a bit of honest advice

Ambivalent Imbroglio, who knows a lot about humanities graduate school himself, introduced me to the now-closed blog, the Invisible Adjunct, and a great article in the Chronicle about her.

Reading her blog, which is about the broken system of humanities education in this country and the struggle of a non-tenure track professor, I think, "Maybe that could have been me."

I can't remember if I've mentioned it here or not, but my background isn't purely engineering. I started out in the humanities and fell into engineering by accident, discovering a love for programming and engineering after taking the aptly named Beginning Programming for Social Sciences Majors.

Even though the majority of my undergraduate work ended up being engineering and math courses, I kept up my interest in history. I found engineering courses more academically rigorous and more intellectually challenging than my history courses, but I always tried to take a history course where I could.

On graduation, then, I had a choice. I had two degrees, one in history, one in engineering. Which way to go?

Most of my history professors, all of whom were tenured and well-established, encouraged me to go to history graduate school. "You love history and you love to learn," one said, "what better place for you than a history Ph.D. program? You shouldn't be in engineering." I think they found my interest in engineering rather distasteful, as if I had developed a freakish interest in worm intestines or pig guts.

I mulled it over. I did and still do love history.

But I was lucky in a way the Invisible Adjunct wasn't. Her advisors told her, "You're too smart for law school. You're one of us." Most of my history professors were similarly vague. But my favorite professor, a tenured no-nonsense professor of European history, known for her difficult but fascinating classes, was clear-eyed and brutally honest with me.

"Do NOT go to history graduate school," she told me without hesitation. "There is no place for you in this system. You have an engineering degree. The world is open to you. Do not cloister yourself in a world that doesn't really want you." She then told me about reality of life in the humanities, the lack of jobs for Ph.D. graduates and the myth of meritocracy in that system.

A few years later I enrolled in engineering graduate school. While I had been strongly leaning in that direction anyhow, I still appreciate my professor's honesty.

[Update: I am not the only one who was advised to stay away from humanities graduate education by a wise professor. Waddling Thunder recounts his story here.]