Instead of being able to see the work of your hands or the product of your ideas, you can reflect upon the thousands of hours that you spent reading in preparation for your exams, and how quickly the impractical things that you learned in the process slipped from your mind the moment that you completed them. You can meditate on the hundreds of thousands of keystrokes that produced the tens of thousands of words that you typed while staring at an ephemeral image on a screen. After a few years in graduate school, you can print out hundreds of pages of text that you have produced, but looking at a neatly-stacked pile of paper is hardly inspiring. (Would your writing inspire anyone who reads it?) After several years, when you are finally handed a piece of paper in recognition of your efforts, you can step back and contemplate your empty bank account.
Like anything else, Reason #49 also comes down to individual priorities. Bare with me, just playing devil's advocate here...
ReplyDeleteHaving a paycheck at the end of the day is not always it's own reward. Paying the bills is great, but this is also why "the life of the mind" gets hyped up. For some folks, this pursuit is its own reward. I'm not one of those people, but I do think it's necessary to have suffered through that mistake before you really have any perspective on what your priorities are. It's easy enough to claim that we already know what we want (or don't want), but until you've had a few different careers, life experiences, etc., there really isn't anything separating one interest from the next beyond the words of caution someone else has to offer.
Other tangible rewards are equally debatable. If you're the kind of person that needs affirmation, praise, etc., for your efforts, then yes, you won't find much of that in grad school beyond a stack of papers and perhaps a few items you can add to your CV. However, there are just as many professions outside of academia where you won't necessarily have a tangible reward for your efforts either. The only difference in many cases is that your paycheck will mean you're no longer making less than the national poverty figure (<$13K/year); which usually means a better quality of life.
Nevertheless, while some folks might romanticize grad school to compensate for it's obvious failures, it definitely is not for everyone. Moreover, anyone who went to or is considering grad school for the money or for tangible rewards, you won't find it here (except for the professional schools in most instances). Thus, suffice to say, Reason #49 isn't necessarily a reason not to go to grad school as much as it is a warning that if you're the type of person that needs/wants tangible results for your efforts, you'll be very disappointed pursuing the life of the mind.
This is actually a real issue in particularly abstract fields such as math (pure especially) and philosophy. In those cases, even the work of the strongest scholars isn't tangible in any sense beyond words on a page or blackboard scribbles. I think that students become fascinated with the abstract nature of these fields at first, but don't realize that, in fact, they don't really ever get tangible.
ReplyDeleteIn short, it's ok to want work that produces tangible results. It's not a fault of yours, that you don't "appreciate" the work of scholars or want such "pedestrian" results such as something you can hold in your hands at the end of the day. It's just fine to want something tangible for you hard work.
I'm only an undegraduate student and I already feel this way. I feel like everything I'm working for isn't getting anywhere and I don't have any goals or directions in life. All I do is study or write papers no one except the TA is going to read. At the end of the day there's no proof that my bank account will reap the benefits (regardless of what people say money DOES make an impact). I don't think this phenomenon is grad school exclusive but rather the effects of staying too long in school and contributing nothing to society.
ReplyDelete"Bare with me"
ReplyDeleteA Freudian slip perhaps.
I am a first year PhD student and my hard work from my undergraduate degree landed me a 3-year doctoral scholarship that is as worth as much as a lot of people make in entry level positions. The money is rewarding, but there was a lot of satisfaction when I looked at my application, the acceptance letter, and just in being able to say that "I did it!". We also actively publish our work and present at a lot of conferences. I find it rewarding to share my research with people and having something tangible (like a talk or poster) to show.
ReplyDeleteThere is also the idea that your satisfaction of "building that house" comes from outside of school. It doesn't always need to be just from your job. Even though graduate students tend to shun them at times, hobbies can give you this feeling as well.
But maybe I am just a sucker...oh well :)
@Fast Tracker: Congrats on your scholarship, but if it's earning you more than "a lot of people make at entry level positions," I'd wager that you're not in the humanities (primary audience here). The ratio of tangible rewards (like, enough money to pay your electric bill?) vs. intangible has a lot of bearing on one's perspective. It's harder to appreciate the intangibles when your tangible needs aren't being met, and, conversely, it's easier to appreciate the intangibles when you don't have to worry about the tangibles.
