Twenty-Two and Directionless

I'm back. and I've got some things to say.

The past few months have been extremely difficult (cue whiny personal blogging bitches) for me. I am not a person well-suited to the position I find myself in currently. While I think it's fairly normal and fairly common to be 22, jobless with a humanities degree, directionless and craving anything to boost self confidence, it doesn't mean it's easy. I'm getting a little (beyond?) tired of not knowing what I want. Try something. Apparently, I'm not even that good at trying things. Economic recession, blah blah blah. I know I love and am good at school, but it's never any fun being a walking stereotype. Marge Simpson, "Don't make fun of grad students, Bart, they're just people who made a terrible life decision." And you'll recall my rancor at the Maxim article I posted about.

So, yes, I want to go back to school. I also want to be respected for that decision not seen as a cop-out, a default, an acknowledgment of defeat by the 'real world' or a terrible life choice. I'm sure when I start respecting the decision others will follow suit, at least to my face.

In addition to the social pressure angle taken by Maxim, a friend has showed my a blog by Penelope Trunk that takes up another angle. There are two articles on her blog I'd like to address in this post. The first one is about graduate school naturally.

Trunk lists 7 reasons why graduate school is outdated. She is a careerist (by self definition) and so her take on the purpose of graduate school is already deviating from mine. Plus, her critiques aren't really looking at graduate school as professional development for the professional choice of being a professor. So with those caveats, she makes the following assumptions:

1) Smart people no longer go to graduate school (starting off on a great foot)
--Ok first of all. Since the corporate ladder has become obsolete, because we don't stick in one career path for 30 years anymore, because the principles, morals and values of the professional world have broadened, people like Penelope Trunk are forced to redefine 'success' and 'succeeding'. They do so dubiously and with ambiguous language. Definitions of success get whittled down to such generality as to become useless. I would characterize this new perspective's definition of success along these lines:
1) Financial security with room for financial growth
2) Adequate balance of work-personal life
Success is the ability to live your life. How tautological but at the same time, duh. Trunk claims that the workplace is different. New rules to play the game and new definitions of 'winning'. This is the assumption her advice is working within. Graduate school is no longer a "smart" way to achieve financial security with room for growth and an adequate personal life in the workplace.

Why does she think so?

a) Financial reasons. Graduate school is expensive and it "shuts doors". Two of her seven reasons are directly money related. She is right that it is a large investment (sometimes!). She is also right that most people will have to pay back money borrowed to attend graduate school. Graduate school is a 'stupid' move because of its difficult return on investment. Especially when success is simply financial security and time to enjoy that security. One can achieve 'success' without spending a large sum of money on graduate school. This neglects the fact that some graduate institutions view YOU as an investment in those artsy-fartsy terms like "common good" or "civilization" but also in the 'market' of education (they are institutions afterall). The other assumption is owing money in student loans undermines financial security. Yet, buying a house, renting an apt, leasing a car, buying a car or any other financial activity that either requires loans or is "throwing money away" doesn't fall into this 'undermined financial security' category. In fact, many jobs require a car and many people don't want/can't live at home with their parents. Having student loans "shuts doors" because it undermines your financial ability to take jobs that you want as opposed to jobs that allow you to pay back student loans. However, living at home without a car in order to be financially secure from loans or poor investments certainly shuts doors on jobs as well.

b) Professional Development. Reasons #2 and #5. A graduate degree is no longer a requirement to achieve "success". We have sort of already covered this. Why would anyone pursue graduate school if it wasn't required for success? We don't need graduate degrees anymore so the school is outdated. I think this is just a bit silly. I understand why the previous requirement of an MBA provided enough motivation to get one, but what about the other benefits of an MBA? Really? It's only a ticket? And also, I believe medical school is still a "ticket to play" for a large portion of medicine and law school for a large part of law. And it also seems to be a large ticket to play in the arts & sciences, humanities, academia. So, really, it's no longer a ticket to play in business. But, we never really learned anything in business school anyway..."If you don't use your graduate degree, you look unemployable". This reason doesn't even make sense. How many people are using their undergraduate degree? Certainly the expectations are different between a B.A. or B.S. and a graduate degree, but as "expectations for higher education are increased" (in one of her linked articles) wouldn't the requirement to directly use your graduate degree become laxer? Think of all the myriad professions one can have with an M.S. in Psychology, or my mother for example an M.S. in Information Science. And again, my father, with an M.D. having to spend larger amounts of his professional time in Hospital Administration, Business and Social Work. A degree no longer means you can only do this and anything else is "second choice". We do lots of different things with our degrees.

c) Personal Incompetency. This one upsets me the most. First, she claims that graduate school requires us to know what we want before we start. I have heard from plenty of people who have gone through graduate school that you should wait until you know you really want to go to school. Certainly, it's an investment of time, money and energy. Of course I'd want to be sure I want to do it. Like any other important decision? Trunk utilizes and links us to an explanation of the term "emerging adulthood" as a new development phase that basically I'm in the middle of. In this time, we 20 somethings are to find out what we really want and what will make us happy through trial and error in the workplace. We are directionless and lost and we should be, because if we skip this time period we'll have a quarter life crisis. Her final reason definitely hit home and made me pause to reconsider her points. Mainly because it plucked the directionless lost strings that dominate my heart at the moment. But, like I said, I'm beyond tired of this extended state of limbo that seems to be so important for my development as an adult. Partially, what's pointed out is observed and true and part of it is defining us in a way that I don't think is appropriate. The underlying message is "you are incapable of making important life decisions at this time". This WHOLE thing is hypocritical.

