This is literally true because you cannot get a PhD if you don’t learn to navigate University politics, which is the singular largest corrupting influence in academia. If you fail to do that, they literally give you a Masters as a consolation prize for preserving your integrity.
Eh, maybe. It’ll probably be less relevant for me because the humanities are basically all politics, there’s very little way to just “get results.”
But i’ll probably still give it a read, it’s bound to be helpful.
Edit: did read, was depressing… I wonder how similar the experience is in a STEM program? I’m sure the advice of “choose your advisor carefully” applies, but at least internships are pretty common so you can ‘test drive’ your advisor somewhat.
Since a part of the funding the humanities are starved of is directed to STEM, it may be less arduous there. Problems of sexism won’t be much better, but maybe at least closer to the societal norm, which might be the most depressing sentence I’ve written in a while.
The reason I have a PhD is because I was about to drop out and get a real job, when one of our papers won an award and I backed my way into a thesis defense with a 30 page dissertation because it made my advisor look good.
This is literally true because you cannot get a PhD if you don’t learn to navigate University politics, which is the singular largest corrupting influence in academia. If you fail to do that, they literally give you a Masters as a consolation prize for preserving your integrity.
I beat the system by skipping the Master’s on the way to my PhD and then not getting the PhD in the end. Smoked a hell of a lot of dope, though.
You sound like you know from experience
If you want a read about the humanities in particular, here’s a history PhD’s commentary on his experience: https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-to-grad-school-in-the-academic-humanities/
Eh, maybe. It’ll probably be less relevant for me because the humanities are basically all politics, there’s very little way to just “get results.”
But i’ll probably still give it a read, it’s bound to be helpful.
Edit: did read, was depressing… I wonder how similar the experience is in a STEM program? I’m sure the advice of “choose your advisor carefully” applies, but at least internships are pretty common so you can ‘test drive’ your advisor somewhat.
Since a part of the funding the humanities are starved of is directed to STEM, it may be less arduous there. Problems of sexism won’t be much better, but maybe at least closer to the societal norm, which might be the most depressing sentence I’ve written in a while.
What do you mean with “get results”, by the way?
Publications, patents, grant funding…
Basically the sort of stuff that’s politically useful to your university and advisor regardless of any personality conflicts you may have
The reason I have a PhD is because I was about to drop out and get a real job, when one of our papers won an award and I backed my way into a thesis defense with a 30 page dissertation because it made my advisor look good.