I wound up in graduate school because I was trying to impress a boy. He wasn’t the only reason that I decided to apply to, and ultimately enroll in graduate school. But I may as well have written, “I want a PhD in political theory so Tyler Clark will think I’m brilliant,” on my applications.
On my first day of class at University of Chicago, I sat in Interpretive Methods of Political Theory, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into. Nine months after that first class, I had a Masters degree, in the vague field of Social Science, and, despite my original intentions, no hope or desire to enter a PhD program. Still, I reasoned, that was at least way more productive then getting knocked up.
I met Tyler in an Intro to Government course in college. If I hadn’t already planned on majoring in Government, I would have switched majors immediately. During the spring semester of my sophomore year, I enrolled in American Political Thought. I needed to fulfill my theory requirement, but, more importantly, Tyler was taking it. It had become painfully and embarrassingly obvious that I had a huge crush on him. But that didn’t stop my knees from going weak every time he looked at me – which was just often enough to encourage me to enroll in another theory class for that upcoming fall. In that class, I always made sure I had done all the reading and answered all the study questions, so I could say smart things and impress Tyler. The punch line is that it was a class devoted to feminist political theory.
I became hooked on the attention I got from Tyler whenever I was able to unravel a particularly complex theory question. Before this, I had focused on International Relations, and intended to pursue the subject further in law school. In fact, the first time Tyler kissed me was the very night I skipped my first – and last – Model UN meeting.
Tyler and I were both invited to join a political theory reading group that met at my favorite professor’s house on Thursday nights and continued late into the night at a local pub. After a few months of analyzing what Aristotle meant about returning to “first things” and debating the difference between modesty and coquettishness in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America I was hooked on political theory too. My professors encouraged me to apply to graduate school, and I agreed.
I followed Tyler to New York City immediately after college. We had been seeing each other for about a year by then. On the day I signed my lease, he informed me that he had a real girlfriend. I bet that she didn’t know what Machiavelli wrote about fortune, but I was still heartbroken. I was living in a city where I didn’t know anyone and working a boring administrative job to pay my rent. But graduate school still seemed like a good plan, so I plowed ahead with my applications.
I was not naïve about the incredible competitiveness of PhD application pools, but when the rejections trickled in, it was still a blow to my ego. Then the thick envelope from University of Chicago showed up. I was rejected from the Political Science PhD program. But I had been granted admission to MAPSS, the Master of Arts Program in Social Science. I had never even heard of this program, much less applied for it. The website they listed in the letter was sparse and vague, save the customary glowing testimonials of former students that littered the sidebar. I was skeptical. I had applied to graduate school to enter a PhD program, and the fastest track to a career in academia. A terminal Masters seemed like a roadblock; a delay to my goal of a doctoral degree. There is nothing one can do with an MA in Political Science.
The university enticed me to Chicago for Campus Days by paying for my airfare. I met people who, like me, had been rejected from multiple PhD programs. This program, we were told, was for students who would definitely make great PhD candidates but needed to refine their ideas and boost their resumes. Our interests were just too broad, our GREs a bit too low, our research simply not impressive enough. MAPSS was much like an internship: it was a chance for us to get some real experience and boost our credentials, without any of the glory – or support – of a PhD program.
I still had my concerns. When one is admitted to a PhD program, it is generally in part because there is at least one professor in the department whose interests are similar enough that they would want to work with the applicant. MAPSS required us to write an MA thesis under a regular faculty member of our choosing. I wanted to know how this worked when we were not officially department students. I was assured that this would not be a problem; faculty would be eager to work with the bright, diverse students from MAPSS. When I asked if PhD admissions would recognize MAPSS, the Program Director rolled his eyes “It’s an 80-year-old program. Everybody has heard of it.”
Everybody, I learned, did not include my undergraduate professors.
“What do you think of this program?” I asked one of them.
“I’ve never heard of it,” he said. “But it’s University of Chicago – I guess it could be good”
And how could I refuse? I was being offered not only admission and the promise of a degree from a prestigious institution, but also a scholarship that covered a third of my tuition. Who was I to turn down University of Chicago?
Others I met at Campus Days seemed to feel similarly: initially skeptical, but ultimately honored for having been chosen for the program. At dinner the second night I met Chris, who was also interested in political theory. We chatted about our respective interests and intended courses of study. We made plans for the PhD programs we would get into upon completing the MAPSS program.
