The perils of advice, and some self-doubt

by Cliopatria

This week's Chronicle of Higher Education online edition has this rather sobering First Person essay by a Prof. Thomas Benton: An Adviser Without Advice. He writes of running into one of his brightest and best recent graduates working as a cashier at Target:

My former student scanned and bagged the objects as if she was running on a treadmill. She recognized me, and I tried to return her nervous smile. We each asked how the other was doing and said"good." I swiped my card, and she gave me a receipt. There were bored people all around, and the whole conversation was understood in a few embarrassed glances.

"Good to see you," I said, leaving."Yeah, you too, professor," she said, flatly. I saw her feigned cheerfulness droop a little as she turned to the next customer.

Benton reflects on what he told her when she came to him, a few years earlier, for professional advice:

I should have been looking out for her. She came to me for advice. I told her something like this:"A liberal-arts degree is the best preparation for life in general, but it helps if you also have some specific, marketable skills." I had persuaded myself that I knew what I was talking about. I supported and reinforced her choices. And my vanity was gratified by the thought that I was helping her.

Okay, that is scary. I could have written that paragraph verbatim a thousand times over. I'll quote his final section at length:

All I have is an instinctive belief in the value of a liberal education without regard to its practical use. I am increasingly sure that it is wrong to encourage students (and indirectly ourselves) to justify the work and expense of education as a prelude to lucrative career opportunities. Yet I know that when so many students undertake so much debt to go to college, the link between education and future income becomes unavoidable.

It seems inevitable, though we are not yet willing to admit it, that a liberal education is becoming a practical impossibility for most young people. Or liberal education earns the justified reputation of something undertaken at one's peril. Students know they have to make a living before they can appreciate Kierkegaard. They don't have time to question their beliefs; they are too busy getting their academic tickets punched.

I understand that outlook, but students do not seem to know that even the practical choice is fraught with as much risk as following one's heart. They seem unaware of how much their drive for"success" is a construction of consumerist pressures. Perhaps careerist choices carry even more risk, since you ultimately give up what you love for the sake of some opportunity that may not exist by the time you are ready to meet it.

Of course, this kind of pontification can only come from a position of privilege. I can remember all too vividly the fear of sinking into chronic underemployment and relative poverty, of feeling for the rest of my life the special scorn that socially mobile societies reserve for the people who haven't"made it." You're a loser and nobody cares how it happened.

But what can I offer to my students besides the general advice to follow their talents wherever they lead?"Follow your bliss" and"find your vocation." Those remarks seem as banal and unhelpful now as when they were uttered by the wiser advisers of my youth.

Most of my students at Pasadena City College are from working-class backgrounds. To put it bluntly, I am not. Most of my students are not white. I rather obviously am. Most of 'em are first-generation college graduates, while I am the son of two Berkeley Ph.Ds. My kind and fortunate parents paid for my college education; I never had a nickel's worth of student loans. I teach at a community college, but (and this is hard to write) I would have been deeply ashamed if I had"had" to attend such an institution out of high school. All too slowly, I am unlearning my snobbery, my elitism, and my privilege, but it is a work in progress. What from my own experience can I possibly offer to my students? As much as I want to be one, how can I be a satisfactory role model for them?

In the past decade, I have had maybe 70 or 80 students whom I have mentored. They have come to office hours and made special appointments, and they have come time and time again for career advice. Many want to become professors themselves someday. I offer the same sort of airy encouragements that Mr. Benton offered. Indeed, not a semester goes by that I don't actually say:"Study what you love; the money will follow." Though it has all the depth of a Hallmark card, my students nod their heads appreciatively, confident perhaps that if Dr. Hugo believes it is true, than so it must be. As I do in my teaching, I substitute outer enthusiasm for inner certainty. I can always muster the former. It's not that I lie to them about their abilities! Rather, I find that I deliberately misrepresent the difficulties of getting tenure-track jobs in higher education. It's easier to be relentlessly optimistic.

