Some of the topics I hope to tackle with this blog include the following.
The frustrations of being a grad student
As the title of this blog states, sometimes pursuing and advanced degree feels like chasing a carrot on a stick. There’s always the promise that hanging in there for just a bit longer will lead to some great reward...but the stress and uncertainty never end. First there’s the pressure to get into grad school, then there is keeping your supervisor happy and finally completing a dissertation, then there is applying for positions in an ever shrinking job pool, then there is proving yourself for six or so years before getting evaluated again for possible tenure...and it just never ends. And if one by chance, escapes the fog of guilt and decides to pursue a non-academic route, there’s an inevitable barrage of questions as to what the point of all that self-torture was in the first place now that one is simultaneously over and under qualified and most likely in debt. Sigh. There are pros and cons on both sides of the fence and as I am still straddling said fence, I hope to explore them both (although, fair warning, I am leaning towards the non-academic route and thus might be slightly biased in that direction).
As the title of this blog states, sometimes pursuing and advanced degree feels like chasing a carrot on a stick. There’s always the promise that hanging in there for just a bit longer will lead to some great reward...but the stress and uncertainty never end. First there’s the pressure to get into grad school, then there is keeping your supervisor happy and finally completing a dissertation, then there is applying for positions in an ever shrinking job pool, then there is proving yourself for six or so years before getting evaluated again for possible tenure...and it just never ends. And if one by chance, escapes the fog of guilt and decides to pursue a non-academic route, there’s an inevitable barrage of questions as to what the point of all that self-torture was in the first place now that one is simultaneously over and under qualified and most likely in debt. Sigh. There are pros and cons on both sides of the fence and as I am still straddling said fence, I hope to explore them both (although, fair warning, I am leaning towards the non-academic route and thus might be slightly biased in that direction).
As a corollary to this topic, I will thus also be exploring the skills that employers are actually looking for today and how I can both develop and market those as one with a postgraduate education.
The need for system change in higher education
The very nature of higher education is outdated and in serious need of change and not just at the graduate level. Our world has become a radically different place due to technological advances and education has not yet caught up. Who we are as a society, what we value, how we communicate, the role of information...all of these things are different now than they were even twenty or thirty years ago and our way of preparing students for this new world is insufficient and possibly even detrimental for their success. What is currently broken and what kind of change is needed? Unfortunately, this flawed system is what we have right now – how can students find what they need regardless?
Within this topic, I’ll likely also blog from time to time about general philosophy of education topics as I find how we learn and how we adjust to change fascinating.
The research process
Post-graduate education tends to focus on research. My field is social cognition and as such, I have a lot of experience with the research process from acquiring funding, to ethics approval, to designing and running studies, to publishing papers. There is a parallel to the ‘carrot on a stick’ metaphor within this process as well. We have the illusion that we are impacting the world and yet our research often wallows in dusty un-accessed journals or even in our filing cabinets if we can’t convince anyone to publish it. Given that much of the way higher education is organized is for the purpose of perpetuating this research, and given that it is a central part of my life right now, I figure a few posts here and there about its pros and cons wouldn’t be out of place.
