Nothing to prove
I’ve been inching my way through The Graduate Grind by Patricia Hinchey and Isabel Kimmel. Usually I devour books, but books on this particular subject I have to nibble at, because otherwise I get stomachaches. Really. I do. Lovitts, Cude, Nelson, the Kerlins—I have to read them slowly.
The Graduate Grind is an excellent book, a book that lives up to its subtitle as few books do. I’ll have more to say about it once I’ve finished it.
I feel that I owe Hinchey and Kimmel an apology, actually. The episode they seized on as emblematic of the bureaucratic futility of so many grad-school quests is the one I documented least. I wish I still had that documentation; I truly do.
I know why I don’t. The only way I could keep going (which I did, for two and a half more years) after the contretemps with the fellowships office was to bury the entire mess as deep into the unused back rooms of my head as I could. That meant deleting the evidence. I didn’t know that I’d want it later. I only knew I very badly didn’t want to see it any more then.
So I’m sorry. I wish I’d been smarter. Which sums up my entire first grad-school experience, really.
That said, I did eventually dig up one piece of evidence I couldn’t find then: my father’s fisking of me by email after I finally ’fessed up about leaving. I didn’t post it. I do still have it, but I’m just as dubious about posting it as I ever was. I’m not worried about its impact on me; I’ve nothing to prove to him, any more. I just don’t like the idea of painting him in that light. Easier to let people think I’m vilely unfilial, to call my own dad a character assassin.
For whatever reason, there’s been an uptick in the grad-student email I’ve been getting lately. (I keep it all. I really should analyze it for timing, because it does come in clumps, and I’m not sure why.) I do notice that I’m hearing from more students early in their programs these days, and that suits me fine. I’d rather get ’em out fast, start ’em doing something more productive and less soul-twisting. The early-birds mostly don’t break my heart the way the long-termers do.
Anyway. Got a note from an early-bird this morning before I left for work. After the usual embarrassingly effusive thanks, the writer explained to me that he’d gone to grad school in order to impress his professors. He’d show ’em. He’d prove to them how smart and capable he was.
If I had a magic wand, and could wave it to remove from graduate school anyone for whom this was their only or primary motivation… I think everyone involved would thank me, in the long run. I’d wave that wand, too. I would. It would have caught me, the first time.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting praise. There’s nothing wrong with wanting the important people in your life to value you. There’s everything wrong with choosing an expensive and risky course of action purely so that they will praise and value you. Even wronger, if you’re trying to reverse previous poor opinion. It’ll never happen. No matter what you do, they won’t love you any more for it.
That’s where I am with my dad. He’ll never value me much. I was supposed to be an academic, and I’m not (even though MPOW’s ID card calls me “faculty”). I have therefore entered the “disappointment” cubbyhole, and it doesn’t actually matter what I do with my life—I’ll never get out of there. That’s what I mean when I say I’ve nothing to prove to him. There’s nothing I can prove to him. He hasn’t got the frame of reference to value what I am and what I do.
Said another way, when the other half of the sketch—the valuer—both predicates the valuee’s value on one particular life-path and hasn’t got enough vision to value any other, the situation transcends wrongness into sheer horror. This describes more career academics than I even want to think about. My father. Several advisers I’ve had. This poor lad’s undergraduate professors.
(I’m letting UW-SLIS off the hook on this one, incidentally. They may have been disappointed that I resisted their siren calls, but they sped me on my way with good wishes, and they’ll be proud of what I accomplish in the profession.)
It’s an external motivation, not an internal one. Internal motivations won’t ensure graduate-school survival or an academic career, but lack of internal motivation will damn straight torpedo them more often than not. The other possibility for those who find their external motivations disappointed is lifelong bitter feuding, and who on earth really wants that?
If you’re an academic? Especially if you’ve never had another career? Don’t use “you should go to graduate school!” as an ego-stroke for your best undergrads. Just don’t. Please, if what you mean is “wow, you’re smart!” just say so. Your kids aren’t sophisticated enough to realize that you have a blinkered perspective on the work world, much less that your recommendations aren’t to be treated as holy writ. If you insist on sending them into a meat-grinder anyway—it’s on you. It’s on you. Not the kid.
I’m damn tired of counseling your ex-undergrads, I tell you what. I’m tired of blood leaking from my heart over what your flippant advice did to them.
I won’t stop, though, certainly not for your sake. I’ve got nothing to prove to you. More and more of your kids are getting their marching orders from me these days. Think of that, and tremble at your enrollments.