Random
The Academic Life Is Not Candy Land
Anytime I hear the rhetoric about the shelter of academia, I cannot help but think, “What the hell are you talking about?” A job is a job is a job. I have been really interested in some of the responses to Lily’s post about the utility of her MFA, where people have expressed that an academic job involves shelter from the “real world,” and that the simple solution to her very real and valid concerns is to extract herself from the warm and safe cocoon of academia so she might experience “reality.” This is actually a rather common, albeit sort of delusional sentiment, the idea that to know the “real world” one must suffer, toil in poverty, travel, work as a waitress or any other prescription you might have for where the real world is actually taking place.
While nothing is guaranteed, nor should it be, when you pursue a terminal degree and you want to teach, it is frustrating to learn that you may not be able to do what you trained to do, or you might get an academic job without security, working for what amounts to less than minimum wage even though you have excellent credentials. Yes, life is unfair, but the solution here is not for Lily to “walk it off,” or “just write,” because, as I interpeted her post, Lily is not so much lamenting she doesn’t have time to write because she’s in a PhD program. She is lamenting she doesn’t have time to write because she cannot do what she trained to do by getting her MFA even though she has an impressive list of credentials. Hers is the frustration of being the best and having your best not be good enough. That’s a really bitter pill to swallow.
In the meantime, I just finished my first semester as a faculty member at a mid-sized Midwestern public university. I think a lot of these misperceptions about academia and its relationship to reality arise because people simply don’t know what faculty do when they’re not in the classroom or frolicking all summer, or what it takes to become a faculty member. Creative writing is only part of what I do, but I have colleagues who strictly teach creative writing and have the exact same workloads and tenure expectations.
Before you get the academic job, you have to get the MFA or PhD, which can entail reading and writing an exhaustive amount, learning two or more foreign languages, teaching, service work, and otherwise conducting yourself as a faculty member for a stipend that is a pittance. Some people pay for this privilege. Most people accrue a staggering debt load whether or not they are funded. This is all a choice. Then you have to apply for these academic jobs. I applied for about 45 positions. Each application required its own job letter, a vita, letters of recommendation and then various supplementary documents depending on the school including a Teaching Philosophy, Research Philosophy, Writing Sample, Dissertation Abstract, Dissertation Summary, Teaching Portfolio, etc. I created at least one of each of these. I was also working on my dissertation and teaching so I basically went insane and got a lot of gray hair. After you send out your application packages, you wait and hope you will get an invitation to interview at MLA, an annual conference for academics in modern languages and literature. Most English job search committees interview candidates at MLA because it’s centralized.
As a graduate student, you are expected to pay your own way to the conference which is always held in an expensive city. Last year MLA was in Philadelphia. This upcoming MLA is in Los Angeles. As a graduate student, you are generally living below the poverty line so it’s a pretty big deal to have to come up with the money. MLA, until 2011, always started the day after Christmas so to go MLA, you miss the holidays with family. I didn’t get the first MLA interview invitation until the end of the first week of December so I bought my ticket and make my hotel reservations in November with a little faith I would get at least one interview. I got five, went to Philadelphia with my fancy interview suit and then had interviews in hotel rooms or suites, all over the city, along with thousands of other graduate students, equally competitive and credentialed if not more, all vying for probably 100 jobs. It’s awkward and terrible to sit in a hotel room with strangers who are interrogating you. You don’t know what they’re going to ask or what they think of you or what they want so you have to prepare for each interview after researching the respective departments, their philosophies, etc. Some schools are awesome and tell you when and where they’re going to interview you, what they’re going to ask and/or who’s going to be on the search committee so you can prepare more effectively. Some schools tell you to find them by asking for their room at the hotel front desk. While you wait, you sit in a hotel lobby surrounded by a bunch of other doctoral or MFA drones nervously muttering smart sounding things to themselves while shifting uncomfortably in their interview suits. In addition to the MLA interviews, there are phone interviews with those search committees who chose not to go to MLA. I did several of those too. You are generally on speaker phone with committees of four or five people, awkwardly trying to figure out what they want to hear without embarrassing yourself or saying something idiotic. You’ll say something idiotic. On one interview a guy said, “I met you in Nebraska 9 years ago,” and I dumbly replied, “I don’t remember that,” which was the truth but not what he wanted to hear.
After MLA and the phone interviews, there’s a pause for the new year. You wait nervously, obsessively checking the Academic Jobs Wiki for news, for faculty to return to their spring semesters before the search process moves along. You are now waiting for a call to do a campus interview where you travel to that college or university for a one or two day interview. Expenses for campus interviews are reimbursed but you need to come up with the money up front, right after paying for MLA. I had a great boyfriend with a great job or I would have not been able to do any of the job market travel and document preparation (also expensive) without going into debt. On the campus interview for the job I got the day began at 7:30 am. I met with almost every department committee, the chair, the search committee, a group of students, the associate dean or something (I’m hazy on this because it was the end of the day) of the College of Arts and Humanities, and I had to give a lecture about my research. Relative to many campus interviews, this was not bad but it was an all day affair where I was poked and prodded like a zoo animal. The worst part was an insane tour around campus in a business suit in February given by a man who had some kind of allergy to elevators. Other demands at campus interviews can incude teaching a class or two and anything else the search committee dreams up to determine if you will be a good fit for their department. After the campus interview you wait and hope to get a job offer at which point you have to make your peace with the salary and the new economic realities of the modern university, try to negotiate as best as you can, and prepare to start your life as a faculty member. More importantly, you have no choice about where you’re going to live for the next several years of your life, and most of the time, it’s in the middle of nowhere where there are no jobs for, say, your great boyfriend, partner, or spouse. Many people do this whole routine for two or three years or more before they get a job. Jobs of similar salary levels outside of academia only require a two page resumé and one job interview that lasts less than an hour.
