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  1. yeah, not the most expected move. I think it may have been because of non-academic reasons but I don't know... I'm totally out of my realm here, but OP may also want to investigate Ramzi Fawaz, at UW-Madison...
  2. Hillary Chute is actually at Northeastern now, though Chicago remains a good place for visual culture and contemporary lit.
  3. Sorry, but nobody should be spending 2 grand on an application cycle. That's just insane to me. That's like twice of what my monthly income was when I was applying. Application fees can be waived if money is a real issue in some cases, and you shouldn't be applying to more than 8 or 9 programs anyway. Also not everyone requires the GRE Lit -- I couldn't afford it, so I didn't take it and didn't even consider programs that required it once I realized I couldn't take it. Also, most schools don't have triple digit application fees. The highest I paid was $75; the lowest was $25 (shoutout to Fordham). UChicago's was like 100 bucks, but I had no trouble getting that waived since I was broke as shit and could prove it; I would imagine that similarly "elite" schools with similarly high app fees would be equally amenable to that. But yeah, the GRE was definitely the most expensive single part of the process for me. Suffice to say that there are ways to cut corners; it also is worth keeping in mind that you aren't spending all this at one time (I was staggering applications according to when my paycheck would come in) but it is worth it to make a budget for yourself and to be thinking in those terms as you plan out your application process. I just figured I'd add that two cents, since if I saw those price tags to the application process when I was thinking about all this I probably wouldn't have even bothered applying to grad school, lol.
  4. Yes. Asking a current grad student in your field might also be helpful (and perhaps more candid).
  5. This is a becoming an issue too. I'm at a private university that has no rhet/comp and the lack of teaching experience in this program (compared to state schools anyway) combined with upcoming budget cuts is one of my biggest concerns looking forward to the job market. The program is notorious for its grueling academics but a result of that is that it also has a reputation for producing people who can't teach "regular" people. This is one of those problems that more traditionally "prestigious" programs haven't really figured out and actually why, I think, some schools with lower rankings than this one outperformed us on the job market this last year. This category of PhDs who can just waltz into R1 jobs out of their top-10 or top-15 programs is simply becoming a fantasy. My program is structured with that entitlement in mind and it kind of adds kinds of pressure that aren't accounted for in the way PhDs are trained here, which is, essentially, one that places writing a field-changing dissertation over and above practical concerns like developing a pedagogical philosophy and teaching writing that are developed from the very beginning in most state programs. So the points being made on here about being familiar with these discourses and with *teaching experience* is really well taken and important, I think. That might seem so obvious to a lot of y'all at state schools, but here that sort of thing kind of feels like an afterthought, or even an inconvenience, a lot of the time. And it's really hurting our job placements too.
  6. Hey y'all. Haven't been on here in a minute but good to see familiar names! I totally agree with Romanista on this question: in short, no, it doesn't seem to be at all worth it to try and predict what jobs, if any, will be around in 6 or 8 or 10 years from now in English. First of all, re: job market anxieties at large and the "humanities phd problem," this is the best article I've read recently on the subject (which I admit has become a rather stale one for me): https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/phd-students-irrational/#! . What it helps speak to is the fact that these problems are structural and need to be addressed through structural change. The recent NLRB ruling is helpful for that and the reconceptualization of academic labor and expansion of adjunct and grad student unionization are ways of working towards that change. I say all this because I think that's what's worth spending energy on in a grad program rather than trying to speculate on how to make your life's work more profitable in a fundamentally unstable and unpredictable market and economic reality. I don't think it's wise to do rhet/comp if it's because you think that -- in 6-8 years (or more) from now, mind you -- you'll have a 10% or whatever better chance of getting a TT-job. First of all, because... why? I feel like grad school is too grueling already to be doing something you're not 100% into and genuinely humbled/excited by the prospect dedicating your professional life to it. You're already going to feel inadequate all the time, it makes the most sense to have that be the kind of inadequacy that's motivating rather than shutting down. If you're not *really* into comp/rhet and are only doing it because of a contingent market condition, I can't imagine making it through a dissertation, to be honest, at which point the whole TT thing is sort of moot. I think rhet/comp is fascinating and has so much to offer, but I really, honestly feel like it's different enough from what I do as a literature scholar that I can't imagine doing a PhD in it. Really, given how things are right now, I think the best way to "gear oneself towards the market" is two things. (1) Find a field to be as badass at as you can, which is, realistically, going to be a field in which you love doing research. (2) Do what you can while you work as a graduate student to be aware of the shifting nature of academic labor and the academic economy and do what you can to organize with your colleagues to make those conditions as serviceable to you and to others around you as can be managed. Two cents.
