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So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

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Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#51

Post by fastaguy88 »

I think it is important to point out that the author is describing the graduate student experience in the humanities. If you are reading HN, you are more likely to be looking at a degree in the sciences or engineering.

Some important things to remember:

(1) do not pay for graduate school. Good graduate (not professional) programs offer full support for 5 years, though that may include a teaching requirement.

(2) in the sciences, you will be done with courses in 2 years, perhaps sooner. Most science graduate students make it out in less than 6 years.

(3) many graduate programs have a shortage of students, so you should be able to pick from several labs (you all do rotations the first and possibly second years to get a sense of what different labs/advisors are like). When ranking your choices for graduate school, try to find programs that have several faculty doing research that excites you. You don’t have to pick an advisor before doing a rotation with them, but you do want to pick places with multiple options.

(4) be aware that a PhD program is very different from undergraduate. As a graduate student in the sciences, your goal is to make discoveries. You may take some courses to help you learn how to make discoveries, but mostly it is apprenticeship. You will learn by doing experiments that fail. It is not uncommon for your thesis and publicationsto be based on your last 18 months of work. Making discoveries is hard and unpredictable, but most graduate students graduate.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#52

Post by jccalhoun »

hkthrowaway88 wrote: post #49
jccalhoun wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, what the person is saying is just wrong. Source? Me. I'm a straight white male in the humanities. I can point to at least a dozen straight white people I went to grad school with that teach at various levels of college from community college to R1. I don't think I know a single straight white male that got his phd and doesn't have some job in academia. (it is possible that there are some I went to school…

Community college? Come on, be serious. I mean jobs in which people can have an actual academic career, i.e. be published and have an impact on their discipline.

I wrote, "teach at various levels of college from community college to R1"

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#53

Post by tchalla »

fastaguy88 wrote: post #51

I think it is important to point out that the author is describing the graduate student experience in the humanities. If you are reading HN, you are more likely to be looking at a degree in the sciences or engineering. Some important things to remember: (1) do not pay for graduate school. Good graduate (not professional) programs offer full support for 5 years, though that may include a teaching requirement. (2) in t…

I’d like to add to your points

4) Graduate programs are indeed different from Post Graduate programs. Before your doctoral degree, you were given a question and asked for an answer. Perhaps sometimes, you were also given questions for which known answer existed. In your doctoral degree, you will most likely come up with the question and the answer. That’s a shift of mind, you may need time for adjusting.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#54

Post by acheron »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #37
hkthrowaway88 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, I have no interest in or affiliation with any sort of nazism. What does 88 have to do with anything? For the record, I originally made this throwaway to criticize the CCP’s oppression of Hong Kong (hence “hk”). 8 is a lucky number in Chinese. As for throwaways, maybe look at the fact that any questioning of the currently predominant racism leads to accusations of nazism, and see if that explains why…

Just for your knowledge (I’m Asian too so I had to learn this) 88 is a nazi dog whistle in America. Specifically, h is the eighth letter of the alphabet and 88 -> hh -> heil hitler. I don’t know how common it is among actual nazi circles to use that phrasing, honestly, because I don’t know any nazi communities, but that’s the common online belief.

To be clear, this is nonsense and nobody actually does it. It’s the same kind of bullshit as saying the “ok” symbol is racist or whatever. I don’t know how many people honestly believe it or if they’re all just trolling, but if people do honestly believe it then they are wrong.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#55

Post by hkthrowaway88 »

jccalhoun wrote: post #52
hkthrowaway88 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Community college? Come on, be serious. I mean jobs in which people can have an actual academic career, i.e. be published and have an impact on their discipline.

I wrote, "teach at various levels of college from community college to R1"

How many at each?

Edit: To be perfectly clear, I mean no disrespect to anyone who teaches at a community college. It is valuable and important work.

But I think it’s fair to say that people going into a Phd program, and dedicating 6-10 years of their life to working themselves ragged as the OP describes, are not doing so with the hope that they may one day teach at a community college. So, holding that up and saying “See, they had a perfectly fine outcome from getting a PhD, they got to teach at a community college!” is just disingenuous.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#56

Post by dsr_ »

detaro wrote: post #42
hkthrowaway88 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, most of that “nazi dog whistle” stuff (like the ok sign) was fabricated by trolls on 4chan. So maybe think for yourself a little before you go accusing people of things based on Internet hearsay.

88 being used by nazis predates 4chan, it's not a recent invention.

Indeed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column_88 (1970s)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_88 (1990s)

I also advise against using the fylfot or swastika, even though it has centuries of positive associations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

and then came the Nazis, who ruined it permanently.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#57

Post by [deleted] »

dsr_ wrote: post #56
detaro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

88 being used by nazis predates 4chan, it's not a recent invention.

Indeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column_88 (1970s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_88 (1990s) I also advise against using the fylfot or swastika, even though it has centuries of positive associations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika and then came the Nazis, who ruined it permanently.

[deleted]

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#58

Post by cycomanic »

fastaguy88 wrote: post #51

I think it is important to point out that the author is describing the graduate student experience in the humanities. If you are reading HN, you are more likely to be looking at a degree in the sciences or engineering. Some important things to remember: (1) do not pay for graduate school. Good graduate (not professional) programs offer full support for 5 years, though that may include a teaching requirement. (2) in t…

An important addition is that all these discussion are strongly country dependent. While the difference between engineering/science and humanities MAs and PhD exist everywhere. Specifics vary quite strongly between countries. One example: in Australia most PhDs only require an honors year (a fourth year in the bachelor, which is even normal for many engineering degrees) while any several other an MA is required.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#59

Post by jccalhoun »

hkthrowaway88 wrote: post #55
jccalhoun wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote, "teach at various levels of college from community college to R1"

How many at each? Edit: To be perfectly clear, I mean no disrespect to anyone who teaches at a community college. It is valuable and important work. But I think it’s fair to say that people going into a Phd program, and dedicating 6-10 years of their life to working themselves ragged as the OP describes, are not doing so with the hope that they may one day teach at a community college. So, holding that up and saying…

You said "Not mentioned here, but if you want an academic job in the humanities, in the US, don't be white. Universities have adopted explicitly racist hiring policies for the time being."

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#60

Post by karaterobot »

It was clear to me when getting a graduate degree in a humanities field that these programs produced mostly academics whose only viable job was going to be teaching the next generation of academics. And by viable, I mean viable for the luckiest one in ten. In other words, it was already an island of cannibals with no other food source than itself, and none likely to arrive. That system cannot run forever.

Twenty years later, nothing has changed my opinion, and I agree with the author's conclusion here: that a graduate degree in the humanities makes sense only for the wealthy. That's how liberal arts education began, and how it'll probably end. This return to origin should appeal both to students both of history's long rhythmic structure, and of literary narrative, and so maybe it will provide some value to the private scholars of the future.

I also partly disagree with the author, in that I don't think an undergraduate degree in the humanities is all that useful. I have one of those too, and I wouldn't get one again. I can't speak to history departments, but English departments don't have a lot to offer students anymore that a library card and an internet connection wouldn't do better. That's not because studying Literature is easy or worthless, but because that's not what English departments do well anymore.

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