Ramus

I'm a big fan of MA programs. More prospective students should consider them. But applicants should only consider fully-funded MA programs (and there are many of them). Telling someone to pursue "the best education they can get," without considering anything else, is, with all due respect, irresponsible advice. OP, I implore you to ignore this line of reasoning. 
To put a finer point on this, if the choice is between the MAPH and not going to graduate school this year, don't go to graduate school this year.

For the love of sweet baby Jesus, do not accept the Chicago MAPH offer. It's not that doing so would doom your academic prospects (and no doubt you'll find examples of MAPH grads who have gone on to do well). It's that no one should pay for an MA in the humanities, let alone one as expensive as Chicago. The entire premise of that program is using Chicago's prestige to prey upon naive, enthusiastic kids who don't know they could go to another school for free. It is a deeply fucked up, shitty practice, and Chicago should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to host that travesty. 
Aside from money, you should know that it is very difficult to get the full MA experience in one year. It takes time to develop intellectually, and the very fact that Chicago tries to compact a program into a year tells you that they are not interested in your academic maturation. 

For the love of sweet baby Jesus, do not accept the Chicago MAPH offer. It's not that doing so would doom your academic prospects (and no doubt you'll find examples of MAPH grads who have gone on to do well). It's that no one should pay for an MA in the humanities, let alone one as expensive as Chicago. The entire premise of that program is using Chicago's prestige to prey upon naive, enthusiastic kids who don't know they could go to another school for free. It is a deeply fucked up, shitty practice, and Chicago should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to host that travesty. 
Aside from money, you should know that it is very difficult to get the full MA experience in one year. It takes time to develop intellectually, and the very fact that Chicago tries to compact a program into a year tells you that they are not interested in your academic maturation. 

I want to push back on this a bit. No offense, but when I see someone with an MAPH degree from Chicago, I see someone who has attempted to buy prestige that they couldn't attain through 'merit' alone.* Having an MAPH is not the same thing as having another graduate degree from Chicago; hell, it doesn't even approach the prestige accorded to an undergraduate degree from Chicago. And if I know the circumstances surrounding the MAPH degree, you can be assured that admissions committees do, too. They may indeed respect Chicago, but they won't look at the MAPH program the same way.
As I've said earlier in this thread, this does not mean that the MAPH necessarily bars you from later academic success. You can get the degree and advance to a good PhD program. But the people that do that are the smart ones who would have gone on to be successful anyway. I have serious doubts that the nominal prestige of the Chicago affiliation has much, if anything, to do with that success. 
You might think of the MAPH as something of a prestige trap. You go there because you want to get a prestigious degree, but they very fact that you've paid for such a degree communicates that you're not entitled to the prestige you sought in the first place. 
 
(* 'Merit,' of course, includes not only the 'actual' merit of an individual's work but also the many other factors, including class-related ones like where you did your undergrad, which affect admission into a PhD program.)

It might be theoretically possible, but it would take a very long post to explain all the ways it's a bad idea. If you want to do law, leave your PhD program and go to law school. You certainly wouldn't be the first to make that decision. But don't do both, at least not at the same time.

For the love of sweet baby Jesus, do not accept the Chicago MAPH offer. It's not that doing so would doom your academic prospects (and no doubt you'll find examples of MAPH grads who have gone on to do well). It's that no one should pay for an MA in the humanities, let alone one as expensive as Chicago. The entire premise of that program is using Chicago's prestige to prey upon naive, enthusiastic kids who don't know they could go to another school for free. It is a deeply fucked up, shitty practice, and Chicago should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to host that travesty. 
Aside from money, you should know that it is very difficult to get the full MA experience in one year. It takes time to develop intellectually, and the very fact that Chicago tries to compact a program into a year tells you that they are not interested in your academic maturation. 

