Why did you become an academic?
February 1, 2021 4:11 PM Subscribe
I'm doing research for my novel. If you're a humanities or social science PhD, what made go that route? How did you choose your field? Tell me your story!
I accidentally got a job on a small campus of a university where the education academics encouraged me to keep trying new things. As I developed confidence, they (particularly the program director) gave me more and more difficult tasks involving research. With their support, I did an online degree in Multimedia Studies (pragmatically, because I had a lot of skill already in that area). With changes in staff, and my personal life, I became a freelance Research Assistant and was offered office space at a different university (but with same mentor).
I kept taking on more complex jobs, doing annotated bibliographies and designing graphics for theoretic models, creating professional designs for all levels of schooling. Then, because it was there, I did a Graduate Certificate in Research Studies.
Now, having formatted and edited 13 years of an international academic journal, probably 20 textbooks and over 20 PhDs, I figured - yeah, I can do that. So I had a word with my mentor, and I'm starting my PhD mid-year. I hope that it will be on developing a new methodology to support awateness of preservice teacher self-efficacy, something a little bit like the 50 years of draw a scientist project...
It's important to me that my job/activities add value to the world/community - I would not be a good sales person, but I love data and research (I think that's part of my autism as well).
posted by b33j at 5:47 PM on February 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
I kept taking on more complex jobs, doing annotated bibliographies and designing graphics for theoretic models, creating professional designs for all levels of schooling. Then, because it was there, I did a Graduate Certificate in Research Studies.
Now, having formatted and edited 13 years of an international academic journal, probably 20 textbooks and over 20 PhDs, I figured - yeah, I can do that. So I had a word with my mentor, and I'm starting my PhD mid-year. I hope that it will be on developing a new methodology to support awateness of preservice teacher self-efficacy, something a little bit like the 50 years of draw a scientist project...
It's important to me that my job/activities add value to the world/community - I would not be a good sales person, but I love data and research (I think that's part of my autism as well).
posted by b33j at 5:47 PM on February 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
I've got a humanities PhD and have friends in a variety of fields (mostly humanities though)- I'll answer this a bit generally.
First, some variation hinges on the specific field. For example, most anthropology PhD programs will not accept a student that hasn't already had extensive experience in whatever country they aim to study. Anthro coursework tends to be more thematic/method/theory orientated, so you really need to enter the program with a solid understanding of your specific place. I know a few people who went from either Peace Corps or teaching ESL abroad, to anthro PhD programs- they mostly didn't plan it that way, but really got a deep interest in a given place due to living/working there, and doing a PhD seemed like a logical way to maintain a connection.
Other fields require more foresight. Like say, Classics PhDs (or medieval history) need a lot of language skills. Some programs will require fairly advanced knowledge in ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, French- it's no joke, and pretty impossible unless you enter the program with a good chunk of that language training under your belt. Most of the Classics PhDs I met more or less knew they wanted to specialize in that during their undergrad days (though sometimes the reasons were random, like their first classics professor being amazing).
A good number of people in PhD programs have at least one parent who is a professor. This is definitely not a coincidence.
Some activist-oriented people go to grad school to lend weight to their voice to advance a cause they care about. This is very common in Ethnic Studies/American Studies departments, but certainly not exclusively (and not always). Also in anthropology too.
Some people have a really specific interest, and academia is clearly the only place they'd be able to explore it - like say, slavic poetry from the 1800s.
Some people start as high school teachers, realize they really like teaching, but would rather be more specialized.
As for myself, I thrived as an undergrad, and a few of my professors told me "you'd do well in grad school." This was never my goal, but I graduated shortly before the last recession, and spent a handful of years struggling to find full-time work. When I realized PhDs got paid, that seemed at the time like a good deal (questionable, in hindsight), and so that's why I applied. This is also to point out, timing matters - I likely wouldn't have gone to grad school if I had been able to get a job.
