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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Questions of the day.

What does your desktop look like? At Cynical-C.

What can you get for five dollars?

How does an aspiring graduate student in English traverse the confusion of the graduate school application process? I link to this only because of the resounding chorus of "Don't go!" in the answers:

Are you aware of the job market for English PhDs? It is abysmal. Most will never find a tenure track job, let alone one at a small liberal arts college in a nice part of the country. You can end up ten years older, with with a ton of debt, some esoteric knowledge that interests no one but you and ten other people, and no job. Think hard about this.

...


As I review what I just wrote, I wonder whether I should have just given the advice that a friend of mine who teaches French literature gives to undergrads who are considering grad school: don't go.

...


Joining the posters above: English right now is a very, very tough field. Undergrad majors are dwindling, departmental funding is tight, tenure-track jobs are in ridiculously short supply, and the profession as a whole has been struggling to define its goals and make the case for its continuing relevance in the 21st-century academy. Definitely think twice, then three times, about this choice.
Quiet down, y'all. Some of us are still in grad school.