Last year this time, I felt purged, free from the shackles of a cumbersome bureaucracy which had begun to haunt me and a routinized 8-4 office life. I was reading new texts, discussing them with new people, learning new words and learning to use old words differently. My days were fluid, curving round the requirements of classes and assignments, and I did not spend most of my waking hours in front of the computer. I talked to people face-to-face, not through e-mail, I didn’t even know their e-mails. It was pretty obvious to me that I would get my MA by September 2009, and go on to start my PhD by January 2010.
Where did that go? Now I watch myself juggling two part-time office jobs, both of which involve a lot of e-mailing and seeing very little of actual real live people, while half-heartedly trying to do a research which seems to have a bizarre life of its own. I would be lucky if I could even finish the research by December, and write up the bloody thesis by March 2010. The days seems to fly by as I gallop from one set of computers to another, and the e-mails shoot out from beneath my fingers. I hardly see anyone not related to work or close family. Why did I let them (includes myself) talk me into applying for and getting jobs? Why did I let myself be sucked in by all the congratulatory blah blah blah? Why did I deviate from the path I had set for myself? (yes, I know. Money of course, and wanting more and more of it.)
I’m not interested in doing a PhD anymore… my goal now is to get better jobs than what I have already, jobs which pay more and presumably involve even more e-mailing. Tainted by the labour market, I don’t really see the point of spending another N years in the university, talking about (in a rather dissatisfied, critical way) what other people are doing outside of academia. And I certainly don’t see what I could possibly do after getting the sort of PhD I would be likely to receive… The general idea is that with a decent MA, you can more or less get a decent job, and that’s what I want, now.
But I had a decent job, back home! And I didn’t want it anymore, remember?
It feels like I’m sucked into a vortex trying to recreate the same life I had in Iran, now in Canada. And it doesn’t make sense.
Tags: graduate studies, jobs, life, personal, student life, studying, working
October 8, 2009 at 2:27 pm |
“I’m not interested in doing a PhD anymore… my goal now is to get better jobs than what I have already, jobs which pay more and presumably involve even more e-mailing.”
I have considered translating excerpts of this post -like the above one- to Farsi and reading it aloud to Pavi.
October 24, 2009 at 11:59 pm |
The exact same thing happened to me. I left Ireland to find a new way of living, started down the right path, then applied for a job on a whim, got it, and four years later I have the same life I had in Ireland (for half the salary).
I am so mad with myself over it, I cannot verbalise the anger.