I don't think this is really fair... 'haters gonna hate' I think it is fair to recognize that many of us in this field have been extraordinarily lucky, benefited immensely by the opportunities we could take that others could not. I think it is fair to realize that we might be entering an age where most people who graduate with ph.d.'s will not become professors or professional researchers, or really have as much choice in their careers as they might imagine the ph.d affords. I know danah works hard and does great work and I deeply appreciate everything she has done and is doing to make her and other researcher's work relevant to policymakers, businesses and others, but i think it is fair to recognize that she had opportunities, took them, and had she not been presented with those opportunities and had the capacity to take them, she wouldn't be in the same place in her career, I thinks she's said as much on her blog and elsewhere. The problem is that many people don't get great opportunities and even if they do, not everyone has the capacity to pursue them, in other words lives and careers aren't fair. I think we can acknowledge that many things in the ph.d. and professorial/research system aren't fair, they are dependent on many factors and realize that people can honestly feel and think that things could have been different and more fair from their perspective. So to say that not everyone gets to go to Berkeley and meet a great advisor... that I think is fine and true, and while i do feel there may be some emotional commitments to the statement.... I don't think it is 'haters gonna hate'... I think it is just indicating something that we should be telling our graduate students, 'you may not get a t-t job or even the job you want, and that won't be your fault' (though it could be their fault, i don't deny that either). I've worked professionally in academia for 12 years now, and it is not all pretty and some of it is downright ugly. I've seen brilliant people drop out of tenure track, I've seen brilliant people quit while adjuncting, and I've had colleagues and friends drink themselves to death, and commit suicide in graduate school and on the t-t (Granted this happens all the time in the rest of the professional world too, which is sort of my point). It isn't fair at all, they all were great and interesting people that did well with students and their work. I'd say they didn't deserve to leave the way they did, but I honestly think that deserving isn't the real issue as there isn't really a justice here, there is just universities, states, and capital, and the people in them trying to get by and do the best they can, which again, usually isn't just or fair. For me though, it is a job and probably my career. my best advice to those seeking to get a ph.d. usually is 'do not get a ph.d.' past that, get two sets of statistics from the dept before you apply. get their gradation rates for 5 and 10 years and get their placement rate in the sort of job you want. almost every accrediting agency requires some compilation of these numbers, so they probably exist or should exist somewhere. Departments rarely report them unless they are excellent in graduate rate and in placement. There are places out there who take in doctoral students, 10 per year, graduate 3 of those after 10 years, and only place 10% in academia. There are places out there that want to start Ph.D. programs so that their senior professors don't have to teach the introduction courses, and similar things. That's fine if the students know that, and know what kind of jobs are being had by the student body. We just need to be much more real about these things. For my part... I know I have been extremely lucky so far in my career, with my colleagues in AoIR, at Virginia Tech, and around the world, and I am eternally grateful for everything that everyone has done for me and I will continue doing what I can, even if it means that occasionally i post responses like this. -- jeremy hunsinger Center for Digital Discourse and Culture Virginia Tech www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. -Pablo Picasso

I want to reiterate what Jeremy says below. And I do here: http://alex.halavais.net/ask-alex-communication-graduate-school I think the first rule of Ph.D. advice is don't encourage people to get a Ph.D. If they really want to, there will be little you can do to dissuade them. I wholeheartedly agree with the advice in danah's blog post, and the advice of others here, but I think many of the people on this list have something akin to a survivor's bias. If you think back over all of your colleagues who were in graduate school with you, I think you may find that it was a great experience and opportunity for some, an unmitigated disaster for some, and a mixed bag for most. And so, I think it's important for people who want to do a Ph.D. to be willing to do it for its intrinsic rewards. I think Norbert Weiner's opinion from 1958 still holds, despite the tinge of elitism: """ Properly speaking, the artist, the writer, and the scientist should be moved by such an irresistible impulse to create that, even if they were not being paid for their work, they would be willing to pay to get the chance to do it. However, we are in a period in which forms have largely superseded educational content and one which is moving toward an ever-increasing thinness of educational content. It is now considered perhaps more a matter of social prestige to obtain a higher degree and follow what may be regarded as a cultural career, than a matter of any deep impulse. [...] I mean merely that if the thesis is not in fact such an overwhelming task, it should at least be in intention the gateway to vigorous creative work. Lord only knows there are enough problems yet to be solved, books to be written, and music to be composed! Yet for all but a very few, the path to these lies through the performance of perfunctory tasks which in nine cases out of ten have no compelling reason to be performed. Heaven save us from the first novels which are written because a young man desires the prestige of being a novelist rather than because he has something to say! Heaven save us likewise from the mathematical papers which are correct and elegant but without body or spirit. Heaven save us above all from the snobbery which not only admits the possibility of this thin and perfunctory work, but which cries out in a spirit of shrinking arrogance against the competition of vigor and ideas, wherever these may be found! """ Now, the Masters-level degree is another issue... Best, Alex On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jeremy@tmttlt.com> wrote: <snip>

