Comments on Blowing & Drifting
Seventeen years since I received my Ph.D. Since then, I've spent six semesters/terms teaching at the college level (and will spend two more in the coming academic year). I've published five articles in my field...but free from the need to publish or perish, I've written and published 12 essays outside of my field, and I've taught at every level, K-12, and tutored homeschoolers. I've sacrificed the stability and prestige of tenured academia for the freedom to follow my curiosity wherever it leads me. I feel much more like a liberal arts graduate than a specialist with a Ph.D. There's a lot to be said for that.
Sweet comment, Rob.
I believe there are a lot of other people like us out there--Ph.D.s who ended up not finding (or in some cases not wanting) work in academia, and who now work at "regular" jobs for which a Ph.D. is probably NOT required. (I think immediately of my favorite mama-writer Catherine Newman, who has mentioned now and then that she works as a college department secretary, and also her husband, who after earning his Ph.D. and adjuncting for a time, became a massage therapist.)
The main thing I find frustrating about this scenario is the fairly false bill of goods many of us were sold when we picked this "career path" at the young and naive age of 21 or so. Had many of us been honestly told how few jobs there are and how little one earns at such jobs in relation to how much debt one will accrue in order to earn a doctoral degree, I imagine many of us would have run in the direction of a solid B.A. and a "regular job," probably earning more out of college than many Ph.D.-level professors earn when they land their first college teaching jobs. It's hard to be so extraordinarily in debt for a degree that didn't pay off in practical terms.
My diatribe.
My brother-in-law with his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering is running a lumber mill in Iowa, and making 3x the salary he had in academia.
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