One last point - in my experience, many PhDs somewhat regret their field choice, or at least, fantasize about switching fields. So, a philosopher might wonder if they ought to have been in political science, or someone in English might wonder if they should have been a historian. In grad school, unlike in undergrad, you're much more forced in your disciplinary box in terms of the classes you take, and some people realize that while they had really cool professors in [x] field in college, maybe those were the exception rather than the rule. Most people just end up in whatever field they got a BA in (not always, but mostly). I know I wish I had thought a little more critically before choosing my field, even though I wouldn't say I regret it - but I am rather "undisciplined."
posted by coffeecat at 5:50 PM on February 1, 2021 [3 favorites]
First, some variation hinges on the specific field. For example, most anthropology PhD programs will not accept a student that hasn't already had extensive experience in whatever country they aim to study. Anthro coursework tends to be more thematic/method/theory orientated, so you really need to enter the program with a solid understanding of your specific place. I know a few people who went from either Peace Corps or teaching ESL abroad, to anthro PhD programs- they mostly didn't plan it that way, but really got a deep interest in a given place due to living/working there, and doing a PhD seemed like a logical way to maintain a connection.
Other fields require more foresight. Like say, Classics PhDs (or medieval history) need a lot of language skills. Some programs will require fairly advanced knowledge in ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, French- it's no joke, and pretty impossible unless you enter the program with a good chunk of that language training under your belt. Most of the Classics PhDs I met more or less knew they wanted to specialize in that during their undergrad days (though sometimes the reasons were random, like their first classics professor being amazing).
A good number of people in PhD programs have at least one parent who is a professor. This is definitely not a coincidence.
Some activist-oriented people go to grad school to lend weight to their voice to advance a cause they care about. This is very common in Ethnic Studies/American Studies departments, but certainly not exclusively (and not always). Also in anthropology too.
Some people have a really specific interest, and academia is clearly the only place they'd be able to explore it - like say, slavic poetry from the 1800s.
Some people start as high school teachers, realize they really like teaching, but would rather be more specialized.
As for myself, I thrived as an undergrad, and a few of my professors told me "you'd do well in grad school." This was never my goal, but I graduated shortly before the last recession, and spent a handful of years struggling to find full-time work. When I realized PhDs got paid, that seemed at the time like a good deal (questionable, in hindsight), and so that's why I applied. This is also to point out, timing matters - I likely wouldn't have gone to grad school if I had been able to get a job.
One last point - in my experience, many PhDs somewhat regret their field choice, or at least, fantasize about switching fields. So, a philosopher might wonder if they ought to have been in political science, or someone in English might wonder if they should have been a historian. In grad school, unlike in undergrad, you're much more forced in your disciplinary box in terms of the classes you take, and some people realize that while they had really cool professors in [x] field in college, maybe those were the exception rather than the rule. Most people just end up in whatever field they got a BA in (not always, but mostly). I know I wish I had thought a little more critically before choosing my field, even though I wouldn't say I regret it - but I am rather "undisciplined."
posted by coffeecat at 5:50 PM on February 1, 2021 [3 favorites]
I have a PhD in English. When I finished high school, the fields that interested me were computer science and literature, but I didn't like math so I ran the other way. My sister was doing an MA in English, and it appealed to the pretentious, introverted 17-year-old who loved to read more than just about anything. So I did an English major and a history minor.
I didn't know what to do after I finished my BA and I was probably scared of the "real world," so I stayed in school and went and did an MA. And then a PhD seemed like the logical thing to do after that, and I loved this little bubble I was in where I got to to hang out with people and talk seriously about books and culture and ideas. I did want to be a professor one day, thinking that that was the way to sustain the "life of a mind."
posted by synecdoche at 5:53 PM on February 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
I didn't know what to do after I finished my BA and I was probably scared of the "real world," so I stayed in school and went and did an MA. And then a PhD seemed like the logical thing to do after that, and I loved this little bubble I was in where I got to to hang out with people and talk seriously about books and culture and ideas. I did want to be a professor one day, thinking that that was the way to sustain the "life of a mind."
posted by synecdoche at 5:53 PM on February 1, 2021 [2 favorites]
I have a PhD in English, but am no longer in academia.
