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Why revisited

By erik, on April 17th, 2010

I was looking through the archives of this blog, and I found a post from four years ago entitled “Why?” in which I ask grad students, current and former, why they came to grad school and whether they still think it was worth it. A healthy discussion followed. I would like to re-ask the question to those same people and to all the new readers  this blog has acquired since then.  Go read that post, and comment here.

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  • megan

    I went into grad school because I wanted to be an anthropologist, and to really BE an anthropologist, as I understood it, I needed an advanced degree. Also, I switched majors 2 years into college, so I barely fulfilled my course requirements, I didn’t really get to explore the field. It worked out well – I love to teach and I love to learn, so higher education is really an ideal setting for that. The challenge of completing a major project on my own is tough for me – that’s not a skill I’ve developed or been trained in. And the criticism hasn’t always been easy, nor has the job hunt. But having just returned from a national conference I have to say that I love being surrounded by other people interested in researching the human past and thinking about big ideas. I need to keep going to the conferences because those few days of nothing but focused conversations are the fuel to my academic fire. So I am very glad I went to grad school, and I’m happy. Talk to me again after I graduate and have no career prospects :P

  • http://mypage.iu.edu/~bkovitz/ Ben Kovitz

    I’m a Ph.D. student now finishing my second year.

    Why did I enter grad school?

    To spend the rest of my life getting paid to indulge my curiosity and to teach. (*Some* of my professor friends–the happy ones–have told me that that’s how they spend their work life.) I’ve got lots of research ideas, and I’m sure I’ll have many more. Up to now, though, I haven’t had time to pursue them because I’ve been working in industry. People say that in grad school, you focus in great depth on just one thing. I’ve been dreaming for a decade now about about spending a few years focusing on one thing. Grad school is the place for that, so let’s go!

    Has my experience so far lived up to my expectations?

    No. Nearly all my time has been taken up with context-switching. Instead of focusing on one thing, I’ve hurriedly switched back and forth between things. There’s little depth; it’s hurried, superficial learning, worse than undergrad. In two years, I’ve gotten about six weeks of work done, almost entirely during all-nighters. The days are wasted. I have basically lost my ability to concentrate. Often I have had noise in my head: accumulated echoes from mentally carrying around too many unrelated tasks. Even when it’s silent around me, I feel like I’m standing next to a jet engine. I spent all of last summer gradually recovering from the agony of the first two semesters. I couldn’t work, either on school stuff or for money. Three months of quiet helped, but was not enough. Feeling unemployable in that state of mind, and still clinging to the dream of what grad school could be, I transferred departments and gave it a second year. I met a very like-minded professor, assistant-taught in a very good class, and got a tiny bit of research work done: improvement, but overall still awful.

    What are my chances of doing what I want to do?

    Tough to say, actually. Despite the horror of these past two years, I see more clearly what’s involved in the kind of research I want to do, and I want to do it more than ever. Being around other people who know and care about the subjects that interest me is a rare and valuable thing. I’ve finally gotten to indulge my passion for teaching, and it’s clear that I can do well at that. Bottom line, I still want to devote my life to research and teaching. Grad school and professorship might not be the way to do it, though. Whether I’ll continue depends on whether I can find a way around the time-fragmented schedule and work steadily on one thing until it’s done. If I can’t set up a productive work schedule, then I’ll quit.

    • erik

      I went to grad school because I wanted to write and teach, to be surrounded by people who love to think, and love what they do. In many respects, I found these things. In many other respects, I was quite disillusioned by the whole process. I feel like, as I attempt to enter the academic profession, that disillusionment will serve me well, but the cost was high, in time, money and sanity. If I had it to do over, I would still do it, but differently.

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