Academic Bait and Switch

Though I don’t agree with all of this person’s conclusions about his experiences as a TA at an elite university, THIS SERIES OF ARTICLES (I’m funneling you through Cogburn’s blog where I discovered them) are certainly a fun and interesting read, if a bit sad from time to time. Anyone in the profession will nod in recognition many times while reading these stories.

A couple of the anecdotes, frankly, also sound implausible to me, or at least a bit too pat.

One thing I would say about “Henry Adams” is that, like many of us, he probably expected too much from his graduate school professors. You’re quite lucky if you encounter 2 or 3 teachers along the way who really change the way you look at things, just as you’re quite lucky to find 2 or 3 good friends. The other teachers are not usually horrible, though. You can at least learn some things from them about authors you know little about, or a few tips on professional competence. And even if you find their lectures dull, you can learn something from doing the research to write the papers for their seminars.

The fact is that most of your learning in graduate school is likely to come from your fellow students. There are a number of reasons for that, and maybe I’ll do a post in the near future about this topic. But I noticed it clearly a few years into graduate school.