(no subject)
Well, it looks like I’ll be going to Michigan next fall. The decision was pretty painful. OSU offered a lot more money, is about three times closer to Sowmia, and has on faculty two of the best scholars in my current research interest. On the other hand, from everything I’ve been told and have learned, Michigan’s program is somewhat more rigorous and more prestigious. Based on my research, my job prospects, not to mention my education, will be significantly better after attending Michigan in comparison with OSU. This metric is a bit unfair - who’s to say where my cohort will end up, and my education will surely be what I make of it - but it does make me nervous when I can only find one person with a PhD from OSU on faculty in my survey of the top thirty institutions. I guess the point is that the likelihood of me working at a place like UT, where I would very much like to work, is apparently nil if I go to OSU, whereas it is only unlikely if I go to Michigan.
Meditating on my career, of course, leads me to meditating on my mortality. Professors in the humanities, and particularly in my field, only seem to become really good once they hit their fifties; will I live that long? If I don’t, will it all be worthwhile? Of course, I would be a fool to go into a field such as mine if I weren’t interested in learning for learning’s sake. But it gnaws on me, and it makes me hate my laziness - there is so much to do, and I travel through time and approach my end so quickly.
Meditating on my career, of course, leads me to meditating on my mortality. Professors in the humanities, and particularly in my field, only seem to become really good once they hit their fifties; will I live that long? If I don’t, will it all be worthwhile? Of course, I would be a fool to go into a field such as mine if I weren’t interested in learning for learning’s sake. But it gnaws on me, and it makes me hate my laziness - there is so much to do, and I travel through time and approach my end so quickly.