I don’t know about you, but I have no patience for students who bitch about how their degrees “failed to prepare them for the real world”, or how their courses “weren’t relevant”, or who, given a homework assignment, griped: “When am I ever going to use this?”

For fuck’s sake, asshole, if you don’t think the course matters why’d you take it?

“Oh, it’s required by the department.”

Not good enough. If you don’t trust the department, do a two-year degree at a tech school. If you’re as good as you think you are, it’ll show through in the interview.

The basic problem here is this: A great many students seem to want to be spoon-fed only “relevant” information. They seem to think themselves capable of discriminating the relevant from the irrelevant, over and above the opinions of professors who’d actually earned B.Scs and worked real jobs in the real world. These cunning and hard-bitten students, however, aren’t willing to take what they want. Instead, they demand to be given what they want.

“They”? Yeah, I mean “we”. I did that when I was an undergrad. Hell, I did that as a grad student.

I stopped demanding to be given what I wanted — training for a faculty position — when I realised that faculty jobs were (at best) 40% research, 40% teaching, and 20% service. There’s no requirement in my department for grad students (or Ph.D. students, at least) to teach a full course — ever. There’s no requirement for Ph.D. students to sit on a committee, or review a paper, or write a grant proposal, or do anything at all besides churn out eight courses and a novel thesis (which at least hits some of the high points on the “research” segment of our programme).

At some point this year, I realised that what I wanted out of grad school was professorship training — and I wasn’t being handed that on a silver platter. I had — have — plenty of opportunity, but am I doing anything about it?

I’m well aware that, as a tenure-track faculty member, I’ll be expected to waste away my life in contribute my valuable expertise to committee meetings. So, I volunteer to sit on the CSGSA travel funding committee. Do we have any power? Fuck no! Who gives grad students power? But hey, I’m getting a taste of committee life. When I sit on a travel funding committee as a bright green assistant professor and a heretofore silent member pipes up at the end of the meeting with “This is all bullshit!”, I’ll be able to stifle the heart attack and smile knowingly.

Oh yeah, and I’ll probably have to teach a course. It’ll help that, as a TA, I’ve volunteered to give lectures. I can now, with confidence, stand up in front of forty (or four hundred) disinterested undergrads and sound off about… well, whatever it is I’m called upon to teach. I know to run through my lecture beforehand — and prepare notes, even if I’m writing everything on a blackboard. I’m sure that I’ll be sufficiently stressed as an assistant prof without having to figure out how to teach entirely from first principles.

Grant proposals? Written two. Didn’t get either, but hey, that’s (anonymous granting agency) for you. Neither did anyone else in my department. I got good feedback from my supervisor, though. I’ll submit another this year, and the next.

Am I perfectly prepared? Well, no… how can I possibly expect to be perfectly prepared for an uncertain future? Still, it’s better than nothing.

Here’s the thing: too many people (myself included, for the past seven years at least) see school as something that we pay for, and after jumping through their hoops we get something that we want — a degree, or a certification, or Knowledge, or what-the-fuck-ever.

That’s not what it’s about.

It’s an opportunity — it’s a chance to work with some ridiculously knowledgeable and frighteningly compentent professors. It’s a chance to collaborate with similarly minded comrades. It’s a chance to take advantage of a rare array of opportunities to make ourselves into what we want to be, to say “I want to become expert in this field, and this, and this”, and do so — but we’re the only ones who give a shit.

You have no good reason to help me earn an awe-inspring Ph.D., and I’m not going to ask you to go out of your way to do so. That’s my job.

School; life. Figure out what you want, earn it, and take it.

And if you can’t be bothered, shut the fuck up about it.