guys i need some lol college advice

have a keg party and pull a prank on the dean with some nerds.

where is the job where i can read things i find really interesting and talk about them with fantastically smart people and maybe even write about them but i can do it all at my own pace with no pressure and no one ever judges my work?

it's called college, lol.

choose between the honors project and the radio station.

get a job

Lots of great advice on this thread, I'll go through some of what was said. I think I might have some things to offer as I was in a similar situation and was thinking long and hard about the academic route. I studied philosophy (mostly continental/crit theory stuff as well as a lot of ethics, some logic, general history of phil.) and was very seriously considering doing a Phd. Actually, "was very seriously considering" = "ruling out pretty much all other options and thinking that I was definitely going to become a professor." I ultimately decided to take a few years off, thinking I would later apply to programs. I am beyond happy that I looked into other options. Most of my advice centers around "but, dude, think seriously about whether you want to apply to Ph.D. programs!"

Here goes:
one thing to keep in mind is that when you're in college and you love school your only immediate role models are professors. but I have to believe there are other things you can do with your life where you learn and teach...or fields that reward you for thinking.

this is completely, completely OTM. So many smart undergrads who really excel in their majors (especially humanities students) look to the first immediate lifestyle in sight -- their professors, and just think "oh that's what I'll do" without really understanding a.)that there are loads of other options that aren't immediately visible but offer the same intellectual engagement with a lot less of the hassle and b.)that a Phd-->tenured professor dream is a hellish, hellish, hellish process that is extraordinarily difficult to achieve for most humanities students. Some students hear this, but then think "oh, I'll definitely be the lucky one, the student who gets a tenure position, I'm the smartest, most motivated, etc." But every Phd hopeful thinks they will be the lucky one, and the majority of them will not be.

the stuff im really passionate about is the sort of crit-theory/contintental philosophy stuff

This is an awesome field and there is some really engaging stuff in it, but unfortunately the job market is utter crap for this kind of stuff.

just to bring everybody down I am going to mention my grad advisor who was talking to me once about how crazy all these kids are who go and work straight on through eight to nine years, get their Ph.D in english literature, and then somehow think some small college in a nice town is going to have an opening with tenure possibilities ;_;

OTM. Nobody likes a downer, but unfortunately there aren't enough downers giving advice on students who are hoping to be academics. Most of my undergrad professors built up my self-confidence, and I thought "yea I got mostly As and good remarks from my profs" and my academic self-confidence was big and bloated, but none of them really gave me a realistic perspective on graduate study. Looking into it made me realize that I'd get my ass kicked in academia and I'd be miserable to boot.

a lot of the tenured boomer profs will be retiring and leaving options open for me

This might be true, but fewer and fewer of the retiring tenured profs are being replaced with other tenured positions. Adjuncts and other part-time crap jobs with lousy pay and no benefits are replacing the tenured professor who had his/her awesome job for 35 years.

Ultimately, you are wise for not wanting to go straight to grad school. Unless one is a complete crit theory diehard (or any other subject) who reads this stuff constantly even when his/her classes don't require it, he/she would probably benefit from taking some time off. Even that person might benefit. If you find you truly can't live without reading/discussing/researching/ Foucault, et al., then you can always go back to school. I took some time off and haven't read a work of philosophy since graduation, and it feels effin' great. I've had so much more time to find out what really, really interests me and I often think how miserable I would be if I was in a grad program right now.

As for the honors project -- I'd say go ahead and do it! (whether or not you plan to apply for Phd programs.) Things like that can be a blast, even if they are a lot of work. You'd probably be happy you did it in the end. It gives you a decent sense of what long-term, intensive research entails, which is precisely what grad school/academic life is. The only caveat is the one you mentioned about your advisor -- projects like that definitely benefit from frequent meetings with an advisor and if they aren't really there most of the time, it might be difficult. See if there is anyone else you could meet with.

One last point -- to all those who actually did go ahead and do a Phd -- I can be very forthright in all the reasons why one shouldn't do it, but ultimately I think it's a pretty awesome path and have a ton of respect for you. It's such a fantastic way to make a living, if you're motivated enough, and that's great. Damn I went on too long, didn't I?

i really wish deep springs had grad school

thx for the extended reply, mark. i think a major problem is that as true as this: a.)that there are loads of other options that aren't immediately visible but offer the same intellectual engagement with a lot less of the hassle might be, those "other options" are very much not visible, and i dont really know how to go about looking for them. im more than open to other options (in fact, id really like to something i love as much as this without the impossible job market & 7 years of school), its just hard to figure out that they are.

but this isnt a thread about my creeping feeling of dread, its about my honors project.

