Week Nine

I intended to write about Che and last week's discussion, but thinking about it I found I just don't have that much to say that wouldn't be forced and redundant. I agree with some of the sentiments expressed in other folks' posts about it being disturbing and frustrating that these (finally unclassified) documents are still heavily censored with black marking and so on. I just don't think I can write a whole post about this.

What I've been thinking about more is the thesis project, graduate school, and next year's research, and so, following Kat, I want to talk about that.

First, graduate school. For a long time I've been moving back and forth on whether I want to go to graduate school and hopefully end up in academia. I've always seen a lot of pros and cons. On the plus side, a tenure-track position is relatively stable and relatively well-paying (especially after tenure). It would allow me a career exploring the things that interest me, and the idea of teaching college level courses is appealing to me. I enjoy reading and writing and so on and I think I'm at least fairly good at these things. But there are a lot of negatives too--tenure-track jobs are becoming increasingly hard to find; five or more years of graduate school does not sound at all appealing when I'm already totally burned out on school; I don't really like the idea of spending many years on a single topic and researching it exhaustively.

Recently, I think I've become fairly confident that I don't want to be a professional academic. The deciding factor in my mind at this point is simply that the life of academia no longer seems very appealing to me. I don't want to be sucked into a world that prioritizes professional standards and institutional correctness above social change and the freedom to explore life. I'm not necessarily saying that these things should not be prioritized in academia (actually, I guess I am, but I don't mean to imply that rigorous standards for research are not important), just that that life doesn't appeal to me. I want to be able to go where I want and do what I want, and have the flexibility to change my mind about how I live my life and make a living at any given time. I don't want to be stuck into a life-long path that is, in its basic structure, pre-determined.

I've always had artistic aspirations as a musician, and recently in film, that I might pursue, but realistically those things are not likely to blossom into a career. More likely I will end up doing rank and file work for a labor union, or staffing for a political organization.

But if I'm not going to graduate school, where does that leave me as far as this research project? I expect I'm not the only one in this class who intends to finish this project but not to enter academia as an historian, and I would like to hear thoughts from others in this camp about why we're doing it. Is it just for our own satisfaction? I think there's definitely some personal benefits to doing this research and finishing a fairly large-scale writing project, but are they great enough to cause us to spend a year of our time devoted to doing it? Or is the reason for doing it primarily to prove credentials--to add to a resume so to speak? I'm trying to figure out what situation this credential would be beneficial in outside of applications to graduate schools in the liberal arts and I'm sortof drawing a blank. Maybe the reason I'm doing it is just because I don't want to eliminate for myself the choice of applying to graduate school at a later time.

I'm not sure of the answers partly because I'm not sure exactly what kind of commitment this will be. I don't really have a clear idea of how many hours per week of my time this research will consume, how much stress it will add to my life. I'm already sacrificing a course I really want to take because it's taught at the same time as the class meeting time for the 407 class, and increasing the overall courseload I have to take next year by at least three credit hours, maybe six. It would be nice to be able to breeze through my last year of school without any major academic stresses, only taking the courses I want to be taking (which I would be able to do since the only requirements I have left to take are within my majors/minor). I've flirted with the idea of dropping the 407 courses, but shied away from it because it somehow seems like giving up or 'chickening out.' But if I can't figure out exactly why I need to write a 40 page research paper, is there anything wrong with not writing it? Maybe I just don't want to be an undistinguished UT graduate without anything special to show for my time as an undergraduate.