  7. So I'm late to the boat on all this. I'm only just finishing my "first year" and about to start a summer language session... ugh... I would emphasize the "to some degree" in this statement, realizing that this can vary so much and can be easier/more felicitous with different periods of interest. As much as I was told on this forum and by members of my department when I was visiting that I would get to "explore" and be able to change my research interest, toying with other fields/theoretical approaches/time periods over this last year made me realize how much I had already anchored myself in my own period (late medieval Britain), which was much more so than I had realized. In the sense that it was terrifying when I had a moment or two of existential doubt about the field I had come here to study and the prospect of doing something else felt like it would be starting over. This has turned out alright for me: that doubt transforms into new confidence. But it can also be very nerve wracking to think you have a field and then get to a program that urges you to explore a bunch of things outside of that field while also, simultaneously, pressuring you to become an expert: did anyone else experience something like this this year? Unræd's point is excellent (as always), and, I think, quite related to this issue specialization. I think this sort of openness is something that is afforded by figuring out what sorts of methodologies and scholarly praxes that really click with you in your first year or so: "specialization" is very much a process of opening, not of enclosure and imposing blinders, I've found (contrary to all the common anxieties -- that I've had and know others have had -- that specializing is a narrowing, an enclosure that is terrifying and limiting). Interdisciplinary work is more fruitful when you have a set of founding principles, and I've found that my process of specifying a field for myself has actually been strengthened from trying things and figuring out what I definitely *don't* want to dedicate my energy towards as a scholar (as well as figuring out which other disciplines my work might talk to). This is related to the "money" issue, too. A decent amount of scholarship, maybe more explicitly in mine and unræd's fields (but I'm probably just looking through my pretentious medievalist goggles), is just finding new objects that people haven't written about or haven't written adequately about: there're a lot of "discoveries" to be made, which also means a lot of opportunities for publishing and getting travel/research grants and things of that nature. Figuring out your jam and the kind of language and research skills you work well with is how you get your little intellectual metal detector and find the shit to write about that turns into publications and grants and stuff that help form you as a scholar. I know that reeks of positivism, but it's also kind of basically what being a scholar is: finding shit to say new stuff about.
  8. IMHO UC Irvine would be well worth looking at too. Arlene Keizer does postmodern black feminist lit (haven't read her but she looks like she does interesting work). Also, Irvine has Frank B. Wilderson III in their drama department and Jared Sexton in their Film and Media Studies and African American Studies departments, both of whom are doing really interesting work in both Black Studies and Film.
  9. I don't think it's expected or even necessary. If you have a specific question and/or are unsure about how your research goals/interests would be accommodated, emailing a POI can be productive way of 'sending out feelers' for a program you're considering sinking money into applying to spend more than half a decade of your life in. I think, of the schools I actually ended up applying to, I only contacted POIs at two, which includes the one I ended up at. I was very unsure about whether this program would be at all accommodating for research in my field, and emailing POIs here helped convince me to apply. It can also be helpful if you're not entirely sure that you fit the requirements of a specific program or track within that program, like having enough language skills under your belt or something like that. Personally, I don't think it makes sense to waste a professor's time, though, if you can't really think of anything to say except to tell them that you exist. When I was applying, I had an advisor who was really pushing me to get in contact with *everyone*, and I really don't think that's necessary, especially if you don't really have any specific questions or concerns.
