… is harder than it should be.
I have posted previously about the ways that responsible teachers should be representing graduate school to our students, which is to say: with bright red warning lights. <<Danger!>> <<Danger!>> <<There be monsters!>>
But, I haven’t always been able to follow this advice myself. Last week, one of my favorite graduate students — a smart, funny, down-to-earth young woman — came to tell me that she’s considering dropping out of grad school. I should have jumped up and down, congratulated her for escaping the cold, clammy jaws of academia, and ushered her onto a new and hopeful future.
Instead, I found myself trying to defend academia and encouraging her to stick it out. What happened to me? It’s like my body was temporarily taken over by an admissions counselor.
When I asked her why she was thinking of leaving, she said she was disillusioned about academia and specifically cited her realization that we, her professors, did not seem to enjoy what we were doing. (Isn’t she observant?) What could I say? I hemmed and hawed and talked about how it would be a shame for her to have invested her time and money without getting a degree, about what a great teacher and scholar she would make, about the rewards of being a professor, etc.
Afterwards, I was reflecting on my “Rah! Rah! Academia is great!” performance, and all I could think was: I took her rejection personally. If she doesn’t want to be an academic, she doesn’t want to be like me. She has seen through the persona I present to students, the one that really, really believes in academic work and in the value of reading, writing, and talking about literature. (Okay, I do believe in those things, but generally that sentiment gets buried underneath the drudgery of the job.) I just wanted her to want to be a part of my group because, here’s the chilling part, it feeds my ego. I want my students to idolize me because it’s one of the few “perks” I get. Scratch decent pay, reasonable work load, or free weekends, at least my students think I’m the coolest.
It’s quite a let down when they don’t.
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April 12, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Breena Ronan
You are much more self aware about these things than most professors, at least from the point of view of a graduate student. My experience has been that whatever professor you talk to thinks that their interests and their field is the most important. They tend to take offense if you don’t want to imitate their every move.