The pay is not great. At this point, you might say, “Oh I wish I made that,” etc etc etc. I don’t have a response for that. I wish you did too. I could certainly make less. I would love make more. I do not make enough for the amount of time and energy I have put into my education and the amount of time I put into my job, which I can assure you, demands more than 40 hours a week. This is my choice and I am happy with it. If you scroll to the bottom of last year’s Academic Jobs Wiki page for Rhet/Comp, you’ll see the positions and a range of salaries for several new faculty in the field. Jobs in creative writing tend to be similar or lower. On the Creative Writing Jobs wiki, you can see who got what jobs and what their credentials were. There’s no need to wildly speculate or create myths abut what you need to get a job. There’s a lot of information out there about what people make and what it took for them to get their jobs.
As a faculty member, I teach a 3/3 load or three courses a semester. At other universities faculty can teach a 2/2 or 4/4 load and recently, I’ve seen a few 5/5 jobs. In addition to teaching, there is an expectation of having a research and publishing agenda. You have to participate in departmental governance. I serve on four department committees—professional writing, creative writing, the department literary magazine, and composition. These committees generally meet every two weeks and duties include planning events, proposing programmatic and curriculum changes, providing professional development workshops, etc. I gave two workshops–one on using creative writing in composition and professional writing pedagogy and one on the future of the literary magazine this semester. I served as the fiction editor for the department literary magazine (which is not to be confused with that other magazine I edit), worked on my research, proposed conference panels, etc etc etc. Next semester, I will be presenting at a conference in my primary field so I have to actually write the paper I proposed and of course, there’s AWP where I’m doing two panels and I have to figure out how to pay for the travel because only one portion of one trip will be funded. We also have to serve on university wide committees and are expected to do service at the national level. Some faculty advise student organizations or serve on advisory boards both locally and nationally. Many faculty members serve as readers for literary or peer-reviewed journals and/or serve in some editorial capacity for academic or literary journals. We have to document every single thing we do for our tenure portfolios which are reviewed every year, so we can, essentially, prove, after 6 or 7 years, that we deserve our jobs, that is, if you get a tenure track job. If you don’t have a tenure track job, you do all this without job security. You might have to do all this in a fractured or contentious department. My department, thankfully, is awesome and supportive. Amidst all this, the faculty at my university are currently involved in tense contract negotiations because we’re unionized and it’s contract renewal time. One of the main points of contention is the threat of 24 furlough days which is, essentially, a month of pay and none of us can afford that. That’s pretty real.
This fall I taught three different classes which meant three different preps—freshman composition, professional communication, and new media.
In my composition class, I was teaching freshmen who are adjusting to the expectations of college and many of whom have never had a teacher of color and have no idea how to handle that. Two students referred to black people as “colored people.” They weren’t being overtly racist. The did not know any better. There are many rural students, some of whom don’t have personal computers or Internet access at home and I teach my courses with an intensive focus on technology so I have to help them catch up and also recalibrate my expectations for what students come into the classroom knowing. There’s all kinds of teaching that has to take place that doesn’t involve the curriculum and that is very much grounded in reality. The semester began with 21 students and ended 16 because I’m a “hard ass” and a “battle axe” who expects students to do crazy things like attend class and do their homework. I assign writing nearly every day which means reading, for me, every day. In addition to 3 hours in the classroom each week, there’s several hours (it varies) of prep work, grading, and course planning, for each class.
My professional writing class was a 2000 level class with 18 students. I’ve taught versions of this class before so I had a foundation to work from which made things a bit easier. I had a kick ass group of students who were enthusiastic and engaged and actually looked forward to coming to class so this was the one teaching hour each day where I could chill out a little. For this class, one of the curricular requirements is client-based projects so in addition to the prep, teaching and grading, I also had to find a client for the students to do a project for, manage the logistics of that and make sure the students were doing the work the client needed.
The final class I taught was a 4000 level special topics class in new media, also with 18 students. This was a class I never taught before so I had to learn and teach at the same time. It was an experience. This class was full of pre-law students who have to take this special topics class as a requirement so they have to be there but don’t want to be there. They were also a good group but fairly resistant because like so many college students these days, they want a bespoke education that gives them exactly what they want rather than what they need which to my mind is a liberal education where they are exposed to all kinds of subjects. We also did a client based project in this class and I had the students write, almost daily, on a blog so in addition to regular homework, there were those obligations.
For many students, their English classes are the only classes where their professors get to know their names so you develop relationships with some of the students and they then look to you to be a friend, counselor and confidant. You have to decide where you’re going to create boundaries or you will go crazy. You are also dealing with different levels of literacy. I had students who were very competent and students who were demonstrably underprepared and you have to try to reach all of these students without catering too much to either end of the spectrum because there simply is not enough time.
I also work with graduate students. I am on three thesis committees, two creative, one in literary studies, and next semester I will have two graduate assistants to mentor, in addition to the student committee work. I’ll be teaching three different courses again, which means another three preps. Two of the classes are classes I’ve never taught before so I have to develop new syllabi over break.
Beyond teaching, committee work, service, office hours, and research, I have to think about my personal life because I actually have one, my writing, my responsibilities, my family, etc. I get things done and still have time to watch TV because I do not have children yet.
