What Graduate School is Like

As a recovering graduate student I suppose it made sense for me to include a survey on this blog.  Not very many of you have taken it in the few years it's been up, but thankfully I included some open ends (qual nerd here!) so I at least have some entertaining answers.

My favorite question:

Forest Gump said "Life is like a box of chocolates." What is graduate school like? 

Some of you compared graduate school to a cult.  One of you said you felt like a mouse in a maze.

Then there was this great quote:

Grad school is like a searching for gold in the 1800s. The promise of a better life only leads you to hardship and living in squalor, and all you get out of it is a few nuggets that are actually useful.

#Burn. 

I always loved metaphor analysis. Stories are universal to the human condition and our brains seem uniquely suited for metaphorical descriptions. Metaphors reveal fundamental assumptions and understandings that might otherwise remain obscured.  That and they are hilarious.  

Metaphors are also about perspective.  The person who described graduate school as mice lost in the maze also helpfully pointed out that "there is always a way out."  It might be graduating, or it might be quitting, but a maze by definition has an exit. 

What do you think graduate school is like?  Your response may be the answer that helps guide your path out. 

Graduate Student Exploitation

I'm incredibly lucky that in my own situation, I'm not dealing with a horrible adviser, or faculty who are stealing graduate student research.  I just don't like graduate school.

Yet the article referenced above really does reveal one of the challenges of graduate student life:  as a grad student, you are in a vulnerable position where the politics of your department and profession can make you feel powerless.  Interestingly enough, in the entire article about graduate students suing advisers and universities, the major reason a grad student may not come forward is ignored: it's not just that they think they can't win, it's that the relationship with one's adviser is what will result in a diss getting finished and approved, and the grad student getting out.  Often, it's the most poisonous people who control our destiny.  

I also don't think that these problems are rare. In my own experience, I know at least one student this has happened to, and in a very egregious way.  Several others had less severe experiences with it, all the same adviser.  But not a single one wants to say anything, and they all begged me not to either given the power this person has over their lives. 

Help! My Spouse is a Grad Student! A.k.a.To All the Long Suffering Spouses of Graduate Students

Dear Spouse/Partner/Husband/Wife/Girlfriend/Boyfriend/Significant Other/ lover of a graduate student,

You have our undying gratitude, love, and deep admiration.  As miserable as many of us graduate students are, you suffer mightily.  You have little to no control over whether or not we stay or go, and you don't always understand why we are so crazy over a job that seems quite flexible. You don't doubt the mental and psychic stress we are under, but you also don't understand it.

There are guides posted online for the spouses of graduate students, but I honestly don't think there is any significant way to improve the suffering and misery.  I don't want to be a pessimist, but I am going to validate the frustration of seeing someone you love suffer and continually go back to the source of their pain.  The spouses have every right to ask where's my diploma?

What Role Should Advisers Play in Leaving?

I stumbled across this great article about advising grad students who won't finish.  In it, Cassuto (2010) argues that faculty should do a better job talking to students about the possibility that they might not want to finish.  The academy needs to make clear to students that leaving is an option, and one that shouldn't be shameful. He writes:

"Not every graduate student will finish a dissertation. We know that truth to be self-evident. Nor should every graduate student finish. Some would be better off doing other things with their lives. Others simply can't complete the project."

My adviser and I have never discussed my leaving as a real possibility. I told her last spring that I was offered a job, and decided to turn it down, but only after I spent weeks interviewing, discussing details, and ruminating over my options.  As I've posted, I have had several breakdowns in which I openly question whether I should stay.  Despite all of this talk, we've never had a conversation about whether I should.

I'm not sure such a conversation would be helpful.  A relationship with an adviser is by definition unequal in power.  Graduate students are already insecure in their role as an apprentice, it would be hard to take discussions of leaving as anything other than an adviser signalling that they no longer believe in their student.  When I first was admitted to my department, the graduate adviser challenged me after a long admit weekend on whether I should even come to the program. I can't recall the exact language he used, but it was shocking at the time when he said he didn't see me here, and had a hard time seeing how I fit.  The fact that he questioned whether I even wanted this might have been prescient, but I wasn't ready to hear it.  It made me work harder, to prove him wrong.

Instead, the emphasis needs to be on what graduate students hope to get out of life, and whether graduate school and the Ph.D. will move them toward that.  This is what Cassuto (2010) means when he suggests advising the student and not just the dissertation.  We all need to do a better job trying to see the big picture.

