Letter to a Colleague

Dear PhD applicants, students, and job seekers,I was crashing the semester-end party, and a conversation topic briefly addressed the uncertainty in getting a PhD in the current political and academic climate.1 I'm a teaching assistant professor in a large department in the humanities that primarily serves first- and second-year students. We have more than forty faculty members and a few postdocs, and although most members come from an English (literature and composition) background, we have philosophers, archaeologists, and even another musicologist or two. I give you this background to highlight that my current colleagues’ routes to their PhDs were incredibly varied. There was also a running theme: many of my colleagues faced pushback to take the path to the PhD. My chair (English) told us a brief anecdote of a faculty member (“Dr. Doe”) putting fear in a group of PhD hopefuls by asking a list of questions about their futures. Of the questions I remember, these three stuck out the most: Would you move anywhere for a job?Would your partner be able to accompany you?Are you prepared to barely make a living while your friends are starting their careers, vacationing, etc.?As I sat with the anecdote, and with the benefit of a type of hindsight, I thought that the questions were premature. They felt comparable to those apocryphal stories about large lecture classes in the sciences intending to weed out hopeful future medical school students where the instructor says, “Look left, look right; only one of you will be here next semester.” Dr. Doe's questions also assumed a straight trajectory to the PhD and that a student would have to consider these questions after graduating into a perfect job market. I understand that the challenge was probably designed to make potential students think critically about the task they were intending to take, but as I remember the job climate then, around twenty years ago, the questions were woefully insufficient.I reflected on whether I would change the questions or add to them, as I also started a PhD around that time. I decided that I would only keep the final question toward the top, as it seemed the most relevant to potential students at that moment, but put the first two questions at the bottom of the list. I'd add questions that required students to see themselves not at graduation but where they were and possible situations they could encounter sooner than while dissertating. I'd ask: Why are you pursuing the PhD, and could you weather challenges to complete it? What would you do if you couldn't complete the degree?Do you have a good support system, or could you build one?Are you okay with entering the job market, which, unfortunately, is projected to get worse?Will you consider additional occupations for which you may be qualified but which are not what you intended?Can you be open to assessing, consistently, where you are on your career path and making decisive decisions to continue on that path?These are only a few of the questions I would ask students that would have them engage in persistent reflection of their current realities. My questions are directly influenced by my own path in academia.I had a pretty standard path to the PhD; my moves through the academic terrain have been relatively smooth, but not without hiccups. Before I was accepted into a graduate program, I, like many other people of color, had to contend with resistance at home. I come from a very Southern, traditional, single-mother home. However, I wasn't a first-generation student. My mother earned a master's degree in education before I was born, but she had also integrated her high school as a student in rural South Carolina. That is to say that while I was encouraged early to excel academically, there was always a consistent feeling of fear that surrounded academic or career moves.While other classmates and colleagues had strong systems of support, I did not. I had what, at the time, looked like a definitive lack of support, and not only from my closest relative. While my family accepted my original goal to get a bachelor of music education, because at least that's teaching in a way that they could accept, pursuing a PhD was an alien world that was fraught with unknowns. As such, while being admitted to a master of arts / doctoral program in musicology was very impressive to the external world, within the family it was like having a black hole as a life destination. The conversations with family members could move from curiosity to disdain in less than thirty seconds.For a distant, or younger, family member, the next response would be something curious, asking about the field, where I'm moving, and when. But the older and/or closer the family member, the more likely the next response would be (if I were lucky) slight ridicule, likely a bit of contempt, perhaps with a light expletive for familial flavor. So, with this baggage (and a not yet fully developed prefrontal cortex), I went off to graduate school.My experience in graduate school was relatively normal: isolation, expectations that weren't clearly articulated to me, imposter syndrome, being told I was a bad writer with no direction on how to fix it (the answer was more writing, of course, but doing the very thing I was so awful at did not encourage my intrinsic motivation). Yet one thing I was not prepared for was how much my Blackness affected everything. I was called lazy in a faculty meeting, and colleagues gossiped about how I “didn't have the right background” to study historical musicology. There was also the Race, Gender, and Difference class, where I got a B in the class because of my lack of engagement. The class often erupted in very passionate discussions, where people yelled over each other, and I was afraid of becoming the stereotypical Angry Black Woman. Weird racial situations even occurred in social situations. Once, I was relating to a partner's colleague about my fears about future job prospects, and the colleague said that I had nothing to worry about because I was the right demographic.Then came the Great Recession. If the job climate was rough before 2008, the climate after was bleak. At first job searches were postponed, then they were cancelled, and finally hiring was frozen altogether. Faculty members had no advice for students; we were all in unknown territory, and nobody knew what was going to happen. The terrain was terrifying, and everyone seemed to be in a holding pattern for a few years. Although I graduated a handful of years after the Great Recession, the job climate had been forever altered.So, before I graduated, I got a job. It was an “alt-ac” job, but the term wasn't as popular then. I was an academic advisor, and I was able to acquire this job because I was a PhD student, not in