everything > PhD school

A lot is happening in higher ed these days, and since my life is deeply enmeshed in higher ed stuff, I have Thoughts.

In an nutshell: the general public no longer thinks it's a good idea to spend most of your entire adult life paying for a degree from a mediocre school. As a result, the vast majority of schools are having money troubles and some have decided to eliminate subjects like English and/or university departments entirely. And the government has decided now would be a good time to make it more expensive to get doctoral degrees.

All the academics in my twitter feed seem to think this is a coordinated assault on higher education. But...doesn't it seem obvious that the cost of college is insanely high? And shouldn't students who are going heavily into debt major in something with clearly transferable job skills? Who could argue with a straight face that there aren't enough doctoral students in the world? Who among us disagrees that most PhDs (myself included) may have been better off doing something else with their time? And do we really think that all those entry-level jobs that require a 4-year degree couldn't be done by a high school graduate?

So am I crazy or are all the people in my twitter feed? My hunch: the tweeters (twitterers?) are actually just worried about their jobs. School and department closures mean fewer jobs for new PhDs. No grad students means professors will be deprived the pleasure of replicating themselves through their students. An army of administrators will no longer be available to fill out all that pesky paperwork. Academic jobs are disappearing, the means of (academic) production are changing, and many of us may need to re-train when our positions are eliminated. Who knew that factory workers and academics could have so much in common?! 

And the cherry on top: Ben Sasse saying that the humanities, hard sciences, and sports are all "greater than" the social sciences. Reader, I laughed! (Social scientists, of course, are pissed.) Now what I really want to do is find a way to make Sasse's tweets and the responses into a modern version of the Protagoras (a version where Socrates is too busy with his day job at Google to chat with the sophists). Obviously, the conclusion of the dialogue will be that sports management is in fact the highest form of knowledge. 

peripheral tidbits: grant edition

A couple nights ago I finished Ron Chernow's new biography of Grant. I'm feeling pretty accomplished, too, because the book is 960 pages and I managed to read it in three weeks. (I checked it out of the library so there was a hard deadline.) It's easy to read 960 pages when they're interesting, though, so it's actually Chernow who ought to be feeling accomplished.

Anyway, it's a good book and I learned many things. (Notably: reconstruction was hella important and I should know more about it.) However, as is my wont, I would like to make note of two peripheral tidbits:

First, I hadn't fully comprehended just how crazy office-seeking and patronage politics were in 19th century America. I feel like an idiot, but I finally understand what Tocqueville was talking about. Also, I think he's probably wrong, since Americans were clearly obsessed with place-hunting. Though I guess the French were worse?

Second, I learned that campaign tactics were infinitely cleverer before television and the internet: in the 1880 election, Republicans printed a pamphlet about Winfield Scott Hancock's political achievements—a pamphlet that contained nothing but blank pages. Why did no one think of this in the 2016 election? If either side prints a clever pamphlet in 2020 I will vote a straight ticket for them. 

online doppelgänger

I get a lot of German email. I don't speak German and I've never lived in Germany, but my last name is very German, and this leads to a lot of spam and misdirected emails. For the first few years, I just deleted and ignored everything. Then, over time, I realized that there is a particular German Julia with my last name who keeps using my email address. First, she tried to create a Facebook account using my email address. Then she signed up for Pinterest using my email address. Pinterest, unlike Facebook, doesn't require you to confirm your email, so she just kept logging in using my email address and I kept getting notifications about it. 

So one day, after the umpteenth notification, I used my email address to change her password, and then logged in and deleted her account. It was so satisfying! No more emails from Pinterest, and I figured I had taught German Julia a lesson. I felt slightly bad about it, but figured she would now realize that she really needed to use her own email address. 

Then, a couple months later later, I got an email confirmation for a gynecologist appointment in Köln. First, I was impressed that women in Germany can make medical appointments online. Then I was intrigued that this Julia is apparently from the same city as my grandmother (maybe we're related?).  And then I became frustrated that this other Julia really is too dumb to remember her own email address. I wrote to the doctor and explained they had the wrong email, but nothing changed. So after the third email asking me to confirm my appointment, I canceled it. Ha! Take that, German Julia! Now, I was sure, she would finally realize that it's my email address, and that I happen to be a person who is not at all above messing with her life. 

But alas, today I received an email confirmation for an appointment at what appears to be a nice nail salon in Köln. This time I didn't even wait for a second or third notification. Appointment canceled! No shellac for you, German Julia!   

And now I'm really, really hoping that she will use my email address to sign up for a dating site next! Because then I will really get to mess with her and it will be so fun. 

in your dreams

I doubt any of you will be surprised to learn that I watch a lot of HGTV.  I watch all the shows, pretty much, and would watch even more if we hadn't canceled our premium cable package. I love all renovations shows, and indeed, my childhood home was a renovation project, so my early years were sort of like growing up with the property brothers. My whole family just really loves real estate: going to open houses was a regular Sunday afternoon activity in my family. And then I met Josh, who works in real estate, and so the love affair continues.

All this to say: I understand real estate aspirations! What I do not understand, however, is the idea of a "dream house." I also do not understand the idea of a "dream job," but I'll get to that in a minute.

