Epilogue: The Defense
The terrified-yet-resolute grad student faces her committee one last time to defend her dissertation. But soon she finds herself confronted by an even greater obstacle.
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Footnotes
1:10 – “Listener, I passed it.”
A reference to “Reader, I married him,” the famous first line of Jane Eyre’s conclusion (Charlotte Brontë, 1848, p. 400).
12:42 – “Lulu’s outstanding teaching is a result of her personal traits, yes, but also of the gazillion hours of teacher training Rhetoric instructors like her are required to take for support.”
The outstanding Rhetoric Department at the University of Iowa, for example, trains new teachers in a week-long intensive workshop before the semester begins, then continues that training through the teachers’ first semester in a Colloquium that meets for 3 hours each week. Moreover, , if Ph.D. students are coming from Master’s programs—like myself, and like Laura—they’ve already completed a similar training at a previous institution. Which means we’ve also taught other sets of students in other classrooms with other sets of circumstances we’ve needed to learn to navigate.
13:06 – “If we feel disappointed when our own advisors seem less than up to date on best teaching practices, we do so with plenty of authority.”
Maybe a skeptical listener would insist that advising graduate students on their dissertations and teaching undergraduate students are fundamentally different, and training for the latter can’t be applied to the former. But I just don’t agree. And my own extensive pedagogical training is the basis for that opinion.
13:45 – “This is a professional critique from a hard-working and highly motivated student-slash-teacher who was rightfully disappointed with her advising relationship because she knew she deserved better.”
In case you’re wondering, I’m happy to report that Laura is now employed in an advisory position at a student-centered college. Congrats, Laura!
31:21 – “Jessica’s “Jailbreaking” article is one very good example of academic ‘Quit Lit’—a genre of writing in which embittered former academics make public declarations about the reasons they’re leaving the Ivory Tower.”
For an overview of the academic ‘quit lit’ genre, see Colleen Flaherty’s article for Inside Higher Ed titled “Public Good-byes” (Sept. 9, 2015), or the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Quitting” (Dec. 12, 2013).
33:08 – “This is Sabina McCallister, another escapee who earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from York University and then went on to found something called the Leaving Academia project, which included a blog, a career counseling service, and—guess what—a podcast!”
Under the name Sabine Hikel, Sabina also wrote a career advice column for Inside Higher Ed. First installment is here: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2009/06/24/11-things-know
35:16 – “Ric is another Ph.D.—this time in Classics—who left the academy and wrote about it.”
You can find Ric’s writing on the transition from his Ph.D. to private school teaching on The Professor Is In blog. https://theprofessorisin.com/2015/05/18/day-to-day-work-at-a-prep-school-postac-guest-post-part-2-of-3/