My path combines several features of some of the answers above: one super-amazing inspiring prof, encouragement from several others based on my written work, sincere (and deeply self-indulgent) passion for the material, and no freaking clue what else to do with my life as the end of undergrad began to rear its ugly head.
I started undergrad as a "mature student" (though still in my mid-20s), having already pursued training and a career in an arts/performance field, and went back to school as a way to kill time between my creative gigs (thanks, generous student loan program!). I'd always been a book nerd and fancied myself a writer, but for reasons I don't really remember I started undergrad as a history/poli-sci dual major, with vague ambitions of political speech writing and/or international relief work as my future career plans (I'm nothing if not grounded in reality and extremely practical!!) In my third year, I took a seminar on John Donne in the English department entirely on a whim. I needed another writing/language-type credit, I had always liked Shakespeare and shit in high school, and the class fit my extremely idiosyncratic scheduling needs (since I was still trying to work around my performance/rehearsal schedule from my other life). Long story short, this class absolutely took over my brain. I could not BELIEVE how insane and gorgeous and wacky this dude's poetry was, or how fascinating the historical context in which he was writing was, and (even more of a revelation to me) how incredible was some of the secondary criticism and theory we read in the class. I had NO IDEA that that was a job, like, just thinking and writing about literature like that was entirely new to me, and it scratched SO MANY of my own itches that half-way through the semester, I didn't want to do anything else. I switched majors immediately (and stayed in undergrad an extra year to make up for all the time I wasted in polisci classes!). At the end of my third year, I turned in a seminar paper for that Donne class that was very well received by the prof, and in his comments on the paper, he planted the seed that perhaps grad school was something I wanted to consider. I didn't take it seriously at the time, but in November of my graduating year, utterly panicked about the idea of being released into the "real world" in mere months, I revisited the thought and decided to apply. I went to chat to that Donne prof (who I'd taken several other classes with since), and he did me the service of talking to me about the actual reality (and not my fantasy) of what grad school, academia in general, and the current job market specifically, was. It was not at all a rosy picture, but at that point I honestly (thought I) had no better options, so might as well give it a go. Not exactly the most noble or most practical or most thoughtful reason on which to base the next 7 years of your life, but there you go.
I don't regret my grad school time, at all. I am so lucky to have done what I did, and to have done it with the mentors I was gifted. But neither am I convinced it was a wise or healthy move for me, or that I would make the same choices again, if given the chance. Had I been successful in securing an academic job after my PhD, I might, of course, have a more generous interpretation of the situation....
posted by Dorinda at 6:33 PM on February 1, 2021 [3 favorites]
My path combines several features of some of the answers above: one super-amazing inspiring prof, encouragement from several others based on my written work, sincere (and deeply self-indulgent) passion for the material, and no freaking clue what else to do with my life as the end of undergrad began to rear its ugly head.
I started undergrad as a "mature student" (though still in my mid-20s), having already pursued training and a career in an arts/performance field, and went back to school as a way to kill time between my creative gigs (thanks, generous student loan program!). I'd always been a book nerd and fancied myself a writer, but for reasons I don't really remember I started undergrad as a history/poli-sci dual major, with vague ambitions of political speech writing and/or international relief work as my future career plans (I'm nothing if not grounded in reality and extremely practical!!) In my third year, I took a seminar on John Donne in the English department entirely on a whim. I needed another writing/language-type credit, I had always liked Shakespeare and shit in high school, and the class fit my extremely idiosyncratic scheduling needs (since I was still trying to work around my performance/rehearsal schedule from my other life). Long story short, this class absolutely took over my brain. I could not BELIEVE how insane and gorgeous and wacky this dude's poetry was, or how fascinating the historical context in which he was writing was, and (even more of a revelation to me) how incredible was some of the secondary criticism and theory we read in the class. I had NO IDEA that that was a job, like, just thinking and writing about literature like that was entirely new to me, and it scratched SO MANY of my own itches that half-way through the semester, I didn't want to do anything else. I switched majors immediately (and stayed in undergrad an extra year to make up for all the time I wasted in polisci classes!). At the end of my third year, I turned in a seminar paper for that Donne class that was very well received by the prof, and in his comments on the paper, he planted the seed that perhaps grad school was something I wanted to consider. I didn't take it seriously at the time, but in November of my graduating year, utterly panicked about the idea of being released into the "real world" in mere months, I revisited the thought and decided to apply. I went to chat to that Donne prof (who I'd taken several other classes with since), and he did me the service of talking to me about the actual reality (and not my fantasy) of what grad school, academia in general, and the current job market specifically, was. It was not at all a rosy picture, but at that point I honestly (thought I) had no better options, so might as well give it a go. Not exactly the most noble or most practical or most thoughtful reason on which to base the next 7 years of your life, but there you go.
