Someone needs to be going through this thread annotating those bits that apply to UKnians, with our rather different postgraduate structures. But not me – I’m taking three days off to make a bookcase for my son and get away from thinking for a time. See ya.

He was a bit too right on the last part—I’m still an early medievalist!

Also, DO NOT PAY FOR THE PHD. Unless you’re really rich.

Kissing ass shouldn’t be necessary. Being nice and collegial really is.

Get your name out there early if you can—go to conferences, etc. I didn’t do this. Mistake. But also, don’t give too many conference papers if it keeps you from finishing in a timely manner. You can always make up time on the paper circuit—especially if you’ve published.

Know that the job market sucks. Unless you really are a superstar, work on your teaching, too.

Grad school is actually hard. Academic life is hard. It doesn’t stop unless you make it stop—you are starting a life that will likely mean no vacations without reading assignments, no plane trips without books, and eternal homework. Grad school is not as hard as being an employed academic, though—but it may be more stressful.

Be lucky.

Don’t do it unless you really want to spend your life in this line of work. Or unless you can afford it.

And I say all these things after working for real money outside of academe. My job is the hardest I’ve ever had. I love it. I can’t imagine not doing it. But it takes a certain kind of crazy to want to be an academic. Are you crazy in the right way?

“I remember feeling an enormous weight lifted when my dissertation was finally defended and I knew it was over.”

You know, I’ve heard this from a lot of people, but I myself never felt this. To be sure, there was a sense of relief in finally getting the disseration done and out of the way. But I still retain some residue of that feeling that it’s still not quite done. In fact I seem to always have a reflexive element in my responses when people ask me about it. “Aren’t you glad your finished?” “Yes, but I should have included X and not included Y, not to mention….”

In short, that feeling of “never quite being done” is still with me – and probably will always be with me to some extent.

Note: Amusing anecdote – my former chair mentioned to me in passing that, for a long time after she finished her Ph.D., she kept all the research data she used in writing her dissertation, for (some irrational fear) that someone would come back later and force her to make additional changes!

And let’s not mischievously conflate all socialization with conformity and abjection, as #24 does. The work of scholarship is always partly social, via sessions at conferences, comments on papers, collaboration of various kinds, and you have to learn how to do this. This means going to every talk in your department that you can, going to defenses, joining dinners with visiting speakers, beginning to make connections with scholars in your area at other institutions, setting up conference panels.

As a grad student you have all the status of a bum, but the opportunity to change that within a few years. The counterpart of Tim Burke’s smart observation that people will no longer pat you on the head for getting an A is that you need to start acting like a scholar with your own program of work and not like a student who jumps through hoops held up by others. Some cynicism is justified. But I can say from experience that the grad students who are most ear-bendingly cynical, and who attribute the success of others to mere politicking, are usually the ones who don’t get this, or who don’t want to make the effort. So to go back to our initial theme, figure out who among the more senior grad students are actually making progress, and ask them how they do it.

It is possible to go insane if you are unable to put an end to grad school. We probably all know people who never ever manage to put that final period on that final sentence. I remember feeling an enormous weight lifted when my dissertation was finally defended and I knew it was over.

Don’t ever pay for a Ph.D. In fact, don’t enter a Ph.D. program unless they’re paying you a stipend to do it. Ph.D.s are not worth taking on massive amounts of debt. They’re worth the hardship of living on less than $20K per annum, but not worth debt.

Not to mention: you’re going to be at an absolutely enormous competitive disadvantage vs. those who have their prefab apartment and ramen noodles paid for. They will write and write while you will work and work.

If you can’t get into a program that gives you a stipend, rework your application and try again next year. Or else don’t do it.

ass-kissing is not necessarily a pre-req for academic success. The top jobs, in my personal experience, go to those who can think and write (I’m talking humanities here), not to the swarmy…

The swarmy (pals of the DGS, advisor haunters) get grad fellowships and awards. The smart get the jobs. When you’re one of 200 that’s applying for a position, it’s going to be the work that gets you over the bar. Not the fact that your advisor likesyou. Almost everyone gets a glowing letter…

I kissed very little ass during grad school and made it through and into a top rate job.

That said, if you’re completely socially dysfunctional, that might be a problem. No one wants that. That’s where the interview comes in (and it does come in… There are a million stories of the person who nets 9 MLA interviews, yielding zero callbacks…)

Try for very, very smart and human. But don’t count yourself out if the idea of frantic “networking” grosses you out. I makes me want to gag, and I did fine.

1) PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences are clogged with kids from liberal arts undergrad programs who are scared shitless of the job market and thus see grad school as a way of delaying adulthood. Forcing everyone to work for 2-3 years between college and grad school would largely take these people out of the applicant pool (they would find that there are indeed things they can do to make a living with an English degree that don’t involve teaching other people who are getting English degrees) – only those with legitimate talent and a real passion for the field would apply.

2) God bless a liberal arts undergarduate education – all that lazy, pensive self exploration is good for the soul – but it sure doesn’t prepare someone to be productive, which is what you need to be to finish grad school in a reasonable amount of time. Spending 2-3 years at a 9-5 (or 9-9) job teaches you how to get shit done.

A young professor without tenure is likely to be around the lab a lot more and work directly with you more, which can be valuable. On the other hand, they might put more pressure on you and want you to work more, and also don’t have the same connections.

On the other hand, the more established professors have the connections to help you out later, but may be so busy with outside things that you only see them once a month.

Talk with several professors, and ask them not just about their work, but also about their expectations of grad students. And talk to current grad students of the professors you are interested in working with. Look at their past students—some professors show a pattern of students taking 7+ years to get their doctorate, others get their students out quicker.

Pick one that treats you well (eg., says “take two weeks off”), give you good advise, you want to listen to, and most importantly has a good track record of happy students. A good adviser and you will enjoy it a lot … a bad one, and you’re better off checking yourself into the insane asylum now.

Just a couple of weeks ago a 4th year committed suicide here, and the only thing I couldn’t fathom was why they didn’t take their crappy adviser with them.