At first, the Judgmental Bureaucrat talked to me like I am some loser trying to game the system and steal from all the hardworking people. I know she is just doing her job, but it was all rather depressing. It’s one of those times when you want to say, “I would like to be addressed as Doctor [last name] during the duration of this phone call, thank you very much.” Except you don’t because, even when your dignity is on the line, you don’t want to sound like a pretentious asshole.

Judgmental Bureaucrat could not fathom that I left adjuncting in Spring 2011, a job that after all paid about $300 per week before taxes, on purpose. I told her that I got another job, a self-employment gig. Still, she was incredulous. “You left Blah Blah College because the pay was low?” She asked. “Didn’t you know that when you accepted the job? Didn’t you?????”

Boy she really got me there! Yes, Judgmental Bureaucrat, I knew and I signed on anyway. It wasn’t until later that I realized I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than work there. Imagine that!

I explained that working conditions at Blah Blah College were also an issue. I had no desk and no office (except one shared by dozens of others). I asked, “Do you know what it’s like to be a teacher and have no space to meet with students, at least one you can count on being available?” The computers in the office were circa 2003, and the space bar didn’t work on one of them because there was some goo stuck in there. I couldn’t type documents on it. If I had to send an email, I would have to write a preamble like this:

Iamsorrybutthespacebarisnotworkingonthiscomputer

before I actually typed the message. It was very professional! I also told Judgmental Bureaucrat that there were often mouse droppings in the office in the morning when I came in. I remember this because the other adjuncts and I used to marvel that the mice could make it all the way up to the 15^th floor. They’re impressive climbers. Or, they know how to press elevator buttons.

Judgmental Bureaucrat softened up a little bit when I told her about the mice poo. Apparently, if a mouse is shitting in your workspace nightly, quitting your job is a viable option. But if you don’t make enough to live on, don’t get health insurance, have no guarantee of employment from one semester to the next, and find the whole situation unethical and unconscionable on every level, well you just have to suck it up sister!

Not to be defeated by my ruthless recitation of the facts, Judgmental Bureaucrat asked, “Did you ever talk to your supervisor about these conditions?” Good question! No I did not. Silly me! Has Judgmental Bureaucrat ever worked anywhere before, aside from making phone calls on behalf of the People in Charge of Giving Out the Money? What was more likely to happen if I complained? Would my working conditions be remedied tout de suite, or would I mysteriously not be offered a class the following semester and also find myself blacklisted by the HR department. No one wants to burn bridges if they don’t have to. And besides, it’s not like the Chair of the Department, or whoever my “supervisor” might be, could do anything about it anyway. She’s just a cog in the machine (a different, more highly respected part of the machine) like me. What is she going to do, get a butter knife from the faculty lounge and clean the goo out from under the space bar?

What’s really interesting about all this is that Blah Blah College is publicly financed (although less and less, thanks to creeping privatization), so I was earning a taxpayer-funded wage as an adjunct. Unemployment benefits are also paid through taxation. So I have to go through this interrogation to switch from one publicly-funded revenue stream to the other. Weird!

Finally, Judgmental Bureaucrat said she is going to call Bah Blah College and talk to them about my complaints. I did not expect or intend this, as I was trying to avoid burning bridges. I guess that is just not possible. What I really want to know: is the Dept. of Labor going to ask the employer a lot of impertinent questions? Is Blah Blah College going to have to explain why 75% of intro courses are taught by part-timers? Are they going to have to rationalize paying a non-living wage and failing to provide adequate computers or office space? What will happen if they don’t have a good explanation for these things? Something? Nothing? Frankly, I think the mouse droppings are the only complaint that Judgmental Bureaucrat thinks I have in my favor. That mouse excrement is the only thing keeping me in the running for unemployment benefits, just like Free-Market Jesus intended.

Today, though, I realized that my credit card balance is higher than the amount of money I have in my checking account. I have to start assertively making phone calls to temp agencies next week, I guess.  “Please give me a job emptying the trash at Goldman Sachs or whatever.”

It’s a strange feeling to have categorical proof that you are worth less than nothing.

Then I got some comments on the post that made me rethink my decision. And the person I live with reminded me that he read my diss two years ago. He wondered if I might be overstating its general and overall badness.

I started thinking: what is the smallest unit of meaning I could pull out of that text and do something with? I realized that, unless I plan to resign myself to letting it rot, I am going to have to find some decent sentences in that dissertation somewhere.

Not ideas or pages or paragraphs. Just individual sentences.

So that is what I did. I went back to a chapter about a topic that I like, and I began copying and pasting individual sentences that don’t suck into a blank Word file. I decided it didn’t matter if these sentences made sense on their own or not. I would simply create a new document with only the good sentences from a single chapter.