  10. You should probably check out Northwestern. They have some great C18 people, a couple of whom do international/transatlantic work (Rebecca Johnson, Kelly Wisecup). I also feel like UMN is a really good place to be doing poco-anything, though I can't think of anyone there specifically doing that with C17/18.
  11. I'm having difficulty telling whether you're teaching now or not, so please forgive me if I'm just stating the obvious here. poliscar is right re: teaching university, but getting an MA in lit (assuming one can do this without incurring an excessive amount of debt) is not a bad thing to have under your belt if you want to teach high school, and would allow you to apply for some lower level college teaching jobs as well. Having an MA and a MAT (I think) would actually make you pretty desirable for teaching high school English, and just the MA would give you an edge for private/charter schools if that's an area you're willing to look for work in. It also allows you to teach a CC course here and there on the side if you wanted to. So for teaching HS? I think an MA is a great asset and makes you a more desirable candidate than just the MAT (or BA if you're working in a school that doesn't require the MAT to teach). For a PhD, there are people with Ph.D.s in literature who teach high school, but it isn't their first choice and it definitely isn't the route you are trained for while in the program. If you want a Ph.D. as a teacher, I feel like most go get their Ph.D.s after 'paying their dues' as teachers and then go back to get a degree in education administration or curriculum (like you're considering) or something. These sorts of degree programs are far more accommodating for people already working in education (in terms of summer offerings, being a part time student, etc.).
  12. Rydra Wong is a dope username. And I think Wyatt's right. My inclination is that it won't be the focus of your application, though it can't hurt to mention it on your CV and brush up so you can take a reading exam to fulfill a language requirement once you're in. My program just emphasizes reading knowledge, and many C20 people don't enter with a foreign language here (tbh they're often the loudest complainers about the requirement, though :p). You could consider picking up Karl Sandberg's French For Reading (ISBN: 978-0133316032) if you want to brush up on reading academic French.
  13. Yes. Apply to schools with the cash to fund you well as an international student (i.e., contact current international students at places you're interested in). Yes. Computational-anything is valuable, and growing. Many schools are investing in this kind of work. Look into places that are good for Digital Humanities, like Stanford and UChicago. Don't limit yourself because you're international, apply to places where people are doing the kind of work you want to do and apply to places with the money to invest in you (you're international, so you cost more to fund equally, but you do humanities computing, which is a growing field that people are willing to pour money into).
  14. This is something that's been touched on in a lot of threads, though they don't tend to go anywhere as their own dedicated ones. 2. Yes. It's really not uncommon to go straight to a Ph.D. from a B.A. in literature, or most humanities fields for that matter. My cohort is about 50/50 people who came in with MAs and those who didn't. I'd say it doesn't greatly disadvantage you, but it's probably wise to apply to at least one or two MA programs and inspect the MA programs at the schools you apply to (in the case you are offered admission into an MA program at a school where you applied for the Ph.D.). 1. $$$. For timing, this is largely a question of employment, stamina (do you want to dive straight into another 6-10 years of school after your BA?), and financial concerns. I had a year between finishing my BA and starting my Ph.D. and had to do a little juggling to stave off loan payments and save money for moving and the gap between my job ending and my first stipend arriving... etc. etc. On the other hand, paying for the GRE and application fees and shit might be hard while you're still in college and probably broke af. But, I mean, plenty of people don't go straight through to grad school too. So when to apply is largely just a question of when you want to start and what you have going on until then. 3. I wouldn't let things like publications or conferences be the things that keep you waiting another whole year to apply. There are plenty of good reasons to take time, but those things aren't really expected of undergraduates. Schools care more about your academic performance, writing samples, and assessing what kind of work you can do in their program and who you might work with. The other stuff is garnish that can emphasize those central concerns, but aren't the main focus.
