My Life in a Nutshell
Posted: January 15th, 2011, 11:18 am
So here's what's been happening with me.
To cut to the chase, I'm taking a(nother) Master's degree and leaving Emory at the end of this school year.
Over the past couple of years, I have been operating with two co-advisors. One, an older, very well-respected scholar, is retiring this May. The other, a junior professor, is up for tenure right now. At the onset of this arrangement, it was sold to me as an opportunity to get more advice, more insight, more assistance with all the various pursuits of academia. Instead, it has turned out to be a matter of a whole lot of "ask the other guy."
Particularly in the last year, as I got deeper and deeper into the most difficult parts of formulating a dissertation project, I found that I needed help with some things...the advice that one would think an "advisor" was charged with providing. However, there were far too many occasions when my emails and telephone calls elicited response only after about 10 days and several attempts at communication. Often, I got simply no response at all. Other times, upon requesting counsel or assistance, I had one or the other basically tell me "No, I will not help you with that." This is not an acceptable means of educating any student on any level in any field, and it caused me to begin questioning a) the continued suitability of the Emory history department for my professional development, and b) whether I cared to be a part of such a professional environment anyway.
As I arrived at this past fall semester, when I was slated to defend my dissertation prospectus and then depart Atlanta for research, I was still bogged down on a few points of my dissertation, and the quality of my advisement, which had already been poor for too long, started getting worse. One advisor smells retirement and is never in Atlanta, nor is he on campus or particularly available when he is in Atlanta. The other, desperately trying to get tenure, has checked out on me and all of his other students, to the extent that it has become an open point of departmental conversation (which would seem to strongly indicate that he may want to begin considering contingency plans in the event that he doesn't get tenure).
Stuck between two unyielding and almost entirely unhelpful "advisors" (yes, I have begun placing that term in quotation marks, because they have not substantively advised me for nigh on two years now), I began considering the existential dimensions of my professional and academic troubles. Soul-searching and discussions with my closest friends and family revealed that lots of people felt I had not been myself in quite some time...brooding, moody, withdrawn (see that last descriptor for clues as to why I haven't shown my face around here). I realized that the very solitary components of being a historian--studying for exams, research, reading, etc.--were far too removed from the human relations that really fulfill me, and that they had created creeping misery in me.
It further occurred to me that, in the past two and a half years, the only time I had really been happy was last spring, when I was teaching. The classroom was the place where I put knowledge to work, where it combined with relationships to make something new and to make a difference to someone.
As I continued to mull these things and seek advice from those who know best, I was faced with the fact that the vast majority of American universities simply do not prioritize teaching to any meaningful extent. Moreover, everyone kept telling me that the university job market, always poor in the first place, is in particularly bad shape right now along with the rest of the economy, and showing few signs of recovering in the near future (especially for those who work in the humanities). So, that left me with the prospect of two more years of unhappiness trying to produce a dissertation with little help from those ostensibly charged with helping me, followed by daunting job prospects. Even if I did get a job, it would entail another 15 years or so of the solitude of the archive, which (see above) makes me effing crazy. Furthermore, that job would be a) ill-paid for another 5-10 years and b) God knows where.
I didn't sign up for any of this with some illusion that I'd somehow get rich, but I did envision it as a place of vibrant collaboration and the excitement of learning on a daily basis. Emory taught me that, for the vast majority of those who work there, the university simply is not such a place. I have also learned that while the university is full of great scholars, its great educators are fewer and further between than you'd think. Even before I set foot in my first graduate school classroom, I was more interested in being an educator than in being a scholar.
So that brings me to today. I have lots of good contacts in most of the best private high schools in Atlanta, and have begun exploratory discussions with several of them. All of the people I've yet spoken to (some of whom are quite high on their respective totem poles, and all of whom are well respected) have told me that my credentials are sound, and that a teaching job in one of Atlanta's independent high schools would be mine for the taking if I wanted it.
Armed with that knowledge, I've spent the last 10 days or so researching the whole thing in more depth. Turns out I can teach in one of these high schools in very similar fashion to how I would teach undergraduates, with focused, intensive curriculum and a great deal of leeway with regard to how I design and conduct my classes. Outside of the classroom, working in these places entails not mind-numbing archival hours, but contributing to the school and its community by way of coaching, trips, and other means of building relationships with the students and the school...again, right up my alley.
So there's the deal. I've kept my Emory funding through May, and I'm writing a Master's thesis to be submitted there this spring. Come this fall, the plan is to be teaching high school here in Atlanta. That way, I can do the professional things I always really wanted to do, while also continuing to hold my existing relationships (with friends and family here, and with Atlanta in general) as an important priority in my life.
I was initially surprised at how this all unfolded, but as I learn more about this process and myself, it feels less and less like a consolation prize and more and more like a discovery that this path was where I really belonged in the first place.
Sorry this is so long, but now you're all pretty well up to speed on where the hell I've been.