I do have a few former students teaching now at the college level. All are adjuncts so far, waiting and hoping for the appearance of a miraculous tenure-track job. But I've run into my share of former students at Target and elsewhere; they've graduated from four-year institutions, often with history degrees. I love running into my former students and hearing their stories. But I've seen -- or imagined that I have seen -- embarrassment in the eyes of several of them, as if they worry that somehow they have let me down by working at Starbucks fulltime rather than taking out still more loans to go and get a Ph.D. And I wonder, as Benton wonders, whether all of that encouragement and advice does any good.

Year in and year out, I tell my students that their lives will be better and richer because they know about Alexander, about Antony, about Arius the Heretic. They will be better citizens of the world because they know about Luther, Leibniz, and Lloyd-George. But I went straight from high school to college, and never worked for money while in school. When my classes were over for the day at Cal, I could wander over to Strawberry Glade and read a book and think about life; I could sit in coffee shops and pontificate my day away. My students race off from my classes to their jobs and their families. And then they come to me, asking me to mentor them! I am honored and flattered; it satisfies both my vanity and my longing to help. I am so grateful for the genuine close friendships I have formed with many students over the years. But so often, so often, I wonder: What good am I, what good are we historians, if we don't have more tangible, practible advice to offer?

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More Comments:

Hugo Schwyzer - 7/21/2004

You are absolutely right, Oscar; I do know that such students do exist. And I am damned grateful that they do!

Oscar Chamberlain - 7/21/2004

I understand your concerns, and it is right to ask ourselves, "What do we offer?" Yet there is something missing from your comment that I have found (and I teach at a two-year campus in rural Wisconsin).

I have seen students find joy in the knowledge itself. Not all the time, and I can't tell you the percentage. But I know that there are students who are happier because they know the world better. That's got to be worth something.

Adam Kotsko - 7/20/2004

I think that I would enjoy living in a society in which every kind of work was held in equal esteem, in which working at Target was an option that people would be allowed to take, rather than something that you're forced into and then are required to complain about constantly. Some jobs are objectively less fun than others, but I think that a lot of those non-fun jobs are made a whole lot more non-fun by the scorn that is often heaped, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, on those who hold such positions.

For example, if I hear one more public speaker or read one more writer who points out that "even the janitor" has a contribution to make to an organization, I am going to scream.

Derek Charles Catsam - 7/20/2004

I'll bet anyone here a hundred bucks that more recruiters at major companies, accounting firms, consulting firms, investment banks and the like will darken the doors of Williams (student body 2000) this year than will do so in the next two at MSU, my last place, with a student body of 14,000 and growing. Obviously Williams is a different class of education, but it also goes to show that good liberal arts training is in demand even among those we would not traditionally associate with valuing an English, or History, or Philosophy degree. Come to think of it, I'll compare the business and professional jobs class of 2005 (My God!) English major grads from Amherst get compared to the business and professional jobs that business majors at MSU get. Any takers? (The career stats are available, so emperically, this bet can surely happen).
dc

David Lion Salmanson - 7/20/2004

Look, the payoff isn't immediate. But the fact of the matter is that 10 years down the road, statistics are very favorable that your four-year liberal arts grad will be outearning a professional school grad with a BBA or BS degree. The skills that liberal arts teaches are about living one's life fully, richly, honestly, and justly. This applies to everything from how to run a company to figuring out if you are ready to have kids.

It is a little known secret but Wall Street firms love history majors (also, Phil majors) as analysts and many have programs designed to teach liberal arts grads everything they need to know about the business world in 6 months. They like historians and philosophers because they usually see past corporate hype, have learned good analytical (and for historians research skills) and are good at close reading to figure out when company's are snowing them. BBAs are too trusting.

And keep mentoring! Let students know when you see them that you are still available to help them. You have tons of contacts in "the real world," friends from college and high school, don't be afraid to use them to help that student out. Hugo if your feeling guilty about your social privilige put it to work for these kids by hooking them up with folks you know. When the see the quality of what they are getting, the machine will run of itself. Surely you know some lawyers these guys could paralegal for, how many have language skills that businesses need? etc. etc. etc.

