***One of my professors says it takes a lot of ego to go into a field like this because nothing is guaranteed...You have to have a certain amount of confidence that this is something you will be good at. And I am fairly confident that I will be good at it.***
Who said these wise words?
According to Google, it was someone named Camber Warren. However, it would be more interesting to know the identity of the professor he quoted.
Though this is a pretty low threshold for "wisdom" -- the same could be said for any occupation where your success depends on your own decisions (farming, sales, carpentry) rather than following some formula ("Do you want fries with that?") or having your own success almost entirely dependent on the success of the enterprise, and having little say in that enterprise (e.g. most corporate drone positions).
Not to say it isn't true, but it is hardly unique to our profession.
Huh, typical. This piece of "wisdom" explains, in part, why our discipline is filled with angry young men who massively overestimate their abilities and intelligence.
Huh, typical. This piece of "wisdom" explains, in part, why our discipline is filled with angry young men who massively overestimate their abilities and intelligence.
EDIT: Not saying the individual named above is an angry young man, I don't know him. I'm taking aim at the professor's advice.
"Angry young men" pack heat and think they can be pro athletes. They don't become college professors. But don't let that stop you from playing Fun for Misandrists.
There's quite a bit of systematic research showing pretty much everyone over-estimates their abilities -- 80% put themselves in the top 20%, or something to that effect. So it isn't just the angry young men.
And then meanwhile (I'm making this up...) about half of the true top 20% are chronically depressed (see article in the current issue of _Atlantic_) and don't think they are in the top 20%, which is *why* they are in fact in the top 20%...
As for the rest, things sort themselves out after 20 or so years, and this is called "midlife crisis".
Oh, and have a nice day...
Damn. I have to hope those numbers are wrong and more people are in the same position I'm in----never been anywhere near the top 20% and never thought I was, likely never will be and totally ok with that (not depressed I wasn't) , but happy to to work towards it and not in midlife crisis.
I don’t think people are angry because they overestimate themselves though. I think some of the anger might be from the lack of foresight or knowledge or poor assumptions they had before they began grad school. By the time most people understand the market they are usually finished with their PhD. Most people I know had no idea going into grad school that the institution name/department meant so much. We all knew that if you wanted to get a job at Harvard or some other top school then you’d probably need to go to Harvard or some other top school. But at the time I thought, and was not alone, that getting a job, any job (not a job at a top ten), was based to a larger degree on merit. I had no idea that on average, to just get a job at backwater state college, one would have to graduate from a school no lower ranked than UCLA. So of course this is an exaggeration, and a generalization, but on average is not too far from true. I was fortunate and landed higher than expected, and yes I worked hard and contributed original research in top locations. But all my peers in the same department and others, even those with just as good records, placed lower or not at all. Actually I think I am the only one who got a job that year and the next. And last year many fine scholars did not place at all. For my year, I believe the thought was that we’d a get a job somewhere, even if it wasn’t great. I don’t think many of us thought, we’d be lucky to get a VAP at Hillbilly Technical College. Grad students at my current institution had similar views, and I think many will be really frustrated that there is no job at the end. So I think the anger, from men and women alike, is partly due to poor assumptions. I cannot recall hearing from anyone that the odds of getting a job were 1 in 10. And it appears most schools placement records are about as honest as the US Gov’t is on unemployment. Much like how unemployment is based on the numbers requesting unemployment benefits -they don’t count those that ran out of benefits and still don’t have a job or even worse those that , underemployment, those who went from an engineering position to asst manager at McDonalds-, most schools placement records tend not count all the people who stayed a year longer or took a VAP, or post doc or went private by necessity. Tose either get the "placed" tab or get excluded. A more honest number is number of graduates to number in TT lines that year. There’ s not much of course than can be done now, but I think that regularly directing interested students before they apply to this board to get a taste of the acrimony and frustration of those who can’t get a job might be a good start. And of course then making clear to them the most honest probability of success before they start grad school.
You pursue your Ph.D. in political science, because you love the discipline. If you do it for any other reason, then you will end up angry and disappointed (whether or not you find adequate employment).