So, I have debated whether to weigh in here. I see a lot of merit to both sides of the debate here ... but my own perspective is very much colored by my own experience. In terms of these debates, I can never come down on one side or the other. Tl;dr: People need to just do what's best for them.
Long version:
I am one of the few people who made it through a lower-ranked program, spent a gazillion horrible years on the job market while a VAP, secured a tenure-track job ... only to lose that TT job when the pandemic began and my university had to make "significant cuts." Last hired, first fired, all that jazz. And I'm not the only one I know who lost a TT job last spring. You can make it all the way and grasp the brass ring only to have it taken away because universities are currently in love with austerity measures and out-of-love with the humanities.
I currently have a nonacademic job doing something else entirely. I don't call this an "alt-ac" job. In fact, I don't really see any merit to calling it anything other than what it is. It's a job. It pays the bills. In fact, it pays me far, far better than anything in academia ever did and--get this--gives me more time to write. I actually have more time to write now, while making more money, than I ever did as a professor. 
I have a feeling that I'm very lucky in that sense, though. I was lucky to land this kind of job in the middle of a pandemic. While I might have been extremely UNLUCKY on the job market, I lucked out in other ways. 
To give more of a rundown:
I come from a working-class background. I didn't go to grad school right out of college. Instead, I worked. I worked at the kind of "soul-sucking" jobs I see that other posters have already described here. I HATED these jobs. Going to grad school was my escape hatch and something I really idealized. I felt that my talents were being wasted in the ordinary working world, and they were--but so are everyone else's. 
I struggled just to get into grad school, and it took me a couple years. I had very few mentors to guide me along the way. My undergrad institutions did not open doors at the best programs. But once I got in, I thrived. I LOVED grad school--all of it. Most of all, I loved the research/writing aspects, which are highly important. 
I think part of what made me successful in grad school was the memory of the "soul sucking" work I'd done beforehand. I didn't want to end up back in that kind of job. Whenever grad school got bad--like my prospectus got shot down for the fifth time, or I got humiliated at a conference--I reminded myself that my life was so much better than the alternative I'd already experienced.
Other than going to a school that wasn't well ranked, I did everything "right" in grad school. I published. I won paper prizes at conferences and from journals. I got research fellowships, etc. etc. But for me, the job market was a brick wall. I came in second or third a few times, often losing to someone who was better pedigreed or younger or had an "Mst" from Oxford or was just a better "fit" or whatever ... In any case, I spent way too long on the job market, and those were the worst years of my life.
After being laid off my academic job, I discovered that finding a nonacademic job was surprisingly easy. This goes against what a lot of others have said here, and obviously YMMV, but I got a lot of interest in my resume and had many job interviews (even in the pandemic!) sometimes because of my PhD. Now, to be clear, part of that, I think, was because I had previous work experience. I'd already demonstrated that I knew how to show up to a job and work five days a week. I had other skills. I'd been successful in the workplace.
So that's one of my biggest recommendations: If you're considering a PhD, get work experience first. Any kind of "professional" type work experience will do. Your future self will thank you. A lot of people here are talking about doing internships during their grad school summers--that wouldn't have worked for me. I needed every ounce of energy to write my dissertation and finish my program while I was still funded. Many of you will also find the same thing is true. Getting a PhD is extremely grueling and takes everything you have. And teaching takes a huge bite of whatever energy you have left.
A couple other pieces of advice:
The job market is never coming back. It's just not. I went to grad school at the beginning of the Recession, and everyone talked about how it would turn around in a few years. It sort of did ... for a year. But not really. What happened was that universities discovered they could get by on less, pay professors less, and exploit people more. Even when the economy came back, universities didn't give a hot fuck. Instead of offering tenured lines, they transitioned to these endlessly renewable lecturer positions. (If you think you'll be happy in one of those once you're done, you won't. Trust me. They pay far less than a TT job and expect one to work much harder. You get treated like a second-class citizen in your department and have zero room for advancement.) 
My prediction is that the pandemic will have the same effect on universities. In the past year, they've figured out how much they can get away with in terms of online teaching and labor diversification. What I see for the future are a very small tenured few and a whole lot of everybody elses, teaching hybrid or online classes to students who figured out that they really don't need a brick-and-mortar to get the piece of paper, thank you very much. And I have to admit that I've been shocked, on some level, to see that people are still trying to apply to graduate school despite these conditions. When most of the programs are flat-out refusing to admit people, that's a sign, guys. They know that the party is over and the music has stopped. 
Going to grad school right now may indeed be really dumb decision. And if these programs were honest and ethical, most of them would have closed their doors already. I mean, my former PhD program isn't publishing their job placement statistics anymore, they're so bad. But they're still admitting people. I find this deplorable. 
Having said that:
I don't regret getting my PhD. 
Yes, that's right. After everything. After losing my TT job in the pandemic, after all the years of exploitation and heartbreak and humiliation, I don't regret it. The experience of having gotten a PhD informs every aspect of my life, and the weird little world to which I was a party was interesting as hell. It gave me a new vocabulary to describe my current situation, which I surprisingly find a lot more bearable than I would have BEFORE I got my PhD. Yes, the work I do is currently very boring and unstimulating. But I'm not as rattled by this as I was in my 20s. Grad school taught me how to look for fulfillment elsewhere. I still write and just had an article accepted to a major journal. I may finish my monograph anyway--we'll see. 
I do regret spending so much time on the academic job market. 
Seriously, give it two years, no more than three. Being on the job market made me a miserable person. It also doesn't get any better. My first year out, I interviewing for 2/2 loads at departments with graduate programs. My last year out, I was viewed as "stale" and tainted by my own VAP experience. (This is how academia thinks--if you don't land a job your first year out, you probably didn't deserve one anyway.)
Also, even though I refused to adjunct, I still allowed myself to be exploited by VAP positions. These schools act as though they're doing you a favor by paying you a salary with benefits. They're not. They're paying you far less and working you far harder than they are their permanent faculty. I wish I had seen this more clearly.
I wouldn't go to graduate school right now. However, no one would have been able to dissuade me from going to graduate school when I did. 
I think a lot of these discussions--in terms of convincing people not to go to graduate school--are largely pointless. People do what they want to do. I've never understood the point of trying to get people to give up on their dreams, because dreams are a highly personal, emotional thing. The me from 2011 wouldn't have been dissuaded from going to grad school regardless of how clearly the data showed I wasn't getting a TT job. Who in the history of the world has ever been persuaded away from such a personal decision by the existence of data? Getting married is usually a bad idea too, and we all have those friends who chose bad spouses, and the decision seemed obviously terrible to everyone looking on. Did they change their minds after hearing our objections? Seeing the data? Lol. Same goes for grad school. You have to experience it for yourself. 
The life of a professor is not all it's cracked up to be.
Others have already said this here, but it bears repeating. Yes, it's rewarding. Yes, it can be fulfilling. Yes, teaching is more interesting than churning out TPS reports. But it's also low-paying and very draining and often demoralizing. I worked far, far harder as a professor--for far less money--than I do now. Moreover, the academic life is one with a lot of roadblocks, in that you work hard for very little payoff. You spend all year writing an article, just to wait six months to get it back with snarky readers reports. You make all the changes the snarky readers wanted and send it back, just to wait another six months and have the article rejected anyway with even snarkier reports. Same with getting your book published. In no other sector did I sink so much time into projects for absolutely no payoff whatsoever (no money, nowhere else to submit, no credit toward anything, no "billable hours," etc.). 
It also goes without saying that academia has deep problems regarding equity and inclusion. I often got treated like a second-class citizen because of where I went to school--and that never stopped, regardless of how many awards I won or where I published. I'm actually glad to be away from that now, because it was just so damn toxic. I got so tired of having to justify my existence in a field that really didn't have any place for "people like me"--despite paying a lot of lip-service to the contrary.
So that's all I've got. And, oh yeah, Karen Kelsky is terrible at what she does for a living. Don't hire her.

