The biggest lie about graduate school and the Professoriate is the bull they feed you about what Benton (2010) calls the Big Lie of the Life of the Mind. This narrative paints a picture of the academy as the only worthwhile place for those who value intellectualism, and one worthy of so much sacrifice as to justify the lowest of salaries. The academy is presented as a place of respite from a stupid, ugly world where you can go to ruminate on ideas. While everyone else is proving themselves smarter than a fifth grader, or out grubbing for money, you are thinking peer reviewed deep thoughts.
I don't know where you are going to graduate school, but I constantly feel like I am in a cubicle with those guys at Inotech. My department is all about increasing graduate student productivity, and running us through every benchmark of degree progress as quickly and efficiently as possible. There is little time to explore ideas, follow your passion, or even develop your own work. In my nightmares, I see Lumbergh hanging over Peter's desk asking "How's that conference paper coming?" and telling me "I'm going to need you to come in on Saturday." There has been a speeding up of life as a graduate student. In scarce funding environments, increased enrollments, and budget cuts, graduate students are expected to work longer, harder, and faster. We publish more, and fight harder for the jobs that are out there. As one of my faculty observed (not with compassion so much as cheerleading) "Students are graduating with the CVs of second and third year Assistant Professors!" I feel like an early 90s office worker whose life has been turned upside down by outside forces shaping society in ways we can only begin to comprehend.
The last time I felt like I had the leisure and mental capacity to do anything but triage my work was as a foreign exchange student living in Germany. I was an undergraduate in a system that did not believe in the sort of face time, hand holding, intense grading, or infantalization of students that is endemic to U.S. institutions of higher education. It was amazing. I had time to read, think about ideas and write long papers exploring topics of my own choosing. There was no attendance, no prompt, and in October our Professor begged us to "please turn in the paper before the end of the year," by which he meant the academic year ending in June. We could take as long as we wanted, and turned it in when it was done.
As a graduate student, I long for those days. That was real academic freedom. If there is a life of the mind, it's not in a cubicle filling out TPS reports--but it also isn't in the American ivory tower, either.
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