Being an academic is a lot of work. Most jobs are a lot of work. Please though, let’s stop acting like academics sit around doing nothing all day. We only sit around doing nothing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. While there are some academics who might fit your fantasy of the reality insulated academic, let’s be real: there are slackers in any job. The slackers are not the measure of what anyone does. Academics are not in a coal mine or dropping frozen foods into a vat of hot grease or cleaning up someone else’s mess (at least not literally) so it’s all good. There’s a lot of flexibility so while there is a lot of work, I get to do most of it on my terms. I’m “off” from now until January 10th though I have to grade a disheartening amount of work before next week. During the summer, I can pick up other gigs to supplement my income or I can travel or I can sit around reading and writing or doing nothing at all. Don’t get it twisted though. During breaks, most faculty are catching up on everything they neglected during the last semester and planning for the next semester. We get paid for 9 months of work but work year round.
I am excited about my job every day and grateful as well. I wouldn’t give this job up for anything but I must disabuse you of the notion that academia is some kind of magical fairytale shelter from reality. Faculty members are very much part of the real world most of the time. We work hard to get our jobs and we work hard to keep our jobs just like everyone else.
Tags: academia, MFA, real life
Finals week. I’m grading.
“Anytime I hear the rhetoric about the shelter of academia, I cannot help but think, ‘What the hell are you talking about?'”
True irony is delicious.
I don’t know. The people at my MFA never saw it as a “job” degree. Having said that, those that wanted jobs have them. This is yet another of the countless MFA myths–that you can’t get a job teaching, editing, whatever you want to do. If you are willing to move geographically, if you’re willing to work up a long ladder, if you’re willing to not quit when it gets hard (it will be hard for a good while), you can get the job.
This is true in most areas of employment, to be clear.
I don’t even teach for a decent school and it’s grueling. Anyone who thinks faculty work is easier than non-academic work needs to imagine doing their own job, then having everyone else’s homework.
I don’t even teach for a decent school and it’s grueling. Anyone who thinks faculty work is easier than non-academic work needs to imagine doing their own job, then having everyone else’s homework.
I don’t even teach for a decent school and it’s grueling. Anyone who thinks faculty work is easier than non-academic work needs to imagine doing their own job, then having everyone else’s homework.
It is definitely funny when people post about academics not living in the “real world” as if those people were out hunting bears or constructing new bridges, or whatever would constitute the “real world,” instead of just posting from their cubicle computer in their boring corporate job.
Point being: most jobs are absolutely awful and the real world is unreal anyway.
There isn’t much bumping into each other. Most has been choreographed in training or repetition.
Right on, Roxane.
haha, why do you think I am an academic? I was saying plenty of negative things about academia in the thread this spun off of. My most recent full time job was a boring corporate job where I posted on htmlgiant from my office cubicle.
anything that really happens is real, is really part of the real world. that’s what is so bizarre. I mean, I know what those people are trying to say, but what they’re trying to say is bullshit. everything is real. some parts of real life are different from other parts. different, but not less real.
word! and as the recent bank failings (and the near-trillion dollar aid to the ‘free market’) have shown us, we can no longer sit idly by while people glibly refer to academia as somehow not being part of the “the real world”. Bravo to you.
shouldn’t you be preparing a class or something?
hahhah…yizzurp, that’s what i was thinking
thank you roxane for sharing all of this – it depresses me, excites me, makes me sick to my stomach and gives me hope…i’m going into my thesis for my MFA, and you’re always an inspiration, and always telling the truth, as it should be – thanks for that
Finals week. I’m grading.
“Anytime I hear the rhetoric about the shelter of academia, I cannot help but think, ‘What the hell are you talking about?'”
True irony is delicious.
As an undergrad freshman, should this article (as well as Lily’s article) absolutely terrify me? Is it too soon for me to be panicking about my future this way? One of my writing professors once offered her own speculations on whether to get the MFA or just plunge straight into the market and look for publishers. She herself earned the MFA and spent approximately three years living in a tiny, rustic cabin in Alaska without any water or heat. There she met her husband, who is now a writing professor at the same college. He got his PhD, but I don’t know his story. Anyway, since then, my professor has had two novels picked up by HarperCollins and in between teaching, she pretty regularly attends national conferences specific to her genre. Her success is admirable, but she would be embarrassed to tell any of her students how much she is paid for teaching. And at the aforementioned conferences, she is usually one of three or four (out of 20 or so) authors with an MFA. The point within all of my rambling here is, should I freak the fuck out now or wait at least one more year?
There is no need to freak out. You just need to understand the realities of the system. There are always going to be exceptions but in general, there are many challenges in getting an academic job. These challenges shouldn’t deter you from doing whatever you want to do. They should, instead, inform, so you can adjust your expectations accordingly and, more importantly, have Plans B and C.
Roxane: This post is what I would have said if I thought more carefully before hitting the “publish post” button. This is the post I wish I had written. Thank you. Oh that damned wiki! It eats my time and gives my obsessive nature all the proper nutrients for a healthy diet.
It got to the point where my bf literally had to make me stop reading the wiki, particularly in December and early January. I still check the wiki for this year. It’s like a compulsion now.
wow, I agree with the above comment: it sounds depressing to me, but rewarding to the right person.
