Lemuel Gulliver wrote:I'm not sure your aunt and her friends' advice makes much sense. Perhaps what they're getting at is that generally speaking, people tend to get job offers 'away' from where they came out of. This is supposed to cut down on nepotism and regionalism, but with the 'Net and airplanes, it's not like academic ideas can't travel from, say, Dallas to Boston. Of course, this doesn't explain the Ivies who have plenty of each others' graduates teaching at the Universities.

From what I've heard from friends who've gone through grad school, the deal is, whatever town you did your grad school in is full of people constantly graduating from that same grad school. Hence the job market in that town is excessively flooded. And there are other towns where they don't have a comparable program, and there you go. You're automatically a bigger fish in a smaller pond when you leave the town that has just graduated you and the rest of your class.

I probably know upwards of 30 people who have Master's or PhD's. Maybe 10 or so of them are current or former coworkers, about half of those with PhD's. Also, I know eBeam. And an ex-girlfriend and former bandmate of mine got her Masters in Film.

Then there's lots of people I know less intimately, though still know them to some extent, folks like Biznono who I believe has a pretty fancy degree of his own, and who I would have probably not thought of had he not just posted ealier today. And other forum posters or their wives, there's at least a couple/few of them that I know.

I've often thought about going back for a Masters, only problem is, it wouldn't be in what I got my bachelors in, so I'd have to get a second bachelors degree first. Kinda daunting. I have no interest in acquiring debt. But at the same time, if I went for EE, that would open up a lot of jobs to me, and also render me able to repair solid-state amps a bunch better than I could now (which is not so much).

Now that I think about it, probably every single guy in most of the meetings I go to for work has at least a Master's degree. So I'm probably well over 30. With the vast majority of them being technical, mostly acoustics though many in physics or some kinda chemistry or ecology or whatever Master's you get for knowing all about pollution.

I can only think of one person who's using their degree to teach, though. And I think of him more as a musician than a teacher. But of course the money has to come from somewhere.

For the record, I currently reside in Saint Louis MO. A fiarly cultered city despite it being ignored by the rest of the country. I will be attending grad school in Atlanta, which is a haven buried in the deep south.

The point I was trying to make in the previous post was, that it is not only challenging to make an impressionable mark on stundents who otherwise may only be exposed to the same malformed shit day after day, but remarkable and heroic.

Poly sci from a good instuctor in Bumblefuck anywhere: priceless.
Could save our country.

Or continue to disregard these people, it's much easier. I don't know if I could do the remarkable thing. But it should not be looked a upon as dispicable.

-Wilson

By the way Ginaandtacos, check back with me in two years. I don't plan on quiting, -the way i see it I can't quit. There is no other option.

-wilson

Geography should never enter into your decision when choosing a graduate program. Not one bit. You will be metaphorically screwing yourself in the ass with neither lube nor reacharound.

The reputation of the institution and your advisory committee make up about 50% of your future ability to get a job. When universities post tenure-track job listings, they get about 500 applications. The first thing they do is go through the pile, throw out 450 of them who aren't from well-regarded programs, and then look at the last 50 in earnest.

I know this for a fact because I have been the grad student representative on three hiring committees in the past 2 years. If you go to some shitty school in New York or California because you think living in New York or California is neat, your application goes straight in the garbage. Ditto for people from Northwest Oklahoma Tech. It's not fair, but it's the way it is.

As for being geographically selective about where you will eventually work, it's a total crapshoot. It's a bit like the military - you join, and then other people tell you where to go for the next 30 years. The idea that you will get to pick and choose where you live/work is ridiculous. You'll probably get one job offer - two or three at most (counting community colleges and other shitty institutions) - coming out of grad school. You go where someone offers to hire you. It's that simple.

My wife defended her dissertation yesterday--she's now officially Dr. Crow.

I earned a MA in 2002.

My wife had a harder job than did I--my grad school was a breeze compared to the PhD.

Ike

SM57 finished grad. school and law school and I know him.

No shit.

Believe it or not, I finished grade school.

It ain't no thang!

I was in grad school and only got my Masters. My old roommate had my masters and was PhD bound but then quit 4 years into his program. He doesn't regret it either.

