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[vicarz]

I 'brag' about my Master's degree, but a lot of people forget - I dropped out of graduate school. I was never supposed to have a pissant MA degree. I was going for my Doctorate - a real one, not a JD. I was miserable, lonely, tired, and just...quit. I thought I could do it, but didn't want to and wasn't sure what I'd do with the degree when I was done. I was scared of the job market and couldn't find a job. I didn't have a good job either - when I quit, dropped out with a MA, I just worked in a print shop.

I wasn't a good writer, but worse - I had no interest in any research area. If I could have gotten a PhD with coursework I may well have stuck it out, but I was supposed to develop a research interest and do a dissertation on it. I had no interest in research, no interest in any area of I/O Psyc, and sure as hell had no interest in running an experiment. I understand now a lot of people either teamed up with professors and followed their interests, becoming mildly interested themselves - and others were at work, and I've seen people "cheat" with their work related activities for which they were rewarded at work and at school for work they didn't or barely did. I didn't game the system back then. But...I also didn't care much. I finished a sub goal.

Comments

[drmathochist.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Enh, you're better off. I constantly wish I hadn't wasted ten years of my lilfe on my Ph.D.

[grymnir.livejournal.com]

Quit the whining.
Seriously.

I am || close to quitting my PhD program as well...but I won't get a second MA out of it if I do. All of the time and energy will have been wasted if I stop now.

Now, my ^slap^ to you is that a PhD requires coursework, collaboration, a broad passive research (literature review) and active research. The active component for me is braiding works, techniques, and sources that are far outside my areas of experience and "expertise" with those that other scholars have already plucked the nuts off of. The active is the difficult part to do solo. We really need guidance for the active work, from determining a valid line of inquiry to developing it into a basis to integrate the unexpected as we find the "unknown unknowns" during our research, and finally, in that last merciless editorial massacre and purge necessary to present even the dissertation draft.
It isn't "cheating" to use your work related activities, but a real-life application. For some people they find they grow to hate their work or themselves when they try this; others find they can't work in that position or industry any longer--there are hazards. You might call this *gaming* the system, but it is only integration.

What it seems you lacked more was a good adviser and a little direction. Sometimes they don't get to know us well enough to help, and all they do is sign the forms of a multitude of advisees. It can be hard to tell going in and few of us begin a PhD program with a solid goal in mind AND retain it through the seminars, adversarial committees, and especially the final stretch when funds are gone and we've hit the point that the blow-up dolls begin to look like a viable date.

You went back and got the JD. Time and writing and one that you have *gamed* more successfully. So, the PhD, it isn't a measure of you nor aptitude, but perhaps it is of attitude...you didn't see the purpose and did not waste your time floundering through research. Good for you.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Whining? I must not be conveying my intended tone - it's more a commentary of realistic understanding of me where a bunch of people think of me as Mr. Goal, accomplishment, and stuff that doesn't fit myself-as-slacker belief system.

Oh I've seen people cheat, no doubt. It's gaming the system to comment on something you had no control over as though you authored it, and do an analysis based on someone else's work. It's gaming the system to do what you are paid to do, then turn that in for a grade. It's gaming the system to hang out with the professor, then be assigned "research" or special 1 cr classes to get extra A+ that are exempt from the class curve.

Sucks you can't get a MA, but awesome that you stick with it. Your area of study seems particularly challenging.

I think my JD was probably gaming the system.

[grymnir.livejournal.com]

I use "whining" for good or ill...typically to refer to any writing/posting on LJ that occurs before the sun rises.

I take your points about the "cheats," though I tell my students that if they can make a class project work for their outside life, they will learn more than just doing something for a grade, after which they will promptly forget the entire experience. That said, you worked with the sciences while all of my tracks have been within the liberal arts. Liberal Arts...no wonder the "New Taliban" (to quote Robt Kennedy, Jr) of the heartland are all for getting rid of foreign language programs, cultural studies, and assorted other "identity-biased" lines of inquiry (see recent law in Arizona. Fuck Arizona.)

I did get my MA first, rather than beginning a PhD program that "awards" (as though you didn't fucking earn it) an MA if you do NOT complete the dissertation.

Again, I say there is nothing wrong with gaming the system. But yes, cheating AND gaming...well...I only slept with my professors after I was no longer their student.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

It depends on how you look at them. Originally I wanted to make as much as my dad - able to pay for a townhouse in the suburbs. I can.

Actually my first goal was not to be picked on, but that was an especially youth-ey one. I'm not.

Yeah I enjoy what I do, and did not care a whit about I/O.

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

Same here—I only have a master's because I dropped out of grad school. I don't regret it one bit, though. I decided I was done with all the arguing.