Most people who know of me know me
by my Twitter persona, Capitalism (@geistdeskapital). This is not to say that I
run a popular account. I have yet to break 400 followers. But these 370 or so
non-Twitterbots who do follow me have thus far comprised the largest sustained
audience my thoughts and quips have yet enjoyed. More people know Capitalism
than they do my corporeal form. More have engaged with the simulacrum than the
original copy. Almost nobody knows what I’ve dedicated the past seven years[1]
of my life to. They only know my ephemera. My tweets.
My own foray into Twitter has
paralleled those recounted by others. The conventions of academic writing do
not allow for wit, humor, satire, sarcasm or really any form of rhetoric that
makes life worth living. And these rhetorical constraints lead to ontological
ones: the boundaries of the world slowly encircle a domain of technical,
humorless, inapplicable, politically suspect knowledge that we then call either
social theory or social science depending upon ones “problem area” and
intellectual “bent”. Twitter is a nice break from that. 140 characters are far
less limiting than any academic publication. And it allows us to unleash that
shitty (though we think of it as witty) Voltaire we all have lurking inside of
us. This is what academia was supposed to be about, we tell ourselves. But with
royalty checks.
This, in its own way, is a “quit
lit” piece. But this claim will prove to be controversial and a bit of a faux pas in certain circles because,
well, I’m an outgoing graduate student, one who was once considered a promising
doctoral candidate and quite the “get” for his program and who is now leaving
to little fanfare and faculty reviews noting his squandered potential and
scattered, unfocused output. So, yes, a “quit lit” tale, but one where the
author lacks his due comeuppance: no dissertation, no published paper—not even
a conference presentation—no post-doc, no job talks, and none of the obligatory
(and inevitable) junior faculty anxieties. I’m treading on the guild masters’
ground here. How dare I write this? Really. Who the fuck am I?
An ingrate, perhaps. I was given
full funding. No class fees and a modest monthly stipend. This stipend provided
for a comfortable existence, enough for decent food, clothes, and an ok place
to live. If I lived even less than scrupulously I could afford a few nights out
for dinner and drinking while still being able to stow some money away for
saving. Yes, the city I lived in had a pretty affordable cost of living, so
that went a long way. I was not trying to make ends meet in New York. But these
are all decisions that we have to make, no?
I incurred no debt. This is rather
uncommon. For seemingly intelligent people, prospective grad students are
financially illiterate. Do not go to a program that further puts you in debt.
Do not do it. It’s idiotic. You know why medical and law students are willing
to assume six figure debt? Because there are high paying jobs at the end. Lots
of them. Yes, law students have their problems. The market isn’t what it was.
But fifty percent of law graduates score jobs in their first year looking. And
almost all of them make over $60k. But graduate students looking to enter
academia? Twenty percent earn tenure track jobs.[2]
And $60k is on the higher end of the pay scale for an assistant professor. I
don’t care how smart you think you are. There’s an eighty percent chance that
you’ll be a contract player, bumming from post-doc to post-doc making $35k a
year tops.
For those captured by the romantic
notion of the suffering intellectual, this may only feed into the fantasy. Or
your persecution complex. Whatever it may be, stop it. More than likely, you’re
bourgeois to the core. You own a surplus of cultural capital. You’re probably a
bit shy and standoffish. You’re going to want to find someone and start a
family and settle down because that will
actually give your life meaning. No, it really will. It doesn’t have to be
marriage. But you’re going to want to settle down and love a few people
unconditionally. You are. Because it’s fucking great. And you’re going to
realize that the post-doc life is terrible for that. And so is the debt. Don’t
do anything now that will hurt your kids down the road. Really, don’t take on
needless debt.
My
departure from academia was in part motivated by these reasons. Falling in love
disabused me at least of the suffering intellectual complex. Living the life of
a post-doc is no longer a situation I’m okay with. Nor is the lack of choice
over where I live. There’s the realization that the academic life may not be
that hard on you in a vacuum, but it is unnecessarily hard on the other people
in your life. It’s a bit narcissistic either to think otherwise or simply not
care.
Yet
even without this moment of maturation, my days at the academy were over. My
field, political science, is, for the most part, thoughtless and
incapable of meaningfully contributing to society's development and improvement.
For Part II's discussion on the fact-value distinction, click here
[1] I
more or less have focused on the same sets of questions since I entered
college.
[2] 25-30% of the current workforce is tenure track, but there are more PhDs
graduating each year than tenured spots opening up, so only a fraction of those
slots are actually available. Remember people: this is tenure. I should also add that the data are not disaggregated here, meaning that scientists likely have a higher placement rate, driving the placement rate of those in the social sciences and humanities down
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