Q: In Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives, Jeff Schmidt writes,
The prospect of failing the qualifying test frightens the student, even the student who is best at answering the kind of questions used on the test. The student is frightened because his desired future as a professional in his field of interest is at stake. But he is also frightened because society does not guarantee his material security (except at a life-shortening subsistence level). It seems possible for the individual, if suddenly of no value to employers, to go overnight from a job to walking the streets, from being somebody to being nobody, from living in the suburbs to living on skid row, left to struggle for survival among the desperate at the bottom of society. It doesn't matter that such individual downfall is very unlikely; by simply featuring the possibility, the system announces the fundamental insecurity of the individual. This insecurity unrelentingly haunts the student studying for the qualifying test. The student sees professional training as his chance for a secure future, with status and nonalienating work, his life free from the threat of a nightmarish trip to the bottom of the heap. An important part of his past is also riding on the qualifying test, because no matter how many years he has vested in preparation, coming close to passing is worth nothing in terms of attaining professional status. The years of preparation go down the drain along with the hoped-for career.
A: That was graduate school, for me. At Tulane.
It was traumatic.
Nixon got in and cut Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society money off and the faculty threw us to the wolves.
No, they blamed the situation on us.
We weren’t good enough.
We didn’t measure up.
We had been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
Q: You can’t believe them when they accept you, and give you a fellowship, and not believe them when they say you weren’t fit to bear the escutcheon. They didn’t want to put their imprimatur on you.
You believe them.
You believe it’s your fault.
You blame yourself.
A: I blamed myself. I felt like I had failed.
I had my chance and blew it.
Q: Do you believe that now?
A: No. I believe it was cowardly what they did to us.
And dishonorable to try to squirm out of it by not facing up to their own bad behavior.
Q: I don’t see how they lived with themselves.
A: Not very well. There was alcoholism, divorce, extramarital affairs, drug addiction, mental breakdowns, domestic violence, incest, gambling. If you count playing the stock market and speculating in real estate.
Q: College professors? That’s no better than the ghetto.
A: No. No better.
Q: You are better off out of that.
A: I am.
I didn’t want to be one when I saw what it entailed. Treating students like we were treated.
Thank God I found out in time.
What if I had gotten my PhD, gotten a teaching job somewhere, gotten tenure.
I’d be afraid to utter a peep. For fear of losing it.
They’d have me by the short hairs.