Okay, this got a lot longer than it was supposed to

I recently learned that a friend and colleague has decided to quit graduate school. It was a bit of a shock at first, but after reading his explanation, I understand it.

I have certainly felt much the same way about graduate school. I also used to love to read. But graduate school isn't about literature as much as it is about the analysis of literature. Which sometimes takes you very far afield from literature.

His escape from the ivory tower made me question why I too haven't escaped. Why did I stay under the same circumstances? And then I realized that maybe they weren't the same circumstances. And that some of the things that I thought were handicaps, or negatives in my academic career, might actually have kept me at it.

There are similarities in our stories, but also differences, and in some ways I'm grateful to those differences because they allowed me to get through the rough spots.

Like my friend, I read voraciously as a kid. Loved reading. Not always high quality stuff. But I read a LOT! I did other stuff too, clubs, music lessons, painting and such, but reading was my first love.

When I started having kids, I certainly read a lot less. When they were young, I was usually just tired after they went to bed. And my hopes of staying home with them and raising them were quickly dashed with cold water when the hard reality of only one income squeezed us uncomfortably. So working while having little kids in the house made reading secondary. I chose to read shorter things - short stories, magazines, or even do activities that could be over in a half hour or hour, like crossword puzzles, instead of picking up novels.

But as I worked, I came to realize that the best I could do in the field I was working in was make district manager after a decade or so, and still only pull in about $30K. And I REALLY, REALLY, didn't want to be district manager. I couldn't imagine spending my life doing that. Let alone for the pittance that it would pay.

So I went back to school. At 29 I walked into my first university classroom.

That was a shock, and probably subject for a whole other blog post. And I went through a lot a changing ideas about what I wanted out of the university experience. One thing I was sure though, was that I wanted a degree that would be useful. English literature was the last thing on my mind.

But then I took an elective: The novel and the Short Story with a wonderful professor, who has since died (to the loss of all those students who will never study with him), but it re-awoke that love of literature. And I figured out a way to get an English degree and a Biology degree at the same time, so I felt justified in catering to my love while still earning a "useful" degree.

I took biology because I started considering a medical career. But then I realized I didn't want to go into medicine. It's not that I didn't want to be a doctor. I think I would've liked that. I think I would've even been good at it. I even think I *might* even have been accepted to one of the lower tier medical schools.

What I didn't want was the medical education though. I knew it would require more time and commitment than my undergrad, even beyond what earning two degrees concurrently required. And I wasn't willing to do it. I lived in the family housing on campus, and I watched my neighbor - single mom of three kids, just like me - do it. Yep, she was doing medical school. But it was brutal on that family. And she had a much more extensive support system than I did. I just couldn't muster the energy I imagined myself needing in the same position.

So I gave in to my love and went on to graduate school in English. And I loved it. I knew from the moment I began the Master's, that I wanted to spend my life reading and writing about literature.

I will admit now, that part of my motivation to enter graduate school had nothing at all to do with a love of literature. It had to do with being a newly divorced mother of three elementary school kids with an ex-husband who was beginning to make it clear that he had no intention of paying the child support he owed. I had little confidence that I could earn enough right at that time, to support those kids. I knew I could try. But I also knew that if I was in graduate school, I could supplement my earnings with student loans if I needed them. (I ended up with assistantships instead, but it was still extra cash that I sorely needed)

Perhaps that's a touch sacriligeous. To have financial considerations be part of my choice to follow this career path. It wasn't all of it of course, but it was part of the consideration. But once I was in, I knew this is what I wanted.

(And I actually ended up making more at my job the second year of my Master's than I ever thought possible, so I guess it was an unnecessary worry...)

The Doctoral program was a whole different experience from the Master's though.

My friend, the one who left academia, in part because grad school in English is more about the theory than the literature, went to a really good school. The kind of school I don't think I would've made it into. The kind where there are professors who people really want to work with (at least, I would've loved to work with a few of them). I was happy for him when he got in, but also a bit jealous.

See, this dissertation that I'm doing on Cyborgs and Clones is probably the furthest you can get from what I wanted when I entered my program. I came to my program with a clear idea of two areas of study I wanted to undertake.

I study neither of them now. And the transition from what I wanted at first, to now, has been really hard at times.

One area I don't study because the department did not offer courses during my coursework years that would allow me to study it. The other, I was told I really wasn't qualified for.

Those were both hard blows that first year. And then when I failed the prelims, I really questioned what I was doing in a program that wasn't offering me what I wanted, and really didn't think I could manage what they were offering.

We lost half our class that year too - one transferred out, and the other dropped out, leaving just two of us.

But dropping out wasn't an option. I was in a foreign country on a student visa. If I dropped out, I wouldn't be able to work. And I was the one with the teaching assistantship. Without my income we'd be living entirely off loans. And we wouldn't be able to do that.

It was do or die. If I flunked out or dropped out, we'd have to admit defeat and head home. And that would derail my husband's career too. I couldn't do that to him. And I didn't want to go home having failed to do what I set out to do. So I studied, and passed the prelims, and searched around for a new area of study.

Obviously I found it, but if I hadn't been forced to stay in the program, I wonder if I would've? I never really entertained the option of not staying because it just wasn't an option. But I wonder if it had been an option, would I have stayed?

Right now, I can't imagine not doing what I am doing. I'm loving the research and even the torturousness of drafting and redrafting and redrafting yet again to get the prospectus approved. But I can't imagine not doing it.

So maybe those life circumstances were benefits for me because in the long run they forced me to keep going through the rough spots. And now I'm in a place where I'm happy to be.

Well, either that, or I'm just too stubborn to realize I should've got out a long time ago! But I'd like to think this is where I should be...