I don't regret my grad school time, at all. I am so lucky to have done what I did, and to have done it with the mentors I was gifted. But neither am I convinced it was a wise or healthy move for me, or that I would make the same choices again, if given the chance. Had I been successful in securing an academic job after my PhD, I might, of course, have a more generous interpretation of the situation....
posted by Dorinda at 6:33 PM on February 1, 2021 [3 favorites]
I always wanted to teach. My dad has a PhD (social science) but didn't work at a university; my older brother also got a PhD (hard sciences). So grad school was always on the table for me as an option, and I'm also in a field that's not taught in high school for the most part. So if I wanted to teach, it would be at the college level. Add all that to the economy crashing my junior year of college and a PhD program seeming like a good place to ride things out and there you have it. My talk with my undergraduate advisor about applying was basically him going "oh good, I don't have to talk you into this."
I love my field and what I do, so I'd say that my main issue in grad school wasn't day dreaming about another field but "what half baked idea do I have for plan B?" (Get hired by a fancy school to teach English and my field as an elective mostly. Later, selling my soul to a tech company. Lately it's been running a bookstore.)
posted by damayanti at 6:35 PM on February 1, 2021
I love my field and what I do, so I'd say that my main issue in grad school wasn't day dreaming about another field but "what half baked idea do I have for plan B?" (Get hired by a fancy school to teach English and my field as an elective mostly. Later, selling my soul to a tech company. Lately it's been running a bookstore.)
posted by damayanti at 6:35 PM on February 1, 2021
I'm in the humanities as an art department chair and professor, though I have a terminal MFA since in the USA the visual arts do not have a PhD.
In college I thought I'd be a lawyer but since there's no set undergraduate major for that career path I went with art as my major but did law internships and took law elective classes and engaged in law-related extracurriculars like parliamentary debate. I did think of art as a backup option, though. I accepted a job in business after graduating undergrad with the intent of studying for the LSATs too and then going to law school. However, I graduated into the 2008 recession and law school started to look less attractive, plus I realized as I worked in business full time that I don't like business cubicle life and for me cubicle life's too similar to the day-to-day of being a lawyer as well. After a couple years working in business, I went back to graduate school to hopefully become an art professor. I did not at that time understand the odds of success - which are abysmal - but I did put in way more effort into my job search than anyone else I knew who was trying, and I exceptionally fortunately landed a position.
I am also very lucky in that I am skilled at and interested in a wide range of disciplines, and I do think I could've been a professor of a number of different subjects; I was genuinely making a decision when I applied for graduate school in art as opposed to another area. I picked art because I thought I'd really like the day-to-day of being an art professor. I was correct. The classes are great for me - they're a whole lot less lecture and a whole lot more active problem-solving, hands-on work, and hanging out than other subjects, all of which I prefer even with the double or more contact hours that are the trade-off. Plus I think I get fewer disgruntled students than some of my colleagues in, say, required math sections. I also prefer the type of research that art professors do.