  15. Here's useful list of stuff for accessing books/articles/resources even if you don't have access to university research resources: https://thelitcritguy.com/2016/05/02/smash-the-paywalls/ Dude's twitter account is worth following too. The list leaves off Library Genesis, a great resource for getting your hands on pricy academic texts. Academia.edu might also be helpful, as scholars will often upload their own papers on there; though some are definitely more active than others on the site. For your subject area, you should definitely be buffing up on theory (lib gen is great for this). There's a thread or two floating around for brushing up on stuff like that, but the list of journals mentioned by screamingacrossthesky are the leading journals if you can get your hands on them. I feel like Critical Inquiry and post45 are particularly worth checking out for broadly theoretical issues in modern/contemporary lit. I could be biased there though.
  16. This isn't at all superficial, it's one of the more important things to consider. Location was one of the biggest factors in my decision and I don't regret it at all.
  17. Word. One of the good things about both academics and teachers (and other jobs that really do value being as educated as you can) is that they can recognize the value of criticizing their own field without undermining it. I assume that you're a licensed teacher making a living doing that, working in a public school system that sounds like is working well and doing what it was set out to do. Which is fantastic. But I just worry about the state of public education in many places, especially in places where there are big issues with economic inequality and segregation and where those socioeconomic issues are perpetuated alongside the undermining of public education in ways that can actually be beneficial for people looking for a plan B, but not necessarily in a way that would be savory to a lot of otherwise well-intentioned young educated people trying to be a positive force in their cities and make a decent living wage. It's more complicated than "this is bad" or "this is great" though. I do think people should look into teaching as an alt-ac career (as lindsey372 said, having that kind of knowledge and background can be very valuable in a school), but, like anything else, should make steps towards that early instead of taking it for granted as a natural "Plan B" (which is an attitude I've heard people in my program say: I think there are real problems with both the attitude of TFA vets I've heard talk about teaching as a form of martyrdom and those who say they'll just go get a teaching gig in a high school if they can't find a job in academia). :-)
  18. This wasn't at all my experience. I made 20/hr, but anyone who's taught knows that hourly wage is an inadequate way to pay a teacher. I was a long term sub, which is different from being a sub. I didn't answer to a sub coordinator, but to the vice principal and department chair and was treated, in terms of responsibilities, like a regular teacher. I taught and designed classes on my own, had students from the beginning of my classes until the end. I was part of a PLC. It was essentially like being an adjunct, and I was treated just like a first year teacher, minus the benefits. I also took on the same subbing responsibilities (on top of my full-time teaching load) as full-time teachers, since the school I worked at had shortages. It sounds like worked with kids in a rougher area, but I may have actually been in a better position than you. I wasn't salaried but was essentially making around $36k a year if I did summer school and maybe chose to take some more subbing gigs. Which in my town was a very solid income, especially being a single person with a B.A. (in a town where having a welding certification or a license to operate heavy machinery is much more value than a college degree). I also could have become salaried in the next couple of years if I had stuck with it (actually, I would have had to: in order to keep the job, I would have had to started making progress towards a masters, which would have in turn made me a strong candidate for a salaried union job). That's fine. The perspective I was offering was as someone who did the kind of work that one would do if they were trying to get into the profession of teaching coming out of a higher education setting without previous experience doing so (so as a "plan B"). My experience is similar to someone who would have done Teach For America, for example, or gotten into working through a charter school (though that, admittedly, would have been much nicer). In terms of the workload, though, I was reminded by other teachers on a regular basis that this was normal stuff for a first year teacher. "Trial