On getting a ph.d.

Getting a ph.d. is stupid enough, even if one were guaranteed an academic job upon completion. The fact that these jobs are far from guaranteed makes a ph.d. monumentally stupid, at least in the social sciences and humanities (in economics, the hard sciences, and even engineering to some extent, the ph.d. is increasingly seen as the terminal degree). But, some people do get academic jobs, and I hope to be one of them at some point. Right now, the academic job market in political science is pretty terrible. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will improve by the time I'm ready to to look for a job, but I wouldn't bet the farm on that. If I can't find an academic job or at least a post doc, I'll start looking for something with the feds or with a consulting firm (Apt Associates, Mathematica) or a think tank (the Urban Institute or something along those lines). All these people need policy analysts, so they would actually value my degree. So, I won't starve. The student loans I continue to amass are terrifying, but there's nothing I can do about them now. I probably shouldn't have gotten that master's degree, but on the other hand, who knows if I could have gotten in anywhere without it, and besides, I didn't know I wanted a ph.d. then. In any case, I did it, and I have the debt load to prove it. Can't change that now, and they can't repo my brain. I'll just let Smog sleep for now. I'm sure he'll come to collect his treasure when he's good and ready.

So, at least I have a real world fallback. I feel really sorry for those poor schmucks in philosophy, english, history, etc. who have no real world fallback for their degree. That's not to say that they CAN'T get a non-academic job. It's just that their degree will at best be harmless and at worst a distraction when someone's reading their resume. Oh well...at least they get to love what they're studying. (I can't exactly say that about political science, but I'll save that for another day).

My dream job would be to teach American politics and public policy at a smallish liberal arts school in a mid-size city. Like, if I could take Earlham (my alma mater) and place it in, like, Portland, Oregon, that would be a really great job. With this job market, though, you pretty much take what you can get. Which means I'll probably end up teaching at Dickhead Community College in Post-Industrial Wasteland, Iowa. All I can say is, thank God for netflix.