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[dreamingofslac]

I'll try to keep this rant brief . . .

With the job market going from bad to worse in a number of humanities fields, the number of "be prepared with a Plan B" articles are starting to increase.  We've also seen a lot of this rhetoric on the fora.  While these articles and comments are often quite commendable - the job market being so poor that it is unrealistic for even top graduate students to expect to get desirable TT jobs - the manner in which they suggest obtaining a "Plan B" career can also be highly unrealistic.   

In another thread, several people responded to the suggestion that an individual ready to leave a humanities PhD program obtain a job as a research librarian.  A couple of people responded by explaining that becoming a research librarian isn't exactly the easiest career path either.

These articles also frequently mention public history or museums as well as a sort of, "Can't get a job in the academy?  Check out museums!  They'll no doubt be hiring!"

While I'm not about to posit the claim that the museum world is as challenging as the academy, it isn't exactly all peaches and cream either.  Good jobs in the museum world net over 100+ applications or more, many from individuals with degrees in museum studies and years of internship experience.  Many very well qualified people in the museum world with degrees from ivy league institutions (I'm saying this just to scare you) go from unpaid internship to low paying part time job to (if their lucky) a salary lower than what a local public school teacher makes.  Maybe 10 years in they get a slightly better job across the country, but there is no prospect of tenure (unless you are a curator at a large museum) and you could get let go at any moment.

While I applaud the efforts of people to suggest that people have a Plan B in mind - simply reassuring people that there will be jobs in libraries and museums is more than a bit misleading. 

We need to paint a wider portrait of what a "Plan B" looks like.  Sure, you might score a great job as a museum professional or research librarian.  But you'll also want to think about K-12 education, jobs in government, and jobs in business.  We also need to suggest that people go to their school's career center to get ideas and learn how to apply for these jobs.  Seeking "Plan B" advice from people who have spent much of their adult lives in the academy can be a recipe for disaster. 

[macaroon]

Plan B defense:

Research librarians are in demand right now.   That is not an empty piece of advice.  My husband has an MLS, and he's had really great jobs.  Last spring, when I got hired for my TT position, it took him about 72 hours to find a new job in TTville.  In all seriousness, he e-mailed out a couple of resumes at ~ 6:15 AM, before our kids woke up, and his phone was already ringing before he left for work.  Technically, that was before the recession (but not really - it was AFTER the Bear Stearns collapse).  However, he only knows of a couple of librarians who got laid off, and of them they all got new jobs fairly quickly. 

My husband wasn't a humanities PhD dropout, though.  He just went for an MLS.  Oh!  His employer paid his tuition.  That's another great thing about MLS programs - most of them are almost entirely night school.

[dreamingofslac]

Ok - I'm not as familiar with the jobs in library sciences as I am with museum jobs - maybe there is more demand for librarians.  My main point here, however, remains.  Your husband had an MLS degree in hand and probably had some relevant experience.  If he was leaving a PhD program and had no experience working in libraries, I bet it would be a different story - as your post suggests.

If you have a MA in Museum Studies, you'll be certainly be more competitive for jobs in the museum world - but that's no guarantee either.  My rant is aimed at people who suggest that someone with 3/4 of a PhD or even someone who unsuccessfully hit the market can stroll into a museum or library and be handed a job.     

[bread_pirate_naan]

Great post. 

I worked as a research librarian in the private sector for a while, because of the experience I had and the positions I held during undergrad.  No MLS.  The posts in question refer to academic research librarianship and are absolutely correct.  Don't go thinking you can use your obscure filed plus an MLIS to get a tentur track library job.  Not going to happen.  You can work in industry or in K-12, if you want to support science or law libraries, better get out of the humanities, right quick.

Want to work in a museum?  Better apply for those interships, but know theat there are whole disciplines dedicated to preparing people for those jobs and they don't pay well.

Triple props to calling out the people who went straight through undergrad in academe.  Do not listen to these people.

I hope everyone has a chance to see a search during their program so they can see what unsuccessful candidates look like.  Better than you.  Sure they say stuff during the interview that will tank you (if you read the job boards), but may not even be why they're not getting the job in the end.

Single?  Date whoever the fvck you want.  If they have a good job.  That probably means outside your program.

These articles also frequently mention public history or museums as well as a sort of, "Can't get a job in the academy?  Check out museums!  They'll no doubt be hiring!"

You are so right about this.  Also, those people who can't stand that the Humanities are being asked to establish their relationship to an economy/business and can't find one?  That's just bad thinking.  Sure, not everyone is interested in subfields that move major money or study objects that economists also follow, but the mechanisms that bring Shakespeare and Comic books to the screen are worth thinking about.  Have your work exist in a real world.  Live in the real world.

