is this for me?
Do i really want to be an academic? Why am i shooting for the moon? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to complete my B.A. and either apply for education at McGill or try and get into the Masters in Administrative Science at JMSB? I don’t know how far away i want to move…i don’t know how much longer i want to do this for?
Call this the pre-GRE cold feet. Someone pls smack me out of it.







No, I’ll hug your, cause I had the same type of worries about education not so long ago…
*HUGGGGGGGS*
Deborah
30 Aug 06 at 10:52 am
heather you are made for this.
veronica
30 Aug 06 at 11:18 am
you’re made for it heather. just do the damn thing and do what you like.
Anabelle
30 Aug 06 at 2:58 pm
Well, being an Academic does have its annoyances, some of which might be more irritating to some than to others. Example:
- Having to publish material on a regular (annual?) basis.
- Being expected to hire TAs to teach your classes (Don’t.Do.That!)
- Fighting for tenure
- Interdepartmental fighting. Humans are dangerous and stupid. Never forget that.
- Thousands of papers to correct
- Distinct lack of a proper social life
- Crappy pay
- Living in a very isolated intellectual world that’s 10-15 years ahead of what the general public knows to be the current-and-up-to-date accepted version of The Truth.
- Being a smug, self-obsessed, high-brow, snobbish intellectual twat who’s no fun at parties and whose idea of a good time is attempting public readings of Proust.
Upsides:
- You teach what you want. It’s your call
- You get to work with students who’ve just passed the whole hormonal angst period of their lives. This is Teh Yay.
- You get your very own office.
- Your life becomes one in which you live within your brain
- Paid summers
- Tenure is the greatest thing ever known to mankind
- Conference trips!
You seem to be obessive enough to enjoy such a career, and you certainly have the energy for such a job. You might not always live where you’d like, which is crappy, but the upsides are fairly cool. Or so I inclined to think…even if I do mock it mercilessly.
Ilya Popov
31 Aug 06 at 8:45 am
Ilya, tha is the most beautiful response anyone has ever written to something i wrote. Thanks so much…thanks everyone for your support….
hfeatherina
31 Aug 06 at 4:31 pm