{"id":12627,"date":"2009-05-19T15:16:03","date_gmt":"2009-05-19T15:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/05\/19\/thinking-of-graduate-school-in-the-humanities-part-ii\/"},"modified":"2009-05-19T15:16:03","modified_gmt":"2009-05-19T15:16:03","slug":"thinking-of-graduate-school-in-the-humanities-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/05\/19\/thinking-of-graduate-school-in-the-humanities-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking of Graduate School in the Humanities? Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

On <\/font>February 9th<\/font><\/a> I linked to Thomas H. Benton's Graduate School in the Humanities:<\/em> Just Don't Go.<\/em>  Today I discovered his <\/font>Just Don't Go Part II.<\/font><\/a>  Prospective graduate students should digest it thoroughly albeit cum grano salis<\/em>.  I don't recommend Benton's piece in order to discourage anyone but to apprise them of what they are up against should they embark upon graduate study.  But if ideas are your passion, and you have talent, and you are willing to live like a monk, take risks and perhaps later on retool for the modern-day equivalent of lens-grinding, then go for it!<\/font><\/p>\n

Here is the question you should ask yourself.  Will I consider it to have been a waste of time and money to have devoted 4-10 years of my precious youth to graduate study if I find that I cannot secure a tenure-track appointment in a reasonably good department in which the chances of tenure are reasonably good and find that I either have to re-tool or become an academic gypsy moving from one one-year appointment to another, or end up as an adjunct teaching five courses per semester for slave wages?<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

If you answer in the affirmative, then you almost certainly should avoid graduate school given a very bad job market that gives every indication of getting worse. But if you love your discipline, have some talent, and your very identity is bound up with being a philosopher, say, then you should take the risk.  I did, and I don't regret my decision for a second.  Of course, I was one of those who secured a tenure-track position right out of grad school and went on to get tenure.  But had I failed to get a job, I would not have considered my time in grad school wasted.  They were wonderful years in a wonderful place: Boston on the Charles, the Athens of America.  I lived on next-to-nothing but avoided debt by tailoring my lifestyle to the modest emolument of my teaching fellowship.  But that's just me.  Philosophy for me is the unum necessarium.<\/em>  I cannot imagine who I would be were I not a philosopher.  For me, no way of life is higher.  I am going to do it one way or another, whether or not I can turn a buck from it.<\/font><\/p>\n

Now if you think like I do, but allow yourself to be cowed by parents and friends and the manifold suggestions emanating from a money-grubbing society in which 'success' is spelled '$ucce$$' and pronounced 'suck-cess' into thinking that you must be 'practical' and put economic and career considerations above all others, then you may wake up one morning a rich shyster or medico but with deep regrets that you didn't have the courage to pursue your dream.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 9th I linked to Thomas H. Benton's Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go.  Today I discovered his Just Don't Go Part II.  Prospective graduate students should digest it thoroughly albeit cum grano salis.  I don't recommend Benton's piece in order to discourage anyone but to apprise them of what they are up against … Continue reading “Thinking of Graduate School in the Humanities? Part II”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-autobiographical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}