Question (from "Alvin"): How do I finance my last dissertation year if I'm not a T.A.?
Question (from "Beulah"): They've got me teaching five classes of freshman writing. How can I possibly find time to write and publish?
Question (from "Cheryl"): What next? Now that I've gotten the right drugs and good therapy, my neuroses no longer have a death grip on my life — but they cost me nearly two years of dissertation time, along with my teaching assistantship. I'm now an office temp by day, a dissertation writer by night, and an occasional e-mail correspondent with my dissertation director. How will I explain the lost time when I'm on the job market — or will everyone just dismiss me as a loony?
Answer: Ms. Mentor is reminded of the bird fancier who came upon a tiny bird he thought was a dove, but he wasn't sure. And so the fancier cajoled the little bird into opening its beak, and sprinkled its mouth with a pungent green herb.
Why?
Because only true doves can stand the taste of thyme.
Oh, all right — Ms. Mentor admits that her story has little or nothing to do with the matter at hand. It's just her wicked little trick to seduce readers into wasting a few seconds. Do you feel guilty?
If you do, you have the makings of an angst-ridden, time-downtrodden academic.
Thyme is cheap, but time is precious. It is the thing we yearn for, the thing we fear losing, the one thing that cannot be regained. ... But sometimes, as with Alvin and Beulah, Ms. Mentor's answer is simple.
"Get time and money any way you can," so you can finish your Ph.D.'s and resume your lives.
Unless you win the lottery or were born into a very wealthy family, you'll probably have to finance your last year with a job. If there's nothing research-related (a lab, a political campaign), look for something that adds to your skills. Office temping, for instance, can teach you about business and technical writing — hot fields where there are tenure-track jobs. (For more on this, see how to use graduate school strategically.)
But do not be lured into thinking that a few sections of freshman comp will propel you through the dissertation. Comp is usually underpaid, and it also draws from the same creative part of the brain needed for writing. If you're hunched over hundreds of papers to grade, you're depleting your store of words, emptying your house of ideas.
Ms. Mentor exhorts you not to be a martyr. If you teach comp, do not crucify yourself. Choose a few key things to grade (such as thesis sentences, transitions, comma usage) and pass over the rest. If students' pages are bleeding with red ink, the most conscientious will be devastated. The others will be bored and annoyed. You will be brain-dead.
English Ph.D.'s take longer than any others to get their degrees, according to a recent report in Science magazine. From the time they enter grad school, biochemists on the average earn their Ph.D.'s in 5.9 years. Electrical engineers take 6.4 years; mathematicians 6.9; computer scientists 7.6; political scientists 8.7; and English professionals 8.9.
And so Eager Emma, a literature lover starting grad school this fall, will most likely collect her Ph.D. sometime in late 2008 — or three Presidential elections from now.
Ms. Mentor urges students to move faster into academic adulthood, by being ruthless. Beulah, for instance, must make her freshest hours of the day her Writing Time, with a reasonable goal: "one lousy page a day." She must become best buddies with her Creative Angel, who lets her dream, free-write, mull and flow. She must squelch the other side of her brain, the Demon Editor/internal critic who's always muttering, "It stinks ... you're an elitist, pathological nogoodnik ... do something useful and wash the floor."
One lousy page a day means 365 lousy pages by the end of the year. And most of them won't be lousy at all.
Harken, too, to Ms. Mentor's Mighty Maxims for Time Management:
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Each night, make your Must Do list for the next day. List your daily Writing Time as an appointment.
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Rank your Must Do's in order of importance.
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Write a Should Do list of things you might do if you had time, such as "wash the floor" or "shop for good china" or "worry about what other people think."
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Burn the Should Do list.
When you're on the road, the Must Do list belongs in your datebook or palm computer, which travels with you to all professional occasions. Don't waste others' time with "I'll call you when I check my schedule." Keep your datebook current and write down all appointments.
Save your memory — your creative space — for writing. Do not clutter it with trivia.
If your home and office are too busy, find an out-of-the-way coffee house where you're not apt to meet anyone you know. During your sacred Writing Time, do not talk to anyone. Answer no phones. Surf not the Net.
Snack if you must, but what Ms. Mentor particularly favors is a large double caffeine jolt. Think of Balzac, the prolific French novelist, who consumed 14 to 24 cups of espresso a day.
That's real writing fuel.
"But, Ms. Mentor, what if I follow all your rules and fall behind anyway, like Cheryl?"
What if job interviewers ask, "How come you took so long, you bozo?" or, "If we hire you, will we have to worry that you'll crack up or go postal?"
Such questions are both boorish and illegal, and they'll only be asked if your vita has unexplained gaps. If you simply list the years you were a grad student ("1993-1999"), no one need know about lost time or missed chances.
As long as you're chugging along, your troubles are under control, and your director's pleased, your career prospects are as good as anyone's.
Brighter, in fact — because you were wise enough to query Ms. Mentor.
That is an excellent use of your time.
Question: Since we tend to be a profession of isolationists, I wonder: should our campus have Monthly Mentor Meetings, for reading your book and columns and pondering academic and pedagogical topics, such as burnout, student evaluations, the aesthetics of communication, and the loneliness of new faculty members — and do you think every campus should have that kind of group, especially in cold climates where we're all wallowing in misery?
Answer: Yes.
Sage Readers: Last month's column on Exploding Head Syndrome brought Ms. Mentor some fan mail ("Thanks to you, I've embraced my inner dust bunnies") and some fear mail ("These are my troubles, but I can't risk letting you know who I really am").
Ms. Mentor assures readers that she never reveals names. That may be why some of the most bizarre individuals in Ms. Mentor's tome (see below) have never recognized themselves. One even told Ms. Mentor that "No professor would ever do something so asinine as that dork on Page 66."
Well ...
