I’m thinking – seriously – of going back to school for a PhD.
You may be asking yourself what kind of crack am I smoking, to be considering such a project. I mean, sure, it’s several years of my life. It’s a year out of the classroom (and that has to happen sooner rather than later, given the fact that my wonderful department head isn’t going to be with us forever). It’s more tuition. And the most frightening thing of all is not the dissertation, that I can handle. No, comprehensive exams scare the bejeezus out of me. ETA: did I mention I’m considering doing this whole thing in my SECOND language? Yeah, there’s that too. I’m out of my frakking mind.
So why am I looking at this?
Well, it all comes back to a conversation I had a year ago June. I was very upset and stressed at having to teach a class that I have no business teaching (and they gave it to me again – I am very upset and stressed, and have no desire to wreck these kids lives by teaching them a subject that frankly I hate with the firey passion of a thousand suns). I was expressing my disappointment and my feeling of stagnation. It had been a rough year, that year, and I was feeling more than a little broken. But the VP who does the scheduling said something that hit. Decide what kind of career I want, and go after that.
Which is what I’ve been doing ever since.
I don’t know if I’m going to be in the classroom my entire career. I think I have a lot of brains, and I’m an asset to any discussion about curriculum. I can see myself being an asset in mentoring, or in developing curriculum when the government remembers History is important. I mean, Cultural Literacy. I’m rebranding, ha ha.
I also teach academic courses, and want to continue teaching the more advanced academic courses. I love the discussions of the higher level courses. Challenging these kids makes my day.
A PhD in History is subject expertise, in the curriculum that I teach. And I’m not looking to move on to the university level, I want that knowledge to stay in the school where I feel it will do the most good, and in the public school system. It’s not the only thing I’m doing to take my career where I want it to go. I’m also in my school district’s leadership programme, which is an administrator development stream.
I’ve been teaching a few years now, and I am getting to the point that either I stagnate and become bitter, or I move to the next big thing and challenge myself.
Having realized at Courcelette this summer that I had myself a topic brought on the realization of how ready I was for the next big thing. It’s going to be tough. Financially, it’s going to be tough, and there are a lot of things I have to look at. Mentally it’s going to be exhausting. But I can do it.
On the up side, I’ve been reading up on WW1 for 13 years now. I’m a walking encyclopedia. So that’s one comp down, two to go.
This blog, by the way, is a response to this one: a very well-reasoned and not unpersuasive argument for NOT doing a PhD when you already have a perfectly good job.
My mum asked last night what type of career I expected to get out of my current degree (& upcoming Master’s for that matter) and was completely flabberghasted when I said “none”. I agree that education for career reasons is a good motivator but I’ve rarely managed to stay in a career related to my education for more than a few years. I get bored too easily and then bounce off to the next thing. I’ve decided that formal education (as much as I loathe it somedays) is to satisfy my curiousity. My career(s) will take care of themselves.
Also – The whole concept of credentialism pisses me off to no end. The idea that there’s only one acceptable way to gain knowledge bothers me. It’s a limiting mindset developed to entrench a class based system.
I hear ya. If there was another way to get the same academic clout I’d totally do it. I am looking forward to comps as much as a root canal. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of ww1… and I have to sit an exam to confirm that is the case? PUHLEEZE.