Last week we posted the video “So You Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities?,” which humorously cautioned students about what they could expect if they pursued a doctorate. My fellow FT blogger Matthew Milliner, a Ph.D student in Art History at Princeton, produced a response video. While it wouldn’t persuade me to send in my grad school application, some people might find it a refreshing counterbalance.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010, 12:31 PM
November 3rd, 2010 | 2:53 pm
Beautiful.
November 3rd, 2010 | 6:09 pm
“I know there are not a lot of jobs, but last time I checked, it’s tough all over.” Dude, take a course in probability. And…well, do they offer a course in Not Being Obnoxiously Clueless at your school?
November 4th, 2010 | 2:42 am
I can’t wait until Mr. Milliner graduates and is unemployed and unemployable.
November 5th, 2010 | 5:02 pm
I looked up Mr. Milliner on the Yale website and see that he studied divinity before beginning his degree in Art History. I wish that someone with his background would approach this discussion with less sneering and more psychological insight and compassion. It’s true that the original Humanities PhD video was quite bitter and negative, but it became as popular as it did because it describes real and serious problems in the field. Of course what we’re doing is a great calling, and most of us signed up for it out of passion and love. But for many of us (though perhaps fewer with degrees from Yale) the reality of academic life has turned out to involve 60-80-hour work weeks that don’t allow us to do our best at any aspect of the profession and thus yield a persistent sense of failure, little or no job security, low pay, poor or no health benefits, persistent debt, “homes” isolated far from family and loved ones, and little time to make friends or cultivate romantic relationships. Many of us are not in a good situation. That video, for at least some of us who posted it, was a way to blow off steam and possibly even open up discussion about how to address these problems. Maybe parts of this are our own fault, but just accusing us of being pampered whiners is not accurate, helpful, or kind. Also, incidentally, we’re not 12th-century priests anymore, and I think that’s just as well. I don’t want to go back to a medieval monastic education system partly because, as a woman, I probably wouldn’t be able to join. On the other hand, maybe he’s friends with Harold Bloom, and his cartoon is a reaction to the comment about Dr. Bloom in the original video. That comment was, granted, gratuitous and nasty, and in that case I can understand some of why he took this tone. Say harsh words and you can expect to get them in return.
November 5th, 2010 | 9:29 pm
Come on! Commenters here are pretty mean-spirited.
He obviously didn’t set out to address each problem in graduate education. Somehow, after six years of graduate education, I can easily sympathize with either of these videos. If you can’t, (1) you are either extremely naive or (2) Milliner is right that you are probably in the wrong profession.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact