Should you go to graduate school?

Rachel at Rogue Cheerios, like others before her, responds with a qualified “no.” She also asks some important questions that prospective graduate students should answer and argues that soul searching should occur before grad school, not during or after it. In my experience it is easy to let academia supersede our other interests and much harder to try to figure out if there is a place in our lives for academia alongside our other goals.

For the last 12 years I have lived in places because they housed the academic institutions that would have me, but this is not the way that life has to be. In fact, I recently congratulated one graduate school colleague for deciding to live in a particular geographic area (job market be damned!) and another for quitting a tenure-track job in order to be nearer to those he cared about. These are hard choices and there is no wrong time to make them, but knowing that you are not, in fact, willing to move across the country once for graduate school and again for a job that may or may not materialize is a good way to determine that grad school may not be for you.

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Ten years since college graduation

Roughly ten years ago I was graduating from college and making plans to start grad school in the fall. I was lucky to have great undergraduate mentors  who gave me an idea of what to expect. Today, students can also rely on Fabio’s Rulz. Here, then, are a few pieces of advice for those who will be starting grad school in the fall from somebody who survived (and even enjoyed) the experience:

Show up to things (Whether or not there is free food, it is good for faculty and other grad students to know who you are.)

Once in a while, say something that sounds intelligent (Once people know who you are it will be helpful if they occasionally hear you say something that indicates you were paying attention.)

Do not tell your professors about your work habits (Ideally, they will think that you start every paper months before the deadline and thoroughly complete all of the readings. Don’t ruin the illusion for them.)

Do some thorough reading (In my first few years I diligently read every page of the assigned texts but I wish I had taken more time to actually digest the material that I was reading. Reading a portion of the assignment thoroughly and being able to discuss it intelligently is probably better than doing a surface reading of all of it but having nothing to say!)

Get started on research (Whether working on your own or collaborating with professors or other students, it is never too early to start developing your research agenda, whether or not you think this work is leading toward your master’s thesis or dissertation.)

Think seriously about the type of job you want (Research will be important for getting any type of job, but there being able to teach some of the core courses in your field will also be helpful in most situations. If you know what kind of job you want it will be easier to seek opportunities that will look good down the road.)

Have a good time! (Grad school is a marathon, not a sprint. Your life will not be appreciably worse if you put off – or skip – some of the reading to go out with friends, but it will probably be appreciably better if you do!)

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Going back to grad school

Until recently, I hadn’t returned to the location of my grad school years since finishing my dissertation and starting my job.  Because I still have some good friends in the program, the trip was part reunion and part nostalgia.  As friends graduate and faculty retire, I’m sure that this feeling won’t be present in many future trips, but I was surprised to see that almost nothing on campus had changed.  I was most surprised, though, by the differences in my interactions with faculty.  I am not sure if the difference was due to my own increased self-confidence upon returning after a year and a half as a successful faculty member, a greater recognition that I was an equal on the part of faculty, or some combination of the two (perhaps it was just the fact that the last time I was there I was just coming out of the foggy dissertation netherworld…).

The most bizarre of these encounters involved a faculty member that I have had some differences with in the distant past.  In one day on campus I am fairly certain that I talked to her more than I had in the final four years of my graduate career.  This is the same faculty member that had wondered what was wrong with me in my first year.  It is possible that she may look at my job at an unknown school and think that I could have done better if I had only listened to her advice.  My hope, however, is that she looks at the fact that I have the type of success that I wanted and considers that she may have been wrong.  Regardless, interactions such as these reminded me that I have come a long way since the beginning of my graduate career.

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Less than the sum of its parts

Teaching classes of 60-70 in grad school I rarely had what I would consider a “bad” class.  Sure, there were different dynamics from semester to semester, but I never disliked my classes as a whole.  That changed last spring.  One of the things I quickly noticed about teaching classes with 25-35 students is that the dynamics are not that different than in a class of 65.  The caveat to this is that in a large class there are always at least a handful of students who are engaged and can help move discussions along.  In my spring class there were only one or two of these students and it was not enough to preserve the overall class dynamic.

This fall I am teaching a similar course (required for the major, not much student interest in the topic itself) and my early sense is that this group of students, if left unchecked, could have a dynamic similar to that of my spring class.  One of my efforts to prevent this has involved individual meetings with students.  The funny thing is that in one-on-one interactions, all of the students I have met with so far have seemed interested and engaged in sociology and learning, if not the actual subject of the course.  In class, however, this interest and engagement disappears when they get near their friends.  It appears, then, that in this situation, my class is less than the sum of its interesting, engaged, individual parts.  We’ll see how it goes.

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Get the ef outta there!

Fabio has posted another of his Grad Skool Rulz over at Orgtheory, regarding the mythical end of graduate school:

Before moving on, I should note that staying too long can have dire consequences. Students can become unmarketable, dissertations are out of date, departments may cut funding. Students who have spent too much time in graduate school will be seen as folks who can’t get stuff done, which makes it hard to get a job. If you knew some was in grad school for 12 years with one modest publication, wouldn’t you be a little suspicious? It behooves you to figure out the norm in your field and stick to it.

He also distinguishes between “short clock” and “long clock” disciplines, with sociology somewhere in the middle.  This also seems to vary by program, as some students in sociology unfortunately find themselves somewhere that they are “allowed to drift indefiinitely. If you don’t finish your dissertation, no one will remind you. If you dedicate all your time to teaching, no one will care. Even if you do finish your dissertation, people will sit on it for semesters and nothing will happen. To blunt, the graduate school system is not designed to help you graduate in a reasonable amount of time. It’s designed to waste your time.”