Have a plan for 5 letters of the alphabet and let your graduate work support or inform those plans in some concrete way.  Go to that meeting that with the people from the state department, if they visit.  Diplomats need to know stuff you might care about.

Just in the application phase?  If it is crushing you, get out now.  Just do something else.  If you need strokes to keep your self worth up at this point, just forget it.

Fully funded?  Go kick some ass.  You can go from nowhere to on the map in an instant. 

Again, great post.

[gradstudentanon]

As someone who is considering that Plan B after having little luck with PhD applications, I am glad to see a thread like this.  I have not considered museum work as I know how competitive it is and I also have zero training or experience in the field.  I have considered library work but also have no experience or training (thought of going for the MLS).  My other option is going for a paralegal certificate as I do have experience as a legal secretary.

But I don't know.  What do you do with an MA in a humanities subject?

Looking forward to some good info!

[tenured_feminist]

You know, I am not sure I would waltz into an MLS program tomorrow and figure I'd be totally set when I got the degree.

I have spent the last few days talking to people from all over the US about their budget situations. "Dire" doesn't begin to describe it. Almost everyone is getting slammed almost everywhere -- private schools with endowments are seeing the endowments tank, private tuition-driven schools are worried about continuing to pull in the tuition, and publics are getting ravaged by the legislatures. I'm hearing percentages like 10-20%. I'm hearing numbers in the millions. Layoffs. Furloughs. Pay freezes. Pay cuts. Lines eliminated. Programs and institutes closed.

Do you really think that libraries and library staffs are going to be immune to this? Really?

I could be wrong, but I think the only growth areas in higher ed for the next several years will be in contingent teaching (very moderate there) and assessment/institutional research. At some places possibly consulting on fundraising.

Sorry to be a downer, but I think we have to be realistic.

[macaroon]

Ok - I'm not as familiar with the jobs in library sciences as I am with museum jobs - maybe there is more demand for librarians. 

There was when he got started in the business.  He got his MLS in 2001.  Initially, his career goals involved working in a museum.  He had extensive museum experience as an undergraduate.   Because of all his experience, he discovered the same thing that you did; while there were plenty of "undergraduate intern" positions available in museums, there were very few full time jobs.  The librarians were happy to take him.  He got a great job right out of college working in a corporate research center in what was a "junior librarian position".  The ideal candidate was somebody who was working on or would start working on an MLS at night.  I want to add that most of his cohort  of "junior librarians" at this place were exactly the people here who are looking at an MLS as a plan B - several of them had MAs in the humanities.

[glowdart]

My advice?

What's your field?  Eh, that only matters so much -- What are your skills?  What can you offer an employer other than a piece of paper with some letters on it?  That is where you have to start looking for your Plan B.

I know that I'm "spoiled" because I have plenty of clearly available Plan B jobs that I could apply for and plenty of contacts who respect my talents in the "real world" (thank god) and plenty of transferable skills that will enable me to get jobs in the field, but I am perpetually amazed at how otherwise bright people who supposedly have passions and interests cannot figure out what jobs might be a good Plan B.    

What are you going to do if you get a TT job and your advisees show up in your office looking for advice about careers?  What do you tell them?  That's what you tell yourself now.  

We are not born with skill sets.  We develop them through our choices and experiences.  The reason that I have the job options that I have right now are because I have been working for decades.  Look at your skills.  Look at jobs.  Find the good matches.  Look at jobs you might want, figure out what skills you are lacking, and then figure out how to acquire those skills.  In the meantime, however, you need to work somewhere.  Where is that going to be?  Who is hiring?  What did you want to do when you were six?  What would you have done if you hadn't gotten into graduate school?  

What were you going to do when you left undergrad?  Start there -- and yes, as the OP notes, this means you might end up in an unpaid internship during the day while bartending at night.  How else do you expect to get experience?   Take a desk job during the day and spend your nights taking French lessons (or whatever) or volunteering at a museum (or whatever, and yes, the public history job market is awful.)

And yes, I took time off between degrees and worked jobs, most of which had nothing to do with my major, in an attempt to find myself, starting very young.  I also spent a whole lot of time working in low-paying s***ty jobs in my field throughout high school, college and while in graduate schoolto get the experience necessary to be where I am now.  Where is that mythical "now" place?  Now, I could walk out of my TT job and *maybe* get a job in the field within six months, if my contacts are still employed themselves and need people or know people who need people at places that still have operating budgets.  That's after 20+ years of working and gaining experience & skills.


It isn't going to happen overnight, and if you've never put in time as a desk clerk in an office building while volunteering on the weekends and writing at night, then now is the time to wake up to what the rest of the world does for a living.  

[mountainguy]

One of my former SO's was a librarian and I briefly worked as an archival technician a few years ago. I found the work to be dreadfully boring. To each their own; some people are perfectly happy with that career, including for my ex. But Dreamingofslac is right--humanities grads shouldn't expect to waltz into library positions without an MLS.