ReplyDeleteNobody goes to graduate school because they expect hte tangible reward of a fat paycheck, but because so many graduate students in the humanities end up living on the edge of poverty for such an extended period of time, the intangible rewards that come with research and writing and speaking and even teaching become increasingly difficult to justify, much less appreciate.
The problem isn’t simply the tangibles, i.e., the lack of money. The worst problem about grad school, in the humanities and social sciences, at least, is the intangibles: The fine talk about “the life of the mind” is, depending on the speaker, either a con job, or an expression of pure ignorance.
ReplyDeleteIf you love the life of the mind, have spent any time thinking about ideas, and have shown any initiative in life before being confined to grad school, you will quickly learn that the life of the mind is off limits to you. Your job, while living in abject poverty, is to parrot your idiot professors’ dogmas. And you must submit to politically correct lie after lie about race, sex, history, politics, etc. Thus, unless your field has nothing to do with people, and can be restricted to lab work, you cannot pursue the life of the mind. In the totalitarian antiversity, the truth is verboten.
Honestly, I think that this is a weak reason. First, who says that "contemplating" academic work is not "a satisfying experience." Sure it may not be as tangible as a house, cake, or car, but achievements don't have to be visible to be appreciated. If anything, academic accomplishments are more rewarding, because they can be more lasting. A printed work can be reprinted and reread for decades, while a car is lucky to survive that long, and a cake definitely won't.
ReplyDeleteThis really isn't my favorite, either. In most service jobs, which make up the majority of the American economy (as, okay, you do acknowledge), there are no "tangible" rewards other than money - just the knowledge that you've done a good job forwarding the goal you originally set out to accomplish. I don't see that it's that different whether what you've set out to accomplish is to sell a skirt suit, enforce the law, or write an academic monograph - basically, this post boils down, yet again, to the fact that graduate students are often broke. This is a serious drawback that shouldn't be taken lightly, but it's something you've already said.
ReplyDeleteI think what makes this a legit reason, if you will, is the perception of what grad school is. Students honestly think that they will make this everlasting contribution not just to their field but to all of arts/science/medicine/law/all of the above. Being among the brightest in their classes for year and years you can't really blame them. The problem arises when, slowly and painfully, this is shown to not be the case.
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing to have a dull job where the only tangible benefit is getting paid and to be fully aware of this going into it. It's quite another to think your job will be inspiring and world changing and it turns out not to be the case.
Truer words never spoken.
ReplyDeleteI took a half-hour to write a response here. When I tried to post it, I was sent to an advisory page where I was told for the first time that I had to log in elsewhere in order to post. When I tried to return to what I had written, I found it had been dumped. Surely you can design your site better than that. I had inside information to offer, and your interface trashed it
ReplyDeleteIn other words, your efforts produced no tangible rewards. Did you find that disenchanting?
ReplyDeleteLack of drive and motivation seems to be prevalent in this blog. I came across it searching for an article for my PhD research proposal. I understand that my work will not produce "immediate" tangible rewards, but the rewards that it will produce will be meaningful to me, and to the expansion of the field. Without contributors to a field, there would not be any field. If I had not sought higher education, I too, might have the time to spend on writing 100 justifications on why I did not. Sounds like cognitive dissonance....just sayin'
ReplyDelete"... but the rewards that it will produce will be meaningful... to the expansion of the field."
ReplyDeleteGetting ahead of ourselves, here, aren't we?
One thing you won't see anywhere on this blog, are critics coming back a few years later and confirming how wonderful things have gone with their graduate school experience and/or academic PHD's. I wonder how that "meaningful expansion of the field" turned out 3 years later.
DeleteCan confirm the lack of tangible rewards bit to be incredibly true. I had a job interview the other day where they asked "why do you want to enter this field (marketing) when you are finishing up a Master's degree in English?" I explained how, in academia, you're expected to add to current knowledge in your field and "expand" said knowledge, so to speak, by using your research/readings of text/background knowledge, etc. However, you don't know if anyone will read your argument--will it be a useful part of the field? Will someone see it and think I'd fit in well at their university? You have no idea. I then said, "In marketing, I'd like to use my knowledge and expertise to make a more direct impact. It would be great to use my time and effort to produce positive results not only for myself, but also for your company and your customers."
ReplyDeleteSince then, my motivation to write papers has dropped through the floor. The many papers aren't going anywhere beyond my profs, who probably won't remember reading them in a few months (or weeks, or days, more like).