Monday, March 28, 2005
(9:10 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
My Conundrum
My future children are lucky they're not born yet. If they were, I would have just entered the house in a rampage, telling one that her handicrafts are not done correctly, the other that his incessant piano playing is driving me nuts -- and I'd hit a light switch and yell, "Aw, is the electrician ever going to get this right?" And then I'd creep out my youngest child by holding him over-tightly as I held back tears of despair.I would act out this scene from It's a Wonderful Life because I'm pretty sure that I'm not even on the waiting list at DePaul. I have not been "officially" counting on getting in off the waiting list, but finding out the news this morning (from one of the professors with whom I've been in close contact -- but who, for the first time in over a decade, was not on the admissions committee), it became clear that I really was hoping for the deus ex machina of some nameless person choosing Fordham or Villanova over DePaul.
Now my options all seem to be fairly bad. I've requested a deferral from Nottingham, both because Goodchild is on leave next year and because I'd like to have a decent shot at actual scholarships, so I could take a year off and go there. I have the offer from New School, with the very flattering scholarship -- but that scholarship makes it so that I would spend basically the same amount for tuition for a second MA as I would spend on the coursework for a PhD from CTS. I wonder why it is that I couldn't have applied at more places that would have offered funding; but wait! -- I actually did, and the very best result I got from any of them was being on the waiting list at Vanderbilt, an institution at which, on paper at least, I am a virtual clone of several of their current grad students.
I know it's all dice rolls, and it's not really a matter of my wanting to be affirmed as a person -- more a matter of feeling like pursuing the rather uncertain road of an academic career would be a whole lot easier to take if I could go into job searches without being pinned against the wall with an unreasonable amount of debt. And it's also a feeling of -- once again, now as at every point of my life -- having missed out on the opportunity to go to an institution whose prestige would complement my talents, allowing me to, you know, actually get somewhere in life.
Yes, yes -- no harm in waiting a year and reapplying; or, better, the academic job market is so shitty that you're going to hate yourself even more in five or six years when you've got this advanced degree with no job to go with it. Just sign on with the temp agency, and you'll eventually stumble into a job. Or why not get your teaching certificate? Right. And I'll be thanking myself a few years down the line when I'm trying to start a family and I'm on so much better financial footing. I'll be able to afford the name-brand cereals for my children.