by fire" is what they always said. If I had wanted to, I could have stayed, taught summer school, kept teaching as a long term sub and gotten my MAT and made a career out of it. I was making more money there than I am off my graduate school stipend. I got to know a lot of teachers and kept up with education politics in the state, which are bad. Part of the point I was making politically is that my job and the way I was worked is in many ways indicative of a larger trend of devaluing the overall profession of teaching. BUT: I totally could have continued what I was doing and turned it into a career; I had a great working relationship with the other teachers and with the administrators at the school. But I also felt overwhelmed and felt the value of taking the professionalizing path that most of the other teachers had taken; if anything, it made me value the profession more. Nobody here was trying to undermine the profession. I just know a lot of people who try to get into teaching the way that I did and think that it's part of a larger systemic problem that is neither good for students or potential teachers. If you want to teach, you should go get a MAT and do student teaching and understand that's it's a profession in its own right just like being a professor, but with its own professionalization tracks and methods. That's literally the only point I was trying to make, because I've known way too many people do similar things as me, either through subbing or Teach For America or similar programs and I think those routes are bad for the profession (both from reflecting on my own experience, talking to others' with similar experiences, and talking to and working alongside a lot of career teachers). I've met too many people who went by the logic of "oh, I can just go teach" and ended up in really shitty places, but that doesn't mean I'm jaded about teaching itself. If you want a job in a charter school and you have a Ph.D., that's not a bad option at all, and you would get benefits and a solid middle class salary. I've suggested that route elsewhere; and there's a whole sector of education designed for people like that, but understand that it's in a precarious relationship with unioned career teachers in public schools. All I'm suggesting is the same thing people suggest when they say you shouldn't adjunct, because its exploitative for you and perpetuates a system that exploits others. It's obviously more complicated than that, and I think teaching in grade school has more mobility than that, but what I see here and elsewhere is a movement in a direction that is undermining and making obsolete the teaching experience that @lindsey372 is describing. Look at what's happening in New Orleans (where traditional public schools have been eliminated altogether). Look at how Rahm Emmanuel treats education. See Scott Walker's philosophy on education (he's been greatly expanding voucher systems, and has been encouraging more "self-sufficiency" in public education, both in primary schools and universities, with the result of undermining teachers unions and making schools resemble vocational schools more and more at the expense of the arts and humanities). See, like, everything that's wrong with the state of Kansas. But in some places, these people are gutting public education and moving towards a system that is actually very good for unemployed academics like us. Education in general is in a weird place in this country, and people should't act like working in public education as some sunny alternative to academia (which, as has been exhaustively discussed in our beloved "ponzi scheme" thread, ain't so great in many important ways). Are there more opportunities for teaching in high schools? Undeniably, yes. But it's also it's own complicated world and it's worth researching before treating it like a safety net. Though it should be said, that if you want to be a teacher or be in education making a salary and getting benefits and don't have a degree in education, Chicago is actually one of the best cities in the country for you. But it's in the vanguard of a larger national trend in educational practice and policy that most unioned, public school teachers find extremely disturbing, and that isn't something you'd know if you're just coming into the situation as your -- totally solid -- "plan B." It's a great option for many of us, but it also helps lead to the undermining of jobs like what @lindsey372 has. I've encouraged people to teach many times, and still do, just with caveats because it's not for everyone and the job market can either have issues that some people would take issue with ethically or, in some places, just simply be a bad idea because of the state politics that are gutting the education system (see: Kansas).