posted by vegartanipla at 7:50 PM on February 1, 2021
In college I thought I'd be a lawyer but since there's no set undergraduate major for that career path I went with art as my major but did law internships and took law elective classes and engaged in law-related extracurriculars like parliamentary debate. I did think of art as a backup option, though. I accepted a job in business after graduating undergrad with the intent of studying for the LSATs too and then going to law school. However, I graduated into the 2008 recession and law school started to look less attractive, plus I realized as I worked in business full time that I don't like business cubicle life and for me cubicle life's too similar to the day-to-day of being a lawyer as well. After a couple years working in business, I went back to graduate school to hopefully become an art professor. I did not at that time understand the odds of success - which are abysmal - but I did put in way more effort into my job search than anyone else I knew who was trying, and I exceptionally fortunately landed a position.
I am also very lucky in that I am skilled at and interested in a wide range of disciplines, and I do think I could've been a professor of a number of different subjects; I was genuinely making a decision when I applied for graduate school in art as opposed to another area. I picked art because I thought I'd really like the day-to-day of being an art professor. I was correct. The classes are great for me - they're a whole lot less lecture and a whole lot more active problem-solving, hands-on work, and hanging out than other subjects, all of which I prefer even with the double or more contact hours that are the trade-off. Plus I think I get fewer disgruntled students than some of my colleagues in, say, required math sections. I also prefer the type of research that art professors do.
posted by vegartanipla at 7:50 PM on February 1, 2021
Response by poster: These are all awesome and incredibly helpful! Thank you, everyone! More, if you'e got them!
posted by swheatie at 6:47 AM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by swheatie at 6:47 AM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
I was pursuing a PhD in social psychology and was an adjunct professor for 4 years but I am no longer in academia. For me, it was a combination of:
- Respect for my college professors who were the first people to treat me like an intelligent human being with talent and potential rather than some miscreant (which was how I was labeled and treated throughout primary school, despite being a good student academically). Once I got into grad school this was only amplified, so it become the place where I "belonged" and gave me a sense of pride and self.
- Feeling completely out of touch and unfulfilled with the capitalist system that surrounded me: the typical 9 to 5 grind that led to wasteful consumerism that seemed to make everyone miserable and tethered to places and things.
- A really awesome undergrad research methods course that made me realize my brain is endlessly curious and loves conducting research and statistics.
posted by Young Kullervo at 7:34 AM on February 2, 2021
- Respect for my college professors who were the first people to treat me like an intelligent human being with talent and potential rather than some miscreant (which was how I was labeled and treated throughout primary school, despite being a good student academically). Once I got into grad school this was only amplified, so it become the place where I "belonged" and gave me a sense of pride and self.
- Feeling completely out of touch and unfulfilled with the capitalist system that surrounded me: the typical 9 to 5 grind that led to wasteful consumerism that seemed to make everyone miserable and tethered to places and things.
- A really awesome undergrad research methods course that made me realize my brain is endlessly curious and loves conducting research and statistics.
posted by Young Kullervo at 7:34 AM on February 2, 2021
As an academically gifted student with a PhD father AND grandfather, I figured I would also get a PhD about as early as one can start thinking about these things--like, middle school? I was deeply involved in music in HS but decided I didn't want to pursue that as a career. I'd been interested in archaeology and Native American history from childhood, and decided on an anthropology major when I was a HS senior.
During the summer after I graduated HS, I got a letter from the department suggesting that students who still had to meet the general ed foreign language requirement might do so using a "field" language rather than a common European language. I considered Swahili but it wouldn't fit in my schedule so I wound up registering for Quechua, which is why I wound up specializing in the Andes. I added a double major in creative writing, another long-term interest, after it became clear I could easily fulfill the requirements based on courses I was taking out of interest (writing seminars, literature). I was in an elite program at my large state school, took grad-level courses, conducted independent research, worked closely with my writing mentors, did a senior honors thesis in BOTH majors, and got stellar grades, so the expectation to continue on to grad school was never in question.
