In Which I Am the Potatoes
WARNING: Long post follows.
I suppose it is time to write a post about something that has literally been on my mind every day this semester.
I am also thinking about it right now after reading Dr. B’s recent post – particularly, the comments on her post. Oddly (to my way of thinking), no one suggested that she just get the hell out while there’s still time.
The question for me, and it’s not a compelling one, I grant you, is: should I get a Ph.D.?
A corollary to that question is: should I, in pursuing the Ph.D., quit the correspondence grading that is literally making me alternately pissed and a nervous wreck, and working on which I’ve now managed not to do for nearly a week?
The answers to these questions are not simple. I remember when I was coming to grad school in the first place, I read all the “Should I Get An MFA?” articles that get published from time to time. THOSE THINGS DON’T DETER YOU AT ALL. My guess is because it’s so easy to assume that, unlike the person writing the article and philosophizing about the aphorism “An MFA and a buck fifty will get you on the subway?”, I am not a loser. When in fact I am.
I have even scouted the web for articles about Should I get a Ph.D.?
None of this answers my question.
Thus:
PROS:
*I’ve put 7 yrs of my life into this project and have taken on a significant amount of debt. Need return on investment.
*Because of the really outrageous number and astounding variety of writing classes I’ve taught, I have a vast knowledge of which textbooks to use when, strategies for explaining aspects of writing, pilfered worksheets, stolen exercises, and other totally useful paraphernalia. I have the somewhat unique perspective of having seriously studied pedagogical overlaps between the teaching of creative and expository writings. THIS CONCORDANCE OF PAINFULLY ACQUIRED KNOWLEDGE SHOULD NOT GO TO WASTE.
*Sometimes, I love teaching. I love it. I love it. I especially love it when I can get students to go along with something that at first they believe is TOTALLY WACKED OUT but then they get into it and they realize that I have magically prompted them to rethink their entire way of composing sentences and in fact thinking about the world. THAT ROCKS.
*I love it when I have a really good writer in the class and that really good writer totally digs me and I dig her/him and furthermore I KNOW HOW TO HELP THEM. They’re really good, yeah, but I can give them some tips on drawing it all together. And then they make this beautiful thing, this coherent thing. This way of looking at the world, brought to clarity. And I helped to bring that into the world. AND THAT ROCKS TOO.
*I have seven million ideas for classes that would be really, really good.
*I love the books on the list for my exams.
*Critical theory makes me kind of hot.
*I have a Prospective Director who is caring, thoughtful, and brilliant. Plus, bonus: a vegetarian. (Yes, I am an English major, and yes, my project is about the politics of food. Go figure.)
CONS:
>Prospective Director is not in my specialty. Problems ensue.
>I’m sick of hoop jumping and red tape rigamarole. I remember literally bursting into tears in the bookbindery when I was trying to drop off my MFA thesis. Some stupid hangup caused by Totally Not My Fault.
>I AM TIRED. I’ve been doing this for 7.5 years, something like 30 classes and counting. I started teaching a month after I turned 21. I have not slowed down since. In my entire twenties, I have done nothing so steadily as teach.
>When I started, I was very shy and very underauthoritative. And it took a long, long time for me to get over the pain I felt those first couple of years, before I was at least older than most of my students. Some of that pain still lingers. I never feel like what I am doing is good enough. And I am also mad. I came to graduate school to write. I was led to believe that teaching would be a minor time commitment and would not distract me from writing. THIS IS A COMPLETE LIE.
>I have had a full time job. It was a term position. Non-renewable. Also, I didn’t actually have to apply for it. Or interview (don’t hate me). But by god, I held the post. And I showed up each and every day. Except for once. So I have nothing to prove, really. I already won: got to be the young one with a job.
>I’m sick of the administrative bullshit. I’m sick of living on tenterhooks about whether the department will be able to continue to fund me. I’m sick of having to feel grateful when it turns out – days before the semester starts – that they will. I’m sick of not having dental insurance. I’m sick of periodically losing my health insurance. I’m sick about all the bellyaching about the State of the Profession.
>I’m sick, I think, of feeling so powerless. How I am financially obligated to beg for scraps. To keep myself going. So that I can get the Ph.D. That no one is pretending will get me a job.