“I still think you should go to Dallas,” my undergraduate professor said, referring to the other MA program that had accepted me and offered a partial tuition scholarship. “It’s a respectable program.”
Dallas, I scoffed. Who would go to Dallas over Chicago?
Besides, MAPSS was an accelerated program; in just a year, I would have my Masters degree and be ready to reapply to PhD programs. I was already trying to plan how I would spend that year between grad school programs. I have never been a patient person, and always been an overachiever, but in retrospect, the reason for my rush is painfully obvious: I feared I wouldn’t be impressive enough until I could put “Dr” in front of my name.
I arrived at U Chicago in late September, and certain flaws were evident immediately. The core course was supposed to teach several different ways of studying the social sciences, but to this day, I have never met anyone in academia who has even heard of most of those alleged approaches. Even more frustrating was that professors in the Political Science department, who we were told would be eager to work with MAPSS students, seemed annoyed that the program forced us to harass them into supervising our theses. And then there was my brilliant advisor, Jay.
I had met Jay briefly at Campus Days. He was rushed and running behind schedule. I was annoyed at the long wait after having spent most of the day in line. I cannot say our first meeting went well. He made a disparaging remark about my undergraduate school and the “obvious” conclusion of my senior thesis. By the time I got to campus in September though, I had already heard that he was one of the most brilliant up-and-coming political theorists. I knew I had best make friends with him, because he could be my ticket in to the hallowed halls of academia.
Jay was a graduate of University of Chicago, arrogant, and, according to the undergraduate girls he taught, really hot. My first reaction to this was contrarian revulsion, but upon further consideration, I realized I would have found him pretty hot if I hadn’t already hated him. He taught my Interpretive Methods of Political Theory class, which moved at warp speed and with no clear logic or coherence.. I did take a degree of pride in the fact that the political science cohort had the highest grades in the core course – we had Jay as an advisor, so of course we were the best students in the program. Occasionally Jay would nod at a remark I made in class, and I would glow in his approval. But I didn’t really like Jay. Not only was he arrogant and dismissive, he was not very helpful with paper topics or making dense material any more approachable. The class was so frustrating, that it was difficult to take any interest in the topics. This was supposed to be what I loved to study, but I struggled just to force myself to do the assigned readings.
It was around midterms of the first quarter when Chris, who also had Jay as an advisor, started to voice his doubts. We were at a department sponsored gathering to celebrate surviving turning in our midterms for the core class. “I don’t think I want a PhD,” he confessed to me.
“Why?” I asked. I was genuinely surprised. Chris seemed to be so comfortable in the environment. Whereas I was intimidated by much of the materials we studied, he had no problem with raising his hand in class.
He shrugged. “This program isn’t what I thought it would be.”
I had been feeling the same way, but I was sure it was just because of my Interpretive Methods class, or because I was less than thrilled with Jay as my advisor. But by finals, Chris was not the only one voicing doubts. After final papers had been turned in, a large group of us was gathered at the local pub. “So who has decided that they don’t want to do a PhD?” someone asked.
I was shocked and perplexed at the number of hands that went up. I honestly did not understand why you would put yourself through this program, if not to make yourself a more attractive PhD candidate. Sure, I knew the statistics – only about a third of MAPSS students went on to do PhDs. But I considered myself among that third and I thought my friends did too.
What I did not realize was that I was uncomfortable with their dismay because it made me begin to question my own desire to pursue a PhD program.
Chris and I both survived Jay’s Interpretive Methods class by the skin of our teeth, so he was shocked when I chose to take a class with Jay the next quarter. Both of us had planned to avoid Jay as much as possible, besides the seeing him in his required role as our advisor. To my surprise, the class was a vast improvement on the previous quarter. Suddenly, I found myself doing all the reading, and writing down points to bring up in class. I wanted Jay to think I was smart. I wanted Jay to think I was worthy of a PhD program. I wanted Jay to be impressed.
I wound up in grad school because I was trying to impress a boy, and fittingly there I was, three years later, still trying to impress a boy. I was also still writing papers on feminist political theory, a subject that I was not really interested in. The irony was too amusing to escape me. I would have reveled in it had Jay’s approval not been so painfully elusive. I was frustrated that I simply could not seem to navigate my relationship with him. While he was responsive to my comments in class, I couldn’t get any direction from him when it came to research topics that I was interested in. My undergraduate professor had warned me that as a woman in political theory I would inevitably be pushed towards feminist theory, but I would not have given into the categorization so easily, were it not for Jay’s insistence that I could create an interesting topic. After all, he knew better than me. I ultimately produced merely passable papers on topics that were of little interest to me.