Eh, that other post wasn't the most generous or thoughtful thing I've ever written, but I don't think it was self-destructive. I don't see the basis for your attribution of defensiveness to me, though I don't see much value in litigating it.
While I welcome healthy skepticism, your suspicions are misplaced. They seem to have arisen from your reading of what I say I "want": my intent was to express what I value now (in contrast to my undergrad days), not what I desire but am currently lacking. As it happens, my current position is precisely the job that allows me to pay a mortgage, go on vacation, and pursue hobbies and interests. I'm happy with my current situation, and I have a realistic development plan for my career and future (and thus have a decent enough answer to the question you assume I don't know how to answer).
Regarding your second inference, I'll say two things. One, I'm not sure what counts as familiarity with "the demands of working in the private sector" apart from, well, working in the private sector, which I do. Two, I'm not sure why my signature has further added to your paranoia about my credentials, but it should go without saying that a signature on TGC is not a resume. If you want to read through my resume, I can send you a copy to allay your concerns further.
Of course the first bullet is true, and I'd be happy to give a full list of pros and cons of working in the private sector based on my experience.
I couldn't help but laugh as you explained for me the obligations of homeownership. As a homeowner, I know these all too well. (You didn't really think I meant "paying a mortgage" to be an exhaustive description of homeownership, did you?)
Regarding vacations and hobbies, I'll just say that's not been my experience. I clock a firm 9-5 M-F, and I haven't had any vacations intruded upon due to work (though I have no way of knowing if my experience on this is representative). I've actually been able to pursue a new hobby, fly fishing, with the additional time that I now have during the nights and weekends.
You're right, of course, on 401ks, which is why last year I also contributed the max allowable to my IRA and threw additional money into my brokerage account. My point in raising 401ks was that humanities grad students in their 20s aren't thinking about retirement but that they should. 
And regarding the last bullet, again, I'll just have to say that I haven't had to deal with the cult of personality in the private sector that I saw in the university. I'm happy to concede that this may -- likely is -- commonplace elsewhere in corporate America.
Maybe that would have been better, though I've made several posts in the past to that effect. See below.
As far as committees, I was only ever really involved in my subfield-specific grad committee.
I fortunately didn't have any bad relationships with professors that needed remedying. I got along swimmingly with my committee members and those faculty members with whom I took classes. My assessment of the poor mentorship provided by my committee stems from my belief that they'd rather bury their heads in the sand rather than confront the fact that they're "training" their PhD students for jobs that aren't waiting for them. I talk about this experience some in this post:
Like in many programs, my job market training came both in the form of 1:1 advising and in a series of job market workshops. I thought these were both fine, except that, again, they downplayed the likelihood that the department's PhDs wouldn't get TT jobs. The department also sponsored a voluntary, 3-hour workshop on alt-ac job seeking during my tenure.
By the time a typical graduate student would first go on the market, I had resolved not to apply at all, so I can't tell you how competitive I was. I will say that I was completing my dissertation on a topic that would have been considered "trendy" in my subfield at the time I would have applied. 
Finally, there are no "sour relationships" between me and the professors I named. My assessment of those folks was based on my incidental interactions with them, hearing how they treat other graduate students, observations of their contributions to departmental communications, and, in the case of one of the named, their interactions with my wife. These people weren't on my committee, and I have no ongoing relationship of substance with any of them. 
I won't go too much further in what is already a very long post, but regarding "pivoting" I can only say that what worked for me was to pursue internships (against the advice of my professors). By the time I graduated, I had worked two internships with the federal government, one with an education non-profit, and one with the private sector company that is now my full-time employer. Not that I would have expected anyone here to remember this, but I've discussed my experiences preparing to leave higher ed in the following posts: 
 

