This is such an important topic, thank you for writing this! I just finished my PhD last spring (Early Modern European history, women & gender) and managed to do all the things to make my CV competitive - the presentations and grants and distinction, a pub forthcoming, plenty of encouraging comments from my advisors. A job cycle later, no interviews or prospects to show for it.
I don’t regret doing the PhD, because I’m obsessed with the work itself and feel so lucky to have devoted a chunk of my life to it. But I’m glad to see you’re considering potential routes out of academia for when you reach the other side - as much as academics don’t want to talk about it, it’s essential to be prepared to continue the work in a different way. I’m only now starting to chart a path forward as an independent scholar, and I too am finding so much inspiration and a glimmer of hope from the Substack community.
I appreciate this post so much. Just because there’s not nearly enough academic jobs doesn’t mean that our continued research will be any less valuable.
Thank you so much for this! I’m a Victorianist/19th century person (British and American lit) and I have been working at an academic library as a marketing specialist, which I recommend because it gives me access to databases and books. It’s a great place to be because even when my job is boring, I can escape to the stacks for a minute and find something great to read.
But I really appreciate your take, because it is one I have thought of many times. Many well-intentioned writers about this topic just approach it as an individual problem rooted in the genre of melodrama (the sad stories of people who couldn’t live out their dreams!), but the way you approach it here is more an institutional problem, which is the way I think we should look at it. The reality is that when many, many individuals are not getting jobs in the humanities, well, that adds up to those fields kinda dying, as you point out. And it also means that many of the ways we treat scholars don’t make any sense for the vast majority of people doing scholarly work. Essentially, we have a system that works well for like 3 people, and the rest of us just have to kind of pretend that we are no different from those 3 people or risk not being welcomed into those spaces. What would it mean for conferences and professional societies to run as if everyone at them/in them did not have institutional affiliations? What would it mean for scholarly publishing to start grappling with that reality? A recent example I have of this is how I was doing reviewing work for an award as part of a scholarly society I’m in. Those of us doing the reviews are a mix of tenure track and non-academic folks, but the committee structure still kind of assumes that we all have the time and access to read five monographs in a couple weeks and review them. This is not to mention the fact that I contemplating giving awards to people who are doing what I cannot find the time to do—write a book. It feels a bit like working at a restaurant I can’t afford to eat at! Anyway, I appreciate your take to no end! It is just nice to see some acknowledging the realities here!!
thank you so much for writing such a long, cool and interesting comment. you’re so right that all the conversation i/we see about this is about individuals being or not being special enough, achieving or not achieving their childhood dreams. it’s so easy to slip into that mode and i am absolutely not immune to it. i could write ten elegies to the tolkien-esque professorial life i wish i was good enough for, and i have written that and i will write that again. there’s so much there that isn’t about individuals though and a lot of academia commentary falls into a hole of evaluating individuals’ specialness that we can’t get out of to talk about the actual landscape as a whole.
I agree! I also have written and thought about the issue that way! I think for those of us who actually have that experience of having to move out of a discipline we love (at least in an institutional sense) it makes total sense! My big issue is when folks who actually have academic jobs seem to not realize that this reality affects them too—like, it’s all of our fields that are dying! But reading this was very exciting for me for real. I’ve been trying to write about being in this weird academic in-between space, and also in a place where the universities are being systemically destroyed (the US south). So it’s just so exciting to see someone else talking about similar stuff!
Oh dear, I hear you! I'm a few years further on than you: I did my postgrad studies in Paris, in English and French literature. Aced the qualifying exams, got the PhD funding, presented at conferences, helped organise conferences, taught classes and seminars, contributed to publications (a little bit), and was awarded my doctorate with honours. And it was great in some ways, horrible in others. And at the end of it all? No jobs. I did everything I was supposed to, and in fields that are not exactly obscure (British, Irish, and French 19th-20th century literature)... But that year, there wasn't a single job I could even get an interview for (nothing in my field). And I *could* have waited around for five or six years, reapplying every year, just as I saw my friends do, only to be turned down in favour of someone who had played the department politics better... But I had a young family and needed an actual job. I became a school teacher. These days, I cobble together teaching in uni and schools, doing creative English workshops at home, writing and publishing. Still a struggle to make ends meet. But unlike Medieval Studies, where I think scholarship is the only way to preserve and promote that whole wealth of culture and literature, my academic field is glutted with bollocks. I still research and write, but I'm not at all interested in academic publishing. Who would be? It's a bunch of intellectual snobs talking only to themselves. They care nothing for the audience, only the prestige. I'll have none of it. (Caveat: of course there are brilliant vibrant scholars in all fields - I know many, and love and admire them. I just cannot. I do love teaching though!)