What this looked like after I was done was a kind of prose poem: random lines about vaguely related topics, non sequitors, weird outlier sentences that didn’t go with anything.

Then I started writing.

I started with one of the not-shitty sentences. Next to it was another not-shitty sentence. Something needed to go in the gap of meaning between them. I started filling in the gap with new sentences, which eventually turned into paragraphs. Slowly, I was connecting disparate lines from my diss and creating something other than what it had been before.

This process, which took a few days, was like a revision high-wire act. The old sentences were like the swings of a trapeze. I swung off of one into the air before grabbing the next (hopefully) sturdy sentence and landing safely on the other side of a freshly written paragraph.

Now, I’m not saying this new-ish text is any good. In fact, I think it might be pretty bad, as first drafts usually are. Nor was this an easy thing to do. But I just don’t give a damn right now. Perhaps the key to reclaiming a bad piece of writing composed under duress (composed, as it were, to fulfill another kind of sentence) is to smash it to bits, to remake it from the bottom up, to get back to the bones of a few not-shitty sentences, and begin.

Why, you may be wondering, did I put myself through such torture? Well, I have been reading some scholarly articles lately (old habits die hard!) and I started thinking, “Hey, you know what this conversation between academics really needs? It needs me and my research!” See, I conducted research as part of a scholarly conversation. Only, I never actually entered the conversation because, by the time I defended, I was so tired of my work that I couldn’t bear to look at it or think about it for months and months.

But here I am almost two years later thinking, “Hey, maybe there’s something in there that actually doesn’t suck.”

I was wrong.

Why does my dissertation suck? It’s not because it wasn’t a good idea or good research. It’s not because it’s not on an important topic.

Instead, my dissertation is a piece of shit because I was trying to please too many people. I can see where I included the sources and arguments that my advisor wanted me to include. Then I can see how I tried to squeeze in some discussion of the texts and ideas that my other committee members thought were important. This includes requests made by one faculty member who asked me to stick a bunch of citations in the document at the last minute because my advisor hurt her feelings once.

Yes, there was a power struggle between the members of my committee, and I was stuck in the middle trying to seamlessly integrate all of their advice (mandates, actually) into a single document with my name on it.

Wait, you may be wondering, what about you and your ideas?

I can see a few traces of my voice and my original idea in the diss, particularly in the old drafts. Reading it is almost like walking through the woods at night, drunk. Occasionally I wander onto a path that I recognize. “Oh, I know where I am now! I remember this place!” And then, before long, I wander off again onto some twig-strewn tangent where I distinctly remember someone telling me to go even though it is inhabited by hungry bears.

Dissertations are awful. Every last one of them. They’re a record of a kind of hazing, of the writer’s struggles to Get. Through. This. Motherfucking. Program. Now.

Other than that, they are not worth much.

So, I finally closed the book (literally and figuratively!) on my piece of shit dissertation at last. I will never enter that scholarly conversation. I am not sad. I just wish I had known seven years ago what a dissertation actually is: a story of what a PhD candidate has to do to survive. In other words, it is a story of time passing and of utter compromise.

I sat down the other day to write one because my bank balance is slowly dwindling on account of the fact that a) I only have a part-time job and b) I refuse to drink cheap liquor. A post-academic has to have some standards, after all.

First, I Googled around and found some “sample resumés,” but they weren’t very helpful because I couldn’t figure out how to categorize my skills. I know everyone says you have to break down your academic experience into stuff you’ve done that people will understand. Like, instead of listing my teaching jobs, I have to say, using strong action verbs, that I “Managed a Class.” Then I have to include some bullet points about what “Managing A Class” entails.

It was difficult for me to complete this simple task for some reason. Don’t employers know what “Teaching” means? Do I really have to say that I “graded 100 essays a week” or whatever? What about my dissertation research? Do I use the headline “Conducted Independent Research” and then list some of the skills I employed? Like what? “Synthesizing Information” and “Writing Persuasively”? I have no idea. Seems to me that “Synthesizing Information” and “Writing Persuasively” are even less clear than “Conducting Research.”

In the end, I felt a little blue about the whole thing. I know I did a lot of stuff as a proto-academic. But what was it exactly? I don’t know how to explain it except by saying, “I wrote a scholarly book on X and I also taught some classes on Y and Z.” But no one wants to hear about that. Good God, I don’t even want to hear myself talk about it anymore.

So what about the resumé? Well, after a few days of not having a clue what to do, I paid somebody to write it for me. I couldn’t really afford this luxury, but it seemed like a better option that staring at a blank Word document in despair for weeks on end.

