"So, what's like to be back in school?"
I returned to my old, pre-academic, job today to finish off a few things. Great fun. Great to see everyone and great to remember how much more I like what I'm doing now than what I used to do. But I got a lot of questions like, "How's it feel to be back in school," in a sort of "Wow, I remember how fun undergrad was - it must be great to go back" kind of way. Thing is, though, life as a post-MA PhD student, at least for me, has a lot more in common with having a job than with undergrad, and that's hard to get across.

Sure, it's an incredibly intellectually stimulating job, with a very flexible schedule; I don't have to wear a suit, and I don't have a lot of administrative stuff like professors do. These are all excellent things. But they make my time at school a good job, not an unfortunate interruption from my partying, like undergrad was. Maybe the best way to think about that is that half of my entering class will be gone next year. Some because they find other things to do, but most because they are shown the door, either directly or indirectly (by not being offered funding.) For all of us, our career, even whether or not we have one in this field, is dependent on what our professors think of us - funding and eventual job recommendations come from that. Our writing will have to show the department and those in our field that we're "promising." To do that we have to figure out what important people in our respective fields think is important, and that's a lot of work. It's like learning enough about tax law that you can tell a 20 year tax partner something he didn't know and but thinks is important. In fact, in our need to become expert over a complex and esoteric area and in our dependence on our professors, we have more in common with law firm associates than we do undergrads.

So sure, it's great to be back reading interesting stuff and talking to interesting people about it. It's nice to work out at 10:30 in the morning if I want. But grad school is not undergrad. And those in my class who think it is will not, I suspect, be back next year.

UPDATE: Apparently this problem does not go away once you become a professor.

- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 1:34 PM