The people on HGTV shows are constantly talking about their dream house. The most fascinating part, for me, is that they all seem to have the same dream. They want an open floor plan, they want 3-4 four bedrooms, they want to stay in their current neighborhood (unless they are on House Hunters International), they want a "master" with a spa-like bathroom. They all have a very specific price range, but are OK with blowing past it so they can have the Carrera marble or the gas fireplace or the wine fridge they have their heart set on. And, most annoyingly, they are always ecstatically happy with the final result. They are so happy they cry. 

After a few episodes, watching people achieve their dreams so consistently ends up feeling pretty oppressive. I start to think these people's dreams must also be my dreams. Suddenly, the popcorn ceiling in my apartment brings down my mood. My parquet floors begin to nag at me. The laminate counters in my bathroom become unacceptable. If only I could do a renovation! Then I too could be living in dreams!

Then Josh turns off the TV and insists we go outside, and I remember that I actually like my apartment. And then I walk around the block and remember that I don't have dreams about housing at all! I dream about living in Paris, I dream about getting a call from Marilynne Robinson asking for my opinion about an essay she's writing, I dream about writing a bestselling romance/mystery novel under a clever nom de plume, I dream about reading all the Platonic dialogues in order, but I don't dream about houses.

And just a few weeks ago a friend inquired about my future job plans, and when I replied without much gusto I was told I that I need to conceptualize my "dream job" in order to achieve my full career potential. When I insisted that I have never once dreamed about working, she was somewhat taken aback. I don't have a dream job—I have dreams about what I would do if I didn't have to have a job.

This conversation irked me, and I realize now that it's for the same reasons that people crying with happiness when they see new hardwood floors irks me. The whole point of dreaming is that it's not real! Why would you dream about bathroom tiles when you could dream about your long-lost great-aunt bequeathing you a palazzo in Italy? Why would you dream about working when you could dream about stumbling upon buried treasure and only doing whatever you want for the rest of your life?

I do understand that most contentious people have goals, and those goals may include getting particular jobs, purchasing certain houses, and acquiring specific wine fridges. Good for them! But I sincerely hope their dreams involve more interesting flights of fancy. 

Then again, I've never cried with happiness about anything, so maybe I really just need to loosen up and take more pleasure in interior decoration.  

a perfect word

"I have an experience of recognition, not just in response to others’ ideas, but on the order of a single word. It happens, in my own writing, in those moments when you know there’s a perfect word, even though you have not written it yet. You cast about for it, and over time, some obscure word will come to you — your mind knows it’s there. Often, it’s a word with such an extraordinary precision that you wonder how it survived. You think, This must have come down from early modern English or Anglo-Saxon — how did it come to birth? How did it survive? Who was it that needed this word first and coined it? It’s amazing. You wonder how many people have had any use for it over the last 300 years, but there it is."

—Marilynne Robinson 

petty cultural tyrannies

Why is not wanting to see Hamilton treated as a minor form of heresy? I never thought I'd see the day when I felt oppressed by the need to feign interest in a musical. I'm not even trying to be a contrarian (...mostly?) and yet otherwise polite people become visibly annoyed when I don't want to listen to them sing along to the soundtrack. Who wants to listen to anyone sing along to a soundtrack?? (Seriously. Find me that person and I will buy you an expensive cocktail.)

And why is it that these same people who are so peeved by my lack of interest in seeing Hamilton have never read any Hamilton? I mention the Federalist Papers and all I get is a blank stare. Or a look of total disinterest not dissimilar to the face I pull when people extol the virtues of Broadway musicals.

And now that I think about it, that's is a pretty succinct illustration of the gaping intellectual void that undercuts all of modern culture. You're welcome! 

the &^#@*! side of history

Somewhat masochistically, I now keep an eye out for uses of my least favorite phrase. In case you're interested, here are some recent gems:

• From HuffPost, "Donald Trump once again cemented himself on the wrong side of history, pleading Tuesday not to remove statues honoring the Confederacy."
• From the NYTimes, "Sometimes standing on the wrong side of history in defense of a cause you think is right is still just standing on the wrong side of history."
• From Vice, "Let's keep it simple: The statues should come down because they honor men who fought on the wrong side of history."
• From The Cut, "But then, Google might simply want to be on the right side of history. Using science to explain the differences between groups of people is a look that has never aged well."

(As an aside: while my frustration extends equally to anyone making claims about the right or the wrong sides of history, the latter formulation seems more popular these days. We are clearly feeling less triumphant and more reproachful.)

In every instance, "the wrong side of history" could be replaced with a simple normative statement and the sentence would be all the better for it: "defending a unjust position, even in defense of a just cause, is still wrong"; "the statues should come down because they honor men who fought for an unjust cause"; "but then, Google might want to do the right thing," etc, etc.

Clearly the authors are uncomfortable with making simple judgments about right and wrong. I sympathize: it's often hard to demonstrate why something is wrong. So they appeal to history instead, as though doing so would definitively show the reader how people ought to act now. But most people have no idea what to do when confronted with political or moral dilemmas, and history (at least none that I've read) does not give us any reason to believe otherwise.

Yes, slavery has been eliminated, the confederacy was defeated, and scientific sexism and racism have been proven wrong, but that doesn't mean we've moved beyond injustice. The one thing history does show is that humans are brilliant at finding new and interesting ways to torment each other.