Last Friday, I went out to celebrate a friend-of-a-friend's birthday, and there happened to a number of ABDs and recent PhDs present. None of us had long-term, steady work (as far as I could tell). Granted, we all have PhDs in the humanities or social sciences, so this was not at all surprising. In fact, it was a real relief to talk to people who were not surprised to hear that I have a PhD and no steady work. The problems of academia are well-worn, and I have nothing to add to the debate over how to translate a PhD into an alt-ac career or the adjunctification of the academy. (The first is hard, and the second sucks, and that's all I have to say.) My subject here is identity, and how losing the one you used to have is difficult.
An example: a year ago, when people asked what I did, I told them that I was a PhD candidate in political theory. This generally elicited positive responses, and sometimes even questions about Plato. But what to say now? A couple months ago, I could say I had "just finished" a PhD, but that's wearing thin now, four months out. "I'm unemployed" is really the only honest answer, but it feels so...incomplete.
Worse than declaring my unemployment is the inevitable response, which is usually a version of the well-meaning question, "what kind of work are you looking for?" When I was finishing up my dissertation, I would quickly diffuse this question by insisting that I would figure it out once I was finished. But what to say now? I don't have a very good or clear answer. And if I was in the shoes of the question-asker, I would be wondering what on earth I had been doing for the past five years, and whether I had been living under a rock. The answer is that I've been teaching and reading and writing for the past five years, and I have also been living under a rock.
In short: my present circumstance has called for some reinvention and career soul-searching, but this has not been the hardest part of being unemployed. The hardest part (other than lack of salary, of course) has been losing my work identity, which, in DC, is one's most defining characteristic. For half a decade, I was part of an exclusive and rarified club: academia. And now, yes, I'm unemployed. Not only that, but I need to find a whole new field. I knew this would be hard, but I wasn't expecting to feel a real sense of loss over the transition. Especially since I didn't even want to stay in academia. I guess I thought that I would be able to take some of my identity with me, that the PhD would at least confer a measure of gravitas on the years I spent working for it.
The standard reaction to being expelled from the academy is bitterness, but as someone who was happy to leave I just can't work up the requisite resentment. I do wish that post-PhDs would back off a bit from the bitterness, though, if only so there could be more space for a discussion of what to do with what we have, and how we might be able to show people outside the academy that a PhD can be an asset, even in the workplace.
An example: a year ago, when people asked what I did, I told them that I was a PhD candidate in political theory. This generally elicited positive responses, and sometimes even questions about Plato. But what to say now? A couple months ago, I could say I had "just finished" a PhD, but that's wearing thin now, four months out. "I'm unemployed" is really the only honest answer, but it feels so...incomplete.
Worse than declaring my unemployment is the inevitable response, which is usually a version of the well-meaning question, "what kind of work are you looking for?" When I was finishing up my dissertation, I would quickly diffuse this question by insisting that I would figure it out once I was finished. But what to say now? I don't have a very good or clear answer. And if I was in the shoes of the question-asker, I would be wondering what on earth I had been doing for the past five years, and whether I had been living under a rock. The answer is that I've been teaching and reading and writing for the past five years, and I have also been living under a rock.
In short: my present circumstance has called for some reinvention and career soul-searching, but this has not been the hardest part of being unemployed. The hardest part (other than lack of salary, of course) has been losing my work identity, which, in DC, is one's most defining characteristic. For half a decade, I was part of an exclusive and rarified club: academia. And now, yes, I'm unemployed. Not only that, but I need to find a whole new field. I knew this would be hard, but I wasn't expecting to feel a real sense of loss over the transition. Especially since I didn't even want to stay in academia. I guess I thought that I would be able to take some of my identity with me, that the PhD would at least confer a measure of gravitas on the years I spent working for it.
The standard reaction to being expelled from the academy is bitterness, but as someone who was happy to leave I just can't work up the requisite resentment. I do wish that post-PhDs would back off a bit from the bitterness, though, if only so there could be more space for a discussion of what to do with what we have, and how we might be able to show people outside the academy that a PhD can be an asset, even in the workplace.
6 comments:
But if we were to think that a PhD is an asset outside of academia (and maybe also science research), then aren't we actually saying it's a desirable pre-requisite for those jobs? As in, you should get a PhD if you hope to be a journalist, a schoolteacher, a consultant?
No, certainly not. I will admit that a PhD (especially in the humanities and social sciences) is not a desirable pre-requisite for anything but being a professor. However, it might still be worth something, even outside of academia. There is a middle ground, I think, between being a necessary pre-requisite and being a waste of time.
I'm sorry! Being unemployed and job searching are independently terrible and no fun, and combined are even worse.
Doggie will help!
Yeah, I want to say something like, an academic PhD is work experience of a sort, rather than a strictly educational credential like a BA or a professional degree. Because various kinds of previous work experiences can feed into a job without being settled pre-requisites for that job. Degrees alone don't seem to have that flexibility; they're just check-off items - required or preferred or irrelevant. But when people say a PhD is good for X or Y, it seems like they mean the degree itself, and not the 5-7 yrs of research and teaching that went into it.
You have a dog?
No, I don't have a dog. Not yet, at least. I am thinking of distracting myself from unemployment by procuring a small furry animal upon which to dote. Alex is encouraging this.
And yes, I think getting a PhD amounts to work experience, unlike (most) professional degrees. Most people don't seem to really have any idea how PhD programs work, though, or what they entail, which is probably part of the problem.
Chinchilla!
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