  19. I wasn't at all trying invalidate yours either (nor do I think rising_star was). I also know people who taught in Texas and had similar experiences to mine, so I wouldn't be so quick to the draw on that. My city literally has *both* some of the best-ranked and most notoriously rough high schools in the country. Public doesn't mean equal, even in the same city, county, or state. I'm just saying you should know what you're getting into (which doesn't just mean it's "hard"). I'm just saying that just because you do a Ph.D. to teach college doesn't mean that teaching high school is the most logical alternative just because it's teaching. Full disclosure: I was a long term substitute, and my position in some ways was sort of a legal gray area (long story), but the way I was treated and hired is reflective of the practices of similar small public schools in a state where public education has been systematically attacked for years by the Republican party (Scott Walker has no friends amongst the teachers). It wasn't a long-term or permanent job and I wasn't properly trained. Going into it, I had a cavalier, "well, I'll try this, there're no jobs around here and it'll be a great plan B if I don't get into grad school" kind of attitude. It was overwhelming, emotionally draining, and exhausting. I liked teaching and I loved my students, but I just want to point out that if you treat teaching as a "backup" or a casual job you can just pick up, I think it's not good for you or the students and in a lot of places, having a steady supply of educated middle class white young people with a "useless" degree or two (like me) as contingent labor is how public schools are forced to teach their kids. I felt like I was a scab, a cog in a larger system treating teachers like trash. When I was there, the state government was trying to make it easier to get a teaching license (so that in schools like mine with bad teacher retention rates, they could make a high school diploma the only prerequisite to teach high school). If you're in a big city, I'd imagine that it's the charter schools and/or Teach For America that you'll likely be turning to as your "plan B" teaching gig and there are serious issues with that. There are plenty of people who choose to be teachers as their Plan A and those peoples' careers and the sector that they work for is under attack right now in many places. Kansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Wisconsin... the list goes on. Texas has its own rich resume, I'm sure. The charter school system where my partner works gives preference to people with fancy degrees in their subject areas over those who have worked hard to make a career out of teaching. These schools do great work but they're also part of a larger trend and systemic issue that a lot of people find unsustainable and unethical. So I'm not saying rule out teaching, I'm just saying, if you're thinking about it, do your homework and don't rely on it like some sort of safety net back up, because its a career in its own right with its own complicated situation that isn't necessarily any better than academia. Okay, I'm done now. There was a perfectly decent discussion about brainstorming alt-ac stuff before I helped it devolve into this petty little pit of bickering about teaching careers. That being said,
  20. Thanks unraed :). Ummm... yeah. Hm. This is the main thing I'm getting from reading about your experience teaching. I was teaching in a public high school in a rust belt town with a poverty rate of 35% and a lot of issues with gang/drug related crimes and rural poverty. And yes, I consider the job I had to be exploitative. I had no benefits, was paid on an hourly wage for hours that only reflected a fraction of the hours I was actually working, and had very little support from administration and other teachers (including basic things like being kept informed about basic district policy). If that's not exploitative, I'm not sure what is. I now live on the south side of Chicago and I'm not teaching now, but I can tell you for a fact that the teacher's union and the way public education here is f***ed up. There was a city-wide strike on Friday. The union has very little power and the way public schools here is very top-down, with public schools getting shut down in low-income neighborhoods in favor of a charter school system that literally makes a profit off of taking students from adverse backgrounds and training them to do well on the SAT through extremely regimented, authoritarian, and paternalistic teaching methods and piping them to name-brand schools. I don't know what it's like in Austin, but I can tell you I didn't teach kids who read Derrida. I taught kids who were barely literate and were trying to graduate so they could get out of school system that had failed them and devote more time to supporting their families. I taught homeless kids, kids who sold drugs, kids who were parents to their own children and/or to their younger siblings. Since those are the types of kids who most need teachers -- good teachers, passionate teachers -- that's why I'm reticent to say that teaching is a solid "plan B." Because it's a completely different ballgame than going to graduate school to be a literature scholar. There's no comparison. If you're doing it, more power to you, etc. but it sounds like your teaching situation is pretty exceptional. I.e., not what many peoples' experience would be. As for teaching kids of the 1%, this is a lesser of two evils teaching gig for a lot of people. I've heard grad students on this forum and IRL talk about teaching in a prep school or a suburban district as a plan B many times. I don't fault that route at all, but it's a different can of worms. I still don't think it'd be a simple or smooth-as-silk transition, but yeah, actually, coming out of graduate school in literature with a Ph.D., I would think you'd be better prepared for that work than teaching at a public school like the ones near where I live now or where I was teaching. Thank you. That's putting it lightly. None of this is to hate on public schools or being a teacher -- I'm a big advocate of teachers and public education, but I also support teachers' rights and supporting teachers who are passionate about doing that, not just having a plan B that they have no idea about for the event that they don't get a job in academia. I think that's misleading.