My next step is to actually look for a job. I admit I am procrastinating the “apply for jobs” part of the post-academic process.

I am going to try to land a temp position first. I have modest goals. Maybe I’ll wait until after the holidays though. Or after I get back from a short trip I’m taking in January. Yeah, that’s it. Or maybe I’ll wait until my good liquor finally runs dry. Then I really will have no choice.

The other night I was consoling a friend who is freaking out because the college where she has been adjuncting for years did not offer her any classes for next semester because, if they did, they would have to provide health benefits, as per the new union contract. Of course, they couldn’t let that happen because they’re assholes.

I was trying to convince her to get off the adjunct train. I said, “There really is a world out there beyond the academy.”

Now I will find out if I have to eat my words.

Prof. Brown starts by explaining why tuition increases are not a defensive measure that colleges take in order to make up for decreased state funding. Instead, tuition increases are an administrative strategy to increase revenue. They are part of the logic of privatization that has brought higher education to its knees in recent decades. Tuition has gone up 400% since the 1980s, far outpacing inflation or family income. All while the ranks of low-wage adjuncts have grown to obscene proportions.

What do tuition increases and privatization strategies have to do with postacademia?

As I’ve argued on this blog before, the reason so many PhDs can’t find jobs is not because of “natural” market fluctuations or because candidates did something wrong. Many deserving, committed people won’t find jobs (whether they want them or not) because the strategy of privatization beloved by hedge fund managers everywhere has seeped into academe like a toxic sludge.

Here’s part of Prof. Brown’s powerful statement about how deeply, utterly connected academia is to the world.

“The university is not a place ‘cut off’ from the rest of the world or from other political situations. The university is one situation among many in which we struggle against debt, exploitation, and austerity. The university struggle is part of this larger struggle. And as part of this larger struggle, the university struggle is also an anti-capitalist struggle.”

What does it mean to engage in an anti-capitalist struggle as a lowly postacademic set adrift on the currents of privatization and austerity? I think it just might mean taking a stand, once and for all, against student debt.

I’ll be writing more about student debt and the havoc it has wrought in the lives of millions of people who drank the “if I go to school and work really hard, I will have a secure life in a job that doesn’t suck” Kool-Aid because they were thirsty and it was the only beverage available.

For now, check out the campaign some people I know have been working on to gather a million signatures from debtors who can’t take it anymore. Yeah, I know what some are going to say. “How can you pledge not to pay your debts? That is just crazytalk from freeloaders!”

I don’t buy it. This campaign is not about evading debt or responsibility. It’s about fairness and economic justice. It’s about education as a right, not a source of profit.

We should not merely gather, humbly, at the foot of the Powers That Be (you might call them the 1%) and say something reasonable like, “please lower our interest rates!” This is the time for bold action. Academia is the real world; it’s time to reclaim it.

Academia, in general, is not a noble profession. It’s a job like any other, really. More accurately, it’s a precarious career track where people vie for positions and try to climb the hierarchy like everyone else in every other profession. The term ‘noble’ implies a class hierarchy, as if everyone who engages in academic pursuits gets to claim a higher rank by default. But academia is nothing if not a hierarchy where most people are on the bottom. And rank, to invoke another meaning, smells like shit.

All this means that you are not better than other people because you are studying to become a scholar of Susquehannan Squirrel Squalor Studies. Your work is not more important than other people’s work. Your daily thoughts are not more brilliant than other people’s thoughts. Anyone who is conscious, I would argue, lives a life of the mind. You don’t care more about the search for truth (or questioning the epistemological basis for such a thing) than others because you have a PhD. You don’t care more about reading and writing than other people who read and write care about it. And, no, you don’t deserve autonomy or a decent living or prestige any more than the guy who delivers your mail deserves those things.

If you are a grad student, you are just someone who is trying to get a job doing a particular thing. This is perfectly legitimate. The only difference is that academia has even higher rates of having the door slammed in your face than other professions. (I even hate to use the word ‘profession’ because it sounds, well, like some kind of noble endeavor, when it isn’t. It’s a job.) Why am I bothering to make the point that graduate school is not a noble pursuit? Because if academia is a job like any other, then you can leave that job when you don’t like it anymore. It’s not like you are walking away from your one true calling (that’s what I should have called this blog post: Academia Is Not A Calling). You are simply changing jobs, getting rid of a career you don’t like (or that won’t have you) and doing something else. It doesn’t even matter what that something else is right now. What matters is that you don’t fall into the trap of believing that academia is a noble pursuit that requires sacrifice of money, sanity, or relationships. You’re not a monk for Christ’s sake.