An Ode to Joy

One thing about graduate school that really surprised me is the extent to which the whole experience can just suck any joy out of life.  Like a succubus perched on the chest of the sleeping Victorians, I felt my life essence draining away due to what I now recognize as situational depression.  While graduate school can be a time of wonderment and exploration for those truly suited to it, for me graduate school was like one really long illness that left me exhausted, numbed out, and emotionally drained.  I had a hard time leaving my work at school, and this interfered with my ability to do anything else, especially enjoy myself. 

This fall, when I finally gave myself permission to leave, doing things I enjoyed suddenly became possible again.  I’ve been listening to music, writing, and going on spontaneous outings with my husband that I normally would have turned down.  I’ve been less rigid with planning my day, and when things don’t go right, I just adjust rather than freak out.  As my therapist put it, I’m learning to live less on the edge.  In fact, I’ve been having so much fun that I have been staying up way too late and paying the price since I still get up early.

My favorite time of the year is fall: I love Halloween, Thanksgiving, and most of all Christmas.  What I love even more than the holidays is their anticipation.  I begin thinking about pumpkins and costumes in September, and listening to Christmas music in October, and I put my tree up around Thanksgiving.  This year, with all the emotional work of leaving, I threatened to put the tree up in September.  But I’ve made it until now in part because my husband bought me a new tree for Christmas, and I am so excited as I wait for it to arrive.

This tree is the opposite of the graduate school practical tree.  This tree is not what my social self says a tree should be.  Rather than a practical green tree, it is a riotous, fantastical indulgence.  My new tree is a champagne colored, pre lit 6.5 foot slim profile tree.  I fell in love with it last year as a display tree at a local coffee shop, and looked up the specs determined to get one this year.  This is the Liberace of Christmas trees, and I am going to throw every glittery glass ornament I have at it. 

As I deal with the hard stuff of leaving, my ability to enjoy myself and feel happiness is increasing.  In fact, I’ve begun to think that actively seeking out opportunities to experience joy is an important part of the leaving process.   For me, that is going to be giving thanks for the opportunities I have had and will continue to have, as well as for my family, and friends.  As well as the simple joy of really enjoying the holidays this year, one ornament at a time. 

Doubts on Leaving Graduate School

Lately, I’ve been having second (third, fourth, upteen) thoughts on leaving.  Part of me worries that I might regret walking away.  I still don’t want to teach, lecture, grade or attend socializing events.  I don’t even want to write my dissertation, or go through the stress of comp exams.  I just feel like I am prepared enough now that I have so much invested, that maybe I shouldn’t walk away.   

This is a concept known in economics as sunk costs, or the notion that when we calculate how much more we should invest, we think about how much we have already spent.  Economists think this is crazy, by the way, because it often results in people throwing good money after bad. If a gambler has already lost $500, the last thing they should do is throw an additional $100 after the bad debt.  Sure, they might get lucky, but what they have been doing isn’t working. 

Many of the bloggers who write about leaving graduate school have talked about sunk costs. The reason sunk costs come up so much is that quitting is uncomfortable.  While some quit in the first semester, most of us seem to be quitting further in, when suddenly all the time and effort we have already spent looms before us to become justification for devoting even more time.  For a really great break down on when to leave, check out this post on LeavingAcademia.com.  While the author talks about leaving during a recession, if you scroll down you will find a prescient analysis of when you should leave graduate school.

I know that objectively if I stay through next semester I will be miserable.  I also know that I do not want to stay through the dissertation.  Even my guilt isn’t very logical since I am just talking about sinking more time, but not enough to finish.  So I don’t know that my concern is even about the sunk costs so much as the finality of leaving.  The fact that I have funding, and a fellowship in a top department means leaving closes this door forever which should be a good thing, but is still hard.

When I think about the fact that I have finished all of my coursework, it’s that no other University will ever recognize that coursework without making me jump through a bunch of hoops and even more coursework that it truly feels wasted.  I know that I really will never go back.   The fact that I have done all this reading for comps, and won’t even “do anything” with it, makes me feel like I should write my comprehensive exams on my own from my new job and send them to my (former) faculty.  Yes, writing that statement makes me feel crazy. 

The truth is that I am sorting out several difficult issues: the guilt of walking away from something that I should want but don't; the guilt of not finishing something I started (I can hear my dad's voice now); and my own personal foible of having a very hard time just being done with something.  I always think I am going to stay involved, and then I feel guilty when I invariably don’t, so I lose track of relationships and lose the connections to friends and people I really enjoyed. 

