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芝加哥学术生涯规划-第二章芝加哥学术生涯规划 原文 Entering Graduate School A chapter from The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career: A Portable Mentor for Scholars from Graduate School through Tenure by John A. Goldsmith, John Komlos, and Penny Schine Gold What is graduate school really ...

芝加哥学术生涯规划-第二章
芝加哥学术生涯规划 原文 Entering Graduate School A chapter from The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career: A Portable Mentor for Scholars from Graduate School through Tenure by John A. Goldsmith, John Komlos, and Penny Schine Gold What is graduate school really all about? John Goldsmith: I would say that the most important fact to bear in mind is that, in general, the purposes of graduate school and of undergraduate studies could hardly be more different. A college education—in the United States, at least—is aimed at providing a general education, a liberal education, even if the choice of a major subject does allow some degree of specialization. In contrast, graduate education is aimed at creating a professional. When I use the term "professional," of course, I am not using it in the most familiar way. The term is generally used in relation to disciplines such as law, medicine, and business. The schools in these disciplines provide specific training along what are generally well established lines, bringing the student to the point where she may, in most of the cases, pass a standardized examination, such as the bar exam or the medical boards. The professional schools do not require students to write a dissertation or engage in individual research efforts—those hallmarks of graduate education in a research university. Yet it is still true that graduate education is aimed at forming a particular type of professional: a professional researcher. There are some important things to say about this. The most significant of all is that this kind of intellectual formation has relatively little to do with passing on specific information. Oh, it is true that all educators make similar claims: they are not teaching specific things, but rather how to learn; still, this is nowhere as clear as in graduate school. Alas, the graduate research environment is not structured so as to be the training ground for the most extraordinary minds either. There are too few of them to justify (or help shape, for that matter) the enormous institutions that we are talking about. No, graduate education is about training graduate students to become researchers (and to some extent, teachers) in a research environment, within a specific intellectual tradition. Psychologists create new psychologists; linguists create new linguists; musicologists create new musicologists. Penny Gold: Let me give an example of what we mean by "professional training." In my very first term of graduate school, I registered for a course called "Medieval Biography." I was happily anticipating learning about a variety of medieval people, their lives, and their thoughts. Instead, each student picked one medieval author and then tracked all existing manuscripts and published editions of this person's work. I chose Einhard, the ninth-century biographer of Charlemagne, and spent hours and hours in the stacks of the Stanford and Berkeley libraries, pulling down very dusty volumes that catalogued manuscript collections across Europe and using various bibliographical tools to find all existing editions. (Some of this would be easier now because of computers.) I found this enormously tedious and complained throughout the term. I wanted to be learning about Einhard and Charlemagne, not about his manuscripts! By the time I began my dissertation research a couple of years later, I finally appreciated the research skills I had developed in this course. Another example was a graduate colloquium in "Renaissance and Reformation History," in which the entire reading list was recent scholarship, with not one primary source text from the period itself. This relates to the issue of what is being taught in graduate school. It is certainly true that the foundation of graduate training is training in a method of analysis, whether that be historical, linguistic, economic, or some other method. Yet there is also a great deal of specific information that must be learned, as one is expected to very rapidly become knowledgeable about "what is being done in the field"—hence, the focus on reading the scholarship of others in many graduate school courses. It is also such stuff (masses of it) that one is tested on in the oral or qualifying examinations that are the gateway to beginning on one's own doctoral research. In fact, one of the challenges of life after graduate school is to keep on top of the ever-changing scholarship in one's field when one doesn't have the concentrated time to do this that one does in graduate school. John Komlos: While undergraduate education concentrates, in the main, on learning a body of knowledge in a wide range of fields, graduate school is essentially about exploring the frontiers of knowledge in a particular field. Hence, the latter is an extension of the former, but differs from it greatly. Being on the frontiers of scholarship (like its geographic counterpart in early American history) is not always a comfortable experience. There are no guideposts to tell you which path to take. Can you offer any advice for the person who is seriously thinking about entering graduate school? John Komlos: Yes, indeed. A very good rule is that you should be excited about the field you choose. This is most important! Do you really want to find out how the economy or society works? Are you curious about Stone Age cultures? Are you really deeply interested in the questions economists or sociologists or anthropologists are asking and the answers they are supplying? If not, you should seriously question whether these are the right career paths for you. By the time you contemplate entering graduate school, you should have your goals well sorted out. The American undergraduate education allows, even encourages, a great deal of searching by trial and error. Flexibility is its strength, but at the same time, it places an immense amount of responsibility on the individual student to build a program that makes sense in terms of her intellectual development. By the end of your undergraduate education, you should have a good idea of what you want out of life. Is academia attractive to you? If you are still unsure, you must talk to people whom you respect and whose judgment you trust as much as, or more than, your own. Bear in mind also that genuine introspection helps a great deal. However, as long as you feel uncertain, you should delay making a commitment. Premature decisions often mean excessive