Another one for the clipping file...

A Tale of Graduate School Burnout

A Tale of Graduate School Burnout------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contents:* The First Year* MA Exams* The Quichua Incident* Teaching* Leaving* Analysis* Documentation

I wrote what is on this page in order to clear my mind, during and after the process of leaving graduate school. I wrote it because I was angry and mournful and hurting, and I hoped that writing would help me sort myself out. (It did help, quite a lot.) More than anything else, I wanted to understand my experience better. I was frankly glad to be leaving graduate school, because it damaged my health and my abilities and possibly my character, but I still grieve over feeling the need to go. It's very easy to blame myself, believe that if I had been stronger or smarter or stubborner I would have made it without cracking. I expect that it will be easy for many who read this to blame me. I accept that, as I accepted it without comment when my own father did it.

Why I decided to put it on a website is not as clear to me, but I will try to explain. I was told by the psychologist who helped me out of graduate-school-induced depression that he saw a crusader mentality in me; I expect more justice out of the world than the world can provide, and I get very angry when I believe the world has failed to be just. I think he's right, but I don't think that's the whole story.

When I first considered putting this on the Web, the motivation was about 60% anger and 40% a desire to help other people in situations similar to mine.

Graduate school can be a very isolating experience, and failing graduate school is worse; failures are pariahs, often because those who aren't failing are justly terrified of failure and need to believe that they are different from those who fail.My anger isn't gone, but it is fading. I do still want to help. I'm not happy with the information and suggestions available for people considering graduate school. I'm not happy with the lack of support given to many graduate students. I am especially not happy with the practically universal attitude in academia that 100% of the responsibility for a graduate student's success belongs to the graduate student, as if the environment that student enters were totally irrelevant. And I am not happy with the complete information void and the hurtful and false assumptions that surround the ex-graduate-student. If I can add a new and different voice to the discourse, I want to...