The Road Not Taken to Hell is Paved With Pretensions

[matt_rah]

There have been three main threads I've pursued in my academic career: math, music, and (French) literature. Of these, the third is the one where I met with the greatest success-highest GPA, best relationships with professors, honors thesis, etc. However, I never had any interest in pursuing a graduate degree in French literature (or comparative

Comments

[mazarin]

"In 1995 Yale had been ranked, disconcertingly, as No.1 for on-campus burglaries."

I don't have a great deal to say about the other parts of the article, but this much I can vouch for.

part 1

[samedietc]

I really really should be asleep, but you know i can't resist when you lj-link me (for nerds, that's like saying my name three times in the mirror

Re: part 1

[crystalpyramid]

Wait, what do you do in grad school when you're over theory?

part 2

[samedietc]

Second, the letter makes several claims about graduate study of english that i want to separate (though they're related on some level); in the general order that they appear in the Letter

part 3

[samedietc]

which brings me to (e) "grad school's a scam" and (d) "people fight over jobs, not truth" -- grad school is a bit of a throwback, something like an old guild apprenticeship, and there's truth to the claim that grad students are a source of cheap labor while we're in our apprenticeship. but "exploitation" doesn't exactly mean "scam" because, while being exploited, I am (theoretically) learning a trade. grad school is only a scam if the trade i'm learning is not useful to me (if there's no jobs out there) or not useful to others (if the whole thing is a hoax). as i said in part 1, i think the fear of jobs drying up is calming -- people may not get jobs right out of the gate, but people do get jobs. as for whether it's a hoax, i'll get to that most important point at the end. but as for (d), there's some truth to that, and some exaggeration. is there competition for attention and money? yes, there is, because, like it or lump it, grad school is my job. (that the university doesn't pay me a living wage is a problem for just that

Re: part 3

[xse99]

The time period depicted in the article is the 1997-98 academic year. And in the last 10 years, composition & rhetoric have eclipsed literature in English depts nationwide. You'll have to take my word for it in both cases, but matt_rah can tell you that I have both on good authority. Rhetoric is HUGE now, but it was barely on the map 10 years ago. Sadly, the rhetoricians can't write any better than the lit crits... I have that on good authority as well.

part 4

[samedietc]

(a) "english is a jargon-y hoax