The following letter was published in Inside Higher Ed:
I’ve been doing research on how to become a professor, and I’ve stumbled across your blog. I’m almost done with a B.S. in Astrophysics, and I know I essentially need a PhD in order to have a real chance to be hired at any college/university. My main concern is that when I finish my PhD in a few years, there won’t be any jobs at a community college (currently my goal, as I love my tutoring job more than I believe I will ever love research) that will hire a white male physicist with no post-doc, and a degree from a school barely in the top 50. And if I do land a job, how much ‘playing the game’, as my IT major roommate put it, do I have to do? Is it purely based on how well I teach, or is there a degree of sucking up to the boss and being ‘overtly sophisticated at a luncheon’, as an example of how my roommate explained he would have to play the game is his field. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not asking if I can be a jerk and expect to keep my job. I just want to know how to get a job as a CC professor and keep it.
My friendly advice: just grow the fuck up, you little fool. Any other suggestions are welcome.
Clarissa's Blog 
Harsh, but to the point 🙂
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At least, one person agrees. 🙂 I was starting to feel very misunderstood. 🙂
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Well, I can name at least one potential graduate supervisor in astrophysics with whom he would get along famously. The kind of guy who values employability above education.
Also, he feels that there’s a shortage of white males in college physics faculties? Really?
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Excuse me, what? A person who is worried about employment in this economy is a little fool who needs to grow up? I’d say he’s a great deal more grown up than people who revel in the ecstasy of their ‘pure’ pursuit of knowledge, unpolluted by worldly concerns.
I personally find this man distasteful — because I am one of those pure pursuit types myself — but at least I’m mature enough to realise that people might have different motivations from mine in the same sphere of experience, and that this is all right.
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It’s the “white male physicist” part that I find distasteful. I hate this “white males are the most oppressed group in society” mentality. If the idiot seriously thinks that the field of physics is overrun by women of color, he should visit an optometrist urgently.
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Or women in general. I got honest surprise from the guy in charge of rooming for the conference because I’m a girl. It was like he’d never thought girls actually existed, let alone in the physics department.
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My advice would be. : If you do not truly love research, do not do a PhD. You will be miserable, and so will your advisor. A PhD in the US takes a loooong time. In that time, you could do all sorts of things more interesting to you, for example a second degree in psychology or whatever could help you with teaching, if that is your goal, or earn some extra money, or in general find out more about what you truly want to do in life. Life is too short to start in a direction that you do not find interesting just for some vague future goal that you might later find out you don’t even like. I think every step of the way should be in some way fun for you, then you will be most successful, learn the most and in general have a better life.
Btw, are there professorships at community college? Do they entail any research? All I know about community college is from the ‘community’ TV series… 🙂
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He just has no clue at all. He doesn’t even have the research skills to know what a PhD entails. He should get a Master’s first, at the very least, and try to be a high school teacher or something.
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Why has he already decided he will do a PhD, but will (apparently under no circumstances) do a postdoc?
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I wouldn’t do a postdoc under any circumstances, but I’m in the Humanities where postdocs have no value other than to exploit people. In the sciences, postdocs do serve an important purpose.
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“In the sciences, postdocs do serve an important purpose.”
Which purpose is that?
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All I know about it comes from my friends in the sciences, of course. They say that it really helps to assist a scholar on an important project because you learn a lot, get publications out of it, acquire practical skills. And the important scholar in question gets people to work in hir lab. Many research in the sciences are collective. In the Humanities, however, almost none are. hence, the difference in the use of postdocs.
I don’t insist on any of this, however. I’d be very interested in hearing different opinions.
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I’ve heard that it can also help build up experience for an academic position.
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This person should be strongly discouraged from pursuing a PhD in physics. Even if he manages to make it as a professor, the world will be much better off without a community college prof with his attitude.
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