So I’m creating this as a challenge for myself: I will leave graduate school, and when I do, I will really leave.  I am not going to promise to submit articles, or do additional rewrites.  I am just going to be done.  I am going to walk away from a life that is not for me, and that means leaving all of its trappings and endless lists of unfinished things I should do. 

Because I am going to quit.  And I am going to let myself fully shut that door, and walk away.

Should I Quit Grad School?

"Should I quit grad school?"  I can't count the number of times I have typed that phrase into Google, hoping for an answer that deep down I already knew.  "Quitting grad school," "Should I stay," and "I hate grad school" were searched so many times, that I often found myself reading sites and comment threads only to realize that I was rediscovering them. Years later.  My desire to leave, and my search for justification, validation, and some company in my misery was that bad.

They say insanity is doing the same thing, but expecting a different result.  It does seem a little crazy to be constantly searching and researching the same damn thing, but that is part of the process of leaving.  If you have found this post because you are a frustrated graduate student unhappy in your program, and uncertain in your future, know that you are not alone.  Know also that as you sort through everything you are going through, you are very likely to meet yourself again and again.

And that is ok.  Deciding to leave or to stay is a big thing.  The process takes time.  Be gentle with yourself, and realize that whether you stay or go, there you are.  You deserve to be happy, and you need to do what is best for you, and not anyone else.    

The Life of the Mind F&%k

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.

Leaving Graduate School--the Soundtrack

So one way I have been trying to reconnect with my interests, passion, and sense of self is through music.  My favorite song right now is "I am not a Robot," by Marina and the Diamonds.  It speaks to the ways in which I have walled off my emotions to get through the day.  Very robot-like!

Some of the lyrics I can really relate to... 

You're vulnerable, you're vulnerable
You are not a robot
You're lovable, so lovable
But you're just troubled

Guess what? I'm not a robot, a robot
Guess what? I'm not a robot, a robot

The video is kind of cool, too.   You can watch it here. 

In fact, her star body paint reminds me of sparkle pony, so for good measure I'm linking to that awesome clip from Portlandia, too.

A Little Passion for a Project

Now that I have starting moving toward the exit, I find it harder and harder to focus on the work I need to finish up.  Realizing you have no passion for the majority of what  you do makes it difficult to keep slogging forward.  There's one project on my plate that I took on when I still thought I wanted to go the research route, and I am actively avoiding it. Today I cleared my schedule to work on it, and I just can't concentrate.

Part of the challenge is that I spent all day yesterday grading undergraduate essays. That kills both brain cells and soul cells--it's all I can do to mark margins in an exercise I no longer believe in. More and more my comments veer toward: 1) general, useful writing advice that will carry students beyond a course assignment (two page paragraphs, really?); 2) elaborate drawing illustrating my comments, such as "hit me over the head with your argument," complete with stick figure and mallet (will my point get through?).  This can't be my only creative outlet.

Things got so bad regarding my inability to concentrate on grading that I resorted to writing my essential self a letter:

Dear Essential Self,
I hear you loud and clear--and I totally GET IT!  You hate school, and you want out. While I facilitate our exit (escape?), please have some patience.  We really need to finish this damn grading!  We need to walk away from school into gainful employment, not slink off with a box full of our office belongs and a big fat FIRED stamped across future references.  Health insurance remains a valuable tool to access all those mental health services we need!

On Leaving Academia--or Getting Out While You Still Can

I've spent the last several months reading and rereading leaving academia blogs. In fact, I have been lurking in comment threads, escaping into the fantasy world of leaving, and mentally and emotionally checking out of my life.  This is my coming out post.  I think I am finally ready to leave.   But I didn't get here overnight.

First, there was this classic piece from Professor is in. It IS ok to quit, and graduate school is a psychological prison of our own making:

"It is ok to decide that’s not what you want.  It is ok to make another choice.  There is life outside of academia.  But academia is a kind of cult, and deviation from the normative values of the group is not permitted or accepted within its walls.  You will be judged harshly by others and, to the extent you’ve been properly socialized into the cult during graduate school, by your own inner voices.  Making the decision to leave involves confronting that judgment, working through it, and coming out the other side.  It is long and hard and involves confronting profound shame.  I went through this.  I know."