my best advice to those seeking to get a ph.d. usually is 'do not get a ph.d.' </snip>

-- -- // // This email is // [x] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net //

This response has taken a long time to generate because i didn't want to offend anyone. At some point, tho, you have to say 'f*ck it' and go for what you know. Before i do get started, however, let me point out that i'm not ranting at Jeremy, even tho i'm responding to his reply. On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 9:12 AM, Jeremy hunsinger <jeremy@tmttlt.com> wrote:

I don't think this is really fair... 'haters gonna hate'

i don't understand why 'haters gonna hate' isn't fair. Please show me where people are addressing danah's work by generating work of THEIR OWN that's critical of her methods, data, or theoretical approach. That's the only substantive criteria i'm prepared to accept. You don't like that danah went to berkeley and you didn't? that's hating. you don't like that Judith Donath was her mentor and not yours? that's hating. you don't like that danah's worked for yahoo and microsoft and you're still struggling to get your department to recognize that Internet Studies is a viable PhD topic? that's hating. Let's not even get into the ad hominem criticisms about danah, cuz those are out there too and often used as justifications to decertify her work. *yeah, i said it.* Moreover, let's not pretend that criticisms of danah's work don't stem from some deep-seated resistance to research on youth, gendered, and raced technology users. i've dealt with enough sub-rosa comments (and blind peer reviews!) about my own intellectual endeavors to understand that in many ways, this field reproduces mainstream, masculinist, patriarchal, raced, sexed, gendered, and technocultural ideologies. That makes us just like other fields, so i'm not complaining - just pointing out something that seems to be forgotten on this list from time to time. Which brings me to my second (and last) point:

I think it is fair to recognize that many of us in this field have been extraordinarily lucky, benefited immensely by the opportunities we could take that others could not.

It ain't luck. The PhD is not a lottery ticket. In many cases, you chose your school...you chose your courses...you chose your topic...you chose a life of poverty LOL. The PhD is not promised to you; it doesn't always go to the smartest or the nicest. In my short-lived experience, i have begun to understand that the granting of the PhD (and gaining tenure) rests almost as much on your cultural and social connections as it does the intellectual acumen you have on hand. i'll leave that for further discussion at a later time. *stepping off soapbox* My advice for minorities (and lower income folk) interested in pursuing a PhD in (insert discipline)/Internet Studies - go for the money FIRST, then go to a place where a faculty member has agreed to work with you. Finding a minority faculty member in LIS to work with is like finding hen's teeth; ain't many of us out here and a lot of us are service-overcommitted. Get to know non-POC faculty who are interested in you as a person, not as an ethnicity or oddity. Those people, if their interests match, will help you develop a research agenda. If they don't match, they'll help you find someone who does - and recommend you to them. Generalizing from my own experiences (YMMV), you might find a faculty member to work with, but if they're not able to hook you up with their own funding, you're dependent upon the department's largesse. In this day and age, many programs are saying the PhD can be completed in 4 years, but some will not commit to fully funding a student for those 4 years. Get your funding straight...then use networking (institutional and extracurricular), the Internet, and conferences to meet people who are willing to help you develop your ideas into research. That's what i got. -- Andre Brock Assistant Professor - Library and Information Science/POROI University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242