schweblog

I had a few experiences this week that have made me seriously reconsider my academic future. Two years ago, I was ready to go all the way and work myself into a professorial position at a university. One year ago, I was resolved to get my MA in philosophy or history and teach high school. Right now, I’m seriously wondering if I’ll ever want to set foot into another academic institution again after I graduate in December.

On Tuesday, I made a quick run to the library to pick up a copy of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which I need for a paper I’m writing this weekend. I was flipping through it as I went back to the front desk and simply glancing over the text–not having read it, but knowing of it–I realized that the lecture I had received on Hegel’s approach to the world in my Contemporary Sociological Theory class was, quite frankly, wrong. The professor, once the head of the sociology department, had blatantly misunderstood the content of a vastly important thinker and had passed that misinformation onto her students, parading it as truth with her prestigious title and a piece of chalk.

Chalking up my dismay to me being a snooty, nitpicky philosophy major, I took a deep breath and went on my way. That evening, I attended my Critical Literary Theory class: it is an upper-division English course that was not required for my degree, but I took it because I was interested in the subject matter. Of the 15 or so other students in the class, it seems that two or three others are taking it for the same reason. Everyone else seems to be in there because it is a requirement for their English degree.

This isn’t new, though. The very nature of our academic institutions today are such that students expect a degree and the university gives them one. It is a contractual agreement. Lack of passion isn’t a rarity…it’s the norm. My beef with this Lit Theory class, however, isn’t that most of the students just don’t lack a passion for the subject–they flat out don’t understand the reading. Admittedly, some of our readings are challenging–difficult, even, when we were assigned Kant–but the majority of the readings are fairly simple. And yet, here are nearly-graduated English majors–people that are supposed experts in reading–staring at the professor like deer in headlights, secretly hoping and praying that a mid-80s Ford truck ends their existence before the test next week.

Finally, I attended an induction ceremony for Phi Sigma Tau, the philosophy honors society, on Wednesday afternoon. I had the chance to sit down and bullshit with a few grad students in the department. Many of them I got to know in a French Thought class I took in spring of last year, at which point several of them had been working full-time on their masters for several semesters. Most of them are still not finished. Further, discussions with them makes me wonder if writing a thesis is all that challenging, relatively speaking. No doubt it requires time and effort, but I’m really questioning if a thesis is more about regurgitation than innovation.

—

Following this last week’s experiences, I’m beginning to think that my time would be better spent avoiding academia altogether and seeking to make a difference in a high school. Teach for America will get me the degree necessary to hit the maximum salary cap in a teaching position in most states, thus enabling to avoid stepping into a university ever again after graduating. This prospect–and the subsequent time that would be freed up for reading what I want after-the-fact–is rather appealing and is my present choice du jour.