\n<\/p>\n
(Program note: In order to reduce the competition for attention, this column\u2019s Monday and Thursday schedule has been changed to Monday and Friday.)<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s post outlined The Girl\u2019s many academic strengths and mourned some changes in the field that make pursuing her preferred career a high-risk enterprise. She\u2019s a wildly talented reader and writer\u2014insightful, distinctive and often funny\u2014who would make a great English professor if the world still offered jobs like those in any meaningful number. She\u2019s looking closely at an information science option. I asked my wise and worldly readers if they had any thoughts on advice I could offer her.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Luckily, I have the best readers ever. Folks responded thoughtfully and graciously. Some highlights and patterns:<\/p>\n
One wise and worldly reader took issue with the assumption that graduate programs are about getting jobs. As he put it,<\/p>\n
\u201cI tell students that, so long as you are going to grad school in a funded program, if no job in academia results, then you\u2019ve had the privilege of spending fiveish years doing something that few people get to ever do. And then, in terms of career prospects, you\u2019re right back where you were when you finished your B.A. Being in a funded grad program will allow you to tread water, financially speaking. So yes, you will be behind your friends from undergrad who went straight into careers and began building up equity in their homes and their 401(k)s, but that is the sacrifice one makes to get to spend time in grad school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Concur in part and dissent in part. (That\u2019s language from the Supreme Court, from back when they used to explain their decisions.) It\u2019s certainly true that the kind of extended reading of academic texts that grad students do is rare outside of the academy. And on good days, there can be real intellectual excitement. But I also remember a lot of posturing, preening, bluffing and one-upmanship that seemed as petty as would be found anywhere else. And while it\u2019s true that a fellowship is a rare privilege, it\u2019s also true that the opportunity cost of subsistence-level living for five or more years is shockingly high. So yes, it can be intellectually rewarding, but I\u00a0suspect there are other ways to get that without being quite so broke.<\/p>\n
Another reader reframed the issue, putting the field of study at the center:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I really believe in the importance of transmitting human culture across generations, then should I maintain that it\u2019s worth doing only when it\u2019s economically expedient? Would I have any real credibility with my students if I seemed to tell them, out of one side of my mouth, that reading Walden<\/em> and Moby-Dick<\/em> is a valuable use of their time and a potential source of future wisdom and happiness, and then also tell them, out of the other side of my mouth, that they should make career choices that are at odds with what they\u2019re gleaning from these books\u2014and also, by the way, not be bothered if those books disappear from their children\u2019s and grandchildren\u2019s civilization?\u201d<\/p>\n It struck me as a variation on the much older idea of a calling. I\u2019m sympathetic to that at some level\u2014when I don\u2019t write for a while, I feel out of tune\u2014but I\u2019ve seen the idea of a calling used to justify appalling levels of exploitation. While TG is wildly talented, she\u2019s also pragmatic; her politics, like mine, are about rejecting poverty across the board, rather than romanticizing it. I consider her clear-sightedness a real strength. She wants to make an adult living, and I don\u2019t blame her one bit.<\/p>\n On the opposite end, one reader suggested that she pick up some training in automotive repair, start working in a shop, and use her communication skills to move up over time. It\u2019s an interesting theoretical point, and it brought back fond memories of Car Talk<\/em>, but I don\u2019t see her doing that. (She confirmed my hunch.)<\/p>\n High school teaching also showed up as a frequent option. Even as professor gigs seemingly vanish into the ether, many states have teacher shortages. As dual enrollment gains ground, opportunities for teaching at least introductory college-level courses may become easier to find. High school is a very different environment, but the option exists.<\/p>\n Several readers\u2019 stories (or their children\u2019s stories) started with traditional academic pathways and veered into institutional research (the in-house research office on campuses) or instructional design. Both fields draw on a general knowledge of the ways that higher ed works, and a rapport with faculty is helpful in both. The job market for instructional designers appears to be much healthier than the market for either librarians or humanities faculty. That may be because instructional design can lead to corporate training jobs, as well as jobs in the academy. A wider scope of potential options is not a bad thing.<\/p>\n Others made the point in various ways that career paths aren\u2019t linear. One mentioned a daughter with a Ph.D. in physics who went on to become a successful patent attorney. Another started trying to be a librarian, switched to the tech world, got a Ph.D. in philosophy and now helps engineers with their people skills. <\/p>\n I had to smile at this argument, because I know it\u2019s true. If you had told me, in the midst of my doctoral program, that I\u2019d spend much of my career in community college administration, I would have looked at you quizzically. Yet here we are. Degrees matter most at the early stage; by a decade or two into a career, it\u2019s not unusual for the job title to be pretty distant from the degree. But TG is at the early stage, so it still matters.<\/p>\n Thanks to everyone who wrote! I was gratified by the generosity of spirit that everyone showed. Best. Readers. Ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Program note: In order to reduce the competition for attention, this column\u2019s Monday and Thursday schedule has been changed to Monday and Friday.) Monday\u2019s post outlined The Girl\u2019s many academic strengths and mourned some changes in the field that make pursuing her preferred career a high-risk enterprise. She\u2019s a wildly talented reader and writer\u2014insightful, distinctive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[8455,1935,862,3684],"class_list":{"0":"post-25776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-advising","9":"tag-girl","10":"tag-readers","11":"tag-respond"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}