I insinuated myself onto SLIS’s library-planning committee, which met this morning. (How’d I do that? The usual way. I volunteered.) I turned up there bright and early to take care of some work that fell into my lap yesterday. That done, I repaired to the computer lab for a couple minor web-page fixes, no cursing necessary.
(Now, y’all, go figure THIS. My InfoArch client’s new page works fine in Firefox on Win2K and XP. It breaks in Firebird on Win98. WTF is up with that? I don’t actually care, because it’s not major breakage and nobody coming to this site will be running Win98 anyway, but sheesh, can I possibly catch a break here?)
A SLIS person also involved in that meeting walked in; I shall be deliberately vague about her identity. Suffice to say it was someone I like and respect. We exchanged greetings and a bit of chatter about the meeting. Then she asked me “So what are your plans?”
Bit of time-deixis confusion to sort out, as I thought she meant “until I graduate,” and she actually meant “afterwards.” Once that was cleared up, I hemmed and hawed (which was utterly my fault; I keep getting asked this question, and I keep not having a straight answer—must fix that).
“Well, are you thinking about the doctorate? ’Cuz, you know, I’m thinking about how we could keep you here.”
“No. No. Just don’t even go there.”
Except she did, of course, because I cannot keep frickin’ academia from trying to sink claws into me no matter how hard I try. Again with the great job market for LIS Ph.Ds, and how there are so few to teach my skills, and so on. Which is all, I do not doubt, quite true—this woman is in my judgment completely incapable of intentional dishonesty.
And could I do this? Hell yeah, I could. I’ve seen the calibre of doctoral student around here. I have no reason to hang my head in that company.
And would I be useful? Hell yeah, I would. And I’m fond of being useful.
I’d be useful for a time, anyway. Until my skills got out of date. Because that’s what rubber-hits-road skills do in academia. Get rusty. Get outdated.
Academia does not value rubber-on-road skills, rarely even permits (much less encourages) their active cultivation and employment. That’s where academia and I started hitting the skids in my previous life; I was a dead-keen linguistic data miner, but data mining isn’t Real Academic Work of the sort that gets one tenure in language and linguistics departments. This isn’t to say that there aren’t academics who keep their rubber-hits-road skills honed. It’s to say that the system they’re embedded in doesn’t usually make that easy or pleasant for them.
And then I have to ask—what’s in it for me? What would a Ph.D buy me, and is it worth the cost? A job? I’m reasonably satisfied I can get a job anyway, even with the hideously depressed library job market. A chance to teach? I teach as it is. Librarians teach their patrons and each other all the time. A chance to be useful? Sure, but won’t I be just as much use building text repositories, or helping kick Elseviley Verlag’s butt to the curb?
Toss in that a Ph.D is at least three years more work—probably more like five, hustle how I may—and it just gets harder and harder to justify. I am thirty-effing-one years old. I wasted half my twenties in grad school. It’s time and past for me to get the heck out of school already.
You want to know what I want to know? I want to know why these offers even tempt me. Don’t I know better by now? Don’t I have a better sense of myself than that? Haven’t I grown up enough that flattery doesn’t dislodge my common sense?
I hope. Because I suspect this isn’t the last time I’m going to hear the sirens singing.
