Blue Collar Scholar

I've been meeting quite mysteriously with several professors lately. Not mysteriously as in like, at maskerade parties, discussing things with them in an alternate persona while fox trotting. Mysteriously, as in going to them during office hours and making scheduled appointments without really knowing why.


Why? What could they tell me? "It's okay"?" You'll make it"? "Just go for it. Be a professor"? Was this what I was looking for? Someone to give me a more serious garantee for my time investment? I don't know...

But, some of them do say that. Others say other things. But why? What could they possibly say that I haven't heard before?


Well, Dr. Johnson, for one, said a few things that were quite different and honest. He talked about how being a professor isn't something you do with a job in mind. It's something that you work towards because you love the research and time spent studying, in addition (and in some ways subjugated) to teaching. He said that, during his graduate school, he had to reduce his time spent studying to 80 hours a week. Reduce!

Johnson's point was well taken: Being a scholar is a huge commitment, an enormous amount of work, and not something enjoyably erudite. It's dirty 9am-5pm translation business. Working to become a professor is roll-up-your-sleeves, blue collar book work.

Dr. Watt, whose opinion usually fares on the "You can do it if you believe you can!" side of the argument, also made a pointed comment. She said that everybody can have a job, and most people do. You don't become an academian to have a job. You can do that by going into law or advertising or banking. You go into academics to learn and discover and struggle with esoteric topics. The job is means to an end (furthering your research through a funded institution), not the end, and you must go into a PhD or even Masters program knowing that if all you come out with is the degree and no job, you will still be satisfied that you did it.

So, what of it? I don't really know. In some ways, these conversations reinforced my already decisive stance that I cannot undertake the voyage of humanities/classics grad school right now--not when my passion for research and devotion to intellectual studies is not rock-solid. I am not sold on Socrates or attached to Achilles just yet. I could still be a wine merchant. (E&J Gallo sales jobs are looking oddly promising and I have a potentially helpful connection.) And honestly, what could be a more classically-inspired career than being a wine merchant?

Seriously though, before I determine what or if I want to devote a lifetime to intellectual studies, I need to have my own odysseys, first. Wine merchant or corporate businessman, history teacher in Sicilia or New Zealand sheep herder...the thought of settling on one thing right now feels extremely wrong for me. And that's one thing that I know for certain.