I did take a couple years off after undergrad to work, and when I was gearing up to apply for grad schools I decided to apply to anthropology departments and not pursue and MFA in creative writing because I could envision myself spending the next 40 years of my life teaching anthropology to 18-yos but couldn't envision spending 40 years in creative writing seminars going over the terrible, terrible poetry that most 18-yo writers put out.
So that's how I wound up with a PhD. I adjuncted for a couple years but never got a tenure-track job so gradually exited academia.
posted by drlith at 8:39 AM on February 2, 2021
During the summer after I graduated HS, I got a letter from the department suggesting that students who still had to meet the general ed foreign language requirement might do so using a "field" language rather than a common European language. I considered Swahili but it wouldn't fit in my schedule so I wound up registering for Quechua, which is why I wound up specializing in the Andes. I added a double major in creative writing, another long-term interest, after it became clear I could easily fulfill the requirements based on courses I was taking out of interest (writing seminars, literature). I was in an elite program at my large state school, took grad-level courses, conducted independent research, worked closely with my writing mentors, did a senior honors thesis in BOTH majors, and got stellar grades, so the expectation to continue on to grad school was never in question.
I did take a couple years off after undergrad to work, and when I was gearing up to apply for grad schools I decided to apply to anthropology departments and not pursue and MFA in creative writing because I could envision myself spending the next 40 years of my life teaching anthropology to 18-yos but couldn't envision spending 40 years in creative writing seminars going over the terrible, terrible poetry that most 18-yo writers put out.
So that's how I wound up with a PhD. I adjuncted for a couple years but never got a tenure-track job so gradually exited academia.
posted by drlith at 8:39 AM on February 2, 2021
[Insert joke about "the money, man..." here.]
I loved my subject from an early age, and never made serious efforts to pursue anything else. I started reading philosophy as a teenager, but ended up working on things very different from that original set of authors. (Went from the existential-literary end to the analytical-sciency end, remaining kinda political the whole time.) I always had wide interests, and philosophy was one of the few places where I could indulge a lot of them while doing challenging work that ran through it all. There are a lot more interesting, fruitful ways to be a philosopher who's really interested in mathematics and chemistry than there are to be a mathematician or chemist with an interest in philosophy.
Academia also promised a more hands-off-if-you're-doing-your-job-well atmosphere, and more horizontal structure in deciding how work should get done than anything else I encountered. A lot of work environments depend on much greater levels of control from above in the name of efficiency (or at least looking like you're acting in the name of efficiency), and I could see that in jobs I had across the spectrum when I was younger. People always tell me how much they love The Office, but I can't watch five minutes of an episode without wanting to put a sledgehammer through the TV. Even as gentle satire, that kind of environment turns me anti-social instantly. At the last temp job I had during grad school, I found myself engaging in light sabotage of the office workflow, just to vent some frustration. Even in doing so, I could see it was making a mess of me and I needed to work elsewhere. But in academia, I do far more work than I'm required to, put out fires and fix leaky boats, and don't miss the time or the money I could have had doing something else. It's a great place for people who are independent and creative (though not for people who just imagine themselves to be).
posted by el_lupino at 11:44 AM on February 2, 2021
I loved my subject from an early age, and never made serious efforts to pursue anything else. I started reading philosophy as a teenager, but ended up working on things very different from that original set of authors. (Went from the existential-literary end to the analytical-sciency end, remaining kinda political the whole time.) I always had wide interests, and philosophy was one of the few places where I could indulge a lot of them while doing challenging work that ran through it all. There are a lot more interesting, fruitful ways to be a philosopher who's really interested in mathematics and chemistry than there are to be a mathematician or chemist with an interest in philosophy.
