Comments on: Looking for Signposts http://editingmodernism.ca/2014/04/looking-for-signposts/ Mon, 09 Jun 2014 19:02:19 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.17 By: Melissa Dalgleish http://editingmodernism.ca/2014/04/looking-for-signposts/comment-page-1/#comment-6895 Tue, 06 May 2014 00:57:36 +0000 http://editingmodernism.ca/?p=5777#comment-6895 I think doing away with the “hushed tones,” as you say, is perhaps the most important first step. Let’s talk about it! For people who base their life’s work on data and analysis, many academics don’t much like the real numbers when it comes to what PhDs do after academia. Roughly 50% of people never finish the degree, which many don’t know and which signals that the current system isn’t serving some people well. Depending on the field, about the same number who do finish end up in non-academic jobs. Working to create a culture in which professors openly acknowledge that their students will be following diverse career paths, and that the university has an ethical responsibility to provide graduate students with some of the skills they’ll need to pursue those paths, is imperative.

Now that I’m on the other side of the fence, I realize that a culture of openness can do as much, if not more, than creating new resources. We have a stunning array of professional and transferable skills programming available to graduate students on campus, as we do opportunities–like the Mitacs internship program, various faculty RA positions, and non-traditional TAships like working in the writing centre–that can help students develop valuable skills in communication, translating research into impact, writing pedagogy, and a whole host of other soft and technical skills. And they’re underutilized. I blame this on a culture that keeps professors from telling their students about these opportunities, because students headed for the tenure-track don’t need transferable skills, and that keeps students feeling like their commitment to the ideal of the tenure-track is constantly being policed, which makes it unsafe to do anything other than teach, write, publish, and conference.

TL;DR, fostering this culture of openness and revealing some of the many fascinating and challenging non-professorial careers that graduate study can lead to, and that DH may facilitate the transition into a bit more easily than traditional humanities study, is the primary reason I’m curating this series of posts.

]]> By: Kailin Wright http://editingmodernism.ca/2014/04/looking-for-signposts/comment-page-1/#comment-6894 Tue, 06 May 2014 00:23:27 +0000 http://editingmodernism.ca/?p=5777#comment-6894 Thanks for the enlightening post, Melissa! Do you have any suggestions for how English Graduate programs can better prepare students for alt-ac positions. In my experience, there can be a real tunnel vision in PhD programs wherein a tenure-track job seems like the privileged goal and anything else is a lesser position to be discussed in hushed tones. I think that posts like yours are a good step in the direction of helping change these attitudes.

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