>I have given up grading. I almost literally feel like I can’t do it, can’t face the angry e-mails from correspondence students screwed once by the ridiculously designed system and twice by me, the Nervous Breakdown Queen, who lately views it as a full day’s work to have had one hour-long interview and one half-hour-long meeting with students. Plus I had to buy a new printer cartridge. ALL ON THE SAME DAY. There’s no time for grading in a day like that.
>Reading the books for my exam research makes me want to write: 1) personal essays. 2) prose poems. 3) fiction incorporating frameworks from my research, and/or historical figures (Fanny Farmer, Julia Child) and 4) sociology. I AM NOT A SOCIOLOGIST. I AM AN ENGLISH MAJOR. I don’t get paid to write sociology, or prose poems. (Though I did once: get paid to write a prose poem.)
>The exam books also make me want to cook. And go to Culinary School. And watch the Food Network all day. (Good thing I don’t have cable.) And travel to foreign countries. And eat an oyster, which I never have. (I am a vegetarian, not a pescatarian. But I would make an exception.) They don’t really make me want to write a marginally interesting dissertation about How An English Lit Major Justifies Thinking About Food. Plus who would hire me? No one advertises for positions in 20th Century Food Writing Analysis.
>I am irresponsible, and I know this. “Colleague” from Dr B’s comments (this person made my blood boil) would so totally be all up in my shit. And it is bullshit, a lot of it – the way I’ll avoid my e-mail if I feel overwhelmed, or will shut down and refuse to grade. And I don’t know how to stop it. (But I have a complicated relationship toward this con. Because there are two or three courses in the world that I could teach better than anyone else. And this is partly because of the same “irresponsibility,” which does have certain benefits in flexibility and innovation.)
>I think I am depressed. Seriously.
>And so much of my adult identity has been bound up in teaching that it feels like a certain amount of the weight of this depression gets funneled through teaching. Teaching has replaced my mother as the major source of guilt in my life. And even though I’m so obviously supercompetent compared to how I have been in the past, I do not know if it will be possible ever to separate teaching from guilt. Or guilt from depression.
>Also, I could totally be a housewife. I could cook fabulous dinners and I would probably even vacuum now and then. (Honey, are you interested? Anytime you want to start paying me to stay home…) Seriously. I was reading Dooce the other day. (You should too. Though I blame her for the spate of capitalizations in this post.) And she is just about my age. And yet I neither own a house nor have manufactured a baby. But that’s not it – it’s that she has a LIFE whereas I still have A LONG PATH INTO THE UNKNOWN. I mean, I have a life – I have an awesome partner, and we have a really great community. But we’re still in this sort of adolescent phase of owning almost nothing of value and having no idea or little say in where we’ll move or when. DADDY STILL GETS TO TELL US WHERE TO GO AND STILL INSISTS WE MAKE CURFEW, if in this case Daddy is the profession.
A Final Thought:
At the Farmer’s Market this summer a totally cute young farmer was selling colored potatoes. I like colored potatoes: you know, yellow ones, blue ones, ones that are sort of reddy-purple. And many of the potatoes were weirdly shaped. With bulges, or sort of V-looking configurations.
I asked the cute farmer why.
He said his soil was really heavy soil: it had a lot of clay in it. And this heavy soil affected the shape of the potatoes. And so I said, oh, is clay good for potatoes? Thinking that the twisted shapes were a side effect of some kind of nutritious additive good for potato meat. But the cute farmer made half a smile. And said, Not really.
I don’t want to grow myself up in toxic soil. I want to see my proper shape! And I can’t tell, can’t tell what’s the clay in the soil, in my case. Is teaching and guilt helping me grow? Or stunting me?
posted by Evie P. @ 2:19:00 AM
5 Comments:
You raise a lot of really good points. (God, that sounds like the opening to a comment on a student paper - how awful! Sorry!)
What I really wanted to say was that I sympathize with the grading thing and in fact have been talking to a counselor precisely about this issue. (Not sure she quite gets why grading should hold this power over someone, though she's very understanding of the anxiety stuff, seeing as she is a professional counselor and all that...) But in any case - that's not intended as a "why don't you talk to someone" comment, that's just to say: yes - I know how that feels.
Some of the things you mention get better once you're done, and some don't. The administrative bullshit doesn't go away, but it's definitely easier to deal with as a prof than as a student. (It's probably even easier to deal with as a tenured prof, but I wouldn't know about that...) I mean, it's still a pain in the ass, but you're not quite as powerless over it - sometimes the bullshit is you getting to shape/control the bullshit, if that makes any sense.