My issue isn’t that academia is a protection from the real world, but that it’s unnecessarily cutthroat & maybe too much a part of the real world. I guess it seems to me that the career in academia distracts the writer from the right priorities (case in point: all the non-writerly things Roxane & so many others I know spend their time doing –though she admits enjoying that). Of course, I’m saying this as a pretty ignorant person, just starting my MFA & who has yet to be thrown into this path of brutal careerism. To avoid this life-arc, I am trying to understand why I’m doing what I’m doing, and I guess the more I hear about the nonsense of academic (not that it’s a Candy Land full of unicorns, but that it’s so brutal), the more I (want to) view my degree more as a fine arts degree than a terminative degree to advance my career such-and-such way. I think this is why I hate that most writing MFAs are in the English dept, not the art schools: it assumes what Roxane said above: if you’re getting the MFA in poetry, then you must be in it for a career in academia. No, I’m an artist before I am a careerist. My opinion thusfar is: if you want a career in academia, why not get the MA in lit, and a PhD (and write on the side)? Committees, hotel rooms in expensive cities, conferences, budgetary restrictions, competitive interviews, etc. is not, in my humble opinion, the discursive language of an artist. It sounds, tonally, like the career description of a Microsoft marketing manager. Not for me. & a little sad.
good stuff roxane
Roxane,
As you get nearer promotion and/or tenure, the expectation is for scholarship and administrative responsibilities to INCREASE. As you know.
So get ready. And be thankful for coffee.
Great post. The divide between academic life as perceived and the reality is vast. I’m sure most other professions feel the same way. When I worked in an ER In Denver someone actually asked me if it was like the show “ER” to work in an emergency room.
Oh sure, exactly, except none us looked like supermodels and we rarely eloquently yelled.
I always get this underlying feeling those that bash academia had some personal bad experience with a university, as a student or employee. It seems to inform all they say. That’s fine, very human, but I wish more people would own that.
It’s a JOB. If you’ve had a job, you know jobs are complex. Good, bad, ugly. All three.
It’s not a conspiracy system, it’s not a life, it’s not a reason you’re not published or published, it’s not why people approve of your way of writing or disapprove, it’s not about you at all–it’s a freaking job.
I sincerely doubt that people getting an MFA or PHD successfully learn “two or more foreign languages” as part of their studies. Gaining fluency in a language takes a lifetime. Or did you manage to learn college-level English by the time you were seven?
The problem with ranting is you can get so wrapped up in your own situation that you forget there are other people out there living other lives. Sure, this post makes the life of a professor look hard, but plenty of careers are hard. One semester of working as college faculty hardly gives anybody rights to claim ultimate-oppression status.
Getting the MFA to teach wasn’t at all the focus of my MFA program, U of Alabama. That was one option, but it wasn’t emphasized any more than editing, the many other professional venues for the degree, self satisfaction, or, as may be your point, “This is a place where you can focus on your art.”
That’s OK, right? (Not talking to you personally, just the MFA debate.)
What is the MFA is just this?
1. TIME
2. A group of people who really enjoy talking about writing and books.
3. beer
4. coffee
5. A shit-load of assigned books you need to read.
Oh my.
What exactly about this are people against?
The artist has to eat so unless you’re independently wealthy, you do, at some point, have to think about all of these things that detract from the art. The MFA allows you, as Sean notes below, the time and space to write but you do, generally, also have to think about what happens next, or more importantly, what you want to happen next.
I don’t know. The people at my MFA never saw it as a “job” degree. Having said that, those that wanted jobs have them. This is yet another of the countless MFA myths–that you can’t get a job teaching, editing, whatever you want to do. If you are willing to move geographically, if you’re willing to work up a long ladder, if you’re willing to not quit when it gets hard (it will be hard for a good while), you can get the job.
This is true in most areas of employment, to be clear.
I don’t even teach for a decent school and it’s grueling. Anyone who thinks faculty work is easier than non-academic work needs to imagine doing their own job, then having everyone else’s homework.
Oh I totally agree with that assessment. That’s what I try to explain to folks: the MFA is just a space in life for reading & writing, and a little overdrinking & overstressing. I’m a MFA student, and I really enjoy it. I’m just trying to reconcile the relationship between the degree, the art, and the career. When someone explains the brutality of being a careerist (in whatever profession), I cringe for them. When it’s associated with the art of writing, however, my intuition says there’s something wrong here. Many people say “it’s a job like any other job.” Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t want it to be hemmed in by the same tone, the same language of any other profession. This isn’t an elitist thing, it’s that if I wanted to climb a ladder for money & a job title & benefits etc, I would have been an investment banker; in other words, there’s a reason why most of us chose this course –the MFA– and not another, more profitable one. What I personally would like to see change is this culture that everyone describes, and that doesn’t look much different from the corporate culture (just with a hell of a lot less pay). I understand the need to pay rent & have benefits for the kids, it’s just too bad you need to suck dick to get it. It’s wrong to naturalize it, and say “it’s normal for me to work 60 hrs/wk & not know if I’ll be working past the semester…everyone does that.” It can & should change. And it starts when the institutionalized recognize it’s not okay, it’s jacked up. Let the insurance agents & real estate agents be that way, but not us.
Amen to all of this, Roxanne.
This post has successfully made me feel like I AM NOT BUSY ENOUGH, even though I always feel like I am. Augh.
It is definitely funny when people post about academics not living in the “real world” as if those people were out hunting bears or constructing new bridges, or whatever would constitute the “real world,” instead of just posting from their cubicle computer in their boring corporate job.
Point being: most jobs are absolutely awful and the real world is unreal anyway.
Uh, at my university how many poems, short stories, essays you produce per year are not only tracker per program, they are tracker per individual.
Ever heard “publish or perish”?
