There was a piece yesterday in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled, “Who Prepares Humanities Ph.D.’s for a Nonacademic Search?, which reported on findings from a study on how well history graduate students felt they were prepared for life outside academe. Though many of us enter PhD programs with visions of The Dead Poets Society in our heads, after a couple of years we realize that reality is much grimmer. We will not spend our days before wide-eyed pupils and our nights in quiet study and reflection. Rather, we will take out huge student loans to fund our intellectual addictions. We will write dissertations, earn letters behind our names, and get funny caps on our heads. Then, if we are both gifted and lucky, an institution that is doing a search to fill a chair will give us a contract for a year or two. We will take up the task that is given to us with gusto, hoping that if prove ourselves, maybe the institution will award that chair to us. Sometimes that happens, but more often our contract expires and we move on to the next thing and the next thing, wandering like the Hebrew children in the barren wilderness of the academic job market. We may get adjunct work, which pays $2500 per course, on average. So if we taught three courses per semester (which is rare for all but English majors), we would still be below the poverty level. Thus we must rely upon the fading grace and good humor of our spouses to sustain our addiction. Continue reading “Three Reasons Why Independent Scholarship is Awesome!”
