agjenkins20

two shots overgeneralizes ( right after criticizing for the same)and speaks from a position of authority without experience in the field. the stage makes an impassioned plea which equally overgeneralizes and metaphysicalizes (read: abstracts) though not without expressing some genuine good points. queen bee makes an assertion of disillusionment with a hope towards a show of empathy from the very persons (in part...humanities grads) she somewhat maligns. absurdity abounds though sanity still runs through it.

two shots overgeneralizes ( right after criticizing for the same)and speaks from a position of authority without experience in the field. the stage makes an impassioned plea which equally overgeneralizes and metaphysicalizes (read: abstracts) though not without expressing some genuine good points. queen bee makes an assertion of disillusionment with a hope towards a show of empathy from the very persons (in part...humanities grads) she somewhat maligns. absurdity abounds though sanity still runs through it.

if your PhD program provides you with full funding, that is your job. grad school isn't school, it's work. you work very hard for relatively little pay, but the trade off is that you're spending your day doing something you love, in theory.

the implicit argument in these articles is that grad school requires you to put yourself in debt (it doesn't) and that you're not earning an income or working for 5-7 years (you are). being a PhD student in a humanities program will be my job for at least the next 5 years, maybe longer. after that, if i get a job in academia, great, and if i don't, that's okay too.

now that i have an offer that i've accepted, i'm going to be relatively secure for the next 5 years. not rich, but not worried about losing my job either. can't say the same for professional journalists.

edit:

but beyond that, i agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments of both of the chronicle pieces. the "i just love it so much" argument for pursuing grad school is a bit silly and speaks to someone that hasn't thoroughly considered what they're doing with their futures or why. really and truly, my goal isn't to be a professor. it's to inform people about issues (relating to latin america) that i think are critical and that not enough people are paying attention to. a PhD will hopefully give me some measure of expertise in that area. if i can spread knowledge in a classroom, good. if i can spread knowledge in a policy advising capacity, good. if i can be in the field, getting my hands dirty, good. if i can report to newspapers, good. talking about poverty and sustainable development and race relations and migration, all of that matters to me. what form that takes matters far less.

i hope that this is a good reason to still do a PhD. but again, if i leave after 5 years and need to start over in another career, that's not a big deal. people change careers 3 or 4 times in their lifetime, people start over at much later ages than 30.

he's right, though, that entering grad school expecting to end up somewhere, anywhere in academia is the wrong way to go about it. have other plans that will hopefully still make use of the knowledge and skills you gain with a humanities PhD. i appreciate that he's not trying to sugarcoat it.