And if you've made it this far, might I request some job vibes?
To cut to the chase, I'm taking a(nother) Master's degree and leaving Emory at the end of this school year.
Over the past couple of years, I have been operating with two co-advisors. One, an older, very well-respected scholar, is retiring this May. The other, a junior professor, is up for tenure right now. At the onset of this arrangement, it was sold to me as an opportunity to get more advice, more insight, more assistance with all the various pursuits of academia. Instead, it has turned out to be a matter of a whole lot of "ask the other guy."
Particularly in the last year, as I got deeper and deeper into the most difficult parts of formulating a dissertation project, I found that I needed help with some things...the advice that one would think an "advisor" was charged with providing. However, there were far too many occasions when my emails and telephone calls elicited response only after about 10 days and several attempts at communication. Often, I got simply no response at all. Other times, upon requesting counsel or assistance, I had one or the other basically tell me "No, I will not help you with that." This is not an acceptable means of educating any student on any level in any field, and it caused me to begin questioning a) the continued suitability of the Emory history department for my professional development, and b) whether I cared to be a part of such a professional environment anyway.
As I arrived at this past fall semester, when I was slated to defend my dissertation prospectus and then depart Atlanta for research, I was still bogged down on a few points of my dissertation, and the quality of my advisement, which had already been poor for too long, started getting worse. One advisor smells retirement and is never in Atlanta, nor is he on campus or particularly available when he is in Atlanta. The other, desperately trying to get tenure, has checked out on me and all of his other students, to the extent that it has become an open point of departmental conversation (which would seem to strongly indicate that he may want to begin considering contingency plans in the event that he doesn't get tenure).
Stuck between two unyielding and almost entirely unhelpful "advisors" (yes, I have begun placing that term in quotation marks, because they have not substantively advised me for nigh on two years now), I began considering the existential dimensions of my professional and academic troubles. Soul-searching and discussions with my closest friends and family revealed that lots of people felt I had not been myself in quite some time...brooding, moody, withdrawn (see that last descriptor for clues as to why I haven't shown my face around here). I realized that the very solitary components of being a historian--studying for exams, research, reading, etc.--were far too removed from the human relations that really fulfill me, and that they had created creeping misery in me.
It further occurred to me that, in the past two and a half years, the only time I had really been happy was last spring, when I was teaching. The classroom was the place where I put knowledge to work, where it combined with relationships to make something new and to make a difference to someone.
As I continued to mull these things and seek advice from those who know best, I was faced with the fact that the vast majority of American universities simply do not prioritize teaching to any meaningful extent. Moreover, everyone kept telling me that the university job market, always poor in the first place, is in particularly bad shape right now along with the rest of the economy, and showing few signs of recovering in the near future (especially for those who work in the humanities). So, that left me with the prospect of two more years of unhappiness trying to produce a dissertation with little help from those ostensibly charged with helping me, followed by daunting job prospects. Even if I did get a job, it would entail another 15 years or so of the solitude of the archive, which (see above) makes me effing crazy. Furthermore, that job would be a) ill-paid for another 5-10 years and b) God knows where.
I didn't sign up for any of this with some illusion that I'd somehow get rich, but I did envision it as a place of vibrant collaboration and the excitement of learning on a daily basis. Emory taught me that, for the vast majority of those who work there, the university simply is not such a place. I have also learned that while the university is full of great scholars, its great educators are fewer and further between than you'd think. Even before I set foot in my first graduate school classroom, I was more interested in being an educator than in being a scholar.
So that brings me to today. I have lots of good contacts in most of the best private high schools in Atlanta, and have begun exploratory discussions with several of them. All of the people I've yet spoken to (some of whom are quite high on their respective totem poles, and all of whom are well respected) have told me that my credentials are sound, and that a teaching job in one of Atlanta's independent high schools would be mine for the taking if I wanted it.
Armed with that knowledge, I've spent the last 10 days or so researching the whole thing in more depth. Turns out I can teach in one of these high schools in very similar fashion to how I would teach undergraduates, with focused, intensive curriculum and a great deal of leeway with regard to how I design and conduct my classes. Outside of the classroom, working in these places entails not mind-numbing archival hours, but contributing to the school and its community by way of coaching, trips, and other means of building relationships with the students and the school...again, right up my alley.
So there's the deal. I've kept my Emory funding through May, and I'm writing a Master's thesis to be submitted there this spring. Come this fall, the plan is to be teaching high school here in Atlanta. That way, I can do the professional things I always really wanted to do, while also continuing to hold my existing relationships (with friends and family here, and with Atlanta in general) as an important priority in my life.
I was initially surprised at how this all unfolded, but as I learn more about this process and myself, it feels less and less like a consolation prize and more and more like a discovery that this path was where I really belonged in the first place.
Sorry this is so long, but now you're all pretty well up to speed on where the hell I've been.
And if you've made it this far, might I request some job vibes?
