[Industrialblog,
February 22, 2005]
Bitterness, recovery & other random thoughts
I recall back in grad school running into a Matt Groening cartoon where he did a brilliant take on grad school.
The two items in the cartoon I remembered most --
(1) a character telling you that it's okay to procrastinate on your thesis by "reading another book." It was perfect. I'd been procrastinating half the semester using that exact strategy. You can always do more reading for your thesis. You can always justify one more book, even though in the back of your mind you know you're just putting off until tomorrow what you should be doing today.
(2) a sad-sack character identified as the "bitterest person in the world" -- the grad school dropout. He was identified as "currently unable to enjoy anything." I recalled the enormous fatigue I had that day, well, every day in grad school, the enormous efforts I was making, and I thought, yeah, if I quit, I'd be bitter,
Now, as a three time grad student (two-time quitter) and one-time undergrad, I know something about the topic of university education. I also know better than to argue with someone who's got a bad case of post-grad school bitterness. So I'll just make a promise: Chris, buddy, it gets better. The bitterness will pass, and the light will shine again, and you'll walk in the sun. I can't promise you that you'll walk on the skulls of your enemies. I can't. You probably won't. But I can promise you that you haven't wasted your time in college either as an undergrad or grad student and that what you've learned matters.
*****
Now, to change the subject and no longer applying at all to my co-blogger or to anyone in particular, I want to talk about what a professor of mine used to call the preparation necessary for one to speak. If one is a room of Klingons and you're an 18-year-old kid who has never been in anything more than a playground fist-fight, you are not in a position to speak to them about battle, regardless of the merits of your point of view. If you ignore this advice, you may be immediately initiated into both battle and death in battle. You may also be laughed at with impunity, again regardless of the merits of your argument. However, if one is in a room of fellow 18-year-olds with similar levels of experience, you have every right to speak. Context is important.
In some circumstances, you have to not only earn your right to speak, you have to earn your right to listen. Sometimes I've gotten my nose out of joint forgetting that.
The two items in the cartoon I remembered most --
(1) a character telling you that it's okay to procrastinate on your thesis by "reading another book." It was perfect. I'd been procrastinating half the semester using that exact strategy. You can always do more reading for your thesis. You can always justify one more book, even though in the back of your mind you know you're just putting off until tomorrow what you should be doing today.
(2) a sad-sack character identified as the "bitterest person in the world" -- the grad school dropout. He was identified as "currently unable to enjoy anything." I recalled the enormous fatigue I had that day, well, every day in grad school, the enormous efforts I was making, and I thought, yeah, if I quit, I'd be bitter,
Now, as a three time grad student (two-time quitter) and one-time undergrad, I know something about the topic of university education. I also know better than to argue with someone who's got a bad case of post-grad school bitterness. So I'll just make a promise: Chris, buddy, it gets better. The bitterness will pass, and the light will shine again, and you'll walk in the sun. I can't promise you that you'll walk on the skulls of your enemies. I can't. You probably won't. But I can promise you that you haven't wasted your time in college either as an undergrad or grad student and that what you've learned matters.
*****
Now, to change the subject and no longer applying at all to my co-blogger or to anyone in particular, I want to talk about what a professor of mine used to call the preparation necessary for one to speak. If one is a room of Klingons and you're an 18-year-old kid who has never been in anything more than a playground fist-fight, you are not in a position to speak to them about battle, regardless of the merits of your point of view. If you ignore this advice, you may be immediately initiated into both battle and death in battle. You may also be laughed at with impunity, again regardless of the merits of your argument. However, if one is in a room of fellow 18-year-olds with similar levels of experience, you have every right to speak. Context is important.
In some circumstances, you have to not only earn your right to speak, you have to earn your right to listen. Sometimes I've gotten my nose out of joint forgetting that.
While I got an MS, I also walked away from my PhD after my orals and 8 years of work because I thought the amount of extra stuff one member of my committee wanted was unreasonable. So does that mean I can talk?
I saw recently saw that the average benefit of a college education is something like $700k across a life time. (Sorry I'm not looking of the link right now). The bottom line is that, no guarantees, but that piece of paper is on average worth more than you pay for it.
In my case, I'll admit I cheated: I was starting my business at the same time I was doing my PhD course work. When it came time to kissing butt and sucking up, because I was pretty sure we were going to succeed anyway. I was somewhat bitter, but I got a lot of value in terms of knowlege that I could apply to my work during that time and used it in selling myself to clients.
The difference between the pursuit of my (failed) PhD and my undergrad was that the last degree was basically a business decision. I wasn't old enough to recognize it when I was 18 or 19 - but I did when I was 28. Knowing the value of what I had gotten made it a lot easier for me to walk away from it without big regrets.
You might not know what you want to do when you 18 or 19, but you can complete you work like it matters. I'm hoping I can at least teach my kids that lesson. ;)
Oh, the sun shines. It took a few months, but it was less than a year before the depression ended.
The really funny thing is that I don't have hard feelings against anyone in the department. By and large they're all great people, and those that aren't are decent, if profoundly lazy, people. But I hold no grudges.
My problem is that I saw what academia is like; I saw what publish or perish does to the pursuit of knowledge. I've seen the empty pursuit of something — anything — in order to publish. I've seen the way interesting questions get ignored because they won't yield papers.
And most of all, I've seen the way that all of it is built on the backs of people who want none of it and just want a decent job and have to pay $150,000 in order to get it (or rather, their parents pay it).
I dunno, I can sort of identify with those who have a sense of grad school bitterness. I spent most of my young adult life, from age 18 to age 35, as a professional student. I caught on very early (like, as a college freshman) to the ideological BS of the campus Left— back in those days (the mid 1970s) their power was pretty much confined to the angry demonstration out on the campus mall. Of course, by my last several years, when I was at Duke, I got a front-row seat to one of the epicenters of political correctness. For some reason that made all the academic politicking and infighting, the publish-and-perish, and whatnot, seem orders of magnitude more unappealing than they had before.
To make a long story short, I completed my Ph.D. at Duke, then turned around and went back into pastoral ministry.
I went to grad school in 1990, right after the Berlin Wall fell and while the Soviet Union collapsed. That dose of reality immunized me to academic Marxism. To me it always sounded like dressed-up Sixties' stoner philosophy, anyway. I had two years of fun in grad school, got a master's in English creative writing, and then two shitty years, quitting a Ph.D. program in English and a second master's program, that one in education. I've talked about my grad experience elsewhere in this blog -- I was bitter, until I realized that I'd lost sight of my personal goals. I'd always intended to return to the world, except the womb of academia was so comfortable ...
Super G: Of course you can talk. What were you so close to getting a Ph.D. in? Having the business probably helped -- and so did the rigor of study. $700k probably is an average, and depends on your major. I'd recommend most people today to learn a trade or join the service first, then consider college if they have a strong interest in something.
Chris: Yes, the system is exploitative. That's why it's critical to go to the right school. I wouldn't pay $30k a year or more for a college education in anything that wasn't going to pay off big in terms of professional education and professional contacts.