Off-The-Record Advice for Graduate Students

An industry exists for providing advice to would-be professors.  Unfortunately, that industry is generally worthless, filled with self-serving platitudes urging conformity to a system that will gradually kill your soul.  The following advice is intended for young scholars who aspire to maintain a sense of humanity in environments of bald careerism and brutal competition.  There’s no foolproof method, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying.  I hope the following observations help: 

— No matter how adamantly they brand as radical, whenever you see professors rationalizing opportunism or obsequiousness as some important pursuit, or as a practical necessity, put them into your “untrustworthy” category.  (Yes, you absolutely should maintain an “untrustworthy” category—and you needn’t feel a scintilla of guilt about it.) 

— Ignore the dissimulation that invariably arises around what should be simple ethical matters.  There’s no “nuancing” injustice; oppression doesn’t need to be “complexified.”  The mumbo-jumbo subtly conditions you to the status quo (which many mentors see as their responsibility). 

— If your fingernails have always been clean, then refrain from lionizing “the working class.”  Academics who do this sound like jackasses and not a single worker on earth takes them seriously. 

— People who exchange pleasantries or socialize with a known abuser/predator are part of the problem. 

— Scholars of race are plenty capable of racism. 

— The CIA has some kind of presence on your campus.  And it’s not always subtle. 

— Unionizing doesn’t dilute the experience of being a grad student, no matter how passionately the tenured radical in your department wants to preserve your status as a happy apprentice. 

— It requires real thoughtfulness to put ideals of justice into practice (rather than merely theorizing justice around a seminar table).  Seek thoughtful people. 

— Universities are avatars of capitalism.  You’re not preparing for the real world; you’re already in it.  

— Anyone who considers the reputation of the department/institution more important than the well-being of its people is a ghoul. 

— Always try to identify the party with less power (or the party being ignored).  That’s where to start your analysis. 

— Collaborating with mentors can be a wonderful experience; it can also be a good way to get your work stolen.  Plagiarism and intellectual theft are common in the academy.  People who are vulnerable or precarious (and thus relatively powerless) are the most frequent victims. 

— Fancy credentials are more likely a sign of fealty to power than originality or brilliance. 

— Pay attention to how faculty (and fellow grad students) treat people capable of conferring prestige; pay attention to how they treat people (or communities) with little but disrepute to offer.  Basing levels of friendliness on the value that can be derived from an interaction is the hallmark of a social climber. 

— Advanced degrees aren’t coterminous with good character. 

— Yes, your instinct is correct:  that motherfucker over there is totally full of shit. 

— It’s easy to earn job security (or status) carrying water for administrators, donors, or politicians.  But people who make this choice create job insecurity for countless others. 

— Men who bombastically perform feminist bona fides usually turn out to be creepers. 

— With every particle of your mind, with every atom of your soul, resist the idea (into which you’ll be insidiously socialized) that compassion for the persecuted and dispossessed is unprofessional. 

— Sometimes leaving feels like the only way to recover your humanity.  Whatever you decide, always remember that you deserve to pursue love wherever the world puts it on offer.