Of course, Leaving Academia (with its promise of "From Grad School to Happiness") served as my guiding light for months.  During dark days and nights, I would read and reread the posts and comments, emboldened by the idea that there is employment, a life, and a future out there. I admit to sitting in a huge lecture hall as a TA (in the back dark corner so students couldn't see my screen), reading blog posts about getting out.   JC has been like the graduate student mentor and friend who wants you to know that it will be ok.

JC also introduced me to mama nervosa, which spoke to a whole other dynamic of my wanting to leave: my desire to start a family and move on to having a life.  I struggled with whether graduate school would be a more forgiving place to get pregnant and have my first child, but the reality of graduate school as a parent on TOP of the experiences of these ladies in dealing with an unrealistic job market, low pay for adjuncts and TAs, getting through comps, and the bullshit suckiness of graduate school has been illuminating beyond words.

During fantasy escapades through blog land, I luckily stumbled across Plan B Nation's recommendations for advice books and quickly snapped up Martha Beck's Finding Your Own North Star.  This book speaks to me in a way that no book has in a long time:  her concept of the essential self and the social self has helped me strip away the bullshit I routinely fed my therapist and myself to get clarity on what it is I really want.  I hate teaching, hate grading papers, hate writing papers, hate sitting alone and isolated in front of a computer, and hate going to lectures, and academic conferences (where great titles hide horrific and unwatchable panels).  I realized that getting the PhD and walking away to a non academic job would essentially assure me of having to write papers, and sit alone in front of a computer, when I could quit now and do something else.  Why was I staying again?

In my moments of rage, I found Penelope Trunk's hilarious and brutal take down of graduate school, which lifted my spirits and helped me feel ok about walking away from a program even though it is paid.  As she points out, the lost opportunity costs, and lack of benefit to staying are just too much.

So where does this leave me?  I feel like after several false starts (I even interviewed for a job and almost left  last spring), the reality of my situation is apparent.  There is no longer any rational for staying beyond fear and ego, a fact that I admitted for the first time a week ago.

I'm terrified of getting a job and worried I won't like my options. I am also terrified I will not get a job and be stuck here writing my comps next semester.  Now that I have decided to leave, I resent all the more every paper I have to grade, while still meeting with my committee about exams I hope never to take. I don't want to tell my adviser in case I can't get a job, but need to get the word out I am looking.

But mostly, like an addict, my deep-seated fear is that I won't and can't change: that I will stay, and still be here even though I know it is the wrong thing for me.  Now that I have started down this path, I hope I am brave enough to continue.

photo credit: temporalata

Insanity is Doing the Same Thing and Expecting a Different Result

"These people are lunatics!"

They certainly are.  Sometimes, we get so immersed on our own brand of crazy that we lose sight of how insane the world swirling around us has become.  The frog in the pot doesn't realize the water starts to boil--or a watched pot with a frog--hell, I can't remember! Bottom line, if you are a frog, stay the hell out of pots!

Hands down, the craziest time in a PhD program is comprehensive exams.  In talking to fellow grads in my department, advice given out for passing and coping is particularly revealing of the stress and crazy endemic to my graduate program. I have spoken with ten students about the comps process, and through informal survey research, and open ended interviews I can report that only two answers consistently emerge

To pass quals, you need:

1) Drugs (preferably RX) and Alcohol
2) To give yourself up to a higher power, a.k.a. God

That's right, the prescription is basically an all inclusive ticket to a 12 step program.  First, you have to horribly F&5k yourself up, and then you need to give yourself over.  The cycle is complete.

I Just Can't Take It Anymore

Entering my fourth year of graduate school, I just don’t know if I can do it anymore.  I look at the draft of research questions I wrote for my project, and the lines mean nothing to me. I stare at words on the page and they stare right back at me.  They seem to have discovered the secret invisibility of ink so boring you won’t notice it is there.

“What am I doing?” I think to myself.  Why am I still here?

I’ve wanted to drop out of graduate school since I arrived.  My first day of class I was late, and showed up unprepared having not done the reading.  To be fair, it was a surprise.  My department likes to start classes before the official start date of the semester, tacking on an extra session because “a semester is just too short to get it all done.”  I thought I was coming for orientation, but got a surprise lecture on epistemology instead. (Side Note: surprise epistemology, episiotomy, why are the words and their meanings in that context both so painful?)

I’ve always been the reluctant graduate student.  Maybe that should tell me something. 

