Unsorted thoughts re: Academia

[oloriel]

When I went into the whole final exam thing - that is, when I registered for the whole mess - I was having a fairly good relationship with academia. As in, when people asked (as some people were prone to do) whether I was considering to add a PhD. after my M.A., I said "Sure, if the opportunity offers itself, I think that would be cool."

At the moment - having writen my thesis, and having taken the first written exam, and ten hours before the second written exam - I am having a lot of second thoughts.

Well, firstly I am doubting that the opportunity is going to offer itself. I am not even certain that I'll manage the bloody M.A., not because I am stupid but because I function the wrong way. Even if I manage to pass, it definitely won't be with the grand results I've been secretly expecting (and this is not just my usual pessimism; with the grade I got for my thesis, I'd have to write positively brilliant exams and excel at the oral exam, something I have always been naturally bad at, in order to still get a 1.something grade*. Not likely.). Nobody is going to come to me going "You know, we have this postgraduate office to fill, would you like it?" Nobody is going to ask me to write my Ph.D. thesis under their tutelage.

And I am pretty certain that I am not going to struggle for some postgraduate university job or a Ph.D. supervisor myself, at the moment. I am, at the moment, so sick of academia. In the past weeks, I have been reading a shitload of texts that were obviously just published because someone somewhere had to write it in order to keep their job. I have read a shitload of texts that were practically just a review of previous research, the sort that students have to do (without getting paid for it) for classroom presentations. Or where four pages of a six-page thesis discuss the history and use of a certain term, the validity of said history, and the use the present author is going to make of the term in the face of said history and for what reasons. Then follow one and a half pages with some illustrative examples, and a conclusion along the lines of "fascinating topic, further research necessary". I know that these people aren't doing this to make me roll my eyes. They're doing it because it's academic convention, and because they're working in a publish-or-perish system where instead of the common-sense "If you don't have anything to say, just keep your mouth shut" the rule is "If you don't have anything new to say, sum up something old". And make it sound important. And make it sound like you believe it.
And at the moment, that is not what I want to do with my life.

A few years ago, I was reading a book by Pam Houston. It was full of autobiographic episodes, and one of them concerned how one day she was standing in the office at her university, waiting for a signature on the final credit certificate she needed in order to qualify for her final exams, and she overheard two of her professors utterly absorbed in a discussion about the difference between (I think) "immanent" and "innate". And one of them, she knew, had serious personal trouble in his private life, and here he stood discussing "immanent" and "innate" as if anything depended on it.
And she quietly turned, and left the office and her certificate behind. And she never returned.
At the time of reading, I thought something along the lines of, "Wow, way to throw the efforts of the past years away." I mean, she had ploughed through 95% of her university career. Even if she now realised that it was all pretty pointless, couldn't she have done the final 5%? Tsk, really.

But right now? Right now I really, really sympathise. Right now, I look at people discussing the difference between "postcolonialism" and "post-colonialism" for four pages as if anyone cared. And I think, I can live without that. I do not need to be able to rehash a lot of problem-mongering only a fraction of which actually matters to anyone outside of academia, and most of which doesn't even matter to academics. I can read and enjoy books without knowing what literary theorists think about them. I can write stories that some people like, and I can paint pictures that some people think good, and I can travel and think and grow plants and restore an old farmhouse and design things and sew historical clothing and -- I can do all this without all that.
And I am so, so tempted to just throw it and skip the rest of the exams and extract myself from the Matrix exmatriculate and do - well, something that makes at least a small bit of sense. Something that doesn't force me to pretend that the difference between postcolonialism and post-colonialism matters. Something that doesn't force me to pretend that knowing the half-cooked opinions of Sigmund Freud enhances my understanding of Shakespeare's work just because someone who never left her ivory tower thinks so and I have to please her in order to pass.

I won't throw it. I am going to leave university, but I'll do it with an M.A. degree in my pocket. I'll do the final 5% because even if at the moment it all feels not only pointless but actively repulsive, I suppose even a bad M.A. may be of use. I'll do it because I am not a quitter, and I can still try and do something that makes at least a small bit of sense come January. I have wasted so many years, I can waste two more months.

And perhaps in a year I'll feel differently, and I'll feel the urge to discuss immanence and innateness and postcolonialism and post-colonialism, or the Freudian Uncanny² in Shakespeare's comedies, or whether Beowulf was composed orally or in writing. And then I can return into academia because I'll be a postgraduate and all set to go.

But at the moment, I don't think I'll want to. And at the moment, I am almost envying Pam Houston for the courage to just throw it overboard, to turn her back on all the bullshitting and all the do-gooder self-flagellation and all the "We cannot solve the problem, but we are really aware of it!", and to do something else entirely.
I am definitely envying her for landing on her feet and being a published author these days. ^^

Eh well. Time for bed.


- - -
*Note on academic grades in Germany: 1.0 is the best passing grade, 4.0 is the worst. You do not have to understand our system.

²And you don't want to get me started on the Uncanny. The entire notion is based on an etymological assumption that is not actually tenable. And literary critics my exam professor still believes it.
Sometimes - and I know that this is embarrassing and arrogant - I think that it's not that I'm too stupid for all this. Sometimes I think I'm too smart.

Comments

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

The ZP in Japanology was the easiest ZP for me. But yeah (and I was talking about this with eliathanis a while back), the ZP as a whole was worse than the finals. Even with the mad requirements in English, preparation is still easier than it was for the ZP. That was just insane. The only good thing was that you didn't have to take it all at once...

I think my student job has sort of jaded me. I've come to believe you will find the same bureaucratic mind-killer nightmare in any job that involves a lot of office work, so that's not the side of university that I'm afraid of. It's really rather the "publish or perish even if you have nothing new to say" that's putting me off.

Of course, by now I think I could handle that, too, if I had to. By now I think the rant up there is mostly due to one particular aspect that I hate about academia, which, as it is oh so fully represented by the next prof to examine me, got somewhat overblown in my mind. There probably are some exotic niches that I could feel comfortable in despite the bureaucracy behind it. Though your teaching job is still more fun, no doubt. :D

[fusselbiene.livejournal.com]

"I've come to believe you will find the same bureaucratic mind-killer nightmare in any job that involves a lot of office work, so that's not the side of university that I'm afraid of."

I agree with you concerning regular jobs, but I experienced university to be a different can of worms. Bureaucracy itself doesn't scare me, either. But the people in charge at university are professors who do not have the slightest clue of how things need to be done in order to work. And a lot of them are too educated to ask their office workers for advice. I've never witnessed the like before.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, the additional joys of Ivory Tower-thinking. That probably would make it worse. >_>