Academia also promised a more hands-off-if-you're-doing-your-job-well atmosphere, and more horizontal structure in deciding how work should get done than anything else I encountered. A lot of work environments depend on much greater levels of control from above in the name of efficiency (or at least looking like you're acting in the name of efficiency), and I could see that in jobs I had across the spectrum when I was younger. People always tell me how much they love The Office, but I can't watch five minutes of an episode without wanting to put a sledgehammer through the TV. Even as gentle satire, that kind of environment turns me anti-social instantly. At the last temp job I had during grad school, I found myself engaging in light sabotage of the office workflow, just to vent some frustration. Even in doing so, I could see it was making a mess of me and I needed to work elsewhere. But in academia, I do far more work than I'm required to, put out fires and fix leaky boats, and don't miss the time or the money I could have had doing something else. It's a great place for people who are independent and creative (though not for people who just imagine themselves to be).
posted by el_lupino at 11:44 AM on February 2, 2021
I went to a college that was structured very much like grad school--thesis, qualifying exam to get into the major, etc--graduated and told myself "I will apply to jobs that interest me anywhere," and then realized I really liked my life and friends and instead applied to only marginally interesting jobs that were in the city I lived in. After four years in marketing/web content, I realized I needed a jumpstart to another path, and grad school made sense to me--I considered getting an MLS, but talked to undergrad professors and decided to take the leap and try for a PhD in English. I did a freestanding one-year MA first, partly because I'd been out for a while and wanted to make sure of things before diving into the PhD, and then I taught for a year at my MA institution before starting my PhD program.
I was "gifted" in both STEM and humanities fields, and was very strongly pushed toward STEM, both as part of a mania for "women in science" and because, as my father put it, "you can read in your spare time, but you can't do physics in your spare time." By the time I got to college, it was very clear that I in fact wanted to read all the time and that I was happy to let physics fall by the wayside. If I hadn't been so lucky in my career, I might feel differently about that choice, since a person with a physics PhD is certainly much more employable than a person with an English PhD. I have been lucky, though, and I don't regret it (though this doesn't mean I would necessarily counsel a young person today to make the same choice, at least not without a lot more soul searching than I did). My mother had done an MA in English and decided not to do a PhD, so I did have a sense that this was a reasonable career path, but also that there were very real reasons not to pursue it. I've been really lucky and it has worked out very well for me (so far! I'm TT but not tenured, so fingers crossed it continues to), but I also am very aware that academia is a mess these days, and I really really respect those who choose to exit, at whatever stage they do so.
posted by dizziest at 8:42 AM on February 4, 2021
I was "gifted" in both STEM and humanities fields, and was very strongly pushed toward STEM, both as part of a mania for "women in science" and because, as my father put it, "you can read in your spare time, but you can't do physics in your spare time." By the time I got to college, it was very clear that I in fact wanted to read all the time and that I was happy to let physics fall by the wayside. If I hadn't been so lucky in my career, I might feel differently about that choice, since a person with a physics PhD is certainly much more employable than a person with an English PhD. I have been lucky, though, and I don't regret it (though this doesn't mean I would necessarily counsel a young person today to make the same choice, at least not without a lot more soul searching than I did). My mother had done an MA in English and decided not to do a PhD, so I did have a sense that this was a reasonable career path, but also that there were very real reasons not to pursue it. I've been really lucky and it has worked out very well for me (so far! I'm TT but not tenured, so fingers crossed it continues to), but I also am very aware that academia is a mess these days, and I really really respect those who choose to exit, at whatever stage they do so.
posted by dizziest at 8:42 AM on February 4, 2021
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Heartbreakingly, my prof was diagnosed with cancer and passed away halfway through my honours year. But in one of our last meetings, which was at her house because she was sick from chemo, she said something along the lines of: "You should really think about applying to graduate school; you've got the passion and ability and I think you would really enjoy it". I still had no plans, other than finishing the final few credits of my degree, so I was like hmm, why not- and put together an application.
Long story short I was accepted into my program of interest and got a PhD many years and life events later. I am a lot older, and a LOT more jaded about the institution but am still here....!
The tldr answer is: 1) I didn't really have any ambitions and kind of just fell into it; and 2) I was encouraged down that path by a wonderful smart woman who believed I could do it and that it would be a good fit for me.
posted by DTMFA at 5:34 PM on February 1, 2021 [7 favorites]