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bookhobbit This is technically the first day of the new semester, but I have no Monday/Wednesday classes, so tomorrow is my first day back. I'm teaching a class at 8am and then I have various combinations of office hours, Advanced Phon/Phon, Historical Sociolinguistics, and Quantitative Methods. This is only the second semester I've taught (and last semester felt Really rough, although I'm sure probably no rougher than anyone else's first semester teaching) so I'm not looking forward to starting the semester off with an "oh god I have to be an authority."
It's at times like these that I inevitably wonder whether academia was really the right idea for me. Which is funny because I've wanted to be a linguist since I was.....13? 14? I'm literally the only person I know in my entire program who has known what they wanted to study since before high school. I've been focused on it for over ten years.
We cannot, however, ignore that a) PhD job prospects are bad all over and b) I am not a wildly employable candidate. A wildly employable candidate would have better language skills than "a couple of semesters of dead languages and my undergrad Arabic which I am desperately trying not to let rust" and better computer skills than "I'm hoping Quant Methods won't make me cry too much". I don't study an understudied language (I'm fundamentally interested in Englishes, because that's the only language I'm fluent enough to communicate freely in, and although Arabic calls me I just don't think I'm good enough yet) and my actual specialities and research interests (historical and socio) are not remotely profitable to corporations.
Which always makes me think "I should have followed in my dad and my sister's footsteps and Acquired A Trade." One of the reasons I did not do this is that my mom always made me think I was very bad at anything technical/mechanical. I don't actually think that's true, though dyscalculia does make anything involving measuring extremely difficult. But I don't know whether I could physically handle A Trade because I have many body problems.
I recently saw someone on tumblr talking about how what they really wanted was a data entry job that was boring and low-key and allowed them to listen to a podcast and think their thoughts while working, and then go home and not be totally wiped out. On the one hand, this sounds ideal for me because there's so many creative things I want to do but am not good enough to make a Career out of. (This was not too dissimilar to how working in a writing center was in undergrad: even though being At Work required me to engage with students, there was usually time between students in which we were allowed to do whatever.) I, like many people, have a secret ambition to write novels which I know is never going to be fulfilled, but which is nice to indulge. Hard to do that when you're a linguist.
On the other hand, I love linguistics so much. So so so so much. I love research (even though reading academic papers is very hard for me). I love doing analysis. I love science. I love the click feeling when a pattern falls into place. I love telling people about linguistics (even though I don't really like teaching). I just want a job doing linguistics.
On the third hand, I have 0 energy at all times and academia requires So much of you. It's basically two jobs and you're expected to do both well, with a to-do list that's never-ending. This is already so hard for me to deal with in graduate school.
On the fourth hand, there's a good chance I'm going to wind up emigrating for Keel (because we want to live /somewhere/ he doesn't like America as much as I like Wales, and I'm less attached to America than he is to Wales) and a shiny PhD makes me a more attractive and less threatening immigration candidate. Which. like. it's so depressing that I have to think like that. I don't want to be leveraging my privileges to claw out a place in a country's economy, I just want to live with the person I love.
Argh this is going to devolve into depressing musings about the nature of intercountry relationships. I'll stop here.
It's at times like these that I inevitably wonder whether academia was really the right idea for me. Which is funny because I've wanted to be a linguist since I was.....13? 14? I'm literally the only person I know in my entire program who has known what they wanted to study since before high school. I've been focused on it for over ten years.
We cannot, however, ignore that a) PhD job prospects are bad all over and b) I am not a wildly employable candidate. A wildly employable candidate would have better language skills than "a couple of semesters of dead languages and my undergrad Arabic which I am desperately trying not to let rust" and better computer skills than "I'm hoping Quant Methods won't make me cry too much". I don't study an understudied language (I'm fundamentally interested in Englishes, because that's the only language I'm fluent enough to communicate freely in, and although Arabic calls me I just don't think I'm good enough yet) and my actual specialities and research interests (historical and socio) are not remotely profitable to corporations.
Which always makes me think "I should have followed in my dad and my sister's footsteps and Acquired A Trade." One of the reasons I did not do this is that my mom always made me think I was very bad at anything technical/mechanical. I don't actually think that's true, though dyscalculia does make anything involving measuring extremely difficult. But I don't know whether I could physically handle A Trade because I have many body problems.
I recently saw someone on tumblr talking about how what they really wanted was a data entry job that was boring and low-key and allowed them to listen to a podcast and think their thoughts while working, and then go home and not be totally wiped out. On the one hand, this sounds ideal for me because there's so many creative things I want to do but am not good enough to make a Career out of. (This was not too dissimilar to how working in a writing center was in undergrad: even though being At Work required me to engage with students, there was usually time between students in which we were allowed to do whatever.) I, like many people, have a secret ambition to write novels which I know is never going to be fulfilled, but which is nice to indulge. Hard to do that when you're a linguist.
On the other hand, I love linguistics so much. So so so so much. I love research (even though reading academic papers is very hard for me). I love doing analysis. I love science. I love the click feeling when a pattern falls into place. I love telling people about linguistics (even though I don't really like teaching). I just want a job doing linguistics.
On the third hand, I have 0 energy at all times and academia requires So much of you. It's basically two jobs and you're expected to do both well, with a to-do list that's never-ending. This is already so hard for me to deal with in graduate school.
On the fourth hand, there's a good chance I'm going to wind up emigrating for Keel (because we want to live /somewhere/ he doesn't like America as much as I like Wales, and I'm less attached to America than he is to Wales) and a shiny PhD makes me a more attractive and less threatening immigration candidate. Which. like. it's so depressing that I have to think like that. I don't want to be leveraging my privileges to claw out a place in a country's economy, I just want to live with the person I love.
Argh this is going to devolve into depressing musings about the nature of intercountry relationships. I'll stop here.