Sorry you feel that way. Feel free to ignore and continue on the path you're on. I wish you well, and I hope you end up in a stable, well-paying position that brings you security and happiness. Unfortunately, the likelihood of you or anyone else on this forum finding such a position in the professoriate is next to nil, which is why I'm compelled to "proselytize."
I'm not looking for an apology, as things worked out fine for me. Please reserve your condescension for someone else. 
I think you're missing the point. It's not that people aren't intelligent. I was a smart undergraduate, too, just like many on this site. I read about how bad that the job market was before I went. And that wasn't enough to deter me (though it should have been). The issue, I think, is that there is this impulse on the part of professors to encourage their smart undergraduates to pursue PhDs because, well, that's what smart undergraduates should do. They tell their undergrads (as I was told) that they're smart enough to be the exceptions to the trend, or that they can always do something else if it doesn't work out (and you don't need a PhD to do any of the alternatives). The truth is that virtually none of you will be exceptions to the hiring trends, and, if we can agree that's the case, I would argue that pursuing a PhD in the humanities at this time is a mistake.
But, as your reply evidences, most will ignore such warnings anyway (and, for good measure, will likely look on such warnings with derision). Again, I can say that from experience! I was stubborn and self-assured then, too, similarly arrogant in my refusal to listen to those who made it through the process and came out the other side cynical or defeated (so I perceived them then). For those who are like I was then, I reckon there is no getting through. My hope is that if there's someone out there on the fence, wondering if pursuing a PhD's worth the extraordinary degree of personal risk and uncertainty, that that person will simply pursue another option for their future. 
 

Whether you think she's a saint or a skeez, Karen Kelsky is more forthcoming about the fucked up state of academia -- its people, its job prospects, and its insane value system -- than any of the professors I had in undergrad or in my PhD program. For all those considering a PhD, I recommend you spend ten minutes of your time on this video:
While I imagine most of you have heard the horror stories of the job market -- which really has gotten vastly worse in the last year -- I think Kelsky does a better job than most other explanations I've seen in presenting how the whole psychology of the academy works and how professors groom their underlings into trying to stick the whole thing out.
Fwiw, I got out and am much, much happier now. I only wish those of you out there would make the decision that I was too cowardly to make: don't do a PhD at all, and if you're in a PhD now, get out ASAP for your own sake (just say no to the sunk cost fallacy!).

While I caution y'all from placing too much stock in anecdotal data, allow me to share two brief examples of other recent PhD outcomes from my subfield. I imagine you all know the stories about those who end up in adjunct hell, but I wanted to share these two stories because they help illustrate what can happen even when you do everything "right."
Person A: Graduated from the University of Michigan three years ago with two publications in hand, had participated in one of the keynote panels at the national conference in our field, and was well connected with all the big names in our historical period. A brilliant, brilliant guy. Person A won the lottery in his first year on the job market: he got a TT position at one of the better programs hiring that year (an R2 in the Midwest). But Person A has been absolutely miserable in his job. He lives in a place without the intellectual life he enjoyed in Ann Arbor; he lives in a place without any kind of city life; and he's stuck with students who aren't terribly smart or engaged. Every time I talk to person A, he talks about how he wishes he could leave his job but that he feels like he has no way to escape. The takeaway: even when you get achieve "the dream," you may realize that, in reality, it's not quite all it was cracked up to be.
Person B: Is graduating this year from Yale University with two publications and multiple national conference presentations. Person B struck out entirely on the academic job market this year (which isn't saying much, as there were three jobs posted in our subfield). Person B is now scrambling to accomplish the transition to an alternative -- which he had always thought would be an easy one. He's now in a position to graduate with no job lined up, having struck out thus far on "alt-ac" jobs, too. Person B, who had dreams of being the next Stanley Fish, resorted to calling me a couple months back to ask how to break into technical writing, and he now seems resigned to volunteer to gain experience, taking on personal debt in the process. The takeaway: don't buy into "you can just do something else if it doesn't work out," as though employers are waiting around to hire English PhDs. Moving out of higher ed takes time, dedication, and hard work, often requiring you to seek and participate in internships or learn new skills before you can find a job. Though it often gets framed as the easy back-up option, it can take months or years to develop the kind of resume that would make you competitive for the jobs that can put you on a path toward stability.

A lot of excellent points in this thread, that I hope newly-admitted PhD students are taking to heart.  One I will add:
Take advantage of the resources at your school, not just the resources of your program.  Odds are, the people in your program won't know a thing about preparing for a non-academic job.  The vast majority of English faculty at PhD granting institutions have never held/applied for one.  But your school will have tons of resources, and quite probably a whole office, for job placement/development.  Don't dismiss those resources just because they are intended for the undergrads.  Develop a resume alongside your CV and keep both updated accordingly.  Do an internship during your program.  If you make a point of contributing just one thing to each world (ac and alt-ac) in every semester and every summer, then by the time you finish your program, you'll be ready to put your best foot forward regardless of the path you decide to walk (and you'll be better prepared to pivot if you start down a path and realize that it's not what you'd hoped).

