About two years ago at the end of a fairly busy year of completing my honours degree my supervisor asked what I was planning to do next. For those not initiated into the academic fraternity the supervisor is basically god, metaphorically speaking. Their task is to advise, push and cajole you into transforming what is a rough idea into a finished piece of work. They are both jury and at times public executioner. My thesis year had not been smooth at all I was doing a thesis that although at first interesting degenerated into an exercise in sustained boredom. Again my apologies for the explanation but an honours thesis serves two purposes neither of which are any good for one's future employment prospects. First they are to produce papers that allow a student to advance into the doctoral program, in other words they are an audition if you will, a chance to show that you have what it takes to work under sustained pressure and to take the workload that is thrown at you. If you do well you might be invited to come back if not then its see you later and we don't want you any more. The actual process to decide if you are any good entails your work being graded by two people you don't know, who will demean and basically tell you how bad it is before giving you a mark that bears no relationship to the amount of work you have put in. The second reason is that it is nice to have another set of letters behind your name, thats about it.
Having done this and finished I should have guessed what was coming. My supervisor, who I shall call Larry Old Chap, one of the old school whose avowed purpose is to give you the bare bones and then let you sink or swim asked whether I was considering coming back. I should have at that moment taken a step back and begun running screaming from the room never to be seen again. Instead in what can only be imagined was a fit of confusion I said that i was considering coming back; and before I could say hey presto I was enrolled with a scholarship, a computer and an office shared with three other equally confused postgrads.
The ensuing two years have to say the least been interesting. For a number of reasons the world of academia has proven to be a descent into madness. I remember when Francis Ford Coppola called the documentary about the making of the film Apocalypse Now - Hearts of Darkness that it would be an appropriate title for a postgraduate.
Well this is why this is the case. 1. You are given your office and your money and then left to your own devices. No real support, no advice, nothing. The ensuing experience becomes an exercise in futility and learning to deal with criticism all the time. 2. You are encouraged to engage in tutoring only to find out that universities work on the labour of postgraduates some of who take up a huge burden time wise to do the work that lecturers should be doing, that is what they are paid for. 3. You more often than not discover that what you are researching is not really your idea and that in the end it is relatively meaningless as apiece of work, it is again an audition into the academic world. No one actually reads your thesis, unless you are one of the lucky few who get it published. Finally and most importantly you have almost no chance of getting any paid employment in the field in which you have studies unless it is in one of the professions. For a historian like me there is buckleys chance.
So dear reader what is the advice I would give. Think long and carefully before you commit. Do you really want to do an apprenticeship, an indentured servitude, living though an exercise in mental torture and exhaustion that is similar in intensity, or so my mate PS tells me to a five year stint in the French Foreign legion. Don't do it unless you can survive on little money, with little encouragement for four years. I am not saying don't do it just go in with your eyes wide open and don't raise your expectations too high or you may fall a bloody long way and there is no safety net.
http://http://www.dest.gov.au/archive/highered/occpaper/01d/01d.pdf
Look at this paper it is long but ti explains that after 8 years only 53% of students are still studying a whopping 27% are doing nothing and out of the rest they are studying something else completely
