I don’t have much to add about the above video, which probably every Humanities graduate student (or close family member thereof) has already seen, forwarded, groaned or giggled over, and so on. Over at Zunguzungu, we see how the situation is coded in a few ways at once, most notably as a conflict between realism and idealism, such that we graduate students, being of course brilliant realists (which is why we got into grad school in the first place) see the eager undergrad as a laughable fool. Not as, you know, us.
I have an issue with this reading, and it’s enhanced by looking back at Thomas H. Benton’s Chronicle piece from almost two years ago. Benton critiques exactly the sort of behavior shown by the professor in the above clip, who, despite all her warnings to the undergrad, agrees to write the recommendation anyway. In reminding us that professors are “generally too eager to clone themselves,” Benton shatters the idea that somehow the undergrad is not “us.” After all, regardless of our own fantasies of self-worth, we were all at one point in that same office, asking the same thing. Who is to say that we did not sound as foolish and that the professor, similarly exasperated, agreed to our demands, even if just to get us out the door?
Other than her eagerness to work with Harold Bloom, nothing about the undergrad struck me as different from myself. Nothing. I’ve even uttered, word for word, sentiments from the video like the mighty white “money is not important to me.”
Had I not already grokked the Benton piece two years ago (and come to terms with it), I would’ve probably found the video to be completely demoralizing.
Instead, though, I was also reminded of an earlier Xtra Normal video that was on heavy rotation this summer while I was living with an eager to tease Applephobe who considers every Mac/iPhone user (like me) a contemptible fanboy:
I don’t think it’s at all a stretch to see these conversations as, pretty much, exactly the same, except for the end result: in one, the obstinate one gets what she wants, and in the other, the obstinate one takes its business elsewhere.
The dark brown animal is absolutely unswayable regarding its desire: to own an iPhone 4. But when pressed for reasons why, they’re all either tautologies or immaterial. Even when presented with an HTC Evo that can grant three wishes, including a wish for an iPhone 4, the animal persists in wanting only an iPhone 4. Similarly, our undergraduate is unswayable regarding her desire to go to grad school, but when pressed, her reasons are either not well thought out or redundant. I find it telling that after wanting to be a professor, the next reason she gives for going involves being given a grade on a paper by a professor, thereby fulfilling Benton’s warnings about idealising the structured academic life built of little gold stars the student can always chase as though he or she were playing Super Mario 64.
So the seeming solution is to make sure you know what you want before you apply to grad school. Or know that your goal is probably risky, so have a backup plan in place.
There is a third option, hinted at in the video but more explicitly mentioned in the Zunguzungu piece:
Grad school is the thing itself; you might get a job at the end of it, but if you want to do it because you want to be a professor, you’re setting yourself up. You have to want to be a grad student, and to be aware of what that entails.
Compare this to the student’s desires to see how far she can push her ideas on the theme of death in Hamlet/Emerson. Though she repeats strongly for her desire to be a college professor (“I want to be a college professor” is this video’s “I want an iPhone 4″), I can’t help but imagine, and this may be reading myself into the student, that she sees that sort of career path as not precisely that. There are some careerist elements to the student’s dream: she wants to teach and be an inspiration, but most of the careerist concerns about committees, long hours, and the rest, come, instead, from the professor. In that sense, the undergrad has a “clean” desire of pursuing an intellectual project. Scraping together a living in the meantime is only a means by which she can realize that goal. Is that so wrong? Or so different from why people should be in grad school?
Incidentally, I have a few more ideas about the self-selection in this video as well as in Benton’s piece, but remember, I said I didn’t have much to add, so I’ll save that for a later post.
Tags: Chronicle of Higher Education, iPhone, Thomas H. Benton, Xtra Normal, zunguzungu
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