Sunday, July 23
Sunday, July 23, 2006 | 
Posted by
Anonymous
This post was sparked by thistle's comment on Transitions, although I want to make clear that I know this isn't what she was saying; it's just a hot button for me.
I hate it when people act like younger graduate students are just here because we couldn't think of anything else to do with ourselves. I've known that I wanted to go to graduate school since I was in junior high--I changed my mind about for what a few times, but the basic idea that I would pursue a PhD was pretty much a constant. I'm a smart person. I grew up among academics and it's a life with which I am comfortable; it's the kind of life I want to have. I certainly didn't want to take time off just for the sake of taking time off, especially when I was a little afraid of losing my academic rhythm. There was like one summer in my entire college career that I didn't take classes, and it left me feeling at loose ends.
But there are plenty of people who don't take me seriously because I'm younger. There are also people who actively resent me for it, and take varying degrees of pains to hide that. For some of them, that degree is none, like the woman who told me that younger graduate students never really know what they want to do with their lives and will just wander off into the sunset after squandering a few years of funding that should have gone to older, more mature and deserving graduate students.
The resentment seems to be expressed more freely by older female graduate students; I'm pretty sure that there is a component of general resentment of younger women included here. I think older male graduate students (and faculty) are more likely just to not take me seriously, and sometimes it's hard to tease out whether that's because I'm young or because I'm female. I have definitely had moments in professional seminars when an older, male person has restated something that I just said a minute ago and gotten a much more enthusiastic reception from the group at large.
At least when I finish my PhD people will be less likely to assume that I went to grad school to kill time. I hope.
I hate it when people act like younger graduate students are just here because we couldn't think of anything else to do with ourselves. I've known that I wanted to go to graduate school since I was in junior high--I changed my mind about for what a few times, but the basic idea that I would pursue a PhD was pretty much a constant. I'm a smart person. I grew up among academics and it's a life with which I am comfortable; it's the kind of life I want to have. I certainly didn't want to take time off just for the sake of taking time off, especially when I was a little afraid of losing my academic rhythm. There was like one summer in my entire college career that I didn't take classes, and it left me feeling at loose ends.
But there are plenty of people who don't take me seriously because I'm younger. There are also people who actively resent me for it, and take varying degrees of pains to hide that. For some of them, that degree is none, like the woman who told me that younger graduate students never really know what they want to do with their lives and will just wander off into the sunset after squandering a few years of funding that should have gone to older, more mature and deserving graduate students.
The resentment seems to be expressed more freely by older female graduate students; I'm pretty sure that there is a component of general resentment of younger women included here. I think older male graduate students (and faculty) are more likely just to not take me seriously, and sometimes it's hard to tease out whether that's because I'm young or because I'm female. I have definitely had moments in professional seminars when an older, male person has restated something that I just said a minute ago and gotten a much more enthusiastic reception from the group at large.
At least when I finish my PhD people will be less likely to assume that I went to grad school to kill time. I hope.
5 comments:
Sorry for painting all 20-something grad students with the same brush, that was stupid of me.
I'm just peevish because of some hard-partying colleagues who don't behave professionally, aren't engaged with the department, and then complain about not getting enough advisorly support.
I can imagine that older grad students (especially women) do resent you for being younger and on the ball. I confess to being jealous of people who are younger than I am and already have their PhDs or tenure-track jobs. There's a background fear of the various ticking clocks - e.g. biological and tenure - that makes people touchy.
But that's no excuse for not taking someone else seriously.
I hear what you're saying, Cerise, and sympathize because I have heard this sentiment myself. In fact, the other day I was talking to my partner about graduate students in my new department who are (ph)inishe(d) but going abroad instead of going on the market. He claimed it was because they probably started too young and hadn't gotten the "travel abroad bug" out of their systems.
I think it's worth saying here, though, that the pendulum might swing both ways. My undergraduate mentor was an older graduate student who returned to college after her kids started high school and started grad school after they got their diplomas. Despite being extremely bright, I think that a lot of faculty wrote her off because they figured she wouldn't have time to really make a name for herself in the "short" career that was ahead.
During my own grad school stint we had a grad student who had retired from a major company, gone to college, and started grad school when he was just shy of 50. While he was incredibly well-liked and respected, I think a lot of faculty wondered if it was worth bringing him onto big projects or mentoring him if he only wanted to broaden his horizons and wasn't going to go out and get an academic job.
There were 12 people in my cohort, ranging in age from 21 to 35. We all have faced some obstacles and have had to do a little growing up in grad school, regardless of our starting age.
I was going to say something similar to Cerise's last comment about most grad students being older and already married. I just did my MA and am starting my PhD in the fall, and for me it kind of feels - socially - like I'm going back to college. Not because I want to be "hard-partying," but because I'm moving to a new place far away from friends and family, I'll be there for a long time, and I'm going there alone. But when I was doing my campus visits deciding on a school, I realized that most people in grad programs (at least in my field) are older, married or in serious relationships, etc. - so it's not the social free-for-all I have sometimes imagined. It's pretty tough to be trying to figure out both your professional life AND your personal life when your professional life is so demanding...but I'm not sure if this is unique to academia, and I certainly know that relationship concerns don't just all-of-a-sudden come to an end with marriage or age.
AT, could've used the time how?
I do think that, particularly in some fields, experience outside of school is really helpful. I think it is in mine.
I took over a year off before going to grad school, but it was for personal reasons, not self-exploration or growing up. It had taken me long enough to get through undergrad that I had accumulated a lot of life experiences in that time. I draw on those every day, and I see the difficulty that others, who never experienced life in the outside world, can have.
It's not that I think that time off, or even a job, or anything one thing in particular necessarily gives you this experience, you can get it a lot of different ways. But it's good to have those non-academic experiences to compare life as an academic to and to draw from.
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