Just like the “corporate world” (Not sure on that term–as someone else said, academia is part of it, I’m sure) you have to produce, whatever your product (scholarship), or goodbye.
* tracked
You’re an undergrad freshman? What I remember about being an undergrad freshman is that I was freaking out about like 50 thousand seemingly huge things (probably at least half of which had something to do with sex and not getting it), including but not limited to the future. What I want to say to you is that you don’t need to freak out about any of these things, and you can inhabit your body and be awesome and enjoy your classes and enjoy people, but what is unfortunately probably true is that it is probably not possible to stop freaking out until it is over — the ability to stop freaking out, I think, comes with perspective. Although I do think maybe some undergrads are a lot less freaked out than I was. Maybe because they did more shit in high school. Seriously though? Nothing is that big a deal. Seriously.
I always thought the most astonishing thing about E.R. was the BLOCKING. Watching those bodies negotiate space, the choreography, was its own riveting spectacle, absent any considerations of character or plot or George Clooney’s jawline. I imagine real-life E.R. workers must bump into each other a lot more frequently, or shout, “Excuse me!”
LOL
Your depiction of what “others” think regarding academia is accurate for 1923, maybe.
Corporate life is part of the “real world”. Your inability to realize this fact is a neon indicator of your inclusion in academia.
Being an academic is a lifestyle, not an occupation. Corporate life does not equate to academic life.
Let’s be honest.
You have a little part in your hair from the point flying over your head, jereme.
p.s. I didn’t say corporate life wasn’t part of the real world, I’m not an academic nor (at least currently) trying to be, I didn’t give a “depiction of what ‘others’ think regarding academia,”… hell, maybe your whole post was meant to be a reply to someone else because it certainly isn’t responding to anything I said.
I don’t think it was the point flying by, but the energy wave from your arrogant dismissal. How EXTREMELY academic of you!
There isn’t much bumping into each other. Most has been choreographed in training or repetition.
Right on, Roxane.
haha, why do you think I am an academic? I was saying plenty of negative things about academia in the thread this spun off of. My most recent full time job was a boring corporate job where I posted on htmlgiant from my office cubicle.
Candyland is not an easy game. You don’t want to get stuck with GLOPPY.
I think some people bash academia because they feel jealous of the respect it gets. College lecturers might not get paid much more than fry-cooks at Red Lobster, but our society seems to show them more respect.
Also, some people bash academia out of resentment for being compelled to participate in it. Probably most people under 40 years old had the “you must go to college if you ever want to amount to anything” line shoved down their throats for years. Failing to follow the college route often results in disapproval, and being disapproved of often makes people jealous of those they think are getting respect.
academic life is gross. stultifying. candy land or worse. a cop out.
for me.
my friends pursuing that life are not at all diminished by my opinion.
Why not work at a library or teach high school? Similar money, less work, less stress, similar ‘positive impact on peoples’ lives’ and ‘educational role’, more time for writing, easier to get a job.
Your inclusion in academia doesn’t inherently make you an academic.
Your act of dismissal doesn’t necessarily make you an academic either.
Your comment wasn’t extreme enough to label you as such. Especially, the last line.
I think you’re more of a sympathizer.
For the record:
It doesn’t matter (to me) if any human being is or is not an academic.
I think a large part of the bashing comes from going to college and meeting so many professors who are fucking morons or intelligent but sadistic.
I say this as someone who has never attended a college class in person.
ha. yeah jereme, i think something got missed. makes for a really amusing exchange though.
agree with your bridges and bears thing, lincoln. the real world is unreal, unfortunately not everyone treats it as such.
“Arrogant dismissal” because I said some people have boring corporate jobs in cubicles*? Is this Michelle Bachmann’s html handle? I truly don’t get what you are offended about.
*including myself!
For the record, my last line meant that reality is itself very unreal, especially in this day and age, not that academia is the real real world or however you are reading it (I admit that line wasn’t clear though).
My main point is that the “academia isn’t the real world!!” line is normally coupled with talk of how writers should be out doing interesting things, having adventures and in general having crazy experiences that influence their writing. And yet, most people who say that stuff are not doing anything interesting with their lives, and are working jobs that are just as sheltered, repetitive and boring as anything in academia. Those jobs aren’t any more real (or unreal) than teaching in a college. In fact, in many ways they are very similar.
That’s all.
I sincerely doubt that people getting an MFA or PHD successfully learn “two or more foreign languages” as part of their studies. Gaining fluency in a language takes a lifetime. Or did you manage to learn college-level English by the time you were seven?
The problem with ranting is you can get so wrapped up in your own situation that you forget there are other people out there living other lives. Sure, this post makes the life of a professor look hard, but plenty of careers are hard. One semester of working as college faculty hardly gives anybody rights to claim ultimate-oppression status.
I think teaching high school is a lot more work, often (but not always) for more money, and with a lot less autonomy. My friends who do it really struggle to write except in the summer.
I think when people say that they mean that academic jobs aren’t tied to usual capitalist market forces. In my day job, for example, if the company I work for doesn’t sell enough widgets, widgets being so easy do download for free, then people lose their jobs.
In academia, you don’t have to worry about how many books of poems you sell, or how many people spend money on the university pressing of your criticisms, or how many published short story writers are churned from your program. You may lose your job because of internal politics, or because of a lack of raised funds on the university’s part, but you’ll never lose your job for no one reading your prose poems.