  21. I feel like this statement depends on a lot of variable factors. If OP regrets going to a get a Ph.D., OP probably figures her/his case is not exceptional. I'm sure most people with Ph.D.s are employed in some capacity, but I'm sure there are plenty trapped in unfulfilling/depressing jobs or scraping along the poverty line. You can say "just go teach high school" (and I have) but that's not really a unilaterally great thing to tell someone. Teaching high school (well) takes at least as much passion and dedication to do as doing a Ph.D., and in some places (like my city) it's pretty precarious and extremely exploitative work in public education; the alternative being to be lucky enough to find a job teaching the children of the 1% or working in a charter school system that sustains itself by leeching off infrastructure in low income, high crime neighborhoods at the expense of public education and creating a small highly paternalistic industry of piping kids into 4-year colleges with no regard for whether that's the best option for those kids (let alone preparing them to stay in those schools). I have no data to back this up, but I'd imagine that for a lot of places and job markets, having six extra years of school with only some experience TA'ing and leading a class or two at a univeristy (if that) wouldn't put you in a dramatically better place than coming out with a BA (which sucks in a lot of places).
  22. Yup. Just as I was in the ponzi scheme thread, I would be curious hear what people are actually doing, especially since I'm actually in it now. It sounds like OP went to a really similar program as mine; most of the advanced candidates (in their 7th, 8th years) have a pretty similar tone when I've talked to them about shit like this (i.e., hopeless). The department itself seems to think the answer is to be more ivy-like, providing more incentives to finish earlier like offering a nicely paid post-doctoral 2 year lectureship if you finish within a certain number of years that supposedly helps people on the market. But I question the value of even this, even if it means better treatment for grad students (it's not like you can just make more jobs appear on the market by making people a little more competitive). Right now, the big issue is how badly students are treated after their fellowships end, when they teach for adjunct rates and have extremely restrictive caps on their hours for campus jobs when they're trying to finish their dissertations. People are also frustrated because advising is relatively hands off here and emphasizes slow, careful research, but now it feels like to a lot of students like the department is now trying to rush us through. As a first year I've had the same professor tell me to be as inter-disciplinary and exploratory as possible and then two months later turn around and show serious concern that I wasn't trying hard enough to "professionalize." Adjunct professors are completely invisible here. Attrition rates are completely invisible, and the placement tracking is half-assed and opaque. Students have very little say in hiring faculty (though some nominal, minimal concessions have been made this year) too, and while I was all but promised that there was going to be another hire in the period I study this year, it doesn't look like that's going to happen now. Hard to "professionalize" when only 1/4 of the classes you take in your home department over a two-year period are in your field and only one of those is a Ph.D. seminar. Students have been trying to unionize here, but it's also one of those things where the fellowship years, here, aren't that bad (it's a very privileged program in many ways). Silly as it sounds, I sometimes wonder if students were more exploited if there would be more student power, since I can't imagine something like a student teaching strike having much influence here, since there is much less reliance on grad student teaching here than there is at larger universities with bigger undergraduate populations. I guess I would be curious to hear if this account resonates with other peoples' experiences/observations and/or how theirs differ. And, importantly, what people are doing about it.
  23. Word. Right on. This is refreshing to read. Nice to feel a little bit less crazy for once; that I'm not the only one who pretty much felt there was not really so much to lose in doing this. I'm not going to assume OP is an asshole since his/her responses have been infinitely more civil than previous people starting similar threads. I'm going to assume OP is just genuinely curious to know people's thoughts going into this. It's a legitimate question to ask why people dedicate 5-10 years of intense academic study for the possibility of not having any job to show for that sort of training. You don't go get an M.B.A. and then decide to use those people skills to go and be a social worker. Other programs may vary widely, but I know for damned sure that the only sort of "professionalization" that my program really offers is for academic work. And I accept that. It's what I signed up for. I feel bad for people who enter programs like mine with no job experience outside of academia, and/or who come from families of academics that might expect them to follow that same path. That's the kind of background that my knee-jerk reaction would be to judge them for having more privileges and opportunities than me, but whose troubles are no less significant or valid. Because if you count on a program like mine to get you a job in academia because you feel like you literally have no other option, that sucks. So, I mean, while I relate to a lot of these stories, it doesn't mean that I'm not nervous about what happens post-doctorate. It doesn't mean I'm just so enamored with this amazing opportunity and privilege that I'm blind to the reality that I'm giving a lot of years and work to this program that probably won't get me the job that it's so myopically preparing me for. Nor does it mean that I'm actively preparing a "Plan B" with daily or weekly dedication or have a solid plan. So it's still scary, yes. Grad school is cool, but it's also super stressful and alienating, even demoralizing, for kind of intense stretches of time. I don't think it should be demonized, but I also really don't think it should be overly romanticized.