risk taking, and the chances are high that you will not be making optimal use of your time or talents. The point is that graduate school is much too challenging an experience for you to go through if your interest in the subject is merely peripheral. Halfhearted commitments won't work out very well. You have to find the field of your choice stimulating in order to come out of the process unscathed. Otherwise, the chances are good that you will be frustrated and disappointed. If you have not done well academically, it would be foolhardy to think seriously about continuing in graduate school. If you are making plans to enter a graduate program, you should prepare yourself well in advance in the basic prerequisites of the specialization you have chosen. If you want to be an economist, for example, make sure that you have the needed mathematical background. Obviously, the sooner you decide, the sooner you can start working on the subjects that will be important to you in graduate school. It would be very helpful if you spent some time working for a professor in the field you are considering. As an undergraduate research assistant, you can begin to learn what the field looks like from within. John Goldsmith: I'd like to second that. Oddly enough, students who are considering entering an academic profession often have little idea of what they're getting into. In most cases, they are coming straight out of college, where they were able to take college-level courses in some areas and do some additional reading in other areas. They as likely as not had no real contact with faculty researchers and as likely as not did not attend a university with any significant number of researchers. In a few cases, they may even choose a graduate specialization entirely on the basis of reading, never having taken a single course in that area. This is true, for example, in my area, linguistics, where students often come from language or psychology backgrounds. And yet, as John said, a most important precondition for a graduate education to work out well is that the student must love the discipline. How do you know if this describes you? Utterly reliable criteria are hard to establish, but I'd look for a deep and enduring interest in and fascination for the subject, the profession, and its literature. It is surprising how often this condition is not met! Students may (so to speak) wander into graduate school in a specific discipline, take a year or two of courses (or more), and not be at all sure of the correctness of their choice. Still, inertia, the time and money invested, and the fear of losing face all push the students on, often propelling them to the point of writing a dissertation, or even beyond. Yet as the student moves further along in the education process, she will find that there is less and less personal support and that the hurdles rise higher and higher, with longer periods between moments of reward and relaxation. (This trend continues, of course, when the student moves into faculty status.) Without a strong emotional attachment to the field—simply feeling fascinated by what one is doing—this difficult task becomes no more than a long-term commitment to masochism. Loving the field means that the hard work is its own reward. John Komlos: Moreover, I would suggest that the student seek advice, again and again. Penny Gold: I'd like to interject here some advice about advice—who and what to ask: To professors who know your work well: Do you think graduate school, in this particular field, would be a good choice, given my level and kinds of talents? Do you think I would have a contribution to make? To professors in your field who have completed graduate school within the last five years or so: What are the current issues in the field? Where do you see the field going? What is graduate school like these days? To these and any other professors whom you admire or whom you might aspire to be like: Are you glad you became a professor? What are the best things about life in academia? What are the most difficult or troubling things? To graduates of your own college or university who are now in graduate school in a field close to yours or who have recently obtained jobs (your undergraduate teachers, the Career/Placement Center, and/or the alumni office should be able to give you names and addresses): How have you found the graduate school experience? Did you find that you were well prepared for the program you entered? Is there any advice you wish you'd had before entering graduate school? John Komlos: As with any other important decision, you should continually question and rethink this one as well. After all, it will have an enormous (and generally irreversible) impact on the rest of your life. By making this choice, you have in many respects chosen a lifestyle. If you're entering graduate school, you are about to invest several years of intense effort, often resulting in a considerable financial burden. So it behooves you to take the decision very, very seriously. New information may become available that might be put into the decision-making equation. Did you make the right choice after all? Are you as prepared for graduate school as you had thought you were? Do you still find the field as exciting as before? Do you actually have the skills, intuition, and talent you thought you had? If you can identify some marked deficiencies, how long would it take to overcome them? For example, how long will it take you to learn another language? Do you write well? Depending on the rigors of your education so far, you may still not have perfected the art of written communication, even in your native language. You can teach yourself, of course, but it is best done before you enter graduate school. Obviously, the sooner you sort out these issues the better. You might also consider if your motivations are sound. What are the rewards in the field you are considering? What is the ratio of pecuniary to nonpecuniary rewards you can expect? Is that mix about right for you? Try to avoid establishing potentially conflicting goals, such as rising to the upper end of the academic salary range while teaching in the humanities. Original research requires much self-reliance, perseverance, and intelligence as well as creativity. You also need self-discipline to complete the monotonous tasks that inevitably accompany even the most exciting research project. Do you have enough of these qualities to succeed? Self-questioning is, of course, an important quality to nurture in yourself, but it certainly requires practice to be effective. One cannot develop such critical skills overnight. Do you know yourself well enough? Are you practicing self-deception without even knowing it? Are you able to judge yourself without