Almost everything about literary academia is unmeasurable, except by the people who are involved in it and care about it, and they themselves are unmeasurable. I could give a shit about the boring widgets I send out – but no matter how much work an academic does, it’s usually in something they have at least a bit of an interest in.
So all that candyland and the real world mean is that the real world is converted to numbers and money, and candyland is based on interest and esteem.
And there’s generally less lifting in candyland.
CEOs routinely get huge sums of money even if their companies fail under them, incompetent managers fill every corporate hierarchy, etc. The people who get fired tend not to be the ones who are making the huge mistakes.
That’s true of all levels of everything – we’ve all met people who seem to be bad at minuscule jobs and still keep them forever, and people who do nothing at the tops of businesses and make tons of money. The point is that these people deal with money, and create value by how much money a thing makes. CEOs who have companies who fail under them usually at some point made money for someone else on something.
But even then, there’s no question that the CEO failed, he was just smart or evil enough to make sure he was paid no matter what.
A writer can sell barely any books and be considered great by other writers and readers and students. The world of writers and academics is still measured essentially by what a comparatively small group of people think about them over time.
It’s why the art world is also considered candyland – what makes a painting worth millions of dollars? time spent on it? amount of hours the painter went hungry? what some rich dude thinks it’s worth so he feels separate and better than the commoners? A painter may sweat over lots of paintings for years, but what makes a single one worth millions (or nothing)?
All of this is seen ephemeral in the eyes of people who have to live and die based on numbers.
i think both of y’alls posts were necessary and well written. I think they are really best for the folks sitting around thinking about getting the ever-loving MFA.
i think both of y’alls posts were necessary and well written. I think they are really best for the folks sitting around thinking about getting the ever-loving MFA.
No offense, but you don’t really seem to even understand what you are saying yourself. You move from talking about a writer whose work isn’t valued in the capitalist system to a painter whose work is highly valued. How is a painter who sells paintings for millions of dollars guilty of not “creating value” anymore than a graphic designer who makes logos for soda brands, a wall street banker who helps almost destroy the financial system yet still makes millions, a newspaper columnist, or almost anything else in a post-industrial capitalist economy?
What makes a t-shirt with a Calvin Kline logo screenprinted on it have more “value” than an identical t-shirt without the logo? The amount of sweat that goes into something is not indicative of its value in any part of the capitalist system. Value is almost entirely fictional in the modern economy. That a snack brand increases their perceived value through corporate marketing hardly makes it more real or more valuable than a painter increasing his value through winning awards and grants. Or if you prefer something bought by rich dudes, like art, what makes one bottle of Grain Neutral Spirit diluted by water cost three times as much as another bottle of GNS diluted by water? It is not any real value or even any real difference, it is all branding and advertising targeted at rich people who want to feel more sophisticated than the commoners. Pretty similar to the art world really.
And what does a highly paid gallery artist have to do with academia anyway?
Most humanities PhD programs require demonstrated fluency of one, two or more languages. This fluency is demonstrated by oral and/or written examinations that include anything from a simple language test you can pass with high school spanish to having to analyze text in a foreign language with your analysis written in those foreign languages.
You’ll note that I say all work is hard. I could also talk about how hard it was to be a dishwasher, corporate trainer, bartender, or any of the other jobs I’ve held if that were relevant. I’m not claiming ultimate oppression anything. I am speaking to the false notion that academia is divorced from reality and free from responsibility. As I note more than once, I love my job and wouldn’t trade it for anything so please stop reading every other word.
I could not imagine teaching high school and having to be responsible to school districts and parents. I do think it is more work with less autonomy.
thank you, this is my point exactly: work at a library, open up a hotdog stand, sell homemade buttons on etsy, who cares. It seems to me that the abuse workers receive as teachers in academia isn’t worth sticking around for. that is unless you want to be an academic, in which case you probably shouldn’t be pursuing the MFA, but rather the MA/PhD. and with a master’s degree, you can make more teaching high school & have more “impact” on someone’s life.
I feel like I make an impact on my students a lot of the time and I definitely have an impact on my university. For me, the flexibility I note is quite valuable as is the freedom to teach what I want how I want.
Uh, at my university how many poems, short stories, essays you produce per year are not only tracker per program, they are tracker per individual.
Ever heard “publish or perish”?
Just like the “corporate world” (Not sure on that term–as someone else said, academia is part of it, I’m sure) you have to produce, whatever your product (scholarship), or goodbye.
* tracked
People are against the climate the MFA creates, rather than what you are able to benefit from being in a program to obtain one. I understand it. There was a time when I wanted one. Not so much anymore, but I can see groups of people who may not have went to school together, but they know someone from “This Program” who went to school with someone “From This Program”, and they sometimes love getting together with “That one Person from that One Program”, and it gets all, all, yeah. Great work is going to rise to the top, usually, no matter what. But when you have a kitchen full of cooks, all making the same dish, you will have takes on that dish, but there is going to be a basic unified approach (exceptions, always exceptions). Your instructors are going to have this approach. And this approach is generally accepted. Any other approach is going to be off-putting, or maybe not so much off-putting but it will not fit in with the rest of the work being produced. It has nothing to do with the quality of the work, but it is all in the approach.
Think of it like: What if you were an employed fella who couldn’t go to school even if he wanted too due to money issues (or defaulted loans, or whatever) and just wrote and wrote, in some sort of vacuum without a community of minds. You’re naturally going to be outside this radium of “accepted style”. Now attempt to publish this work. It will be more difficult. Look at the bio’s of writers in all your favorite lit mags, let’s say, and spot the MFA. It is interesting.