While I caution y'all from placing too much stock in anecdotal data, allow me to share two brief examples of other recent PhD outcomes from my subfield. I imagine you all know the stories about those who end up in adjunct hell, but I wanted to share these two stories because they help illustrate what can happen even when you do everything "right."
Person A: Graduated from the University of Michigan three years ago with two publications in hand, had participated in one of the keynote panels at the national conference in our field, and was well connected with all the big names in our historical period. A brilliant, brilliant guy. Person A won the lottery in his first year on the job market: he got a TT position at one of the better programs hiring that year (an R2 in the Midwest). But Person A has been absolutely miserable in his job. He lives in a place without the intellectual life he enjoyed in Ann Arbor; he lives in a place without any kind of city life; and he's stuck with students who aren't terribly smart or engaged. Every time I talk to person A, he talks about how he wishes he could leave his job but that he feels like he has no way to escape. The takeaway: even when you get achieve "the dream," you may realize that, in reality, it's not quite all it was cracked up to be.
Person B: Is graduating this year from Yale University with two publications and multiple national conference presentations. Person B struck out entirely on the academic job market this year (which isn't saying much, as there were three jobs posted in our subfield). Person B is now scrambling to accomplish the transition to an alternative -- which he had always thought would be an easy one. He's now in a position to graduate with no job lined up, having struck out thus far on "alt-ac" jobs, too. Person B, who had dreams of being the next Stanley Fish, resorted to calling me a couple months back to ask how to break into technical writing, and he now seems resigned to volunteer to gain experience, taking on personal debt in the process. The takeaway: don't buy into "you can just do something else if it doesn't work out," as though employers are waiting around to hire English PhDs. Moving out of higher ed takes time, dedication, and hard work, often requiring you to seek and participate in internships or learn new skills before you can find a job. Though it often gets framed as the easy back-up option, it can take months or years to develop the kind of resume that would make you competitive for the jobs that can put you on a path toward stability.

Sorry you feel that way. Feel free to ignore and continue on the path you're on. I wish you well, and I hope you end up in a stable, well-paying position that brings you security and happiness. Unfortunately, the likelihood of you or anyone else on this forum finding such a position in the professoriate is next to nil, which is why I'm compelled to "proselytize."
I'm not looking for an apology, as things worked out fine for me. Please reserve your condescension for someone else. 
I think you're missing the point. It's not that people aren't intelligent. I was a smart undergraduate, too, just like many on this site. I read about how bad that the job market was before I went. And that wasn't enough to deter me (though it should have been). The issue, I think, is that there is this impulse on the part of professors to encourage their smart undergraduates to pursue PhDs because, well, that's what smart undergraduates should do. They tell their undergrads (as I was told) that they're smart enough to be the exceptions to the trend, or that they can always do something else if it doesn't work out (and you don't need a PhD to do any of the alternatives). The truth is that virtually none of you will be exceptions to the hiring trends, and, if we can agree that's the case, I would argue that pursuing a PhD in the humanities at this time is a mistake.
But, as your reply evidences, most will ignore such warnings anyway (and, for good measure, will likely look on such warnings with derision). Again, I can say that from experience! I was stubborn and self-assured then, too, similarly arrogant in my refusal to listen to those who made it through the process and came out the other side cynical or defeated (so I perceived them then). For those who are like I was then, I reckon there is no getting through. My hope is that if there's someone out there on the fence, wondering if pursuing a PhD's worth the extraordinary degree of personal risk and uncertainty, that that person will simply pursue another option for their future. 
 

Whether you think she's a saint or a skeez, Karen Kelsky is more forthcoming about the fucked up state of academia -- its people, its job prospects, and its insane value system -- than any of the professors I had in undergrad or in my PhD program. For all those considering a PhD, I recommend you spend ten minutes of your time on this video:
While I imagine most of you have heard the horror stories of the job market -- which really has gotten vastly worse in the last year -- I think Kelsky does a better job than most other explanations I've seen in presenting how the whole psychology of the academy works and how professors groom their underlings into trying to stick the whole thing out.
Fwiw, I got out and am much, much happier now. I only wish those of you out there would make the decision that I was too cowardly to make: don't do a PhD at all, and if you're in a PhD now, get out ASAP for your own sake (just say no to the sunk cost fallacy!).

