Wonton Soup

Well, I'm officially wait listed at my top school. Someone, somewhere, is ahead of me and is going to decide whether or not I go there. Who is this person? Don't they know that the job market is bad, or something? I heard you can make a lot of money teaching overseas *nod*

Yes, well I can tell you all my personal reasons for going into academia despite being acutely aware that the field, the humanities, and the university itself are in a state of crisis. After graduating with my MA I worked at some teaching jobs that were not related to higher education. It was absolutely miserable. I could feel my brain degenerating, my coworkers' teaching methods were horrifying, their politics were worse, and I felt like a widget in a giant educational machine. A complete, classic case of alienation. I can't even imagine what it's like in a non-teaching "industry" job. 
 
I'm going into academia because I know it's a place where I can gain some autonomy, become a better teacher and activist, and generally develop as a human in the whole sense of the word. And hopefully contribute to changing higher education itself, because it needs to be changed. Yes, I will try to publish and apply to TT jobs and get tenure, but secretly (gradcafe is anonymous right?) I don't really care if I end up in a non-tenured position at a "non prestigious institution" (the horror!) because 1) I don't buy into that elitist bullcrap, 2) I enjoy teaching in higher ed generally, and 3) whereever I end up, with whatever level of prestige, I plan on stirring stuff up so that hopefully in the future higher ed isn't the way it is now. 
 
To the poster who said "don't be adjunct because adjuncts THEMSELVES are the problem with the discipline" : with all due respect (which is none), 
#$^ off. 

It depends a lot on the students, the size of the course, and the professor teaching the course. Sometimes students will be asked ahead of time to lead a week's discussion; sometimes the prof will do a little kickoff; sometimes it will be all about small group activities; sometimes the prof will guide discussion using questions/comments from a message board everyone writes to before the class; and sometimes it's just open, blank discussion. The number of students in a class will influence what a day looks like, as open, unstructured discussions are generally bad for larger classes (where the loudest students can dominate and others can get lost) and small group activities can't be done in a 3 person class. Also, the personality of the students matters more than in undergrad and can influence a course. 
My favorite grad classes in the past are my favorites because of the other students in them. On the other hand, my least favorite grad class was my least favorite because of the professor, for various reasons. 

After an undergraduate degree of secondary texts and introductory courses, and then a Masters degree of depth, but scattered depth, I embarked on a similar journey. I drafted up a list of big names and their primary texts and went to work on them in a roughly chronological order. It has been very rewarding. A few things:
 
1) Primary texts are the most important. Secondary academic texts are fine and can help you get a bearing when you feel lost, but ultimately your goal should be to be able to read primary texts and discern the crucial ideas yourself. So read Capital, not an academic article talking about Capital. 
2) Like ProfLorax said, quick, broad summaries from random places like wikipedia and the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy can help you get your initial bearings. I also found blogs really helpful at times. Ultimately, you'll get to a point where you see the severe limitations of these kinds of websites, but they are useful. 
3) Be super self-reflective of your learning process. Ask yourself at the end of each chapter what you "got" from it. If the answer is nothing, maybe you weren't paying attention, or the point escaped you, or (frankly) there was nothing of worth in that particular chapter, which does sometimes happen. 
3a) I find drawing "schemas" or maps of a particular author and all the terms and strands of his/her thinking useful.
3b) As a teacher, I find that when I'm forced to teach a concept, I learn it in a deeper way that "sticks." So I have pushed myself to find opportunities to "teach" an author or idea, either in one of my local community book readings or by writing a blog post or something. 
3c) I have adopted my own in-text note taking style that helps me both learn material as I read and find the important passages and important quotations when I come back to the text later. You should experiment too.

grubyczarnykot, as someone who is also wrestling with finding a post-structuralist, semi-Foucouldian semi-Marxian identity, I have sympathy for your predicament. If your description is accurate, I think your profs are doing themselves and others a disservice by being too dismissive. Too much old school Master Critique. My advice is to be honest by articulating with them a similar message that you have here. If they are worth their salt, they will recognize nuance. Just be sure you also know your stuff

Everyone in academia has a mac. It's one of the rules.

I turned down, uh, all the schools I didn't apply to.
 
*fits in*

After an undergraduate degree of secondary texts and introductory courses, and then a Masters degree of depth, but scattered depth, I embarked on a similar journey. I drafted up a list of big names and their primary texts and went to work on them in a roughly chronological order. It has been very rewarding. A few things:
 
1) Primary texts are the most important. Secondary academic texts are fine and can help you get a bearing when you feel lost, but ultimately your goal should be to be able to read primary texts and discern the crucial ideas yourself. So read Capital, not an academic article talking about Capital. 
2) Like ProfLorax said, quick, broad summaries from random places like wikipedia and the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy can help you get your initial bearings. I also found blogs really helpful at times. Ultimately, you'll get to a point where you see the severe limitations of these kinds of websites, but they are useful. 
3) Be super self-reflective of your learning process. Ask yourself at the end of each chapter what you "got" from it. If the answer is nothing, maybe you weren't paying attention, or the point escaped you, or (frankly) there was nothing of worth in that particular chapter, which does sometimes happen. 
3a) I find drawing "schemas" or maps of a particular author and all the terms and strands of his/her thinking useful.
3b) As a teacher, I find that when I'm forced to teach a concept, I learn it in a deeper way that "sticks." So I have pushed myself to find opportunities to "teach" an author or idea, either in one of my local community book readings or by writing a blog post or something. 
3c) I have adopted my own in-text note taking style that helps me both learn material as I read and find the important passages and important quotations when I come back to the text later. You should experiment too.

