Why Permanent Head Damage?

When I was but a a wee one, sitting in an undergraduate intro course that I somehow ended up taking my senior year of college, a very wise Professor launched into "the talk."  This wasn't about the birds and the bees, or even the gentle conversation with struggling students about switching their major to something easier.  No, this was the graduate school talk.

"Take a good, hard look," my Professor warned, "at what graduate students coming out of your intended program look like, because graduate school is all about breaking you down and molding you into someone new.  You want to make certain that you want to be the sort of person that comes out on the other side."

Graduate school, he intoned, was a process of production. It did something to you, trained you to think a certain way, broke you down and built you back up.  And as a graduate student you needed to be intentional about that.



This story stuck with me, and not only because this Professor had had his own doubts about the tenure track slog.  He had flirted one quarter with giving up his assistant professors job at a prestigious R1 University in a sought after big city "to go pick apples."  We were horrified.  There was silence in the classroom when he mentioned it in the context of a political theory lecture, and we protested that the romance of manual labor would quickly wear off.  No, he insisted, apple picking was quite pleasant, he had done it before, and unlike picking other crops one didn't have to bend over so it didn't extract the same physical toll.

Another friend told me when I complained about the adjustment of my first year about her step father's experiences as an adjunct, floating between teaching jobs.  "Don't worry" she commiserated, "You know what he says, PhD stands for Permanent head damage."

Graduate school changes you.  From the perspectives of both those who have completed these programs, and in my own experience. Some of these changes are positive: I have seen profound advances in my writing since going back to the University; I recognize my own ability to think critically at a deeper level, and to approach things with a more subtle, nuanced understanding. I am truly appreciative of this opportunity, but I am also concerned about how graduate school changes me.  I don't want to lose my passion for examining the big picture as I face tremendous pressure to specialize.  The push to publish shouldn't focus my attention toward only the type and style of research I know my profession expects.  All of my time is spent struggling to please expectations that exist only in the narrow hallways of the ivory tower, at the expense of my outside projects that are actually likelier to help me get my non-academic job when I graduate.

Part of my existential angst is that I am one of an increasing number of students who are returning for additional training beyond the BA, but who don't want a tenure track career.  This is problematic because the PhD is not a professional degree like Law or Medicine.  The University is set up to train Professors--that is what it knows and intends to do.   Yet there aren't enough tenure track positions for all the PhDs, and for those who want research training, the MBA and Law school aren't set up to deliver it.  My entire graduate career has been plagued with self-doubt, a feeling I am assured is part of the process and totally normal.  My anxiety around whether I should stay began before I ever even enrolled, and despite being on time, with high grades, great departmental reviews, and a good CV with fellowships, scholarships, award nominations and even a top paper, I question whether I should be here.  On the days I recognize I need more training, I question whether there are better ways to structure a PhD program for the increasing number of non-traditional students.

I remember walking down the hallway of my department at the end of my first year of my MA program.  "Oh my God," it suddenly struck me. "They are trying to turn us into little mini Professor [name removed]s and Professor [name removed]s!" Despite the warnings about graduate school being a process that intentionally produces students in the image of their maker, the full realization was unsettling.

I felt the urge to email my old Professor and clarify that his advice needed an update.  We shouldn't be looking at the graduate students who exit a program, but the type of Professors who run it as the intended model departments strive to create.  And if that was the case, I was going to need some details on his back up plan, and how exactly one went about dropping out to pick apples.