The key is to figure out how your program fits into all of this and take the necessary steps to get out.  Trust me, it’s better out here.

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Tracking the transition of others

I’ve been tracking the transition to life as an assistant professor since last fall, so it is always interesting to see how others are dealing with their own transitions.  Along these lines, pitse1eh’s recent post provides a nice perspective on the transition from a research-focused grad student to a teaching-focused professor (especially since I was never a research-focused grad student).  The whole post is recommended reading, but at the very least you should heed the message that I have reiterated in a number of my job-market posts:

Lesson Learned: Issues about what type of job do you want (R1, teaching college, etc.) is a fundamental concern that needs to be addressed as soon as possible in your grad school career.

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How to eat (on an interview)

Interview season is quickly approaching for the five schools that are hiring sociologists this year.  If you are fortunate enough to land one of these interviews, you don’t want to blow your opportunity by doing something stupid while eating a meal.  I always thought this was the kind of thing that graduate programs told their students, but given that others I know had vastly different graduate school experiences, I suppose it doesn’t hurt to pass this sort of information along.  With this in mind, a recent Inside Higher Ed post has some helpful advice about what to do (and not to do) while eating with potential colleagues.  Some highlights:

Choose an item priced in the middle range of the menu offerings. You need not order the least expensive, but do not order the most expensive item. Accept menu items “as is.” Refrain from asking for substitutions or asking that ingredients be excluded.

If you choose to drink any kind of alcohol, be sure to drink slowly — and be mindful of your drinking. Have a glass of water along with your beer, wine, or mixed drink. Given the circumstances of interviewing, remember that you may be tired, possibly hungry, and perhaps nervous — all factors that have implications for consuming alcohol.

To this I would add not to eat anything complicated (crab legs) or likely to fling sauce on your interview attire (spaghetti).  In the case of alcohol, the advice I’ve received is to let others order first and follow their lead.  You do not want to be the only person at the table ordering alcohol, but if somebody orders a bottle of wine for the table there is some social pressure to join in.  At one of my interviews last year there was about a glass worth of wine left over at the end of the meal and I was encouraged to take it with me to my hotel to unwind before the next day’s interviewing.  I did.

Even more important than what you eat and drink is this piece of advice:

As a job candidate, you will be focused on wanting to make a good impression and getting the offer. However, remember that you too are conducting an interview. Sharing a meal with prospective colleagues offers an opportunity for you to consider if you want to work with them. Here are some questions to consider:

What is their rapport?

Are they respectful of each other?

Do they seem to get along well?

Are they collegial?

These are people you might be working with closely for many years. They need not become your close friends, but you do want to have a sense of working successfully with them as colleagues.

Cheers!

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Empty

While I haven’t officially moved yet, I recently journeyed to my new home to sign the lease and make sure everything was in order.  Spending a few nights there on an inflatable mattress brought back the feelings of emptiness I had when moving into my new apartment before grad school.  Obviously, the fact that the apartment was empty contributed to these feelings, but with the work that I’ve been putting into finishing my dissertation and preparing to teach in the fall I had never taken much time to reflect on the fact that everything is empty in a new town.  My list of people to call if I need help with something is empty, my social calendar is empty, even the mailbox is empty because the junk mailers haven’t yet caught on to my move.

At some points in my life I would have seen this emptiness as an opportunity to directly shape my future interactions – a sort of blank slate for impression management.  Now, though, I have very little desire to change my social arrangements.  My recollections of making friends are vague, but unlike grad school I assume that it is going to take more than cheap beer to become socially engaged with other professors whose families and children control the majority of their schedules.

Soon enough, the void will be filled.  The apartment will be filled with boxes to unpack, helpful people will be found, more work than I’ve ever done before will fill my time, and the junk mailers will find me.  For now, though, I think that the emptiness might provide a good opportunity to reflect on where I’m going and where I’ve been.  Thankfully, this time I’m not alone.

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Second impressions

One of the bizarre aspects of the job market is that everybody wants to be everybody else’s first choice.  Sure, candidates want to be a department’s first choice, but departments also want to be the first choice of candidates.  Because members of a department typically don’t know to whom an offer will be extended, they need to be nice to everybody to increase the chances that they are their first choice’s first choice.  Thus, departments and candidates alike may sugar coat certain things during a campus interview, leaving the reality for subsequent interactions.

I recently had the first of those subsequent interactions during a trip to look for housing.  On my trip I visited campus again, stopped by the provost’s office, met with HR and had dinner with a faculty member.  Each of these interactions held the possibility for some of the sheen of my successful candidacy and their successful sales pitches for the school and department to wear away.  Second impressions of the school centered on the effects of the current economy.  Compared to a number of other schools, things are not particularly bleak, but faculty members will not be receiving cost-of-living raises this year.  I can’t be sure of their second impressions of me, but they may have noticed that I’m more of a sarcastic asshole than they originally anticipated.

Largely, my second impressions reinforced my first impressions:  the school seems to be on solid financial footing;  the sense of community that was conveyed during my interview remained;  and my future coworker was friendly and gave me good advice about navigating the transition from graduate student to junior faculty member.  He may regret this in the fall when the sarcastic asshole down the hall won’t stop asking him questions.

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The Origin of the Theses

As spring approaches, I am the missing link between the second and third phases.

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