Another mutual friend of ours did finish his PhD and is now teaching at Vanderbilt. His 1st book just got published by Oxford.

Smartest man I've ever met....fucker.

MajorEverettMiller wrote:Believe it or not, I finished grade school.

It ain't no thang!

This took me a minute to get, but I can assure you that once I got it, it was hilarious.

From the point of view of someone with a PhD in history who has taught at a few different kinds of schools, I think the single most important thing that kept me in school is a fondness for what I study. At times what you study and the way the institution directs you to study it will seem trivial. But the basic subject should interest you in a deep sort of way. If you become a professor, seven months out of the year will be spent having to convince students that you care about that subject; the other months have to be spent convincing, in writing, other academics that you have something new to offer to the field. If you don't want to pursue academics but want the degree you will still have to write a dissertation, which requires serious commitment to the subject even just to make the thing intelligible.

Affection for what you study isn't that different, in the way I mean it, from affection for another person. The annoyances will always be there. But it is crazy to hear your friend say, hey, I graduated from college and felt like I should get a girlfriend. But this having of the girlfriend, it kind of sucks. And everybody else, they seem to drop out of relationships. Should I stay with this girlfriend?

Law school + lawyering, maybe with her promise of later lucre + misery she = the cruel girlfriend who makes for the good lovemaking that can justify the relationship for a while.

But the pay in the arts and sciences is so shitty that you will always feel exploited without deep, even if occasionally hard to summon, affection for what you do.

Getting a PhD in the arts or sciences because it seems like the "thing to do" is a big mistake.

The middle of nowhere job with a 4/4 teaching load: don't apply for it if you don't want to. But then be prepared to participate more fully in academic culture -- and be prepared to do this (the best way is by publishing) at least two years before you're finished. Even if you do that, the middle of nowhere is likely to be your fate considering that the larger percentage of the nation's schools, and a huge number of its best schools (i.e., those likely to give you a light teaching load), are not in its major cities. But in any case, what seems like the middle of nowhere can turn out to be better than the margins of somewhere, or wherever it is that people occupy before realizing that scraping by in a big expensive city is an overrated experience.

Maybe a bigger problem is being single (and not wanting to be) in a small town or city that offers few options for meeting other people. But maybe if you anticipate and fear this scenario, you can find someone among the countless seekers in the big city and reveal to her your lovemaking skills before you pack your bags for the middle of nowhere.

Remember too: you can always quit teaching even after you get the degree. The academic profession is not the army, and not just because few academics know how to fire guns (and in spite of the fact that having a PhD automatically grants you officer status if you ever do decide to join the military).

Teaching bad or indifferent students. Yes, this sucks and everybody complains about it mainly for the reason that grading bad writing is time consuming. But before you let this inevitable experience make the decision for you, think about work situations that you will not experience: having an obnoxious boss or client; having a hellish commute at busy hours five days a week -- not to mention having to report to work five days a week; having to record bands whose music you don't like; getting sued by a patient or client; having a short vacation; working for someone else, and so on. Not that each of these things doesn't come with an occupation that usually has offsetting rewards. But in the grand scheme of things, bad students aren't that bad.

I should also say that one of the complicated things about evaluating the experience of getting a PhD in the arts and sciences is that the degree usually takes six to ten years and occupies your life in your life-changing 20s. When I listen to people talk about getting or trying to get the degree I have a hard time telling which has been the greater cause of misery or happiness or edification or whatever: graduate school or everything else that would probably go on anyway over that long period of tumultuous time. From what I can tell, a lot of people who start PhD programs a little later in life, around or after 30, are happier and quicker to get the degree. Maybe the general drop out rate is so high in part because the drop out rate for a lot of things people tend to experience in their 20s is high.

I do have a more negative take on the subject, but I'm in the midst of a four-month-long summer vacation. I've had writing deadlines lately, but I enjoy the writing. If you like what you're doing, and if you're not paying for it (and you shouldn't be in the arts and sciences since your salary will be too meager to pay off debts), you should ignore the bullshit and the nightmare scenarios, write a dissertation, and see what happens.