As they say, "Office Space is a documentary," lol. 
It really sounds like you did luck out, and that's deeply worth valuing and sticking with. If you like the place where you have to spend 40 hours a week, and aren't pushed to spend more, there's not much more to reasonably ask for. I have many issues with the way industry works under capitalism. However, that doesn’t mean that every company will crush your soul or that you can’t find yourself with good colleagues, interesting work, and reasonable working conditions. Your point later is well taken that there’s a big bias against the private sector among academics, and while I completely understand why that’s the case (since we tend to think in big-picture, systemic terms), it’s also true that those conditions *can be* more humane and opportunities *certainly are* more plentiful there and they shouldn't, for reasons of survival, be discounted. 
Just as you wouldn’t want the person who got lucky and made it to be representative of the academic prospects of the people here, I wouldn’t want people to think that white collar work is a proverbial field of free time and job opportunities and good salaries. It *can* be that. But it fully depends on how you machete your way through a hostile economic jungle, and how lucky you are. You could also end up in an awful, dehumanizing situation with abusive bosses and incredibly tedious work. So you have to do your best to minimize those chances.
My major point here is the one that there are tradeoffs for everything and people need to think carefully about what kind of working life they can find tolerable. Do you need job security? Don’t freelance. Do you hate commutes? Maybe freelancing is worth the job security tradeoff for you. Do you want meaningful, helping-the-world-be-a-better-place work? You will probably want to work with nonprofits (though the nonprofit industrial complex is another ethical minefield as well). Do you really need stellar benefits? You probably need a public sector or solid white collar job, unfortunately. Just as academia is a huge tradeoff in terms of time spent, salary, meaningfulness of the work, and job prospects, so is everything else, and because you need an alt-ac plan no matter who you are, you should consider what you’re willing to give up and what you need. 
I think perhaps I haphazardly stuck nonprofits (which have overworked/underpaid issues) with public sector jobs, which tend to have the problems you're listing. I've worked as a contractor for government organizations and have generally found them my most pleasant (if not well-paying) jobs, but I'm not surprised to hear your report. If, in your personal calculus, you like benefits, job security, and work with a mission better than innovation, flexibility, and keeping busy, you might find it better. Or not! It depends again on the situation. I don't personally mind downtime (there is always personal reading to do!), but I certainly don't like process and procedure-based work and would have likely been miserable there too.
I would say the one thing you're never going to be able to fully avoid is interpersonal drama. That everyone is likely to have to confront at one time or another in any job situation. But everything else is worth thinking about as you try to angle the alt-ac resume all of us are going to need.

There's a lot of great advice on this thread. In the spirit of giving advice in brief and moving on, here's two things about academia and grad school that aren't usually mentioned in these threads:
1) Academia operates according to a prestige economy. Many of you are already familiar with the gist of this prestige economy in your worries about getting into highly ranked schools. But it's also important to understand that you, as a PhD student, are a commodity within this prestige economy. Part of the criteria to be awarded an "R1" designation is the number of doctorates produced by the university. Many faculty members like teaching graduate courses as these courses line up with their research and offer more productive conversations than advanced undergrad courses, and advising graduate students can be a important aspect of professional development if you are looking to move from a tenured job at a less prestigious university to a more prestigious one. As undergrad majors in English decline in number, so too do upper division literature courses...making graduate courses all the more desirable from a professor's perspective. The existence of a grad program adds some intangible value to the prestige of an English department at a public university. This is more true of public universities, especially less prestigious ones, than it is of the Ivies, where the level of prestige is already high. What is true of both public unis and the Ivies is that the research agenda of a professor gets a certain glow or buzz when students they advise, and whose ideas might closely reflect theirs, move on to jobs at other universities. As a professor, you never stop being a part of the prestige economy, so it is natural to want this sort of buzz. Now, do all professors actually articulate to themselves these ideas about how graduate students add to their value within the prestige economy? Absolutely not. And several professors may make intentional decisions to resist the prestige economy's moderation of their desires. I say all this so you know the faculty's incentives are not your incentives. They have incentives to attract you to their program, to keep the number of graduate students admitted high, and to encourage you to stay in academia. Your incentive to get a PhD is very different. Keep this in mind from the moment they woo you when you visit, when they talk about the department like it's a family, and when your department acts like the faculty are constantly looking to good by graduate students.
The only way the "system, political" change that @merry night wanderer rightly points to will come about is if tenured and tenure-track faculty mobilize, strike work, etc., in protest of cuts to the budget and hiring freezes. This will never happen. The faculty (will) only strike work if the university proposes to cut tenure/tenure-track faculty positions. And, whatever, I don't blame them. They have mortgages to pay. Their academic identity is a big part of their self-identity. Cool.
2) Don't let the job market reach backward and influence everything you do from the minute you enter grad school. To my mind, the biggest challenge of grad school isn't that new cohorts of graduate students aren't aware of the job market, but that they are hyper-aware of the job market from the moment they enter, and it hangs over them from semester 1. You feel the need to publish as much as possible, and you push yourself to devote time and energy to this in order to make yourself competitive on the market; you may feel the pressure to go to as many conferences as possible; you may feel the need to take on certain professional development activities or service assignments purely based on how that might play to a search committee. Negative feedback from faculty and peers can weigh you down even more so than normal. When you feel this pressure, ask yourself: is this why you wanted to go to grad school? You cannot outwork or outachieve other candidates. Most of you know the academic job market is not a meritocracy, but many probably don't know that all sorts of small, bureaucratic things determine which candidates are hired by search committees. Most institutions prioritize a certain kind of "fit" and it's almost impossible to say in advance what that fit is: a department may hire so they have someone to teach a very specific course on their curriculum; they may hire to expand their research or teaching diversity in a specific way, they may NOT hire a certain candidate because that candidate expressed a desire to teach a course that another faculty member already loves teaching; they may hire a certain candidate because that candidate can also be a 25% hire in the department of Gender and Sexuality Studies or History or Middle-Eastern Studies since those departments have the budget for that 25%. As this is a buyer's market, search committees will have no trouble finding whatever mix of qualifications they want in a capable candidate. 
So, if you choose to go to grad school knowing the risks, spend your 5-6 years actually doing what you find intellectually satisfying, in addition to preparing for an "alt-ac" job in the ways OP and other posters suggest. The "normal" work of grad school is stressful enough. Don't get into grad school telling yourself you'll do everything you can to be as competitive for an academic job as possible.