I totally feel you about needing an ‘actual job’. Whenever anyone says to me ‘there are ways to manage if it if it’s your dream!!’ I’m just open mouthed. I’m nearly 30 already, I have to turn up at friends’ weddings and spend money on respectable presents, I have a partner, I have a pet to feed, I moved back in with my parents twice in my twenties and I can’t do it again
I think you're right to be hopeful about the future of independent scholarship though. There's never been a better time for it! (unless you were a Victorian Gentleman Amateur with an independent income or a cushy "living" as a vicar... And sadly, these positions are harder to find than even they once were!)
Emily, I love this! I’ve dreamed of grad school in my days since university, but I live in the Philippines and there are so many material hurdles… First of all, the lack of diversity in available grad programs here would require I leave the country - and my community behind. That plus the immense costs has made it an increasingly unlikely option for me.
I’ve had to self-direct my studies, but like you said, it can be so frustrating! Our bookstore selections are thin and our only libraries are university-exclusive. I didnt think I would desire structure and mentorship so much 😅
It’s made me really passionate about nonformal educational spaces. Recently I joined one such workshop run by a university professor who felt it was urgent to provide more resources outside of the ivory tower. And to your point - it has accelerated my learning. What I learned in one session equaled months of self-direction 😂
For all its limitations, one thing that makes me excited about our educational landscape here is the emergence of many nonformal educational spaces! There’s a lot of resource-sharing and discipline-blending going on. I dont think it assures expertise or the deepening of knowledge bodies, but it does make for very interesting learning environments. We’ll see how it evolves!
Thanks again for your piece - I agree, we should talk more about unconventional learning spaces!
This is so fascinating for me to read! I know so little about higher education in the philippines. paying for books to study on your own is so hard. i’ve just had a taste of it in my ‘gap year’ between my masters and phd and it’s so expensive and painful.
Something I could have written more about but didn’t want to because I have no personal experience of it is the requirement a lot of people face to leave their country (or go to the other end of it) to study something. I know a lot of international students in the UK who’ve had a wonderful time and really loved it but it’s so much work, so much money, so much potential isolation and culture barriers and leaving so much behind. Studying abroad is awesome for people who want to do it but it’s just not workable to ask it of people en masse with no way of staying at home. I’m so lucky I live in London where there’s a lot I can access near my workplace. I’ve had people tell me ‘you really ought to go to America’ and it’s just, like, sure jan i’ll abandon my partner, my pet and my family and go off to america, with what money, with what job, with what visa
Emily, this resonates with me so deeply. I feel like I’ve “given up” on academia to pursue a career as an attorney. I’m in between having made that decision and law school applications, so I’m trying to read lots and figure out how to keep learning about the things I love while having a career outside of academia. I have a friend who is in a similar position (she’s a classicist, I an eighteenth-centuryist) and I’m going to point her to your substack :)
Also, what is this book club you speak of??? Where do I find one???
There’s read-and-discuss-in-real-time project to read Clarissa by Richardson on all the dates the letters are dated being run by CUNY. they have zoom reading group meetings anyone can join and the people who run it are super welcoming and nice, and then people from all different corners of literary studies can contribute newsletter issues at different points through the read. as an eighteenth century specialist you’d probably be way more at home there than me! It’s called @Clarissa 2025
Dude. I wrote my honors thesis on Jane Austen and Samuel Richardson. It was all of Jane Austen’s works but only Pamela by Richardson because Clarissa is too damn long. I will for sure look into this! Thank you!! 🩷
I truly enjoyed your piece, and I wanted to say: you are exceedingly wise. It's over twenty years since I began my PhD, in Old and Middle English Language and Literature, and I only come to your realisations about the realities of the job market until after I was done, and had struggled to find a foothold in academia for a year or so. It was a crushing blow to me, mentally. So, for you to already know the value of your PhD - to hold your thesis, to connect with students while you can, to have *done the work* - all I can say is, you're more astute than I ever was. I wish you luck. I would not change a single thing about my PhD or my experience, and I wish you that same sense of satisfaction and achievement. Thanks so much for your work.