Extension of childhood. (trying to remain calm). Elementary and High School education in America is a grooming for the workplace. We get a bit more freedom in undergraduate programs and room to explore. We find out what we like and then we pursue it in graduate education. This is the traditionally understood notion of educational progression. Graduate school is where one knows what one wants and tries to make an impact or add something new (their two cents) to the world. Graduate school is where you create your own assignments. You choose what to study, you choose what to write, and you write a dissertation. From the observed workplace, you have a boss and you do what you're told. The creation of your own assignments comes from trying not to go insane. The structure of school was put in place so that we'd be good at "jobs" in the workplace. But, she says Benton says many people go back to school "more out of comfort" than because of passion. I don't know about lack of passion, but yes, school is definitely more comfortable for me than an office. On one hand she's telling me I'm incapable of making an important life decision and on the other hand, telling me my choice is an extension of childhood.

Maybe graduate school will be a stupid poor choice. Maybe it's a bigger Error and not much Trial. Maybe the point of all of this to make sure I don't have grand delusions about more schooling. I can see that. I can also see from that the remarkable similarity between graduate school and the workplace. The main message, from others not just Trunk, is that graduate school isn't all fun and games, you have to work, you might not succeed and people may tell you what to do. Well, duh, that's what the real world is. So basically, I'm left with one final response to Penelope Trunk on the subject of graduate school: Hindsight's twenty-twenty.

Other things that bother me: Everyone she quotes in her reasons have higher degrees. Yes they are from a different generation, but it doesn't change the fact that our important theories, observations and guides come from people who spend time thinking about these things, some people think about them so much, it's a career.

THIS IS REALLY LONG I'M SORRY. (it also occurred to me that Trunk is simply the lightning rod of a lot of frustration and "advice" i'm receiving about school)

I'm switching gears on Penelope Trunk and bringing in another article I found through a great blog. Penelope's article is about social media and the Atlantic's article is about online reading behavior.

Trunk blogs about how the different social media that make up the online environment should be able to express different aspects of our personality. However, she finds that many people are flattening their personality so that they appear consistent across multiple media. She is sensitive to the dispositions of the varying structured media, like Twitter, blog, Facebook, etc.
I find personality and social media fascinating. I wrote a comment on her article that sums up my initial reaction:

"I’m glad someone is talking about this. I’m not sure how successful maintaining multi-faceted personalities online will be. The analogy to “real world” relationships obviously is spot on, but the important difference is control over audience. I more than agree that the plethora of social media in which to express ourselves not only works well with our complex personalities, but also is designed differently in which certain behaviors make more sense. However, recall the awkwardness of those “real world” slips, when your boss catches you saying a lewd comment to a coworker, or a social friend accidentally being the outlet for some personal issue that would’ve been better suited for an intimate friend.

Typically we have control over our audience thanks to the whole spatio-temporal network of the “real world”. Sally is in another city or Jimmy walked in a couple seconds too late. But when it comes to all our online media we lose much of that control over audience. Not only is it nice to be able to interact with the same person in different ways, professionally and socially, it's also nice to be able to keep people separate. Which I suppose, over a slew of different privacy settings for each medium one might achieve a similar degree of control, but I think for the average user you are open and out there for any of your networked contacts. And thus, I see a motive for trying to be consistent or flat in character. How do we gauge the level of intimate progression with acquaintances to close friends to family in a potentially undifferentiated space such as the Google search results page?"

The Atlantic article I also find fascinating because Nathan Carr connects our emerging online behavior with the same economic structures that I'm already critiquing. Of course I'm sympathetic to his stance. I lament the loss of silence in my brain, sustained reading, etc etc within the general population as well. However, I'm not that worried about myself. I recently thoroughly enjoyed reading Anna Karenina which as some of you may know, is quite lengthy. And spend a decent amount of time reflecting and letting ideas echo through the hollows of my head. Then again, I'm unemployed. Since I'm a bit fatigued from my already WAY too lengthy post, I'll pick one point to comment on and then hopefully await some fantastic comments from my readers. wink.

Carr quotes Clive Thompson from Wired magazine as describing the phenomenon of online recorded history as "the perfect recall of silicon memory". Hah. First of all. Fantastic description. And the article by Carr is quite a pleasant read.

This description prompted this thought: Recall and Remember are two very different words. Let's be technical and pull out the definition. Among others that don't quite highlight the difference, there is a Oxford-English Dictionary definition of recall that states, "to cause one to remember". There is a subtle difference and much of the two definitions overlap. But we can tease out an intuition in the word remember. It resonates with another point made in the article that played prominently in my education. Reading behavior on the Internet is both structured and structuring. We organize and lay out the content of the Internet, but at the same time, the Internet organizes and lays out information in us. Carr argues that it spills over even into all other types of media. The structure of the Internet is found in television and newspapers now. He cites studies that find reduced ability to concentrate or absorb large amounts of information or reflect.

While I am nervous about this structuring, as I always am, I feel there is a stronger battle occurring. Carr points out how reading is not as natural as speaking. It's a much more learned behavior than instinctual behavior. And therefore, he indirectly concludes, it is more malleable and easily structured by the Internet's processes. The reason I delineate between recall and remember is because remembering is a process that is just as natural as speaking, if not more so. And it's this process that the Internet will have a more difficult time structuring. Silicon may recall for us, but it cannot remember. Remembering is a human activity, completely loaded. Remembering is inextricably interwoven with interpretation. We still have to interpret the information the Internet recalls. And how we choose to do that, is still very much under our control. We may not be able to fudge facts and the information we're allowed to see may be structured (aka biased) discreetly by the Internet's algorithms etc. but persuasion, interpretation, and a critical intellectual eye are still as indispensable now than ever.