I'm glad I'm doing a PhD, but I really wish someone had told me/I had figured out just how shitty and unsatisfying it would be a lot of the time.

in case anyone's wondering i still havent finished my 6-page paper on women in mathematics.

hahha nice. yea max i do wish i had more advice on your honors project. sorry to go off on the big tangent!

no worries mark, its all the same question anyway basically

hi dere I am in this boat!

AFAIK doing these kinds of paper are really good because they are a great great great example of "research ability" which grad schools really look for. But I am doing one too and yeah it sucks a dick. Not doing PhD route tho, just grad school.

In terms of laziness/procrastination/anxiety, I just kind of constantly push myself to do things, make lots of schedules and planners, blah blah. I have to break everything down or I can't function. To narrow my topic and get an idea how to structure a paper like this, I went down to my college main office and asked to see the papers from previous years. They had a whole room of like all of them ever, and you could flip through and find stuff from yr major and look at how they wrote it and everything. Maybe yours does too! My advisor also advised me to break it down into smaller papers, which is a BIG HELP in terms of not feeling totally overwhelmed and terrified.

sorry I know my posts read like gibberish but I am revising a grad school essay and doing reading for my insane IR classes at the same time.

i think i also need someone to say "MAX stop posting to ILX you need to be working on your honors project"

to say that whenever i post, i mean

"where is the job where i can read things i find really interesting and talk about them with fantastically smart people and maybe even write about them but i can do it all at my own pace with no pressure and no one ever judges my work?"

You should pitch this to the Gawker Media Empire (TM). I hear they're always looking for a new blog-hook.

the Fleshbot crossover would be killer

This thread kind of makes me glad I never ended up applying to grad school back when I was seriously considering it. Especially horseshoe's comment about professors as role models and the romanticization of the academic lifestyle. I still wish my job was as social and engaging as teaching would be, but I can't say it's not intellectually stimulating.

max, I have periodically had to swear off ILX to meet grad school deadlines. it helps me to be all absolutist about it and not look at it at all for like, a month. but I have been driven crazy by ph.d. school; such an extremist approach might not be necessary for you.

(I am absolutist about it mostly for psychological reasons, not because I'm getting so much work done.)

(also maybe since most of my grad skool peers will be female my being male might work for me?)

as long as you are down with feminist agendas!

can i ask a lol grad school question here?

professor sez: write response paper on readings and last week's class every week (which i think is incredibly undergrad thing to do anyway but whatever). she said they were to be 'diary-like.' however, she gives criticizes/grades them based on her personal opinions/agendas and does not seem open to alternate ideas. how do i shot good grades without compromising my own ideas by towing her party line?

wow, that does sound undergrad-ish. if that's the impression you get--that she's grading with an agenda--I would just write the kind of response she wants to read.

ugh i was afraid of that. i just feel like since i only have 4 semesters of grad school i really don't want to have any 'throw-away' classes. i want them all to matter and spend the semester expanding my thoughts rather than analyzing the readings to predict what she would say about them.

that sounds like some bullshit, tehresa. who grades diary-like responses?

i just feel like since i only have 4 semesters of grad school i really don't want to have any 'throw-away' classes.

Yeah, the thing is though, you may not want to have throw away classes, but lol you may have shitty, throw away teachers.

thats not even undergrad shit, thats high school shit

hm that is weird, t. but i think by 'diary-like' at a grad school level she may mean more like 'critical response' but with a bit more personal gut reaction involved. i guess i'd just say that to do well, stay open, address what you know her agenda is but don't necessarily agree with it if you don't agree with it. i don't know, in the end, it's her class...

yes horseshoe... response generaly = subjective and therefore not able to be graded under standard objective criteria, rite?!?!

i am debating bringing this up with my advisor. she may have some tips, but then again, i don't want to seem like a whiny 'wah grad skool is hard' biotch.

how long does your project have to be, max? under 50 pages?

okay, t, y'know i'm a bit jaded about school in all its forms these days, as much as i love education and knowledge and information and all that, but when they say 'response' and 'subjective' and 'your opinion' you have to forget what you thought they meant b/c what they mean now is more along the lines of critiquing with abilty to back up your ideas with references and reasons why

heh, 35 pages... honestly this is a lot less "how can i possibly write this" and a lot more "how can i possibly write this to my absurdly high standards of perfection"

one of my professors pointed out this morning that im taking on way too much and my topic is way too big and im way to interested in writing something totally new and original instead of just putting my head down and learning how to research & write a long paper

otherwise you will be shot down
she might still be a crappy prof, of course, but if you make a solid argument she has no reason to give you a bad mark
xpost

max i wrote 35 pages in 7 days at the end of my first semester of grad school plus wrote a 15 page paper and a 25 pager during that same month. you can totally do it! tried and true: one page at a time, one sentence at a time, one quote at a time, etc etc

