Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Should I go to Grad school? If so what for?

Jesus Pimp · 05-09-2004, 03:41 PM

Here something I found the other day..

Quote:

Public Service Announcement regarding Grad School
Here is what graduate school in the humanities is: a gym for intellectuals.

That's it. Just like you can get physically fit without a gym, you can get everything grad school offers and more if you assemble a committed group of colleagues/friends all willing to meet for 6 or more hours a week to discuss books on syllabi you can easily obtain off the Web. You also need the discipline to produce 20 page essays engaging those books in fresh ways within the formats of academic journals in your field of choice. Also, you want to be submitting proposals for panels and talks to conferences in the field. Call yourself an "independent scholar" and be done with it. People do it more frequently than you'd think. If you want to live a life of the mind, it's yours for the living, grad school or not. Of course it is easier to do it with like-minded people who have equipment and experience and a set routine for doing stuff. That's why it's easier to get fit at a gym than at home with Jane Fonda tapes and a bag of Doritos.

Here is what graduate school in the humanities is not: a job path.

Let me repeat that. Do not go to graduate school hoping that somehow, you'll come out with a higher paying job, or even an academic job at the end. That odds are very strong that you won't. It is now common knowledge that all humanities Ph.D. programs have a 5:1 ratio with regard to acceptances versus actual academic jobs available for graduates. Do not whine when you have no backup plan for your life should you become a statistic. Again: no whining allowed.This goes double for all people getting MFA's in creative fields. You want to publish? Start publishing. You want to direct films? Likewise.

Here is why you ought to put off grad school

Grad school is designed to help you augment your already existing intellectual work, not a place to help you figure out what your intellectual work is. This is why most students fresh out of undergraduate life shouldn't be going to graduate school. Here's another thing: lots of smart people don't think of themselves as having intellectual "work," but grad students do. I like being in shape, but I don't look at my body and assess what needs working on, the way a professional athelete does. Grad students sit around and wonder if they'll ever understand Lacan without reading him in French. Smart people just get one of the many fine anthologies where people talk about Lacan and leave it at that. This doesn't make a grad student "better" than a smart person. It makes them different. Do you see?

Here is a reason to go to grad school.

Everyday, people take on lifetime goals like marathon running. Nobody asks them, "What are you going to do with that?" because everyone knows that some things you just gotta do. I'm a huge believer in big goals like marathons, because I think they build character, show you where you stack up in a certain universe, and a million other cliches. I also think that if you hurt yourself, or find yourself absolutely miserable in one sort of marathon, you should try another. Triathaletes are cooler than long distance runners, anyway, just like public intellectuals and documentary filmmakers are much cooler than Ph.D.'s who hide in their office all day . Although I'm hating the end of my dissertation (okay, love/hating, and only because I want to move on) I loved the experience of graduate school. But I've always liked school in general. If this doesn't sound like you, don't go. PLEASE DON'T GO.

The world is as intellectually vital as you commit to making it for yourself. And you know what? You don't need grad school to make it so.