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Academic Incest and Complacency
11 years ago
General
This is a journal about a very specific pet peeve of mine and how it relates to the world outside of academia.
Academic Incest is a phrase I use to refer to when someone seeks a graduate degree at the same place they got their undergrad, or attempt to get hired where they got their graduate degree. I understand that in part there are decent reasons for wanting to do this, especially if you have things like kids and family. Moving is a bitch, and after following my father through his PhD and to a tenure position at a university, trust me, I understand how hard it is to move to get this done. This is not to rag on people that had to stick with the same program. There are some reasons why it bugs me however.
First and foremost, the reason it's called incest is the education becomes insular. Different departments have different areas of focus. For instance my own department now is much more analytical than my undergrad. It's opened up my education to a lot more areas, which is exactly what should happen.
By attending the same institution at all levels you don't get that same breadth of knowledge. You learn only what a small group of educators have to offer and you go into the world with only that small education. Yes experts in the field have a grasp of all the aspects of the field, so an ethics prof can teach intro metaphysics easily, but at the graduate level it's much different to learn from the person actively studying and researching what you are studying.
The more troublesome part is simply complacency. Staying in the same place makes one complacent. Complacency is death so far as graduate studies are concerned.
Again, going to a new program is hard, it is. It's a new place, new people, new work, and you have to learn to balance it all. One might think "oh it's fine, I know this school, I know this town, I don't have to work so hard then and can focus on other things" but the thing is that difficulty often lends itself to benefit.
For our year we have a fantastic group that is extremely supportive of one another because we were new to the area, new to the school, and needed to learn and survive together. someone that is already used to matters is probably not going to try as hard, and in time may find they didn't try in the right areas.
Someone in the same area will hang with their undergrad friends still in the program and not reach out to the other grads. Someone in the same area might not realize that while they were the big fish of their class, they're coming into a group that is well above the level of expectation and understanding of undergrads and to act like the big fish in the pond is a bad idea.
I am not saying it is bad to keep your friends, just to be complacent. See there are opportunities that can pass by and be missed. At the beginning of the semester when everyone is casually getting to know one another and meet up, if you don't show because you have other friends, then you are excluding yourself from the group. In the adult world, if you keep turning down people they just stop asking, particularly grad students, we don't hang with people just to be nice.
As the semester goes on you'll find that when you need help, or when your friends are busy, there's no one left because you missed that opportunity.
This is not to say that just be friends because someone can be useful. If you don't like someone then just live your life and don't hang out, but often those that are complacent will miss opportunities without realizing, and that gets to be far more of a problem later in life (if I could do shit over again I would have done a lot more networking in the art circles)
That's the general lesson here. In life you will be invited to things, and while you may not be comfortable with everything, or you may not really want to be there, sometimes it's best to make a showing, show you are willing to put forth and effort, so that later people will still remember you and will offer opportunities that you will want. Stability is good, but complacency is bad. Don't be complacent, don't let opportunities pass.
Academic Incest is a phrase I use to refer to when someone seeks a graduate degree at the same place they got their undergrad, or attempt to get hired where they got their graduate degree. I understand that in part there are decent reasons for wanting to do this, especially if you have things like kids and family. Moving is a bitch, and after following my father through his PhD and to a tenure position at a university, trust me, I understand how hard it is to move to get this done. This is not to rag on people that had to stick with the same program. There are some reasons why it bugs me however.
First and foremost, the reason it's called incest is the education becomes insular. Different departments have different areas of focus. For instance my own department now is much more analytical than my undergrad. It's opened up my education to a lot more areas, which is exactly what should happen.
By attending the same institution at all levels you don't get that same breadth of knowledge. You learn only what a small group of educators have to offer and you go into the world with only that small education. Yes experts in the field have a grasp of all the aspects of the field, so an ethics prof can teach intro metaphysics easily, but at the graduate level it's much different to learn from the person actively studying and researching what you are studying.
The more troublesome part is simply complacency. Staying in the same place makes one complacent. Complacency is death so far as graduate studies are concerned.
Again, going to a new program is hard, it is. It's a new place, new people, new work, and you have to learn to balance it all. One might think "oh it's fine, I know this school, I know this town, I don't have to work so hard then and can focus on other things" but the thing is that difficulty often lends itself to benefit.
For our year we have a fantastic group that is extremely supportive of one another because we were new to the area, new to the school, and needed to learn and survive together. someone that is already used to matters is probably not going to try as hard, and in time may find they didn't try in the right areas.
Someone in the same area will hang with their undergrad friends still in the program and not reach out to the other grads. Someone in the same area might not realize that while they were the big fish of their class, they're coming into a group that is well above the level of expectation and understanding of undergrads and to act like the big fish in the pond is a bad idea.
I am not saying it is bad to keep your friends, just to be complacent. See there are opportunities that can pass by and be missed. At the beginning of the semester when everyone is casually getting to know one another and meet up, if you don't show because you have other friends, then you are excluding yourself from the group. In the adult world, if you keep turning down people they just stop asking, particularly grad students, we don't hang with people just to be nice.
As the semester goes on you'll find that when you need help, or when your friends are busy, there's no one left because you missed that opportunity.
This is not to say that just be friends because someone can be useful. If you don't like someone then just live your life and don't hang out, but often those that are complacent will miss opportunities without realizing, and that gets to be far more of a problem later in life (if I could do shit over again I would have done a lot more networking in the art circles)
That's the general lesson here. In life you will be invited to things, and while you may not be comfortable with everything, or you may not really want to be there, sometimes it's best to make a showing, show you are willing to put forth and effort, so that later people will still remember you and will offer opportunities that you will want. Stability is good, but complacency is bad. Don't be complacent, don't let opportunities pass.
So you don't have to worry about me. XP