^ i'm not bragging there or anything at all - research went into those papers that was done over several weeks before too but the compiling of it and the writing process wasn't so bad or long once i got going.

also it feels AWESOME when you're done

i just edited my entire thesis 80+ pages and sent it to prof yesterday. so i'm riding a high. plus i got a job today.

yeah but the thing is i honestly dont want to be in that position... ive written a 20 page paper in a night on two separate occaisions and both times they turned out thoroughly mediocre; this time i really want to do as well as i know that i can.

hey congrats on the job! and the thesis!

i think what i really need here is tony robbins

p.s. if you don't do the work and procrastinate things kinda go to shit. oh believe me, i know. even if you love the work yet can't manage to get yourself to do it for whatever reason, you have to force yourself to do it, like, just pick a quote and write about it for 10 minutes, stuff like that. better for work quality and sanity.

xpost
tony robbins does have some good things to say

also, maybe don't think of it as a 35 page project/thesis. think of it as like, 3 10-page essays or 2 15-page essays and an intro and conclusion

omg congratulations rrrobyn!

max, that perfectionist shit will kill you!

it almost killed me. i think perfectionism is mostly about fear. i've been doing a journalism/talk radio show for the past few months and it's really opened my eyes to how being perfect really doesn't matter - people will love you more for it, in fact.

thanks for congrats, guys :) i'm not all the way there and i'm super busy with life but i'll be defending before december hits anyway yaaay

ya perfectionism = anxiety = procrastination, so what i usually do is hold off till the last minute, turn in mediocre stuff, and tell myself, "if you REALLY TRIED you could have a 4.0" or whatever. its a defense mechanism and a shitty one at that.

max, you know how you said you wished your future, old self could send letters to you-in-lol-college? consider me your future, old self.

woah congrats, rrrobyn! that is so awesome!!!

max, i totally get you. i have a smallish paper to do this semester (10-15) but if i had my way i'd run away to this awesome collection in england and do research for months and months or years and then write a book. my thinking is that because i feel this way about the topic, i can easily churn out the small paper and then have motivation for a possibly larger project down the road. maybe you can think of it that way? then you won't have to think of this process as a terminal thing... it's just the beginning, and then you don't feel as bad about not being able to hole up for 6 months to work.

don't get lost in research though! it is so easy to do. to continue researching, feeling you're getting work done b/c you're reading but then never getting down to the writing part. gotta write.

(thanks t :) i am so stoked on the structure of having a full-time job again. oh, it'll wear off eventually, i know, but i need structure now. i'm even excited about creating spreadsheets and databases so that i am an efficient coordinator type. whoa.)

yeah i guess the thing is i just need to stop aiming so high and find a focus... im so desperate to impress/please my advisor & other profs that im trying to write a book or something, instead of whatever would be appropriate for a 35-page paper

my advisor on my first completed draft:

There's no such chance. You got an A. But I know you can do a h*** of a lot better than this, no?

:(

i hate disappointing people.

:( sorry dude

>:(

Aw Hoos want me to go clothesline some Texans for ya?

damn hoos that is nightmare territory

but i kinda feel like this whole insane semester, which was structured as it was for the sake of getting me completely done by june (and thus getting $10,000 in loans forgiven), was completely for naught now.

Can you tell this sentence to someone with any measure of power? I feel like if it was my decision, and I knew you had repeatedly visited advisors who didn't catch the "mistake", along with the degree audits, I'd use my executive powers to help you out. Then again, this is probably why I will never achieve any position of influence...

oh man, hoos :( so sorry!!!

hoos, that sucks so bad dude :( surely someone will be sympathetic to your case...

because of my own fuckup in planning my degree, i was 2 points short at the end of my last semester (360pts for a degree) but there was no fucking way i was doing another semester so i wrote to the associate dean of my faculty and told him all the reasons i should get an exemption and he granted it within a couple of hours. but my situation was pretty minor. hopefully something similar will happen for you!

Can you tell this sentence to someone with any measure of power?

I'm calling my Dean in the morning.

thx for the sympathies, guys.

also

CONGRATS MAX U GO HAVE A FUKKIN TASTYCAKE DAWG DEAD SERIOUS