Tuesday, April 12, 2005
(9:28 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Worst Mistake of My Life, Documented
I'm going to CTS. The money is obviously not as good as at Vanderbilt, but it is financially doable. As a member of the Invisible Adjunct fan club and as an avid reader of literature in the "grad school doomsday" genre, I know that one is absolutely not to pay for graduate study. I also know that one is not to go to a little-known school. I know all these things -- it is a body of knowledge that I have mastered thoroughly during my brief tenure in the blogosphere thus far.And it stresses me out that I've made this decision. I'm embarrassed about it to a certain degree, because even though it's what I want to do, I know there are going to be a lot of people who think that I'm doing the wrong thing. In fact, they'll think I'm making a big mistake. I appreciate their concern -- I'm not saying that in a patronizing or dismissive way -- and I really do, deep down, genuinely care what they think, probably a little too much. Here, then, is my apologetic.
The job situation in academia is completely random. Let's just face the facts. Really prestigious departments are proud when they're putting 60% of their PhDs into tenure-track positions. The rules that one is supposed to follow in order to achieve academic success are not worth following for their own sake, only for the sake of the presumed reward. Then one ends up not getting a job, despite having sacrificed any passion one once had on the altar of a prudent careerism. I have long thought that was bullshit. I have been writing screeds against academic careerism from virtually day one. So here comes my chance to live that out.
Knowing that the job market for academics is horrible but that I really feel like I need to get in a good period of thorough study and intellectual exploration before "settling down" -- why not study what I want to? Why arbitrarily conform to a professional model of a "researcher," which is most likely going to fail to give me the promised job despite my best efforts? If I would prefer to teach in a liberal arts environment where I'd have a variety of teaching duties -- if I find the idea of submitting to a particular disciplinary regime, in fact the very existence of those disciplinary regimes, deeply unappealing at best -- then what good is it to follow the rules for the sake of following the rules?
There is a good group of professors at CTS, and I will have free access to the many academic resources that Chicago has to offer. Knowing that coming to CTS would be a risk, every faculty member that I've talked to has said that they would do everything they could to make sure I had every possible opportunity -- and so far, they absolutely have. I learned French so I could read Derrida, and they encouraged me to do a Derrida translation. I was doing a Derrida translation, and before I knew it, I had met Peggy Kamuf and Michael Naas and was getting translation and publication advice from two of the most respected names in the field.
CTS is a small school, but it's outward-looking; that's built into the program from the start. If I'm potentially only going to have five or six years to study, why not put myself in a place where I have the resources of six or seven different seminaries, of the University of Chicago, of DePaul University, of Northwestern University? If it's going to be an uphill battle to find a job, why commit myself to teaching in a department that is almost certainly not going to hire me, when I could be making just as much money adjuncting at the many colleges in Chicago and likely teaching a wider variety of courses?
My mom worried that CTS would mean taking the easy way out, but looking at how I'm feeling right now, I don't think that's the case. I think to a large extent, for me, here, today, taking this direction means that I'm going to have to stake out my own path, and I'm very intimidated by that right at this moment. Like I said: horrible mistake. We all know what one is supposed to do in this situation, and I have almost always done what one is supposed to do. I got out of undergrad with zero debt and a near-4.0. I killed myself working my way through a masters all but this semester, and I'm going to have less debt still than most people do from undergrad. I pay my bills on time. I've never asked my parents for money in the whole time that I've been independent. I can hold down a job, and I keep a tidy house.
So let me do this one irresponsible thing. Give me five years -- maybe I'll get this out of my system.
(And I deferred Nottingham anyway, so I can always bail out if necessary. Or do a Fulbright, which seems like a good idea anyway.)
UPDATE: I don't intend to say that prudent careerism and passion are mutually exclusive, just that in this case, for me, that seemed to be the choice. I would have gladly gone to DePaul or U of C Div School, both of which would have combined prudent careerism with passion, but they turned out not to be among my options.