The Emperor has no Epistemological Clothes: Or how I learned to stop worrying and embrace inductive reasoning

Most stories like mine refer back to early childhood—like the kid who knew deep down he was gay, or the friend who was a late talker that turned out to be partially deaf. A "diagnoses" would suddenly bring everything into clarity, long forgotten experiences suddenly strung out like a strand of awkward pearls of self wisdom that hinted all along at what was wrong.  There was the inability to deal with mathematical concepts which found me applying a semester's worth of tactics that fruitlessly led nowhere as I explored across the page, rather than systematically following the steps to solve a problem in a logical and deduced way.  My lack of a favorite movie, food, band,  The fact that every time I rewatched a film was like seeing it for the first time.  My interest in replaying the same experiences over and over again. My brain felt fuzzy, a feeling that didn’t go away until I had spent considerable time in my graduate program.  I would read accounts of students finally diagnosed with dyslexia decades after the start of their problems in school.  Their struggles of not being able to wrap their head around the problem, of their own brain getting in the way, and the marked differences in how they saw the world compared to their peers resonated with me in a deep way.  But I had no such label—and while their struggles were mine in many ways, they understood the origin of their difference and for that I was jealous.

For months I joked that I was going through an epistemological crisis, and unloaded such onto a poor, overwhelmed PhD in the counseling department.  I felt more removed from graduate school, and more frustrated.  There was even the misguided day I marched into a committee member's office and declared that I was no longer an empiricist, and that the only research worth doing involved socio historical qualitative case studies or ethnography.  This constituted blasphemy in my department, but was met with a chuckle and a hearty "no you're not."   I left amazed that anyone could drink the kool aid so completely that they would refuse to believe me. 

One night, late at work on a paper it suddenly dawned on me.  I started my research on the wheel of science in the inductive rather than the deductive portion of the wheel.  My sense of sickness lifted and I had a label: the reason for my ill fit wasn’t just epistemological, it came down to my starting point.  My “learning disability” wasn’t a disorder at all but simply a reflection of how I saw the world and approached my research—differently form my department., and it explained why I did not fit.  This was a process issue.

I had been accused my entire graduate career of being too interested in the context of what I studied, and not focused enough on the underlying phenomenon.  I wanted to take personal experiences and observations and work toward exploring larger level phenomena.  I had spent the first three years desperately scanning text books for a theory, any theory, I could accept and stake my entire research agenda around.  Or a concept even, that could underlie my research.  My program wanted me to think logically and theoretically about a phenomena, and reason out from there. 

"You do know you are not really an inductivist?"  My husband asked that night, after I had burst into the room to unload my newly found knowledge.  He protested.  "You ask empirical questions, you just don't buy into how restrictively your program embraces deductive research.  They need to be more flexible."

He was right.  It still gave me comfort to recognize the source of my frustration, but it also reinforced one of the most important lessons you learn in graduate school.  That the world is not black and white, but a thousand shades of gray, and everything is nuance.    

Permanent Head Damage Poll, PhD

Take the permanent head damage (PhD) poll!

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.

Graduate School is like a Bad Zombie Horror Film

The other day as I was riding up to campus on the bus with too little sleep at the end of a long semester.  Despite struggling to stay awake, I started fixating on all the ways that graduate school is like a bad zombie flick.

A scene from a bad zombie movie flashed before my eyes:

"Don't you get it!?  they are trying to eat our brains!  they are zombies!  Their definitional operation and epistemology might be better, but they are trying to accomplish the same thing.  well be like the living dead!"

"I don't know..."

"Remember John?  He was like the living dead when they finally passed him out of here with his dissertation!"

"Dissertation," he responds in monotone,  his eyes glazed over with a vacant look. 

"They got you too!  Dude we have to get out of here!"

Alas, like most things academic someone beat me to it. But the beauty of academia is that someone has almost always invariably gotten started on your idea, and you get to build off of their hard work.  So I am happy to reaffirm that some scholars have asserted surviving your first year of graduate school can be likened to surviving a Zombie Apocalypse(Meyers, 2011). 

And you know you are PhD when you search your computer files for the rest of that zombie screen play, and it returns the Zimbardo prison study.  SIGH.

Prepare to have your brain eaten, and your head PhDed (a.k.a. permanently head damaged).

Welcome to Permanent Head Damage

This blog is about all things PhD:

• The debt
• The drama
• The training, process, and experience, all of which will leave you with lasting and 

PERMANENT HEAD DAMAGE