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in which one girl's peach is another girl's poison
I'm vaguely sad -- not about my own course, but about the fact that other people are unhappy in theirs. I must admit that my vicarious sadness is due partly to the worry that people I like might quit school and leave me, and then I'd be short two friends more than I'd already have been given the fact that a percentage of my friends in college are here on one-year courses. I'm not entirely unselfish about this.
But the thing is, I've been unhappy before at the prospect of people leaving grad school before they were done, and they weren't in school with me in the first place, so leaving school didn't equate to going away from where they could be my local friends. I find it sort of depressing when a dissertation doesn't get finished. (I feel the same way about bachelor's degrees, now that I think about it.) In some part of my mind or my heart, I feel disappointment on behalf of the student, as if s/he had wanted this thing and worked so hard for it and then given up in the middle of the home stretch.
Hi. I'm Fox. I project. Nice to meet you. :-]
In passing, I'll note that this is the main reason I have never -- I mean, never, y'all -- been able to watch "The Sentinel, by Blair Sandburg" all the way through.
I know a number of things perfectly well, two of which follow:
Partly, I suppose, I want what's important to me to be important to other people besides me. (In the abstract, I mean. I don't want or expect other people to be consumed by linguistics. But I'm sure there's some level at which I want people to agree with me that an advanced degree is worth having and worth striving for and worth not giving up; but see above re giving up.) Again with the lack of unselfishness.
[eta: In the current instances, I'm also feeling sad that people I like are evidently having such difficulty with their courses at the same time that I'm not having much difficulty yet with mine. I identify this as good old-fashioned Liberal Guilt, but it's harder to assuage than the ordinary kind. If I had cash in my pocket and people I knew were hard up, I'd [at least offer to] buy them a sandwich. If I had the means to fund something worthy like textbooks in city schools, I'd write a check and also give of my spare time, if I had any, to make it happen. But there's nothing I can do to level out the degree of ease with which people are dealing with their schoolwork, and it makes me feel unhappy and guilty. The guilt is misplaced -- it's not my fault someone else's course is difficult (although it is to some degree my fault that mine is easy, since I've had all this before) -- but it's there all the same.]
I have learned, over the years, not to try to talk people into staying. I've learned, I mean to say, that when people ask me what I think, I've learned how to separate what I would do from what I think they should do (from what I think they want to hear [g], though I usually share both the second and the third of these). I've learned that the impulse to talk people into staying tends to come from my own feelings about what I'd want, which is neither helpful nor called for.
But I can't really get rid of the sympathetic distress. Even if the people abandoning their degrees aren't distressed or even particularly sorry, and don't need or even want my sympathy. I don't feel this way when unhealthy marriages end in divorce (though I do feel sorry -- less viscerally so, for some reason -- that the marriage was or became unhealthy, I don't feel sorry when it ends); why should I feel this way when unhealthy graduate programs end in the boneyard?
But the thing is, I've been unhappy before at the prospect of people leaving grad school before they were done, and they weren't in school with me in the first place, so leaving school didn't equate to going away from where they could be my local friends. I find it sort of depressing when a dissertation doesn't get finished. (I feel the same way about bachelor's degrees, now that I think about it.) In some part of my mind or my heart, I feel disappointment on behalf of the student, as if s/he had wanted this thing and worked so hard for it and then given up in the middle of the home stretch.
Hi. I'm Fox. I project. Nice to meet you. :-]
In passing, I'll note that this is the main reason I have never -- I mean, never, y'all -- been able to watch "The Sentinel, by Blair Sandburg" all the way through.
I know a number of things perfectly well, two of which follow:
that in many, if not most, cases of not finishing a graduate degree, it's not that the student gives up on something s/he still wants at all; instead, people tend to reach places where they realize they want different things than they wanted previously; and that very few, if any, people -- least of all me -- are harmed by the non-finishing of someone else's degree, so it's actually none of my [damned] business if or why such degrees don't get finished.
