End of the Semester – Fall 2006 (Discourse Chronicle)
Comments(7) [Soundtrack: Decisive Battle (Final Fantasy 6). I returned to Wisconsin for Christmas break two weeks ago and I find myself facing an uncertain future. I managed to complete all five of my PhD applications for next fall before leaving Texas, but whether or not I am accepted into any of them is unknown. I am hoping to leave Texas A&M University for a midwest university such as The Ohio State University, Iowa State, Purdue, or Bowling Green. I find that uncertainty bearable because I experienced it the last time I applied for graduate school programs.
However, the other unknown is my GPA. I started strong with my first semester in graduate school, but each term afterwards brought my GPA steadily down. I also experienced an Achilles’s Heel of mine this term as well: foreign language. Now I find myself entering my last MA semester with a GPA threatening Academic Probation if this term is not excellent for me. Unfortunately, I must deal with foreign language again as I translate Beowulf. I am also taking my last two literature courses. I am trying to remain optimistic about this last term coming up and I also take heart in something K.A. Laity once said to me at a conference. She reminded me that getting a PhD has nothing to do with intelligence, but rather, whether or not I finish. BK]
category: Life
I’m starting to feel that way about grad school too — “just finish,” that is. I’m sick to death of my thesis and just want it to be over with.
Of course, once it’s over then my “real” life begins, and job prospects are looking kind of bleak. I was searching around for creative writing programs hiring professors. Most require a PhD in some form of English (crazy, because an MFA is a terminal degree in creative writing). UW-Stevens Point, for example, is hiring a creative writing professor — but they demand a Ph.D. Evidently I’ll be better at teaching creative writing if I’ve written a rhetoric dissertation but have never set foot in a creative writing workshop. (LAME.)
UWEC is also hiring a creative writing prof, and they understand that an MFA makes one perfectly qualified to teach — but they want a poet who has published at least one book of poems. (Jon Loomis, perhaps?)
This is the conundrum for me — not only in the UW system, but everywhere. Either I need a Ph.D. or publication goodness. Aaagh!
Good luck with the PhD applications.
Thanks, Signe. I talked with others about this on a number of occasions and everybody seems to agree: Graduate School is like an academic military. As a program, it tears us down and makes us either quit, or say “Yes, sir. May I have another?” as my close friend and blog reader Ted reminded me last night. I hope your search improves and things work out.
Hey now, rhetoric is beneficial to all and creative writing complements it, but understanding the “and” trick is crucial for success.
Jason Tondro once explained this concept to me using ourselves as comic scholars as an example (also works as a bow analogy). Comics is not a strong enough research area for any of us to market ourselves with PhDs and expect to be hired at a university. Therefore, we choose other fields and attach them to comics, so I am “Rhetoric and comics” for now.
You’re right bob. Survival, aka doing what it takes to make it through is what defines a PhD. If you survive grad school, then everything else should be gravy relatively speaking.
I too am considering another attempt.
Time will tell.