They don’t care; you have to
“Got a date for your prelim defense yet?”
“No.”
Admonitory voice: “You need to hunt them down and get one.”
The I’ve-heard-this-speech-before sigh. “I know.”
Irked: “Don’t ‘I know’ me! Look, dear, those people do not care whether you get a Ph.D or not! You care. So you have to hound them. That’s just how these things work.”
Thoughtful, responsive: “Hmm. Okay.”
But of course we care! say the six different emails from academics I will get as soon as I post this.
I’m sorry, folks. No, by and large, you don’t care. To prove to me that you do, you’re going to have to list the last five attriters from your department and why they left—and I’m fully prepared to call bullshit if I don’t believe what you say their reasons were. I will call bullshit, immediately and without shame, if not a single reason you give has anything to do with your department.
Friend of mine just finished and submitted her dissertation, after a nasty protracted round of revisions that (from my outsider’s perspective, and you should excuse the expression I’m about to use) looked like a whole lot of people waving their wangs in the wind just to prove they could. My husband has gone ten rounds with his committee over this second prelim paper, and what made him angry about the whole process was that the lone holdout (who sent him a whole bunch of bibliography, only about one-quarter of which was actually relevant) clearly hadn’t read or understood the paper. Talk about wang-waving.
And David’s suggested dissertation topic? We don’t like it. Why don’t you do something in Menominee, David? (Because, um, he’s an Indo-Europeanist without the faintest ghost of an actual interest in Native American languages, never mind actual expertise in them?) And a chance at a formal prelim-paper defense? Um, maybe late August. If we feel like it. And the phase of the moon is right.
Yeah. That’s caring. Uh-huh. That’s giving a great huge damn, that is.
Tangentially, it occurs to me that SLIS has really got a hell of a lot of nerve asking me to stay for a Ph.D. I know I said as much from the outset of this particular comedy, but this morning’s cattle-prod session with my husband really sends the point home.
Sure, they love me now. So did the Department from Hell love me, while I still hovered just outside their grasp. Talent searching is fun. It’s delightful to think you might just have happened upon the next Malkiel, the next Ranganathan. (I saw a beautiful blog post on this point not long ago, but I lost it and now I can’t find it. This annoys me no little.)
Talent development is hard work, and it’s work that academia by and large doesn’t even think it has to do. Once you’re in, you’re on your own. I like SLIS, but frankly I don’t think they’re much better than anywhere else on this particular score. We have officially dubbed you Talented by courting and accepting you; the rest is your problem, baby.
Along with the minor issues of feeding, clothing, and housing yourself while you work through your indentured servitude to us. And the financial opportunity cost of the years you spend here? Not our problem, nope. Which is, frankly, why SLIS’s me-chase really displays brass balls. How on earth do they think I can afford five more years of semi-slavery? And how can they possibly think I would want to?
I mean, imagine that my previous history with academia was not an issue here. (I said imagine. Of course it’s an issue.) Look at this suggestion seriously, taking into account my age, my situation as head of household, and my employment prospects once I have an MLS in hand. What kind of drooling fool would I have to be to accept, I ask you?
And all things considered, my situation is better than most. No wonder LIS departments are short-staffed. The wonder, given the typical age of SLIS students, is that anybody at all tries for a Ph.D in the field.