Perhaps the hardest part of being a graduate student is not being something else. You occupy a strange place in the university; you are not an undergraduate to whom the university at least ostensibly caters, and you are certainly not a faculty member. You are a strange combination of student, teacher, apprentice, and employee. Meanwhile, most of your friends from high school and college who did not choose to go to graduate school will be living very different lives. Chances are that they will be living like “adults” long before you are, and you may never catch up to them in lifetime earnings, no matter what their professions. Money is not everything, but you feel it when you don’t have it, and unless you have a trust fund or benefactor, while you are in graduate school you probably won’t.
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Perhaps it is a bit harsh to say that graduate students spend years developing skills that are of no practical use, but I agree that it can be difficult to figure out a ways to translate the skills and knowledge for use in the "real world."
ReplyDeleteThe hardest thing about graduate school, for me and for many other students I know, is feeling that there is always some deadline (or a handful of deadlines) looming. There is always a paper to write for a class or conference, papers or assignments to grade (if I am teaching), fellowship applications to write, large projects to complete. Once at the dissertation stage, it is even harder because you may work all day on something but have very little tangible evidence to show for it.
You may acquire skills but most of them could have been acquired more cheaply and more quickly in other ways.
Delete"The hardest thing about graduate school, for me and for many other students I know, is feeling that there is always some deadline (or a handful of deadlines) looming"
ReplyDeleteGuess what? That feeling never, ever goes away!Perhaps the subject for another post? It goes away for one day, the day you pass your defense, and then you're back to feeling guilty for not spending your "free" time grading papers/applying for jobs and postdocs/prepping for the five classes you're teaching as an adjunct/rewriting a chapter of your dissertation in article form again to submit to journal #3 (because journals #1 and #2 rejected it yet you need more publications on your CV)/e-mailing your committee to update their recommendations because you're on the market (again(...Oh, yeah, and putting your nonacademic resume together -- a truly fun and rewarding task it is to figure out how to sell all the knowledge and skills that have no relation to the jobs you'll be applying for.
Awesome blog!
no kidding! I can't figure out if it's a selection bias (you'd have to be nuts to stay in academia) or if graduate school makes you crazy, but when you get near the upper echelons, you'll find some of the most maladjusted, socially deranged, nutjobs around. No, not everyone, but a lot.
ReplyDeleteWhen I realized how truly miserable my professors were, and that they couldn't even manage their own personal lives well (married couples in the department with one sleeping with a top grad student), I realized this was going nowhere good.
That is possible. What I saw when I was an assistant professor at a 4 year public university (4th tier, was a culture of fear in my department. Everyone was afraid of the Chair, who, essentially, was really corrupt and for the longest time had always gotten his way in everything (obviously, since there was no competititon). I became very disappointed with this environment and ended up leaving. Others also left, but most stayed.
DeleteI did it right at first. I worked for four years out of undergrad (professional writer). During that time, I felt I hadn't mastered my craft, and hadn't done the reading. So I came up with a plan -- I wanted to read as much as possible, write with professional writers as much as possible, and then go into the Peace Corps.
ReplyDeleteI went to a MA in creative writing -- but my deal with myself is I wouldn't pay for it. Got a "journal assistantship" because of my previous professional experience. That meant I was working on an academic journal, gaining important experience when I continued my career. Plus, no debt. Got my master's ... got my Peace Corps appointment ... and then after five years of grad study and travel, headed back to the real world.
Bully for me, of course. My point: If you have a plan, and stick with it, grad school can work out. But don't plan on an academic career, know what you want to learn (and if possible, what professors you want to work with), and you know how those skills will apply when you return to the business world, you could be all right. Also, don't pay for a humanities grad program -- either get the assistantship or don't go.
BTW, I found even the most lefty professors, when I explained my goals, were eager to help.
ReplyDeleteOnce they knew I was not on an academic-career track, but on a learning-skills-and-reading track, they treated me much differently than other grad students. It disarmed them. They'd offer reading suggestions, would teach writing techniques, and would help me in my goals. After all, they knew I was going away.
A postgraduate research qualification will make you overqualified for most jobs. I was surprised to find employers telling me that I was overqualified.
ReplyDeleteThe careers service told me that I was overqualified - the same careers service that told me years ago that a postgraduate research degree is attractive to employers.
Its not worth it.
Overqualified is just a nice way of saying unqualified.
ReplyDeleteThe general treatment by both academia and administrators within it of education is that more is always better, and that's not true. Generally that's not true, and almost patently it's a lie. You know what a Masters degree generally tells me as a hiring manager if you don't have work experience (commensurate on the vacancy I'm trying to fill)?
Expensive, with little to no guarantee of return. Flight risk, because your area of interest is probably niche and unlikely to be fulfilled in a non-academic setting. None of those things make you look more attractive than a candidate who has a proven track record working a job, lacking debt (or the perception of lacking debt), and also is likely going to transition more easily because they're just switching employers, not swapping one state of mind (school) with another (work).
depends. I work as a structural engineer and every senior position in my department is filled by someone with a Master of Science degree. There is one PhD, but she isn't a senior engineer.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the engineering discipline is important. MS in MechE doesn't seem to be as important in THAT field as a MS in Struct. E (I've also got a degree in MechE). This is mostly because Structural is only a graduate degree, guys with CivE bachelor's degrees are woefully unprepared to design structures.
My masters took 3 years, but that was largely because I had to take back courses since my background was in mechanical. I got a job before I graduated though, so it seems to have definitely paid off. Don't get me wrong though, the grocery bagger at the supermarket I go to has a graduate degree in philosophy. The subject does matter.
I'm still paying a psychological cost of graduate school. I was one of two women in my program (I was the "pretty one" in a progressive California campus) and endured a hostile environment, sexual harassment, and non-consensual sexual contact all the time. I felt like a piece of meat being degraded further everyday and it took it's toll emotionally, physically, and mentally. The school has yet to investigate my reports, there is no sexual harassment policy documented, and my grades suffered to the point at which I was almost kicked out. I threatened a lawsuit which kept me in the program with stipulations that I would achieve higher grades.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't expecting any of that when I entered the program and there were plenty of students that had a completely "normal" experience and are shocked at what I experienced.