I was in the same exact position as Keyser.Soze in that I had no idea of the strong correlation between the reputation of one's graduate school and employment opportunities until I was already in grad school. Nonetheless, I remained impassioned about my research and completed my Ph.D. in a timely manner, and I was/am extremely proud of my dissertation.
During grad school I concluded that even if I did not gain employment as a political science faculty member I would not regret my decision to go to graduate school because I learned so much and had a great time doing so. My lament would not be deciding to pursue a Ph.D., nor the school I went to, but the fact that I could not practice political science on a full time basis.
In the end I would say that BMandeville perfectly states the situation. Every profession has its share of risks. The only things that are certain in life are death and taxes.
I know this sounds corny, but you must follow your heart. Only by doing so will you feel content with your life decisions. Otherwise, you will always feel lament and regret.
To be honest, and this is particularly true in Poli Sci, I don't know that 80% of the people over-estimate their ability; I think they over-estimate their ambition. A lot of people enter academia because they think that what we do is "easy", and truth be told once you get your cushy job it probably is. Or at least, it is if you are ok with simply hitting the low bar often enough not to loose your job. But this is true with any occupation dominated by government jobs.
But, if you want to be GOOD at this, it is a lot of work. It is tough being a really good teacher every week and every class. It is tough being a really good researcher. It is tough putting in 40-50-60 hours a week when so few people (your best students, those in your field) really see and appreciate the difference. And if you they knew how tough it was going in, they would have picked something else.
Most of the people I know have the talent to be good at what we do. And if they are willing to work hard enough, they can even over-come poor department rankings in time. What they lack is the ambition to stick it out year after year to chase this field.
As 8-ball pointed out, what they lack is heart. And sometimes, heart is mistaken for ego.
if you want to be GOOD at this, it is a lot of work.
Political science, like most science and the humanities, is 90 percent inspiration and 10 percent perspiration. If you very much want to make breakthroughs in the field of political science, then as a political scientist your "work" is fun and a challenge. The hard part comes with the review process (and finding a publisher for your book manuscript), and the pain and torture of rejection (when it does occur).
Because the job prospects are so poor and the salary is low, the field loses a lot of good people who are good scholars but are not insane to sacrifice their lives for a profession that has little in return.
FWIW, too much emphasis is given (on this board, as of late) to "placing well" and how that's accomplished. I got into political science party by accident, but mostly because I loved it. I, too, was oblivious to the "market" in the discipline and didn't pay attention to the rat race element of it until too late.
Fortunately, my non-ranked PhD program prepared us (all of us) to do well. We have a near 100% placement rate, even in bad economies. Why? Because we aim for LAC schools and non-flagship public institutions. In the end, we're happy. We publish, we get teaching awards, and we enjoy spending time w/ our colleagues in social settings.
I think too many people here have spent too much time worrying about getting the "best" job in terms of US News rankings and not enough time thinking about whether they love teaching.
APSA consistently publishes statistics showing something like 4 out of 5 people are placed; certainly the ratio is far better than 1 out of 10, though it may not be as good as the APSA claims (I believe a lot of people have questioned the accuracy of those numbers).
But "placement" means a job, not the job you wanted. And as been pointed out numerous times on various threads on this board, virtually everyone placed in a given year is placed some place ranked decidedly lower than where they did their Ph.D. -- that is simply built into the structure of the profession. And with very few exceptions (some thread a while back compiled a list, but it was a few dozen if that), they stay at lower ranked places.
How one responds to this, however, differs widely -- I've known people who did degrees at HPY and have been at low/unranked places for twenty or thirty years and are still bitter about it. I've also known people in a similar position -- often at an SLAC -- who think they have one of the best jobs in the world.
Still: just look at the number of jobs in top-ranked institutions and the number of Ph.D.s those places produce, and the fact that most placements are going to be downward is a mathematical certainty.
^ An adjunct position is also a "placement." In this country, you have no choices but to place yourself somewhere. You can't even collect unemployment after getting your PhD.
I'd be interested in a APSA study on the well-being of polisci PhDs.