Partly, I suppose, I want what's important to me to be important to other people besides me. (In the abstract, I mean. I don't want or expect other people to be consumed by linguistics. But I'm sure there's some level at which I want people to agree with me that an advanced degree is worth having and worth striving for and worth not giving up; but see above re giving up.) Again with the lack of unselfishness.
[eta: In the current instances, I'm also feeling sad that people I like are evidently having such difficulty with their courses at the same time that I'm not having much difficulty yet with mine. I identify this as good old-fashioned Liberal Guilt, but it's harder to assuage than the ordinary kind. If I had cash in my pocket and people I knew were hard up, I'd [at least offer to] buy them a sandwich. If I had the means to fund something worthy like textbooks in city schools, I'd write a check and also give of my spare time, if I had any, to make it happen. But there's nothing I can do to level out the degree of ease with which people are dealing with their schoolwork, and it makes me feel unhappy and guilty. The guilt is misplaced -- it's not my fault someone else's course is difficult (although it is to some degree my fault that mine is easy, since I've had all this before) -- but it's there all the same.]
I have learned, over the years, not to try to talk people into staying. I've learned, I mean to say, that when people ask me what I think, I've learned how to separate what I would do from what I think they should do (from what I think they want to hear [g], though I usually share both the second and the third of these). I've learned that the impulse to talk people into staying tends to come from my own feelings about what I'd want, which is neither helpful nor called for.
But I can't really get rid of the sympathetic distress. Even if the people abandoning their degrees aren't distressed or even particularly sorry, and don't need or even want my sympathy. I don't feel this way when unhealthy marriages end in divorce (though I do feel sorry -- less viscerally so, for some reason -- that the marriage was or became unhealthy, I don't feel sorry when it ends); why should I feel this way when unhealthy graduate programs end in the boneyard?
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it was also part of the general life-change stuff that made her my ex-gf, too.
otoh she is a wonderful ex-gf, and has gone on to have a perfectly good life, and wasn't nearly obsessed with her research topic as i was with mine. which is i guess a lot of why much of my advice to prospective grad students these days is that it's only really worth the trouble if you're really gonna be obsessed.
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To be honest - it's not the degree, so much as it's everything else that I thought the degree would be an escape from. It's just me. I don't think that 'oh, I'll persevere because it's not as though I've got anything better to do' is a valid way to spend three years and too much money.
I guess my priorities have changed, but I also see that they've changed to being the kind of short-term, superficial values that I used to despise in my undergraduate days. Back then I think I would have fitted right in to this place, but I wasn't here, and so I felt like a freak. And now I am here, I've changed too much to really fit in either.
Hmm. Think that's basically the problem. Wow, will sleep better now.
xx
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Continued venting (b/c you want the catharsis of knowing it all):I've gotta agree with
Some people are cut out for this. They want it. They can't help it. Others of us dislike this sort of thing except for the cool people we get to meet (and the prestige that comes with a further degree). The question is: Is doing this actually worth it for those non-academia-lovers?
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Because until someone is knocked out of academia in some cruel Darwinian coup, they are one of the ones smart enough to pursue and utiltize an advanced degree. Now, they're still smart enough, but they won't have the tool to use, leaving you with one less degreed ally in the world to fight the rising tide of anti-intellectualism.
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There are good things about these crises, too, you know. And it's better to make the decision before initiating dissertation research (or whatever the individual's final product is expected to be). . . .
For now, anyway, I've come out of it more determined. More on that behind lock and key one of these days.
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in many, if not most, cases of not finishing a graduate degree, it's not that the student gives up on something s/he still wants at all; instead, people tend to reach places where they realize they want different things than they wanted previously
Or, in my case, it was more that I realized that most of the things I had really wanted from that life-- smart friends, intellectual challenge-- I was finding elsewhere, and that the only things it turned out I could only find in academia were the things I had never really wanted to begin with.
Which isn't to say that I don't have regrets about leaving when I did, but it's mostly that I regret taking so long to figure out I needed to leave.
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