take this PhD and shove it?

Report: 1 in 3 employees thinking of leaving

The sentiment of the old country song "Take This Job and Shove It" is on the minds - if not on the iPods - of many company employees these days, according to a recently released report.

In surveying more than 65 organizations and 50,000 employees over the last few years, Discovery Surveys Inc., a Sharon consulting firm, has concluded that one out of three employees are seriously thinking about leaving their employers.

Oh I do know how they feel. Seeing this sort of reinforces my "you can be miserable anywhere" belief though. That sure sounds pessimistic when I write it down. Somehow it doesn't seem as pessimistic when I think it.

My school recently sent out surveys to PhD students in select disciplines. I got one. I hadn't quite realized just how negatively I feel about this place, the structure and organization. I tried very hard to answer as honestly as possible - usually erring on the side of positive rather than negative, but I know my answers were still consistently quite low ratings. When I got to the question "If there were one thing you could change about your program, what would it be?" I think I spent about 20 minutes just sitting there thinking about it.

Those "one thing" questions always stump me. They're a good exercise in determining your values. One thing. That's it. One.

I said I would change the attitude which glamorizes a lifestyle of poverty, misery, and privation during graduate school. I said I would change it because this lifestyle in this context is a luxury. People who have been raised in lower income families, people who are "on their own" as graduate students, people who only have themselves to take care of them, people who have their own families or obligations to aging parents....those people cannot afford to "play" academic tramp.

I asked a faculty member the other day whether there was any kind of procedure (stated or not) for how to cover for a graduate student when something tragic or very serious happens. We were speaking about my friend's mother's death. The faculty member is something of a mentor to me, and is rather close with my friend as well. She said "well when one of our students got so sick last semester we just sort of self organized a solution. I had someone who was an RA and I took him off that, continued paying him, and had him take on her teaching load for the semester."

My response was that my side of the department wasn't so good at self organizing. She had no comment.

If I have to watch these assholes (by which I of course refer to my graduate faculty) fumble the ball on this one, I think I may very well have to leave. I know my leaving is doing them a favor, getting rid of some of the detritus which has accumulated in the program, opening up a desk and some office space if nothing else. I have no illusions that my leaving would be any kind of hardship for anyone but me. However, I have given it a lot of thought - how and who these people are, and what kind of professional identity I could possibly develop which would allow me to work with them with less daily friction. I haven't got many answers where I do not require super powers or some kind of insane monk like calm. I've thought about this angry, discouraged, happy, capricious, empowered, disturbed, preturbed, sick, healthy, and oh about everyway possible and I still have the same conclusion that I would not be happy on the "standard" academic path even if it were to lead more or less directly to a permanent faculty position. I've seen the permanent faculty. I know what I'm heading for. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, watch "Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf", remove the witty dialogue and you've got a pretty accurate picture. No really, I'm serious.

And so into this system - the one in which I and my friend are both parts and wholes unto ourselves we bring in a 100% genuine tragedy. A thing where people are supposed to shine their brightest. And so far, I am seeing some wonderful responses from graduate students and departmental support staff. But not from the faculty.

I can't work for or with people like that. And I certainly can't be one of them.