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Want to Work in Academia? Read This First!

8th June 2015 Posted by: Maggie Bonsey

GRADUATES are often drawn to the idea of postgraduate study. We asked Maggie Bonsey, MA Irish Studies student at NUI Galway, to tell us about the options available to aspiring academics today.

When you start a degree-seeking programme in the humanities, the first question you will inevitably be asked is ‘what do you plan to do with that?’

If you’re like me, and decided to spend four years (well, two and a half in my case, but that’s a different story) at a top tier research institution doing something like Celtic Studies, your options are fairly limited to “getting a job directly out of college that has nothing at all to do with your BA” or “grad school”. Because I am apparently a huge masochist, I decided on the latter. Of course, that opens up the entire question all over again, but this time you will still find yourself entirely unemployable (in anything that will actually make you money, or give you any job security), but this time you have a Masters degree.

The broader question is really asking if you want to complete your degree(s) and remain in academia, or if you are going to go do something else that is probably entirely unrelated to what you’ve just spent the last five or six years of your life doing.

 

 

Personally, I have always wanted to go into academia. I was the weird kid who was asking where people wanted to go to university at age 8 and would rattle off facts about my interest of the week (usually castles), whether my friends wanted me to or not (they usually didn’t). Now that I’m actually well on my way to getting my foot in the door, the reality that working in the academic world, especially in terms of what I actually want to do with my life, is looking mystifyingly complex, if not spectacularly impossible. Professional academia is more complicated than being paid to research interesting things. To get a job at all, or even to get into a PhD programme in some instances, you have to present at conferences, a lot of conference, or have something published in a (preferably peer-reviewed) journal, network, get your name out there.

But then there’s the reality that there just aren’t as many jobs anymore— even looking beyond the fact that the rate of retirement is plummeting (and then there are the professors and lecturers who have “retired” but are still teaching because it’s cheaper for the university), the field is highly competitive, you have to be either really lucky, or really specialised, and even then, you may end up as an adjunct with neither job security nor benefits. American universities are especially hard on their humanities students and faculty, frequently preferring to re-fit their athletics facilities (again) then actually supporting research.

But even with all of that, I try my best to be an optimist. Sure, it may be difficult to get a job that is relevant to my field right out of grad school, but it certainly won’t happen if I don’t actually try.

So what would I do in a perfect world? I am currently a Masters student at the National University of Ireland, Galway, researching how media can help the Irish language revival—which includes determining whether that’s even possible at this point, but like I said, I’m an optimist. I will almost certainly get my PhD in Linguistics, but my “field” is kind of opaque—the simplest title is probably ‘sociolinguist’, but my actual research goes beyond hard linguistics and includes media studies, theatre studies and elements of language planning and policy as well. At the end of it all, though, I would love to have teaching position in either an Irish university, or in a university that would allow me to continue looking at modern Irish. Of course, if I wanted to return to the States, my professional options would be extremely limited, as when modern Irish is offered at universities, it is almost never actually included in the linguistics curricula. But staying in Ireland has it’s own complications: as I’m not a citizen and I am paying €300 a year just to reside here legally until such a time when I become eligible to apply for citizenship. It is not ideal. Keeping in mind that every academic has at least one (but usually about twelve) alternative plans, in a perfect world, I still find myself hoping to be granted a lecturer position (or even a professorship, would that I’d be so lucky!). But if not, then I hope to find a position in the Irish Language Commission (An Coimisinéir Teanga) and put my hard earned skills to good use there.

The advice I can give to any up-and-coming academics (as one myself) is this:

• Be persistent. I barely know what I am doing after I finish my MA, let alone where I will be for my PhD. But I do know that I will be getting a PhD, come hell or high water.
• Don’t be bogged down by specifics. Be aware that your carefully established plans may not happen just as you’d anticipated, and really, that’s a good thing. You may end up in a brilliant teaching position in Denmark when you were expecting something in Southern Arizona. 
• Don’t let academia consume you. This is probably the most often repeated, and most scoffed at piece of advice imaginable, but it’s so true. Until this year, I never thought I was very firmly against taking any time out to focus on anything rather than my career, but now I’m actually really looking forward to taking some time off and having time to read for fun, knit and maybe even work on my own projects. Finding a balance between a personal and professional life is necessary to maintain your own mental health.

The life of an academic is not one to be taken on lightly. Especially if you’re the only one in your family who is involved in that world, it can be incredibly isolating. But, the development of new theories, or discovery of new facts can be absolutely thrilling, and make the toil completely worth it. At least, that’s how it is for me.

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