Manan Ahmed - 7/20/2004

I have to agree here. The "dichotomy" of ivory tower/real world really annoys me because it is a false pretense. There is no lack, in the academy, of real world hurdles, problems, prerequisites, and disappointments. Similarly, hundreds of thousands of drones occupying grey cubicles have rich intellectual lives.
My criteria for graduate school was simple: It's a job and I am only going to take it if I get PAID for it. I was certainly not going into debt for it. I love History. Love having a community of people with whom I can discuss estorica-reimagined-as-cool. But, I am under no delusions that this is a career that will demand from me strict compliance to its requirements, passing muster among my peers and regular job performance evaluations.
If and when, I reach tenure I may change that opinion but I highly doubt it. I know a lot of "tenured" office workers and that lot is not mine, if I can help it.
I have worked at-least full-time throughout my higher education. Even now, I have the option of seeking an IT career instead of a History one. But, I do not look at it as 1. is my work and 2. is my hobby. They are both my careers that I have invested time and money in and I want my payday.

Jonathan Dresner - 7/20/2004

If we got over our embarrassment at being failures ourselves, we might also consider talking to those students who end up working at Target, etc., and finding out where they think they're going next. I ran into a student working a booth at a county fair, which isn't exactly moving up in the world, but, as it turned out, it was just a summer fill-in between teacher education semesters.

I teach at a school which draws heavily from local populations. I've had students bag my groceries, seen students carrying boxes around campus; one of the smartest kids ever to pass through my World history section is driving a taxi until she figures out where she wants to make her mark, or if she wants to make her mark. One of the most talented actors I knew growing up has made a career in local theater: is he a failure?

Not everyone succeeds on the first try; being too embarrassed to offer support and continued connection is a moral failing on our part much worse than unfounded optimism. Why should our students be embarassed if they can't find "ivory tower" jobs, when we know what the odds are? Why can't they have a "life of mind" and soul-growth between shifts doing useful physical/service labor?

This kind of stuff just perpetuates the "ivory tower looking down on the working peon" image of academia, and it's embarrassing.

Jonathan Dresner - 7/20/2004

The tension between liberal studies and career skills is more rhetorical than real, in my opinion.

But the disconnect between curriculum, which has wandered well off the path of real liberal studies, and career is quite real, except where they are inseperable. I have a hard time believing, by the way, that a BA and AA degree in business are that different in quality; the vast majority of my Business students get nothing from their "general education" courses because they put nothing into them.

Internships are a nice bridging tool, but they require an immense amount of maintenance and supervision to be available, effective. But encouraging students to try out real-world jobs (summers are good for that) and making sure that your courses include skill-building and your discussions include real-world issues aren't all that hard. Doesn't mean that every course has to relate to the present, but, let's face it, humanity hasn't exactly solved most of the problems it's faced: we've gotten extensions on the deadlines, and shifted responsibilities around, but we're still dealing with a lot of the same stuff we've been dealing with for centuries, and some sense of the roots of the problems IS a useful thing, as is some understanding of what sorts of things have been tried before and how it turned out.

Jonathan Dresner - 7/20/2004

Well, one of the things that I love about teaching World History (bolstered by a borderline pathological news habit) is the trends and patterns that I've noticed, and I often advise my students based not on my life path (which was a series of lucky accidents, bolstered by a certain amount of middle-class privilege and the positive power of denial) but on the kinds of things that I really do think will be growing fields in the future: intellectual property law; biomedical and genetic technology; data organization and retrieval; applied social analysis (advertising, politics, activism, consulting).

I've never advised a student thinking about graduate school without being very, very clear on the challenge of getting through a Ph.D. program and the relatively weak prospects of many humanities/social science Ph.D.s. Yeah, it's fun, but you pay for that fun in many ways. Truly excellent students? I try to encourage them to think about primary and secondary education as careers; yeah, some of the issues are the same, but the pool of jobs is larger, and the more really good primary and secondary teachers we turn out the easier our jobs get as college teachers.

When I was in graduate school, the department sometimes asked me to show a prospective student around, or put them up. I had a perfect track record: no student I talked to ever came to our department. Nor has any undergraduate student I mentored gone on to graduate school in history, yet (one might, but then I think she might succeed, too).

The liberal studies thing is a different issue: see the next post....