Now I know the phrase “it gets better” is used by certain movements as a sort of rallying cry, so if you’re from one of those communities, I apologize for the use of the phrase, but I wanted to express this as it was spoken to me, and that’s the exact phrase people use. I’ve been told, numerous times in my academic career by various advisors and mentors, that “it gets better.” This is in strong contrast to the “enjoy having free time now” (I never did– not sure what free time that was), but often people talked about how it got better in grad school when you could focus on one thing. Then better it would be to be the PhD student, no longer an MA. Better after classwork as a PhD student, I was told. Better after exams because you can focus. Better after your prospectus because you know the project. Better after a chapter is done because it’s hardest to start. Better after there’s a full draft. Better after the defense. Better after revisions. Better after the ceremony and the hooding (skipped that). Better after your first job interview. Better after you get a job. Better after your first semester. After your first year. Once you start to work toward tenure. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I hate to be splash of cold water in the face, but if you’re an academic, particularly one who isn’t white, male and studying something super standard that other white males will defend you as you do, it is NOT going to get better. It’s going to get worse.
For example, let me go back to that passage above. As an undergrad, I was one of if not the best student in every class I took. But many of those classes were things like anatomy, or French, or skull-numbing lit classes like “Chaucer.” I was told it’d get better when I started grad studies. Then in my MA program, I had to take several equally boring lit grad seminars because English departments are actually Literature programs with gloves on to hide the paper cuts on their fingers. I went into a PhD at a school where the rhetoric program wasn’t in the English department, but it turns out you cannot remove the politics and the misc. problems by moving out of an English department when the first professor in your first class doesn’t think digital scholarship is a thing. So then you survive a mix of amazing and lackluster classes to come to an exam moment that is supposed to be better. But if you don’t magically understand the instructions that aren’t really the instructions you’re given that will be hell (hint to anyone in a PhD program in rhetoric: your advisors will tell you otherwise, but you’re writing responses to your exams that should be journal article manuscripts. Do not try to use it as a learning moment, because that’s not what it is at all, and you’ll be happier if you don’t take a risk and instead write something from your base understanding that could see print one day). The prospectus will be better, if by better you’re looking forward to several people making sure that any original frame you have for you research is trimmed back to something you can make a lit review from the field to completely support. Then the dissertation… just don’t even get me started.
The job search is not better. Anyone who says looking for a job is better is insane. The job market is like being shoved naked into a wood chipper and having to come out on the other side in a tux singing Tubthumping by Chumawamba.
At your first job no one will mentor you because all the people who realize you need a mentor are too busy trying to get tenure and all the people who should be mentoring people like you will be too busy not caring and reading about Chaucer. He’s hot in the streets again, I guess.
And don’t even think about going “starter job” and trying to look for something while you’re doing your first job. Somehow people do it, but it’s not “better.” I tried to do it, and it almost killed me, probably because unlike other young people I knew trying to climb into a better job from their first position I actually wanted to do my job well. And that’s not going to be a real option if you’re doing a national job search. Because unless you are one of the lucky few, your first job is going to be at least 3/3, probably4/4 or even 5/5. And that won’t be one prep.
Then once you get your feet under you, you’ll get to fight for your right to be part of a faculty. In some fashion– mileage varies. That will not be better, because you think it’ll be the first time in your career that it’s actually about you. The dissertation was supposed to be about you, but it wasn’t. It was about gatekeeping and opening the door. And hiring you was about an empty slot a faculty thought it could sustain a person shaped like you within. When it’s time to review you on your merits, it should be the time that it gets better and you get evaluated fairly.
Only that moment is about the politics of the department, what you teach, how many other people teach what you teach, and it might come down to the impossible dream of hiring another person who wants to research and teach Chaucer should you not be hired.
So that’s almost 1000 words on how bad it is.
I must hate it, right?
No. I love my job. I didn’t like the times it was supposedly going to get better and didn’t, but I love my job. And I’m not THAT mad even at the Chaucer loving people referenced above (maybe still to this day at the undergrad professor who broke my 4.0 with an A- not because of merits but because he wanted to “teach me a lesson” and subjectively thought my Old English accent didn’t show “proper enthusiasm”).
Because I’ll tell you a secret:
I’m not one of the people who came from a family where my parents were doctors, lawyers or professors. I am not a legacy, not a third or fourth generation scholar. I am not a person who had the hard time choosing between the ski trip and the exchange trip over spring break. I haven’t ever been the person who just had to wait and something amazing was going to happen.
I’m the guy who had to figure out how to find enough money to put gas in the car to commute to class. I’m the guy who had to find a place to live on a week’s notice because his step-father didn’t keep up the payments he said he was making and he got evicted. I’m the guy who had to take an extra student loan to not leave his PhD program because he was on fellowship but couldn’t pay his rent after having to cover the expenses of moving.
Life has happened to me. It’s been beautiful and it’s been horrible. I’ve had glorious moments and I’ve had moments that were absolutely gut-wrenching.
I know it doesn’t get better. Claiming it gets better is a foolish notion. It’s like when someone claims their computer broke itself. No, it didn’t. You broke it, even if you didn’t mean to. Don’t confused causality with intent. You have to own some agency in this life.
Things won’t GET better. I mean honestly, they could, in the same way I could roll a 20 on a d20. But I can roll a 1, too, which would be the cosmic version of sliding on a patch of ice and busting your hip (did that once). But the natural state of things isn’t to just get better magically through time.
You MAKE things better.
And you don’t make things better by waiting for the moment when they’re going to get better. There isn’t a save point where suddenly you’ve arrived in “betterville.” You make things better right now by doing what you can.
So if you’re waiting for it to get better, sorry to tell you, but it’s not going to get better. Life isn’t a form of the cold virus. You can’t just drink warm liquids, get rest, and it’ll magically get better.
You can make it better.
But you’re going to have to do the work.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.