Yes I would advise anyone to get an MA first. The MA lets you learn and be a part of your field before you get into high-stakes PhD stuff. You get to learn your place in (or maybe out) of the field, and whether academia is what you really want after having a substantial taste of it. Also, you will be a much more competitive applicant. From a departmental perspective, if I were on an adcom, I would push for not admitting any BA applicants to a PhD program because the risk is much higher IMO. 

I'm fine with taking a good long look at what PhD programs train for and asking whether they train for the right things. But I must challenge the partial myth that there is a surplus of PhDs, and that the problem with academia is that there are too many graduate programs. That may be true for some fields, and particularly fields that the university seems to be moving away from (and of course we can challenge whether they should or shouldn't be moving away from those fields), but a large number of courses in higher education are taught by people who have merely masters degrees. A large number of courses in higher education are also taught by people who aren't even in the field that the course is in. We need to be clear about where the problem in higher education lies--in legislatures, in board of trustee meetings and certain administrative offices, in Scott Walker's head, etc.--and not shift the blame somewhere else. 

I'm fine with taking a good long look at what PhD programs train for and asking whether they train for the right things. But I must challenge the partial myth that there is a surplus of PhDs, and that the problem with academia is that there are too many graduate programs. That may be true for some fields, and particularly fields that the university seems to be moving away from (and of course we can challenge whether they should or shouldn't be moving away from those fields), but a large number of courses in higher education are taught by people who have merely masters degrees. A large number of courses in higher education are also taught by people who aren't even in the field that the course is in. We need to be clear about where the problem in higher education lies--in legislatures, in board of trustee meetings and certain administrative offices, in Scott Walker's head, etc.--and not shift the blame somewhere else. 

After much hand-wringing, thought, and dark-night-of-the-souling, I decided to turn down the offer of admission from Brandeis. This was, no lie, the most difficult decision I've had to make, certainly in my college career. But I think it wasn't right for a lot of reasons -- none of which, I might add, had to do with the program. Thank you all to everyone here who helped and offered advice. I honestly didn't know about this place until midway through the application process, when half my apps had gone out. But I plan on sticking around! 

Good luck to everyone who applied/is still waiting on an offer, and I hope that my spot goes to someone great! 

Everyone in academia has a mac. It's one of the rules.

Fellow GCers,please keep this thread busy:Movement in this thread gives me hope about movement out there in the real world.

Yes I would advise anyone to get an MA first. The MA lets you learn and be a part of your field before you get into high-stakes PhD stuff. You get to learn your place in (or maybe out) of the field, and whether academia is what you really want after having a substantial taste of it. Also, you will be a much more competitive applicant. From a departmental perspective, if I were on an adcom, I would push for not admitting any BA applicants to a PhD program because the risk is much higher IMO. 

Everyone in academia has a mac. It's one of the rules.

I turned down, uh, all the schools I didn't apply to.
 
*fits in*

LCB is right to emphasize that rhet/comp is a field made up of very different opinions on what should go on in a writing classroom. But there are some things that the field does agree on, almost unanimously. See: the various position statements of CCC or other organizations within the field. Thus, there are some things that we can rightfully call best practices, and conversely there are some things that are rightfully called bad practices. I believe that those best practices should be imposed on people who teach freshman comp. 
 
Part of the problem implicit in all this is there is a whole strata of people who teach writing without studying it, conceivably without caring about it. In my utopian world, literature graduate students and people with literature degrees would not teach first year composition. But we are not in a utopian world. We are in a very messy and problematic system where literature departments exist economically on the backs of writing programs, and in this world pushing for literature people not to teach comp is essentially pushing literature to wither away into nothingness. Which is at least not my intention, as I value humanities work generally. But lit students should realize that they effectively operate in two fields and that they will have to conform to the methods of that other field when they occupy it.

Everyone in academia has a mac. It's one of the rules.

Haha, Lorax, my thoughts exactly. Too much effort though.

Everyone in academia has a mac. It's one of the rules.

Everyone in academia has a mac. It's one of the rules.

1. It's incredible to be hearing this at the same exact time as I am arguing about the field's complete lack of standardization and top-down approaches. The current pedagogical work in the field is dominated by cultural studies and critical pedagogy and has been for some time.
 
2. That's a problem because the world of higher education is dominated by standardization efforts, so if we don't do anything to standardize a little bit, we'll just lose control of our programs entirely, and Pearson and ETS will swoop in and take over the teaching of writing entirely. Which would you prefer? That some lefty profs do a little research into best practices and provide some minimal structure for the writing classroom in an effort to maintain our disciplinary control over pedagogy? Or that some for-profit entity come in, install a completely standardized syllabus, implement a heavy-handed assessment mechanism, and completely de-professionalize the instruction of college writing? Because those are the alternatives. I'm afraid most people who teach don't enjoy the standing of Toni Morrison at Princeton.
 
3. If you think the average WPA is out to micromanage the teaching of the average writing instructor, I'm sorry, you're just misinformed. I must tell you again that you don't in fact have perfect perspective on the whole world of writing programs.
 
4. I think your complaints about the field and about WPAs have been registered.

It's April!

It's April!