You remember that episode of Fresh Prince where Ashley had a hit single but it got played out? MFAs are kind like that. Nothing wrong with them. Great song. But it’s on every station and it is kind of annoying at times.
#freshprinceofbelair
that wasn’t necessarily directed towards you Roxane; it was more of a general response to the ‘MFA debate’ thing that this has become. I really appreciated your post, though. Like I said above, I wish I could teach university without getting the crap kicked out of me. Poor treatment & getting underpayed is so common that it’s become naturalized: “oh this is just how it is, it’s just like any other job,” etc. I know it’s not like any other job. And I wouldn’t want my writing compromised by that culture, and I certainly wouldn’t want my ‘self’ to be subjected to the apparent abuse of academia (or anyone else). What other group of workers in any other industry would work so much, go to school for 6-8 years, & then get paid $25k the first year IF you’re a hot commodity. That’s laughable. I know real estate agents who work their asses off, get banged around & whathaveyou, but make $70k their first year. Again, it seems universities are taking advantage of the market’s thirst to “be a professor” or to “have freedom”. But then again, I’m not very knowledgeable about the topic: what role does the burgeoning supply of MFA students in the marketplace play in poor wages & being overworked? I have my intuition on the subject, but not a lot of facts…so again, thanks for your article.
I totally get that, Mike. I just wanted to note that there is indeed reward in my job.
Might be a good time to repost that link to the CHE thing about the guy getting paid to write papers for people (including people receiving graduate degrees): http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/
And anyone suggesting to work at a library instead has obviously never been a librarian.
Seriously the most depressing, stressful (even more so than anything in relation to academia), yet best paying job I ever had.
But I would go home every evening so exhausted it made it impossible to write.
Not worth it to me.
This makes me want to hunt a bridge and construct a bear.
Well, you sort of seem to get what I’m saying, but are being stubborn, so I’ll repeat it again.
The real world, by people who say things like “get in the real world.” is the world of commerce where the average person can gauge what a product’s value is. For example: a good candy bar maker is a person who makes more money from selling his candy bars than he and others invest into it.
A good writer or artist is . . . what exactly? Not the person who sells the most books. If that was true, this website wouldn’t exist. A good writer is a writer that So what I’m saying is that the average person doesn’t take literary academia or the art world seriously because they tell can’t a good poem from a bad one, a million dollar painting from a ten dollar painting. They can tell, however, if a candy bar is tasty enough to be worth one dollar, or five dollars.
I’m not saying that academic life isn’t mentally taxing or difficult – I’m just saying that it’s divorced from making money for survival. A fancy bottle of water is justified because someone worked for the money to pay for that bottle. An academic job is justified by writing some things that other academics will read, and by being appreciated by other academics, and paid for by lots and lots of students who go into debt for life, and taxes.
Try bridging a bear and hunting a construct, and you have academia, which is certainly no easier than anything else.
Or harder.
Just different.
Having done both, I’ll say that teaching high school was more relentless, involved answering to more powers-that-were, and afforded less time to write. The relentlessness consisted not only in the number of students but in the herding mentality of the workday–50 minute periods separated by 3 minute bells–the factory model played out to a fault. On the flip side I made quite a bit more teaching high school, which meant more ability to travel, which was a boon that fed back into the writing.
That’s true, but again, the value of the writing has nothing to do with how many people choose to spend the money they worked for on those poems stories or essays. An old film teacher I studied under, a really great teacher, had to start making films to keep his job. So every summer or two now, he makes a digital film, using students as his crew, and that justifies his job. He saves up and pays for it out of pocket.
And . . . none of them are that great, nowhere near as good as his teaching skills. They’re kind of bad, and I hate even saying that, because I like the guy so much. But he doesn’t have to sell these films. He won’t lose his job if the film doesn’t get into a festival, or if it doesn’t play on public access. He just has to make it, and make sure it’s not going to completely embarrass him.
Could you get fired for the poems not being good enough, or is it just a certain number that has to be ? And if so, could you then get a job at another university where the same poems that got you fired from the first university would keep you afloat at another?
The only point I’m trying to make is that in the theoretical “real world” vs “candyland” that the original poster is complaining about, the main difference isn’t how much work or stress goes into it, it’s whether or not value is translated to what the customer wants, or what other academics want.
Huh. I work at a library and find it way easier than other jobs I’ve had. I’m not a full-fledged librarian, but I know and work with a lot of them. It doesn’t pay very well (considering it requires a MLS), but it’s not a super stressful or depressing job at the library where I work. And there is a lot of time for writing, both at work and away from work.
Sorry your library experience was terrible.
In the “real world” of commerce, rich people’s willingness to pay X for a sports car sets its value, but the same rich people’s willingness to pay X for a painting does not?
Why is a painter “divorced from making money for survival” because he sells paintings to rich people? Your argument is unclear, but as best I can tell you seem to think that because the market is smaller for the paintings (it isn’t the general public setting the prices, but a select group of rich art buyers, more or less) that means it somehow isn’t a part of real world commerce? But then how is it any different than fancy sports cars, designer clothes, or anything else limited to a rich, niche market?
I’m afraid I do not agree with your candy argument. You seem to be conflating definitions of good. You are correct that most people don’t judge artists purely based on the money they generate, but do people really do that with everything else in commerce? If I ask you, “What restaurant makes a really good hamburger” you aren’t going to say “Hmm, I’ll have to go check the stock report before deciding.”