The sense of powerlessness continues, I think, depending on where you are and what the requirements for tenure are, all that good stuff. In practice I presume it continues until tenure. But again, I do find it better being a prof than being a student - you're that much further up the food chain. It does make a difference, but not sure that's sufficient reason to continue.
Anyway, all my sympathies...
It sounds to me, reading what you are writing here, that you like the work (the teaching, at least sometimes, and you're interested in your subject), but the academic bullshit stresses you out. My advice, then, would be to work on separating the bullshit from the stuff that matters to you. (And maybe think about treating the depression.) I had a major "should I finish the Ph.D." crisis which resolved itself more or less when I realized that I wanted to finish for me, because completing the degree was a goal of mine, quite apart from the question of whether it would get me a job. Realizing that also made all the bullshit matter less--it was still frustrating and time-consuming, but it didn't wrap me around the axle any more.
Speaking soley and entirely from my own personal set of issues, I am going to offer a different possibility from New Kid: grad school does suck, yes, and professordom sucks less in a lot of ways (less worry about being judged, but at the same time more crap to do). But I would suggest seriously considering getting the Ph.D. and then not getting a professorial job. Considering whether or not that would be acceptable to you. For me, realizing that yes, that was okay, really helped me to distinguish between whether I wanted the Ph.D. "for" the job, or whether I wanted it "for" me. If you have a different answer (if I'm not going to be a prof, then I sure as hell don't want to waste any more time on this Ph.D. bullshit), then of course the question becomes, well, do you want this job? If so, then finish and keep your fingers crossed; if not, screw it.
Oh, and fwiw, I agree that it's weird that no one is saying "get while the getting's good" (though I did get a private email along those lines). I think it's partly the identity thing: the people offering advice are mostly professors, and we are all (including me) very reluctant to advise people to leave the system (maybe b/c it scares us?). Also, the truth is that one can always leave, but having left, it is very hard to go back. And I suspect that David Horowitz notwithstanding, the academic mindset is essentially conservative: better a bird in the hand, etc.
well i didn't want to sign in, so i have to post anonymously.... I'll say 'do what you want?', i want to be have a ph.d., i have no necessary commitments to being a professor or anything after that, but then i really like my job now, so we'll see. the other thing i'll say is that i'm on a list called work WRK4US out of the wilson foundation, which is about post-ph.d. in the humanities and social sciences non-academia careers, and let me tell you, there are tons of people ph.d.s that are just as happy outside of academia as inside. There is a cultural break between insider and outsider and you can't see everything from either position, and academics are notoriously risk averse.
If it were me, I'd finish, then worry about the future. Or perhaps, like i actually do, i'd finish while working on another job.
Oh, Blurt, I think we've all struggled with a lot of the things that you write about in this post. One thing I would consider is this: if what you really want to do is write, perhaps you should consider taking a leave of absence from your program for one year and devote yourself to the writing? I realize that might not be financially possible, but it sounds to me like that is really where your passion lies - that the things you're reading for your degree are inspiring you to create something of your own and not something critical (and yes, the critical can be creative bla bla bla but you see what I'm saying). If you want to be an English professor, the job doesn't offer a lot of room for that - at least pre-tenure, and I'm not sure if post-tenure there is more room in that area.
I don't know. I've got a Ph.D. in English and I'm glad I did it but I knew that I was committed to the whole shebang - not just the literature but even to the bureaucracy of colleges and all of that, too. If you don't know that, then you could consider whether you could translate the PhD into a non-academic job (which might be a better fit and which would probably give you more time for writing) or you could consider whether the PhD is worth it at all to you. You already have the MFA - why did you decide to pursue the PhD after that? What attracted you in the first place when you already had a terminal degree? (my apologies if you posted on this elsewhere.... I don't remember.... brain fried from end of semester)
I can totally relate. I'm much closer to the beginning of the PhD trek than the end, but I'm already thinking such thoughts. I saw your comment on Bitch PhD's post and am comforted by the presence of an entire community of frustrated academics out there. They may not have the answer, but they can relate! Your teaching experience sounds amazing, though. Although not related to your precise worries, I think you should try to focus on what you've accomplished...for example, getting over a lot of your shyness, or the amazing teaching you could bring to any institution...and realize that whatever you decide, you haven't been wasting your time. That's what I try to do!
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