This. 
I'm right there with you, @helloperil. I told myself I could have until the five years of funding were up and that I'd bounce if I hadn't finished by then. Now I wish I had yanked the cord earlier. My advice on this point was, alas, of the "do as I say, not as I do" variety. 
Yes, yes, yes. It really sucks, and I feel for those who throw up their hands and say, "I just don't have the time or energy." At one point, I was working 45 hours a week, TAing and working an internship at the same time (and commuting 6 hours a week to the internship, to boot). It was absolutely exhausting and, needless to say, I got virtually no writing done that semester.
I wish more universities would experiment with different ways to get their grad students experience by way of their guaranteed funding. At OSU, we had for a time a one-semester fellowship you could apply for that hooked you up with a local alt-ac internship in lieu of teaching. (This is how I got connected with my non-profit internship.) I haven't heard of any other schools using this model yet, but I thought it was a great idea to get students alt-ac experience without forcing them to chose between taking on multiple jobs and ditching their guaranteed funding / tuition remission to work outside the university. 

Having been around for both the original (2015 was my first year of my doctorate), and being currently on the job market (30 applications, 1 interview, 8 outstanding, in case you want to know how that is), some thoughts in no particular order:
A PhD from a program with substantial resources (note: this is not equivalent to a top program, though there is substantial overlap) is still a worthwhile experience in and of itself. $30-35k yr plus good health insurance isn't nothing in this pre-postapocalyptic hellscape. Plus, I've had multi-month paid trips to Europe each year. My teaching load was light but engaging, and I thoroughly enjoyed the process of researching and writing my dissertation. The experience wasn't stress free, but it wasn't a bad sort of stress. A PhD in the humanities takes more than 5 years. Make sure you're funded accordingly (part of the first point). Going to a program without those resources, one where you have to scrape and claw and hustle to get even your basic needs met, is not a worthwhile experience. It's just volunteering to be exploited based on a lie as to future possibilities. The actual line between the two situations is a bit fuzzy, but err on the side of caution. Do not apply to programs just to make sure you go to grad school. I have very little sympathy for those who have recently finished their PhD and are left jobless or in adjunct hell. This includes some of my own friends. Yes, that's more than a bit brutal to say. But at this point, if you didn't know what the academic job market looked like going into it, that's on you. There are abundant resources that not only provide ample warning as to what lies ahead, but that also explain how to set yourself up for a non-academic career outside the academy, or at least outside a traditional professorship track. If the state of the world on the other side of your degree blindsides you, that's because you ignored several hundred flashing neon warning signs accompanied by air-raid sirens, or thought that, for some reason, they were trying to warn everyone else besides you. Have a plan for your post-degree future before you apply. That plan should both identify several possible career paths, most of which should not be "be a professor", and have intermediate goals that set up those career paths roughly mapped out.  Do not adjunct. Do anything other than adjunct. Hopefully that's useful.

Whether you think she's a saint or a skeez, Karen Kelsky is more forthcoming about the fucked up state of academia -- its people, its job prospects, and its insane value system -- than any of the professors I had in undergrad or in my PhD program. For all those considering a PhD, I recommend you spend ten minutes of your time on this video:
While I imagine most of you have heard the horror stories of the job market -- which really has gotten vastly worse in the last year -- I think Kelsky does a better job than most other explanations I've seen in presenting how the whole psychology of the academy works and how professors groom their underlings into trying to stick the whole thing out.
Fwiw, I got out and am much, much happier now. I only wish those of you out there would make the decision that I was too cowardly to make: don't do a PhD at all, and if you're in a PhD now, get out ASAP for your own sake (just say no to the sunk cost fallacy!).

