Higher and Deeper in Academia
So, although it took several weeks of bureaucratic wrangling and a letter of complaint to get it done, I really am, well, truly and officially, a PhD student now. Hooray.
This is, all in all, not a bad thing, though it's something that I could feel more excited and less ambivalent about if philosophise doctor weren't an academic title that's of increasingly limited merit in this day and age - and, more to the point, if the practical act of being a PhD student didn't involve a considerable amount of begging for money writing faintly deceptive grant proposals in which you pretend to know what you're doing and that you're totally deserving of a sizeable sum of money to do whatever it is that you're doing. This is, all in all, a strange ritual whose significance I have yet to fully grasp. I mean, if I actually did know what I was doing, what are the odds that I would become a PhD student? There's something spurious about this whole exercise, casting a drab veneer of propriety and professionalism over something that, in more practical terms, is anything but. Where's all that bohemian ivory tower academic decadence that I've been told about? Clearly I was born in the wrong century!
Ah well, I'll quit complaining and see how it goes. What's the worst that could happen? And, if nothing else, this means that "I'd love to, but I'm busy writing my dissertation" can be successfully used as an effective excuse in just about any situation for the next half a decade or so. Although, it's more likely to be a front for me taking time off to play some video games...
This is, all in all, not a bad thing, though it's something that I could feel more excited and less ambivalent about if philosophise doctor weren't an academic title that's of increasingly limited merit in this day and age - and, more to the point, if the practical act of being a PhD student didn't involve a considerable amount of begging for money writing faintly deceptive grant proposals in which you pretend to know what you're doing and that you're totally deserving of a sizeable sum of money to do whatever it is that you're doing. This is, all in all, a strange ritual whose significance I have yet to fully grasp. I mean, if I actually did know what I was doing, what are the odds that I would become a PhD student? There's something spurious about this whole exercise, casting a drab veneer of propriety and professionalism over something that, in more practical terms, is anything but. Where's all that bohemian ivory tower academic decadence that I've been told about? Clearly I was born in the wrong century!
Ah well, I'll quit complaining and see how it goes. What's the worst that could happen? And, if nothing else, this means that "I'd love to, but I'm busy writing my dissertation" can be successfully used as an effective excuse in just about any situation for the next half a decade or so. Although, it's more likely to be a front for me taking time off to play some video games...