This is never a good thing.

My advisor was very supportive of my work. He gave me prompt feedback on my writing and always responded quickly to my emails and calls. He was also a pathologically controlling demon-God who squashed me under his thumb for years, robbed me of my voice, and forced me to cut off contact with other faculty so that he, and only he, had the power to determine when I could be released from the grad school prison. I felt emotionally and intellectually abused by him, but I just kept on trudging meekly along because this person was in a position to decide whether my ten years of advanced study (and the various personal and economic sacrifices that such an endeavor implies) would result in a degree or not.

I can hear what you skeptics/hopeless optimists are saying: “My diss advisor is a nice person and would never act in a controlling manner.” My first answer is, “how do you really know?” You don’t. You won’t know what s/he is really like until you get there. You can research your advisor and talk to other students about their experiences (always a good idea), but you won’t know for sure what kind of relationship you will have with this person until it’s your turn. Taking classes with someone is no indication of what he or she will be like one-to-one. Your relationship with your advisor, the person who controls your destiny, is not something you can really predict. You have to live it. It’s a risk – and a big one – that you have to take.

My second answer is that it doesn’t matter whether your advisor is the sweetest, most supportive human in the world. The point is that this person will control your destiny. S/he can decide, almost single-handedly, when or whether you are ready to defend your diss, to move on, to grow up, to have any kind of life outside the bubble. In the vast majority of cases, there is simply no way out of this bind because such a bind is the essence of advisor-advisee relationships. When one person controls your destiny, it doesn’t matter if s/he has your best interest at heart. That is because there is no way someone who controls your destiny can really have your best interest at heart. Power will eventually produce displays of dominance. That’s the very definition of power.

I didn’t end up hating my diss advisor. I sometimes feel a sort of irrational fondness towards him now that I have been released from his clutches. We still communicate. Nevertheless, my experience in a Humanities PhD program taught me that you cannot possibly have a healthy relationship with anyone who controls your destiny. By selecting an advisor, you are basically putting your future in someone else’s hands. There are very few ways that story turns out well.

I’m involved in deep discussions with the Occupy Wall Street Working Group on student debt. As I described in an earlier post, we are trying to respond to the student debt crisis that is crippling families. Education is a human right, and it should not be a source of debt or profit. Higher Education should be federally funded, as it is in many countries around the world. So, what gives? Can we have our money back now? Our right to a publicly-funded education was taken away, and we want it back, thanks!

Researcher Adolph Reed has said that it would cost about $60 billion to fund all two- and four-year public colleges in the US, which about 85% of all students attend. Andrew Ross pointed out that the Pentagon wastes more than that every year on “unaccountable spending.” There are also precedents for publicly-funded higher ed, such as the GI Bill which paid for millions of Americans to enroll in college and receive a stipend.

I don’t know about you but I’m totally down with all of that (not the part about the Pentagon just flushing money down the toilet for no reason).

However, the Working Group is discussing what a Pledge of Student Debt Refusal would actually say and do. At the moment, the proposal is that we ask people to pledge to stop paying their student debts after one million other people also sign the pledge.

Here are a few things to know about the pledge:

• Signing a pledge is not legally binding. The goal is to raise the issue of education as a human right.

• People cannot default on their loans individually without serious consequences. But we have strength in numbers to change the conversation about debt.

• Many of us are on the hook for so many bazillions of dollars that we’re going to be paying until we’re dead anyway, so why not sign? It can only help us.

• We need to keep our eyes on the prize, which is federally-funded higher ed. We have to keep in mind that we are not asking for a lot. I read the other day that Bank of America has $53 trillion dollars (that’s “trillion” with a “T”) tied up in those nasty derivatives, which even the bank knows is a time bomb waiting to go off. So spending a few billion for college is like pocket change by comparison.
• The pledge would also include an option for people to sign who are not indebted but who want to support those who are. Anyone working in higher education today is implicated in the growing indebtedness of American students, for example. Parents might also want to sign.

Here are some of the concerns Working Group members discussed recently.

Will such a pledge really scare the banks? Will it have any effect? (I think the answer is: who knows? Maybe it is more important to put ourselves on ideologically-firm ground – by making the case that education is a human right – and go from there?)

How do we respond to people who will undoubtedly say, “I paid off/am paying off my debts. Why can’t you?” In other words, we don’t want to look like we’re only trying to benefit current debtors. (Again, I think the issue is not so much debt forgiveness as it is federally-funded higher ed for all. But I totally understand the concern.)

What do you think? Would you sign such a Pledge of Student Loan Debt Refusal? If you are not a debtor, would you sign a Pledge of support?

More meetings happening this week. More updates to come.