And I'm over here, virtually screaming, "For the love of God, think about your 401k!" 
In all seriousness, I think it's incredibly difficult to convince 22-year-old humanists that they should care about job security, or money, or work-life balance. At that age, I thought worrying about money and all that was so crass and small-minded. Now, I just want a job that doesn't drive me crazy and gives me the comfort to pay my mortgage, go on vacation (...eventually), and pursue my hobbies and interests.
*Cue Progressive's "We can't protect you from becoming your parents" commercial.*

oh and one more thing, once you're in grad school, you'll be told time and time again that if you want an academic job, you should be prepared to move anywhere for it. when i was a naive 22 year old entering my phd program, i thought to myself, oh sure, i'll move anywhere because i love the profession! now, i'm several years older, i have a partner whose field simply doesn't exist in rural alabama, i've spent several years living and working in the Midwest and i've realized "you know, i don't want to just move anywhere for the pursuit of an academic job. actually, i only really want to live near a major metropolitan area, like where i grew up, and where my partner will actually have job opportunities and ideally i'd like to be driving distance from my family." and if you want to be in academia, you can't be choosy like that.
so that's something to consider and prepare for because a phd is long and life happens and sure, at the beginning of your phd, you think you'd be happy wherever as long as you can pursue an "academic life" but four years into your phd, you realize "an academic life" isn't such an exalted thing anyway and wow i'd really love to live somewhere with a major airport and varied food offerings.
you're all great at writing and have the ability to pivot to jobs like marketing and communications and technical writing which are much more flexible in terms of where jobs are located. i'm not trying to convince folks not to pursue a phd because that's probably not possible, but i really encourage everyone who is entering this year to start building a resume outside of academia from day 1 and go in with the expectation that you will not secure an academic job.
i have a peer reviewed publication, great teaching evals, a stellar history of department service, "trendy" research interests, and excellent relationships with my advisors — all told, i've enjoyed my time here and i will go on the job market (in a limited capacity because i'm not willing to move anywhere). but i have zero expectation of securing an academic job. i'll still probably be crushed when i go on the market and get rejected but at least i'll have been preparing for that rejection for six years. that's all you can really do imo: have no expectations. 

dissertator here (so i've seen several cohorts come and go) and wanted to add something about alt-ac: your department, wherever you end up, will be very ill-prepared to help you transition to alternative jobs or develop skills outside of traditional academic skills. your advisors are people who never had to think about alt-ac; they've most likely been in academia their whole adult lives so even if they mean well, they can't offer you much in preparing for the tremendous likelihood that you will not receive an academic job and will need to pivot and market yourself in a different way '
so basically, you need to be prepared to do your academic work while also developing skills that will make you more marketable in the "real world." i've been developing communications/marketing skills since my first year here through a campus job, which is nice and hopefully will lead to something that can pay the bills after i graduate (i'm one of the suckers who has bought into the sunk-cost fallacy and decided to just finish the phd since i'm already dissertating) but it's also tiring to be seeking out these professional development opportunities on top of normal academic duties 
also, i've seen one person in my program get an R1 job the whole time i've been here. the market is bleak bleak bleak. everyone thinks they will be the exception but that's not how exceptions work. if you're going to enter the phd no matter what, i encourage you to start preparing for alternative employment from day 1 

While I caution y'all from placing too much stock in anecdotal data, allow me to share two brief examples of other recent PhD outcomes from my subfield. I imagine you all know the stories about those who end up in adjunct hell, but I wanted to share these two stories because they help illustrate what can happen even when you do everything "right."
Person A: Graduated from the University of Michigan three years ago with two publications in hand, had participated in one of the keynote panels at the national conference in our field, and was well connected with all the big names in our historical period. A brilliant, brilliant guy. Person A won the lottery in his first year on the job market: he got a TT position at one of the better programs hiring that year (an R2 in the Midwest). But Person A has been absolutely miserable in his job. He lives in a place without the intellectual life he enjoyed in Ann Arbor; he lives in a place without any kind of city life; and he's stuck with students who aren't terribly smart or engaged. Every time I talk to person A, he talks about how he wishes he could leave his job but that he feels like he has no way to escape. The takeaway: even when you get achieve "the dream," you may realize that, in reality, it's not quite all it was cracked up to be.
Person B: Is graduating this year from Yale University with two publications and multiple national conference presentations. Person B struck out entirely on the academic job market this year (which isn't saying much, as there were three jobs posted in our subfield). Person B is now scrambling to accomplish the transition to an alternative -- which he had always thought would be an easy one. He's now in a position to graduate with no job lined up, having struck out thus far on "alt-ac" jobs, too. Person B, who had dreams of being the next Stanley Fish, resorted to calling me a couple months back to ask how to break into technical writing, and he now seems resigned to volunteer to gain experience, taking on personal debt in the process. The takeaway: don't buy into "you can just do something else if it doesn't work out," as though employers are waiting around to hire English PhDs. Moving out of higher ed takes time, dedication, and hard work, often requiring you to seek and participate in internships or learn new skills before you can find a job. Though it often gets framed as the easy back-up option, it can take months or years to develop the kind of resume that would make you competitive for the jobs that can put you on a path toward stability.

@Ramus yeah, that's the thread. It shouldn't surprise any of us that things have become much, much worse since then. Also unsurprising: the current cohort of applicants have the same enthusiasm...and maybe the same conviction that things will be different for them. They will be more "professionalized," they aren't in this for a tenure track job, they really care about the intellectual work for its intrinsic value, and--they know it--they will be the exception.