<p>I am a tenured associate professor at a comprehensive Master’s level university in the Northeast. The OP should not to go to graduate school for a Ph.D in English (as I did a while ago) unless she is willing and able to underemployed or unemployed for the rest of her life. I know many fine people with degrees from prestigious programs and outstanding records in teaching and publication who cannot get full-time jobs. There are literally hundreds of people applying for each tenure track job we’ve posted in the past, and right now, we are in a hiring freeze. It is not going to get much better.</p>
<p>Well, I thought, “I want this PhD. As long as it’s being funded, what difference doesn’t it make? I can always do something later.” So, there is that, too.</p>
<p>My D is getting the same advise about law school, but I say, as Joseph Campbell did, “To follow your bliss.” </p>
<p>We don’t know which way leads on to way, but if we keep doing what we want we have a life made up of joy. Of course, within reason. It is not sensible to put oneself in debut for something iffy.</p>
<p>For me, the value of the PhD was in the doing. The job was the icing.</p>
<p>And my S is going to go to grad school for Classics, I think. I am encouraging him. It’s his heart’s passion. He can become a respiratory therapist later if he chooses, or something like that. You know what I mean.</p>
<p>By the way, AnuddahMom, re the Herricks: DS told me that the entire carpe diem school is slightly misunderstood. Carpe diem doesn’t mean “seize the day”, it means “pluck the day.” Doesn’t that give you an entirely different feeling? Of care, and lack of wantonness? </p>
<p>And I am so intrigued by your story. Your cliche is my brilliant daydream. I would so liked to have done that. How did you get there? How did it turn out?</p>
<p>Mythmom, as long as the Ph.D. seeker in the humanities fully understands and accepts that there is most likely not going to be a full-time job with long-term security and benefits waiting at the end of the program, then that’s fine. However, there is a great deal of delusional thinking in the academy, both individually and collectively, that sustains graduate programs in the humanities. It’s very hard to invest yourself fully in a course of study and a lifestyle without, at some level, starting to believe that you’re different, you’re luckier, you’ll get that (nonexistent) tenure-track job. If a person wants to devote eight or so post-B.A. years to intellectual pursuits without the hope of eventual renumeration, then he is either 1) monklike in his devotion to learning or 2) wealthy. Most students I know are neither. That said, I wish your son (and all other aspiring Ph.D.s) all the best.</p>
<p>Oh, and Mythmom’s point about funding is key. Don’t go for a Ph.D. in the humanities unless you can get a fellowship. Otherwise, you’re just paying for someone else’s fellowship, and you’re still not going to get a job.</p>
<p>My D’s situation is a little like the OP. </p>
<p>D graduated from college in 2008 - 4.0, PBK, top graduate in her department, etc. from our stateU. Though we tried to persuade her to wait, to “get a little older” (although she has been mature since birth), to continue her education, etc., D married the summer after graduating and worked for a year while her husband finished his Masters in music. Their plan was always for D to start grad school as soon as he received his degree. D’s area is listed as a social science/humanity and her goal is also to teach at the university level.
Reading article such as this scare me - [Graduate</a> School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846]Graduate”>http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846), but it is what she wants to do. She applied to grad school and was accepted to all four schools with full tuition paid, generous stipend, insurance and travel paid, etc. offers at all 4. She moved half way across the country to attend a large public U ranked in the top 50, that is also ranked 3rd in the nation in her area of study. Son-in-law is working two part time jobs, one in the area of his degree and the other on campus. They rent, eat most all their meals at home, brown bag lunches, sold one of their cars (so they get by with one vehicle), generally live frugally and seem to be getting along fine. We just went to visit for the first time since they moved and loved the area, loved the school, and are so proud of D and SIL for how they area handling their lives.</p>
<p>If you have a dream and the desire to make that dream a reality, it can be accomplished!
Doesn’t have to be an either or situation.</p>
<p>OP has received good advice here. Our marriage cost us about $50 and we were poor enough that it was a pretty sizable chunk of our disposable income at the time. We bought our first house 12 years later. You only need to think about buying a house when your first child is ready to start elementary school. “Settling down” is a state of mind.</p>
<p>@mythmom, I want to be your student! And how great that you and DS can have such fabulous conversation and share perspectives! (is he a student now, if so where?)</p>
<p>
Gosh, well I’ll try to sum it up. I wanted to go to art school, but my parents insisted I get a Liberal Arts degree. Grumpiness and procrastination meant I begged a place at my state school at the last minute. After 2 years, transferred w/ excellent GPA to the American College in Paris (now American University of Paris). Studio Art was always my forte, so after my BA I didn’t feel ready to leave Paris, so went through the Forest of No Return, which is the French Grandes-Ecoles matriculation, and thus became a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. I could still carry that student card if I wanted to – I don’t think there is ever a time limit for graduation, so some of the people lurking around the ateliers there look mighty crufty, and are only students in the broadest Chekhovian sense. I got a job as foreign correspondent for some American publishers, but mostly hung around the Deux-Magots with my friends, rubbing each other’s backs and spouting a lot of fake knowledge of Camus, Sartre, and de Beauvoir.
I did that for 7 years. I kid you not.
I will spare you the rest of the story.</p>
<p>(p.s., my kids think it’s hysterical that I majored in Art History, but psssst, don’t tell them – I’m thinking about doing a Ph.D. in Art History now! At my advanced age! You’re never too old to be foolish, is my mantra)</p>
<p>AnuddahMom: Still my brilliant day dream. That sounds so awesome, and I bet you speak the most beautiful French, too.</p>
<p>DS, and he is a honey, attends Williams. He is taking an Art History class he really adores. Their program is quirky. Intro class is two semesters – first dedicated to architecture and sculpture; second to drawing and painting. You must take both semesters to receive credit for either.</p>
<p>He homework for this weekend was to create a floor plan for one of the campus buildings, randomly assigned by the instructor. He is taking this quite seriously. He can’t draw, and I don’t think he has done much with graph paper or a ruler in a while, but he is game. (The professor said they didn’t need to do this – free hand was fine, but as he said, "I have no free hand.)</p>
<p>And I want you to be my student, too. And my teacher. I always want to perfect my French. And my joie de vivre.</p>