Bart: Look at me, I’m a grad student. I’m 30 years old and I made $600 last year.
Marge: Bart, don’t make fun of grad students. They just made a terrible life choice.
Disdain for graduate students strikes me as a uniquely American phenomenon. In Germany, and I suspect many other nations, it is not at all uncommon or disparaged for those who choose to go to university to continue their schooling into their late 20s or early 30s. But any American plugging along in academia at that ripe age is looked at like a leper at a cuddle party. There are exceptions: doctors are generally appreciated until the medical bill arrives and lawyers are tolerated as a necessary evil. But those seeking an advanced degree that does not in itself qualify one for some specific trade are dabblers, dawdling with minutiae that will never escape the shade of the ivory tower.
I will not deny that I share this bias to a certain extent. When I am outed as a graduate student, I’m quick to mention that I am fully, gainfully employed and shift the subject to the weather or “them Bears”. It’s not that I’m ashamed of being in graduate school or dislike what I do; despite Marge Simpson’s assertion, it’s actually been one of the better life choices I’ve made. It’s more the fact that there are plenty of graduate students who are there to prolong the aresponsible life or put off the workaday routine for another year or six. I simply have no desire or energy to distinguish myself from that flavor of student, so I avoid the topic altogether.
Excised.
Related TOE posts:
- Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head (Maybe)
- Emenai, Master Pen Spinner, Plays Cubefield without Cheats
- John Stormont is Sebastian the Ibis
- On My Morning Jacket, Epiphanies, With Trade Comes Peace, and Jack Kerouac
- Daria Believes in Equal Marriage; Harold and Kumar Believe in Weed.
Who are we supposed to make fun of if not people who made terrible life choices?
This comment was originally posted on Reddit
Congratulations, Master! Nice post. The Department Neck crack made me chortle, which woke up the cat long enough to stretch himself and tuck his head back into the cradle of his belly fur. Lazy, uneducated, unemployed and yet unconcerned and unscorned.
Although the pony tail might fit, the mantle of slovenly, impoverished, demoralized intellectual poseur probably won’t hang too tightly around the neck of those seeking mastery of anything that the Necks deem a Science. The life choice of graduate education is more troublesome for those who seek to parlay their love of literature, or history, or bad coffee and day-old pita, into a lifetime in Academe: the Humanist. The pseudonymous pessimist Thomas H. Benton sums up the misery in Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go.
Thanks, man. I’d read his previous article “So You Want to Go to Grad School” but hadn’t seen this newer one. I love his list of scenarios where going to grad school in the humanities might be reasonable:
“You are independently wealthy, and you have no need to earn a living for yourself or provide for anyone else.
You come from that small class of well-connected people in academe who will be able to find a place for you somewhere.
You can rely on a partner to provide all of the income and benefits needed by your household.
You are earning a credential for a position that you already hold — such as a high-school teacher — and your employer is paying for it.”