spite of it. I was able to use experience in teaching first- and second-year students in general education classes in a one-on-one environment, and the timing was opportune: the National Academic Advising Association happened to be highlighting a theme that “Advising Is Teaching.” The one drawback about advising is that it has a twelve-month contract. There was no time to go off and do research, but I was able to go to the occasional music conference and presented research from time to time. With the advising position, I was able to maintain a connection with the field, have library privileges, and teach a class or two in my home department. I flirted with pursuing a faculty job in music, but with a nine-to-five job and writing my dissertation, I was a bit burned out and didn't see myself being a strong candidate. When I decided to dip a toe into the waters, I was very judicious in choosing jobs to apply for, and I even made a couple of phone interview lists. But the more time I spent “away,” the more difficult it was to acquire a faculty position in music.However, my job in advising, which calmed down my family because I had a job, reinforced skills that the PhD had built and created additional transferable skills. In addition to teaching, researching, organizing, and planning, I gained skills in academic and career planning, coaching and mentorship, and collaborative working among others. I acknowledged and marketed those skills to further open opportunities in teaching and advising. When I decided to go back to faculty life, I had broader qualifications. I had three on-campus interviews that season and ended up as a lecturer at a small state university, teaching and creating a summer program for high school students to transition to college. Eventually, I handed off the program because it became too large, but not before I helped generate more than nine million dollars for the university and made connections across units.So, I went back to the classroom with a grueling 5/5 teaching load, but I was able to continue to work in music. I was the faculty mentor of the school gospel choir and designed and taught the first class in African American music at that university. Ultimately, university restructuring, administrative shenanigans, and a small event known as COVID-19 eliminated that position. I was again on the job hunt and made it to an on-campus interview at a large state university, but the job climate in 2020 mirrored the climate of the early days of the Great Recession. The job was canceled. I pivoted and landed my next full-time position: as a middle school chorus teacher.It didn't last very long.In my second year of wrangling preteens in the name of the arts, the job that was canceled in 2020 reappeared. I applied, made it back to the on-campus interview (this time on Zoom), and I acquired the position I currently hold. It's full time, I have a diverse cohort of colleagues, and my summers are back! There's even a desire for the creation of music classes after some recent university restructuring.There's my story, and it's not over. To sum up, internal and external forces altered my approach and intention within academia, but I had continuous full-time employment almost entirely within academia. Constantly, I had to evaluate my position, read environments, plan moves, and think creatively about my skills and strengths.For current and future graduate students, I have some bad news: The job climate will likely get stormier. We are encountering the continued defunding of education, the persistent educational consequences of COVID-19, and the looming current boogeyman of higher education: the enrollment cliff. High school graduates are predicted to peak in 2025–2026 and then decline for at least a decade. If there are fewer students to teach, there will be less need for faculty positions. Universities have already begun consolidating units, slimming faculty, and canceling programs.In the face of all this adversity, I offer advice: engage in continually assessing your situation, and be open to navigating paths that may not be what you had first intended but may be acceptable opportunities.Your choices and observations may lead you to: Leave the PhD and the field. Many students have fallen victim to the sunk cost fallacy while in school or after graduation. Stepping away from the PhD is a legitimate choice, particularly in the current political and social climate. After COVID-19, many people found themselves at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy and are reclimbing the pyramid to self-actualization.2 Leaving the PhD is not dropping out; rather, it is reprioritizing the path of your future.Finish the PhD, and take a different career direction entirely. For those of you who need to finish but don't think that a career in academia is for you, this decision may also be a way to mitigate the discomfort of the sunk cost fallacy. It may feel emotionally satisfying, or even cathartic, to put a bow on the last few years of your professional life (graduation) and to have “something to show” for the time you've spent in your program. Finishing the PhD but securing a different career can provide options to teach for your own personal pleasure, but take care of your basic needs.You can take the road I took, which was to finish the PhD but explore positions that weren't what you envisioned but are comparable. “Alt-ac” jobs can be a satisfying option if you want to acquire skills across academia and grow occupationally.For those still after the holy grail of the tenure-track job: I'm cheering for you. It's rough out there; it's hard, but not impossible. I've seen it happen, even years after getting the PhD. I have a colleague who juggled more than five classes in adjunct positions per semester across multiple states, cranked out monograph after monograph, presented at conferences, and ultimately landed a tenure-track position. It is achievable.For students of color, you will likely have your own additional layer of challenges. Racial microaggressions, familial obligations, lack of support (my mother told me to quit graduate school at least twice when all I needed was a pep talk), student debt, and the continued attack on diversity, equity and inclusion policies and initiatives are among the issues that may affect you more than your colleagues. You may have to make hard decisions earlier and more decisively than others.To conclude, evaluate what success looks like for you, and reassess your goals often. Be open to opportunities that may present themselves in plain sight, and search for those that may be hidden. Career trajectories haven't been a straight line for some time; create the trajectory that is right for you and yours.I'm rooting for you!Sincerely,Brandi A. NealVirginia Commonwealth University