  24. Yeah, I mean... yeah. I wouldn't call OP an "ass clown" (lol), and don't think s/he has been overly hostile or condescending like VM, but I agree with a lot of these points. I hate the "oppression" narrative these conversations sometimes revolve around (which I think has thankfully been avoided in this thread, actually), to the point where they sound almost comical. Like, sorry your little middle class bubble was popped? The economy has been pretty shitty for a lot of us for a minute now, why should we somehow be the exception because of our education levels? This was the whole reason I wasn't going to go to graduate school unless I could be fully funded: if your graduate degree in the humanities is un(der)funded, to me, it simply isn't worth it. It just isn't. Sorry. Re: jobs and teaching outside of academia: yeah teaching in fancy prep schools ain't like, an easy gig to get into, but if you're in a major city, those aren't your only options. In my city, charter schools are booming, especially in low-income areas, and need teachers. As do public schools, like, everywhere; and there are programs in a lot of major cities that provide funding for your MAT if you're willing to do student teaching in local urban public schools. Does a Ph.D. in English prepare you for teaching high school kids? Hell. No. But college-prep schools increasingly value candidates with advanced knowledge of content over simple classroom management experience. Before I came to grad school, I was hired in a public high school in desperate need of teachers and fast-tracked to long-term substitute certification simply because of having a degree in English and a good college transcript: they didn't hire me for teaching experience (I had almost none), but because they thought I would be good at explaining what feminism or reader response theory was to kids. This is a real trend in education right now in a lot of places. The school my partner works at gives preference to applicants with advanced degrees in their fields over applicants with a MAT. It's tricky for a lot of teachers right now, and ethically and systemically complex and often troubling, but the MAT degree, I feel (sad as that is), is increasingly becoming irrelevant in education. I see that strongly in my city right now. Anyway. Being in grad school (applying for fellowships, helping organize panels and conferences, etc.) also gives you a bunch of experience and communication skills that are desirable in the non-profit sector. I think overall employment rates for Ph.D.s are actually not that bad, even if employment in tenure track jobs is: this is the real reason why I'm suspicious of sob stories and exploitation narratives, though I'm not saying there aren't people who are genuinely screwed over by the graduate education machine or that there aren't serious problems in many programs (mine has plenty). Is that disappointment real? Yes, I can only imagine it. But I can't imagine, personally, it being the end of the world (though I can imagine it being that way for many, many people). I identify a lot with @klader 's (did I do that right?) account: going to my program has given me the opportunity to get out of the *actually* exploitative job I was working in a small, economically depressed town post-college and has made it possible to enjoy some extra time becoming a more educated person making connections and a life in a new city where, even outside of the university, even if I ultimately decide to leave or don't end up in academia, I'll still have had more opportunities for having come here. I like reading people's different accounts in this thread, though. I think the premise a lot more productive than "ponzi scheme" thread, which just got so nasty.
  25. I know next to nothing about Depaul and Loyola's English departments, but I know a tiny bit about UIC? Their English department has a pretty interesting mix of faculty, though, from what I hear, Walter Benn Michaels is a very strong presence in the department, and he can be kind of a polarizing dude. But there are great 19th century people there (Kornbluh, Covielo) and the students I've met in the department seem very nice. That's all I really know.
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