Erin O'Connor, an English professor at UPenn, has called for stories of "Why I left graduate school." I answered that
here.
But that's a long story, so let me give the fast(er)-read version:
1. Lost sight of personal goals. My initial goal in attending graduate school was to master my craft (writing). Alas, after two years I was not ready to leave. So I signed up for the Ph.D. program (in lit). The goal now was to become a professor of English ... notice the mission creep.
2. Unwillingness to incur debt for such a risky proposition. After two years, my assistantship was cut. And no matter, few people were getting jobs; the few winners found themselves doing adjunct work at multiple universities for pay that didn't add up to much. I was willing to remain poor if necessary, but not incur a serious debtload that I would be unlikely to pay off. After a year in the Ph.D. lit program, I quit.
3. Frustration at program's lack of intellectual seriousness. The profession seemed to lack respect for things verifiable. Example: I showed some of Jacques Lacan's writing to a professional psychologist. Nonsense from a scientific standpoint, the doctor said. Then I took this info to a trusted English professor; he said the science didn't matter. What matters are the answers to the questions, "Is it interesting?" and "Is it provocative?" Same goes for economic theories, political theories, or the application of science of thermodynamics, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I asked: QED, English studies are exercises in bullshitting effectively? The professor agreed with this assessment, and laughed it off.
****
At that point, intellectually my respect was gone for the graduate program. My only goals after that were (1) reform, and (2) economic. After one year in the Ph.D. program, I realized that goal (1) was unrealizable by me. So I left ... and joined the Peace Corps, two years later came home, and got a job. Happily ever after.
*****
Not your typical story, I know. The good news is the story has a happy ending. The marketplace rewarded me for the skills I developed — even some of the stuff I learned in grad school. Ended up doing pretty well.
Bitterness? A lot at first — particularly at the ignorance, the innumeracy, the political ruthlessness, and the cock-eyed theories that took place of genuine liberal learning. But that bitterness waned, particularly with the advent of the Internet and the exposure of the negligent of these faculties to the world.
The bitterness only ended, for good, when I wrote the entry that I linked to
above and realized that I had a great time for two years, which is apparently more than most folks have.
Reading such wonderful blogs as
Invisible Adjunct ,
Critical Mass and others also helped, and let me know that "the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die"* ... that liberal learning activates the imagination of something deep within the soul and that won't be stamped out by all the tenured English professors in the world.
* Yeah, so a conservative quoted Ted Kennedy. What of it? Wanna take this outside?