Your point also falls apart because life in 2010 isn’t like a dude making a candy bar versus his neighbor the cobbler and his other neighbor the blacksmith. It is gigantic multi-national corporations and the battle ground is advertising and marketing, not the quality of the actual candy bar.
I think you also overstate your case by acting like mere publication or appreciation by other academics is what determines who gets jobs. Yes, people who are very famous in their field can probably land jobs even if they aren’t good teachers (but those people also ATTRACT students, and students bring money. Hey, market forces!), but most people actually have to teach and get evaluated and prove their worth at their job (teaching) for which students pay money (commerce!)
“That’s true, but again, the value of the writing has nothing to do with how many people choose to spend the money they worked for on those poems stories or essays.”
No, it is based on the prestige that those publications bring which boosts the prestige of the department and attracts students who spend money on the university. The customers here are students.
Yes, the situation is more complicated than that. There are, of course, grants and donors and many other things involved (although, then again, the same is true for private industries of any kind).
I love high schoolers and would love to work with youth, and have several times thought abt pursuing that at some point in the future, but I think this would be a really scary-ass time to teach public high school. We are in the middle of a completely horrifying moment for public education in this country, wherein privatization and corporatization and charterization (union busting) are being forwarded as “solutions” for resource inequity, and wherein teachers are getting scapegoated for what are far broader and more systemic problems.
Although I know this is a pretty rough moment in higher ed as well. Debra DiBlasi wasn’t that off base in the other thread, I don’t think, when she talked abt how the consumer model (students as customers and faculty as service providers) has begun to dominate colleges and universities, I think that jives with what Roxane says in her post abt students who want “a bespoke education that gives them exactly what they want rather than what they need.”) Also rising debt, budget issues and maybe also a more concerted right wing backlash or attack on radical research that is posing a threat to the academic freedom and tenure prospects of explicitly social justice-oriented faculty.
“stipend that is a pittance” <-- actually the best part of grad school for me. The full-time GSA/TA stipend at my school is significantly more (plus health insurance!) than I made working 40 hours a week in first retail and then as a secretary. The prospect of going back to those after pittance plus health insurance scares the ever-living crap out of me.
fight for your long day is a novel that clearly establishes that contingent academic employmentis is hardly a job; rather, it’s an adventure!
Ya, but those jobs are not the jobs we might have imagined for ourselves before starting the MFA. Sure, my peers who wanted jobs in academia generally got them (myself included), but those jobs range from adjunct instructors (at one or two or three institutions with 4/4 or 5/5 loads without health insurance or benefits), Writing Center administrative or tutoring positions, library assistants, or administrative positions with no teaching. Most of us do not teach/engage with creative writing students. Those who wanted publishing/writing/editing positions got along a bit better, but even some of those are freelancing/blogging/not writing and are worse off than their desk jobs they had before grad school.
All of that said, hell yeah I’d rather be working on a college campus than anywhere else. Do I hope to some day have a job that deals more directly with creative writing? Sure.
The thing is, I signed up for this long road and knew what I’d be getting into, so R makes an excellent point that thinking about what you want in your future life is key. As far as I’m concerned the two reasons NOT to get an MFA are 1) because you like to write and you don’t know what else to do, and 2) you think it’s a one-way ticket to becoming a professor of creative writing. All other reasons seem to be valid in one sense or another.
“but most people actually have to teach and get evaluated and prove their worth at their job (teaching) for which students pay money (commerce!)”
How are they evaluated? What are they worth? Are they evaluated by how many writers are spit out? By how much the writers they spit out make? By how much the students learn? How is that evaluated? Who decides what a good grasp of lit is?
I’m not saying it’s good or bad. It’s just that to the factory worker who’s done the same fucking thing every day for ten years, or the warehouse worker (like me) who tries to write after turning his brain off for 8 hours a day, it’s a little annoying to hear people talk about how hard being a writing teacher is. If it’s that fucking difficult, work at Starbucks for your health insurance. If you get ANYTHING out of your job except money, and you have a chance of moving up to better money and more freedom, then consider yourself lucky.
I, myself, would love (and am working toward) a job like that.
What is prestige but people liking each other? I don’t think that’s a bad thing – those people know literature, in my opinion. But in the opinion of people who don’t care that much about literature (most of the country), then the prestigious opinion of a prestigious man is no different from listening to their petulant child talk read poetry about the girl who broke won’t text him back.
I mean, people lease out their lives to study literature, then can’t get jobs with them, except for a small amount of teaching jobs, where no one makes any money off their writing, only their ability to teach students the skills that lowered their own ability to get a job.
I can’t think of a better system to replace it – working a full time unskilled job and trying to read and write as much as an MLA is pretty tough, and not very satisfying.
But to the people who would call the literary world Candyland (not necessarily me), they do so because they do not see any value to what is being studied and taught. And they are a much larger group than those who do care and value literature.
This ridiculous notion that people get graduate degrees in Creative writing, in order to teach Creative Writing, could only have been devised by America.
No, dude, OBVIOUSLY professors have it harder than waitresses, dishwashers, keno runners, soldiers, UPS guys, or any of the other billion jobs without which society wouldn’t even be able to have extraneous things like university level education.
[…] contains two topics and a total of seven posts. Meanwhile, over at HTMLGiant, Roxane Gay writes an essay about teaching and receives 73 comments, a response which represents but a small fraction of the […]
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The Academic Life Is Not Candy Land | HTMLGIANT
[…] contains two topics and a total of seven posts. Meanwhile, over at HTMLGiant, Roxane Gay writes an essay about teaching and receives 73 comments, a response which represents but a small fraction of the […]