In other realms, I was doing quite well; I had a thesis topic I liked and a thesis advisor who signed off on my proposal before most of my peers had even chosen subjects. But after months of trying to form a professional relationship with Jay and failing, I began to doubt that a PhD was still in my future. While my lack of a connection with Jay was not the only thing that made me doubt the wisdom of going into academia, he was the staunchest example of everything that was wrong with my aspirations.
One night the Political Science cohort went out to the campus pub. “Remember how you were telling me you don’t want to do a PhD?” I asked Chris. “Well, I don’t think I want to do one either.”
We sat there drinking cheap beer and venting about our problems with Jay. “I have no idea what I’m doing,” Chris admitted. “And no idea what I want to do either.”
And that was the problem. We had come to this program thinking that our initial denial from PhD programs was just a stumbling block along the road to academic glory. MAPSS had promised us the world. Chris and I were not the only ones who had planned to bang out a stellar year and re-apply to PhD programs the fall after graduation – our admission to them was all but promised by the staff. The grim realization that academia might not be the place for us launched both Chris and me into a state of ennui and angst.
From that day on, it became less a matter of thriving and just a matter of surviving. My goal was to finish my thesis by the early deadline and graduate in June – another fact they failed to mention at Campus Days was that most students took one, sometimes even two, additional quarters to complete a thesis after finishing their coursework. However, I was not going to stick around any longer than I had to. Since I no longer had intention of applying for a PhD program, it didn’t matter if my grades suffered a little while I put most of my time and energy into writing and researching my thesis.
But sometimes that desire for PhD glory still nagged. Some days, like when I made intelligent comments in class and felt that the material was clicking; or those nights when I was pounding out paragraphs for the rough draft of my thesis that was due in forty eight hours; or when I stepped out of the building where I spent most of my waking hours and took in the faux gothic architecture against the cerulean sky — it made me want to believe that I was meant to do this for another five years.
And still, I longed for Jay’s approval. One night, our program held a dinner for all students and advisors. That evening, Jay held court while we all sat around, transfixed. There was no denying his magnetism, and even I, who often expressed my loathing for him, found myself fighting my classmates to grab the seat next to him and hanging on his every word. He made you need him to think you were the smartest in the cohort, or that you had the potential to be part of that three percent of political theory PhDs who wind up with a tenure track position.
I never did get Jay’s approval. Sometimes, when I was in his office trying to discuss my research, I would get nothing but a blank stare in return. Worse, he was never convinced by my thesis argument; his comments on the final draft were condescending and, according to my thesis advisor, not very accurate. While my position was unusual, my thesis advisor was convinced by my argument. However, Jay tried his hardest to see that my thesis did not pass. The program gave him power as the required second reader, and he wielded it to try to crush my dream of graduating in June.
The battle over my thesis ended once and for all my PhD aspirations. It didn’t matter that my thesis advisor – an expert in the field – supported my paper. Without a glowing recommendation from Jay I was finished anyway.
MAPSS did not even unlock the doors we were promised it would swing wide open. I know of a few people who continued to PhD programs, but they weren’t students under Jay’s advisement. As for me, my prestigious Masters degree has been a bit of a double-edged sword. When I applied for my first round of jobs, I did not expect to be bombarded with questions about why on Earth I would want a position with “assistant” in the title when I have an advanced degree. The program had left me overeducated, and after a year out of the workforce, under-qualified for many things I might want to do.
I sometimes still have idle thoughts of going back to graduate school. This time, I would go for International Relations, My Masters thesis ended up with a fairly strong international relations theme.
Sometimes I think I’ll go to law school; my boss has told me that I should. One of the first things he said when he met me was, “So you have a Masters from University of Chicago…why do you want this job?”
By then, I was well versed in answering that question, and I did land the job.
I am never going to be a tenure track professor. I am never going to be able to put “Dr” before my name (which I coveted even though I think it is too pretentious). Ever since the PhD program did not work out, I have lacked a plan with a capital P: a Plan A that I am enthusiastic and confident about. As for Tyler, I am on as friendly terms as you can be with someone who broke your heart. I see him maybe once a year. He is still not impressed by me.
But I go to work every day to a job I like. I read articles about how the job market is worse than ever for PhD graduates and I am glad that I got out when I did. Maybe eventually another boy who I want to impress will come along.
Then I’ll go to law school.
