Where I come from, there are a few roads: the privileged (you have the family’s connections no matter what), the immigrant (study hard, avoid jobs to deter you from education), and the working class (go to school or work hard but DO something). To enlighten, my family is equally divided between slightly damp off the boat immigrant and solid steel working class. It’s been hard to go to school, excel at humanities and see no potential for success outside of school. And I think it starts young. The successful working class and priviledged SEEM to have achieved such a thing through education, after all don’t most career paths require a bachelors? What very few school counselours will note is that it takes drive, enthusiasm and networking. Oh dear networking, how is that supposed to happen if you live in a small town? Or come from/are an immigrant? Where’s your enthusiasm when all this suddenly becomes apparent your third year in a school far from home and your classmates have internships set up for them?

I realize that there are mentorships and fraternities, honor societies, etc. But even perfectly socialized, intelligent, well-rounded, super-educated folks out there are still struggling.

/twocents

The debate about the merits and deficiencies of pursuing grad school are not anything new. A large section of this debate stems from Thomas H. Benton’s piece last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education, in which the professor asserts that Humanitie…

I graduated this past spring with a double major in Fine Arts and Literature. Unless I want to do the professional painter thing, my main option is more schooling. I still have plenty of options to choose from in the grad school department, but not too many of them are practical in the education=job sense.

Frankly though, I’ve expected this. Choose a Humanities degree and people are bound to tell you how impractical you are from day one. And they’re right: I’m impractical, but I wouldn’t do anything differently. I find myself really missing the intellectual environment.

But yeah, ok, I’m also working as a waitress and trying to think about Grad school options without hyperventilating. Peace Corps, anyone?.

That is invaluable in my opinion.

I remember being a young man just out of the military, with no big responsibilities and a chance to go to school. And like many in such a situation, I found it hard to decide what I wanted to pursue. I floundered around for a while, and then decided that when one doesn’t know what course to take–one should head for what one loves while trying to build a range of broadly applicable abilities along the way. In this way I became happy in my studies of literature. I worked in bookstores, and more than once I had people say–”You’re an English major? What the hell are you going to do with that dergree?” And I would say that I planned to wipe my ass with it, thank you. They would ask what kind of job I tought I was going to get, and I would say–I have a job now. Naturally I did have to think harder about such things when Cindy and I got married and we had a child, but I wouldn’t have met Cindy if I hadn’t done things the way I have done them. I teach now, and some aspects of the job are pleasant and some are definitely not. But I could also quit anytime I wanted to (and will soon), which is more than many can say who have bought the whole picture–delivered to them by everything from the Prosperity Gospel to ask-your-doctor-about-Prozac ads–of what an American’s life should be. I think a person’s powers of imagination may be educated, and that’s what being an English major can do for a person.

Also, I book marking this page for posterity. I need hard proof the a Scroggins can have a conservative view.

I’m frankly surprised by people who pursue any degree with a view toward a particular career, only to be shocked to discover that their options are limited. I’m particularly puzzled by people who pursue humanities doctorates with the intent to teach without realizing what they are actually getting themselves into. But I don’t blame humanities programs for the problems of underemployment so much as the clueless people who go into them. (This is a downright conservative view. Andrew–can you believe it?)

And Andrew hon, my comment was meant to be lighthearted–I’m not the least bit offended by anything this morning. Not yet, anyway.