{"id":386,"date":"2017-12-13T15:06:38","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T15:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/research\/?p=386"},"modified":"2018-01-30T14:50:28","modified_gmt":"2018-01-30T14:50:28","slug":"ph-d-s-are-still-writing-poorly-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/research\/2017\/12\/13\/ph-d-s-are-still-writing-poorly-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Ph.D.s Are Still Writing Poorly, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
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from the Chronicle of Philanthropy\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n
By Rachel Toor\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>DECEMBER 13, 2017\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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D<\/span>ear Pretenure Faculty Member:<\/p>\n

You were an excellent student, a deep thinker, curious, maybe a little quirky. You loved learning and got interested \u2014 so interested \u2014 in things most people didn\u2019t care much about. You lived to read, to question, to puzzle and ponder. Back in the day, you may even have loved to write.<\/p>\n

Then you went to graduate school, and the joy of being a pupil got pummeled out of you. Years of hazing \u2014 being told by professors that you weren\u2019t getting it: your ideas too obvious, your prose too uncomplicated \u2014 made you a little sour, a bit less enthusiastic about the whole knowledge-production business.<\/p>\n

Early on, you felt capable. Then you were assigned to read the work of the best minds in your field and found yourself rereading \u2014 over and over \u2014 paragraphs whose meaning you couldn\u2019t extract. You shook your head. Blamed your incomprehension on a hangover. Got new glasses.<\/p>\n

Reading became an exercise in intellectual rigor. You learned to extract useful nuggets and to ignore what you didn\u2019t understand. You read the luminaries in your field and aped their sentences. You tried to sound on the page like those academics you most admired. In class, you mimicked the speech patterns of your professors.<\/p>\n

You learned the secret handshakes and shibboleths without questioning, or even noticing, the changes taking place in your language. You hid behind the third person, used the passive voice when you could, and shied away from making blunt assertions and bold arguments. You wrote nothing you couldn\u2019t back up with a zillion footnotes. You began to pad your ideas with throat-clearing statements and ready-made phrases, taking 25 pages to say what could have been plainly expressed in 10.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I want you to know: The emperor has no clothes. Yes, the intellectual heavyweights did have big ideas; they did posit new theories that changed their disciplines or the world. That doesn\u2019t mean all of their writing is good or should be imitated. For the most part, you mold yourself after them at your own peril.<\/p>\n

Your advisers were smart, caring people who came of age in a different time. They taught you as they were taught, expecting you to reap the same rewards they did. But their training methods and advice are not doing you any favors in today\u2019s world, academic or otherwise. That dissertation on which you worked so long and hard is probably not a book and may never be a book. It was the last hurdle in the hazing process, but it won\u2019t do you much good outside the fraternity.<\/p>\n

And the fact is, many of you \u2014 especially those working in visiting, part-time, and other nontenure-track positions \u2014 will have to learn to survive off campus.<\/p>\n

Perhaps you sent out hundreds of job applications and got zero tenure-track interviews. You heard murmurings when you started grad school about the academic job market, about how rough it was, but you were always a star student. You would be the exception. Now you\u2019re eking it out on the adjunct path, pulling espressos and tutoring SAT takers. Bitterness threatens to consume you.<\/p>\n

Or. You snagged a gig as a full-time, nontenure-track lecturer. You teach too many classes and worry each year whether your contract will be renewed. You devote all your time to students. The questions, the emails, the texts never stop. You give them everything you have, and still, they want more. They love you, but your job security is tenuous.<\/p>\n

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