making excuses? Do you rationalize your mistakes, so you cannot learn from them? You can improve your forecasts about yourself by consciously updating your information set periodically. How have you erred in the past, and what can you learn from these errors about your true abilities and about your expectations? Are the goals you are about to set for yourself reasonable in light of your past performance? Are you getting closer to formulating a reasonable strategy for solving problems? If, for example, you have a tendency to start projects without finishing them, it is much better to acknowledge this attribute than to make excuses about why this is the case and externalizing blame. Disregarding that trait in yourself is a big mistake, one that may cost you dearly later. How can you use that information to predict your ability to succeed in a Ph.D. program? First, take that information into account, and then work on improving your predictive ability by searching for answers as to why your actions fall into a particular pattern and just how these mistakes are changeable. Just what is it that makes it so difficult for you to complete a project? Once you are able to finish some tasks ahead of schedule, you can be more certain that, with some probability, you can actually complete a particular goal you set for yourself in the allotted time. In other words, you should not be making systematic errors about your abilities or about your performance. If your mistakes are systematic, the chances are you are disregarding some significant information available to you. I'll make this point yet another way because I think it is crucial for success. I believe that mistakes are OK, in general. They simply cannot be avoided, and if you are not making enough mistakes, it might well mean that you are not challenging yourself sufficiently to find out where your limits are. The real problems arise if you do not learn from the mistakes already committed. That can happen for many reasons. You might tend to put the blame on others, or else you might be so used to making these mistakes that you fail to see the patterns in your own behavior. Your mistakes might also be self-reinforcing. Perhaps underneath it all, you really do not want to reach the goal you set for yourself. Perhaps you let others set your goal for you. Perhaps you are just plain afraid of success. Though the reasons may be many and complex, the consequence is simple: if you continue along that path, you can systematically get farther and farther away from where you want to be. So make an effort to recognize your mistakes; try to face them squarely and explore the systematic reasons for your doing them, including flaws in your own thinking and in the assumptions you are making reflexively without thinking them over, and make a conscious effort to avoid the same mistakes in the future. I know that it is easier said than done, but you will find that practice does help. And another thing: do not forget that your personal life should be in congruity with your current aspirations. If you are married, it is imperative that your spouse/partner fully support your going to graduate school. Otherwise, you will have too many frictions with which to cope, in addition to the tribulations encountered in your daily work. Your career choice will also put requirements on your spouse/partner, inasmuch as your obligations will limit your social life, including your ability to maintain contact with relatives, clubs, organizations, or friends to the extent you did before. You should be prepared for these changes in your life. In addition, you will probably feel a certain amount of financial insecurity unless you are independently wealthy or are married to an employed spouse. Because the financial constraints could affect your peace of mind—and, therefore, your performance in school—I advise graduate students to earn some money during summers. In some fields, such as law, this comes automatically, since internships are common, but in other fields, it is less easy to do so. I particularly recommend nontraditional kinds of employment. Open a business preparing tax returns, for example, if you have the aptitude for it. Buy a house and renovate it. You are smarter than average, so use some of your talents to make a little profit. If you can do so, you will not be completely at the mercy of the academic job market. John Goldsmith: I think people's social experience probably varies widely. Surely academics are about as social and hospitable as people in other walks of life! There are forces at work that encourage people who work in, say, linguistics to socialize with other linguists, and I think that these forces are much stronger for some reason early on in a person's career than they are subsequently. How should one go about choosing a graduate school? John Komlos: Of course, most people will apply to several universities, and it is important to do so in order to test the market. You may have certain notions about your qualifications, but how do they look on paper? How do they compare to those of others? How do others perceive them? There is no reason to assume that you will not be accepted into a particular program simply because you do not have excellent grades in the field. You might have other qualities that can compensate any deficiencies in your grade point average. Good GRE scores, for example, do help. Different departments weigh these various components of your record differently. In addition, departments vary on their standards for admission. Some are strict, feeling that by admitting a student, they make an implicit commitment to her that she has a fair chance of completing the program. Other equally good programs might take a more relaxed, laissez-faire attitude with respect to admissions, thinking that students have inside information on their abilities and should be given a chance to prove themselves, even if their record up to then was not impeccable. Students, they believe, will be weeded out in due course anyhow, by various filters the department has instituted, if they are not really qualified to do graduate work. These idiosyncratic philosophies will not be spelled out in black and white in the departmental manuals. So you should cast your application net widely. In addition to some safe bets, you should try some unlikely possibilities. More choices ought to be preferred to less. The good news is that practically everyone (87 percent, to be precise) who applies to an advanced-degree program gets at least one acceptance, and that means that you should have no problem getting into graduate school. You just need to seek out the right program for your set of abilities. John Goldsmith: In sm
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