He’s right but I’m O.K. with it
“The thing you’ve got to remember,” he said, “is that even if you’ve got a PhD, you’re still going to enter the workplace at the bottom of the pile.”
Well into the third year of my doctoral degree and keen to secure a non-academic job in the not-too-distant future, this was not the news I wanted to hear.
I’m a graduate student fearfully facing down the business end of my PhD. Like many PhD students, my story mostly involves hopping from degree to degree without any substantial experience of the much fabled ‘real world’. …
Just about a year and a half ago, I moved to York.
I didn’t know it very well. My last real visit had been when I was ten and my mum won second prize in a church raffle. She was granted the curious pleasure of a no-expense-spared trip up to the lovely cathedral town of York in the back of the Father’s Corsa*. In anticipation of a day of pained ecumenical small talk she dragged me along — precocious children are useful for breaking the ice — and off we went on the three hour trip up to the northern territories of the A1(M). Nowadays the same journey takes me just under two but it turns out they don’t teach you about forth, or even fifth, gear at seminary college. …
About
