I know it's not the same as declining an acceptance offer, but guys, I just turned down Harvard, and it feels...weird but awesome.