Paralegal work is an area that some grad students may find fulfilling, since it involves research and writing. But it can be a stressful environment, the hours can be grueling, and it's best to have taken at least some paralegal studies classes (many employers will only hire people with paralegal's certificates, others don't care).

[frogfactory]

Working in a lab environment is great training for office management and similar administrative jobs - at least it was for me.  It's not nearly as much fun, but many of the key skills are similar.

Bartending is fun at times, but demanding as heck, and you can wave bye-bye to any chance of a social or family life.  Working in a busy kitchen is worse.  Waiting tables is probably the same.  Not recommended if you just want to make an additional few dollars a week on top of another job.  That way burnout lies.

[gradstudentanon]

Some good things to think about.  I think I will take advantage of my school's career center and go for a talk.  At the least, my resume needs some polishing.  There is also a careers fair in a few weeks and I think I'll dig out a decent outfit and go have a look. Can't hurt to get some ideas and maybe potential contacts.

[litcrittr82]

My advice?

What's your field?  Eh, that only matters so much -- What are your skills?  What can you offer an employer other than a piece of paper with some letters on it?  That is where you have to start looking for your Plan B.

Exactly.  What did I do with my 'airey-fairy' English MA and useless liberal arts background *before* recklessly and dangerously and unthinkably starting my current PhD in English?  I worked at a consulting firm making a higher salary than any of my engineering and business degree buddies in my age range.  And if the naysayers get what they want and the humanities descend into a heap of rubble in 5 years and I don't get my coveted tenure track job, I'll have some industry experience and contacts, technical writing and Web design experience, qual. and quant. analysis experience, and a PhD.  Boo hoo hoo.

Just because you have a humanities degree doesn't mean you have to work at a library or a museum if not in academe.  Your humanities MA won't get you a salary bump like an MBA (although that's kind of a travesty), but it won't bar you from pursuing all kinds of industry jobs that want people who can write (I mean REALLY write, not business write), train and give presentations, moderate focus groups, etc.  A humanities student should be honing all of these skills in the process of pursuing an academic career in the humanities.     

[nofia]

What everyone has written is very true. For people who are interested in the museum field though, one thing to keep in mind (which always seems to get left out of the plan b articles) is that there are private sector jobs that relate to museums, and these are another avenue to pursue if the TT thing doesn't pan out. In addition to private companies that do exhibit design and need people to write and research for them, there are also companies that do feasibility studies, visitor studies, development, capital planning, media design etc. These jobs tend to pay better than an entry-level or even mid-level museum job, and if you can appropriately market your skills, are a good option as well. I left one of these jobs to go for my history phd, but I'm keeping one foot in the museum field by continuing to do internships because I do feel like it is a viable plan B for me (I have an MA in museum studies, had a bunch of internships, and several years as a professional in said private sector field). That being said I also have a plan C, D, and on if things don't work out. The OP is right though, museum and library jobs can be hard to get if you don't have experience, and they do not pay all that much. On the other hand, they are often quite rewarding in other ways, and I see no reason why one cannot do an internship at least in the years before their dissertation so they have some professional experience.

[gradstudentanon]

I think part of the problem for many of us is that we don't know that our skills can transfer over to other industries and areas or what those industries and areas might be. 

[magistra]

What drove me nuts about the article is that is was so anecdotal.  I know, I know, it was a column, and we say this a lot but....if there's anything we're trained not to do, it's to take one experience and generalize it.  The examples given were particularly egregious -- museums?  In the good years there weren't any jobs -- I was looking.  I've seen several articles about laying people off in museums, and it's surprising how many were there in the first place.  Nor is one little internship (if you can afford it) going to change your resume.  Journalism was another example, as if the journalism schools aren't overfilled too.  And you're competing with people who actually want those jobs, not just deign to do them until they find something that's a better fit.

But we can read, and write, and think.  We've had a lot of experience with computers and managing information.  (I'll bet most of us type more wpm than a lot of secretarial staff.)  Employee training is basically teaching.  Yes, we might go into something closely related like secondary ed, but companies do want humanities grads.  You know we groan over student papers?  Those kids are out in the workforce.  If you were their boss, would you trust them to send out a memo or write ad copy?  Or would you rather have someone more like us?

I suspect that the best thing you can do to make yourself marketable is take some of the computer seminars on your campus and maybe do some online teaching.  Learn the basics of web design and Excel.  Everyone's got a web page they need to maintain, and it's proof that you can master different types of software.  Online teaching at the high school and college level is growing, and you wouldn't have to move.  But even if you decide against teaching, your computer skills are better than most of the public's, and they're the sort of skills that all of us have and most any job needs.  They're not field-specific.