I feel quite lucky to be starting this degree age twenty nine and after having worked adjacent to university policy for a lot of years - I spend eight hours a day understanding exactly what the funding landscape is looking like and what it’s doing to people all around me. People always say ‘How can you know all that and still want to do it’ and its a hard one to answer - I just love the content of the work and want to be here however I can. Truthfully I’m sure I will be a bit crushed when I finish and there’s no path to becoming Tolkien at the end of it, there’s a little bit inside me that I can’t quite eradicate that says ‘what if it really did happen for you though?’ and I’m gonna have to deal with that when I finish
i can put some more organised thought into this later but the first one that comes to mind is @zombie grrrl ⚔️ - it’s not exclusively medievalist but her close reading of jeff buckley lyrics and old english elegies lives rent free in my head forever and ever https://substack.com/@zombiegirlzine/p-155622860
I finished a degree with the Open University last year, so it was heavily scaffolded but distance learning and required a huge amount of discipline. I have been thinking about doing a masters but I think I have come to the conclusion I just want to keep learning. My intention was never to go into academia, I did the degree just because I felt under-educated and that I needed a kick in the bum to get my brain going so there is no real reason for me to worry about a formal system but it would be great to have the guidance, like the say it can be like floundering in a dark forest, or even like being a bee, flower to flower, never settling just going ‘ooo that’s interesting ‘ and moving on. Not going into any depth with everything is fine but doing it with nothing isn’t particularly satisfying.
I have so much respect for the open university and everyone who studies with them - it’s an amazing institution. You’re so right with what you say about direction, there are a lot of people who don’t want or need a career as a professor but would love to have more structure and direction than reading on their own. It’s a pity there are so few in-between spaces
Hi Emily, I deeply enjoyed this piece. I have been out of academia for 10 years now (I only did a BA in history and english lit) but am still incredibly curious about these topics. I am lucky to work as a library assistant at a university library which means I get full library privileges and can explore my interests generally without a charge.
Your comments about how academics view independent scholars is really interesting. As a library assistant much of the older tenured faculty tend to view us as uneducated dolts but many of my colleagues hold masters degrees and we all still like to read deeply and discuss the topics that interest us (for me its medieval and early modern women among other topics). I have noticed that newer faculty/contract instructors tend to treat us as regular people and are incredibly kind.
I have also witnessed first hand how academics treat independent scholars. One of my best friends is THE expert on the queer history of our province and they have co-authored a book and numerous articles on the subject but because they do not have an advanced degree many academics attached to a university do not always view them as the expert they are.
Your thoughts about the cost of advanced degrees also really resonated with me. One of the perks of working at my university is we can audit 2 courses a year for free and we get half off tuition. I have toyed with the idea of doing a masters here but what is preventing me is A) neither the English or History departments focuses here align with my personal interests and B) even with half off tuition and a job that will let me study part time the cost on my university staff salary is still too much!
All this to say I will continue to be an independent studier and I hope to come across the kind of discussion groups you mentioned to be able to learn and engage with others.
As a fellow humanities student, specificly in the realm of engish education (but my interests lies in african/caribbean women and gender literature) your essay really hit hard for me. My first interest in college education was literature and I wanted to study it for the rest of my life, yet despite my teachers encouraging me to do so in high school, I am nowhere near wealthy and the career market for it wasn't something I was interested in. Thank God and the universe I found and fell in love with education and the stars aligned with me becoming an educator but I am not blind to the fact that many HBCU's funding for humanities, especially education, is being attacked and underfunded. Without the professors who genuinely fight for me and my field of study, we would have fallen victim to the broken model of creating teachers who care not about the humans they are teaching but the robots they are "meant" to create (thank you Horace Mann). The opporutinity for me to explore digital humanities and continue the educational path is turly a gift and a privilege not many students nor people have, especially in America where being able to go to a good college ( not an IVY but a college that cares about each of its deparmtents) is rare and is like searching for a needle in a haystack. It wasn't easy falling into the studies that I am in and I'm thankful it aligned with my heart and soul but I know so many future teachers who are only doing so because they either felt like it aligned with their souls or because it was the only path they considered (yikes). Thank you for your honesty and heart because this post not only encourages me to fight for the accessibility of education and finding ways to bring it to all people no matter the interests but because of the genuine joy it is to learn! Learning is soooo fun and especially when it aligns with your interests, it can be life altering. I'm thankful I found a career in English Education but its not just about the surface level of education, the rich history and fight for Black Educators is something that cannot scratch the surface of what people think it to be. I hope you are able to find joy and success in furthuring your education, no matter the doubt and obsticales because your writing bleeds with passion and I truly hope it never dies out.
This is an important post. Opportunities are becoming very limited and there’s a distinct impression that Medieval studies are not worth doing. Obviously, I disagree strongly with this.
I did my MA about 20 years ago, when my daughter was tiny. It was part-time and distance learning. I received a Distinction. I only say that because I want people to know you can succeed under those circumstances. Like you, my University department, course director and supervisor all disappeared mid term, just as I had submitted. As I had written my dissertation exactly as my supervisor had recommended, I was understandably pretty upset.
I have not had the chance to continue my studies. Until now. My daughter is 24 and working and but still living with us. I have a lot of free time to read and immerse myself in my subject. However, I probably won’t do a PhD.
I think I will write a book. In that book, I will puncture many much-loved and long held beliefs about the Dark Ages. For instance, there probably wasn’t a King Arthur. However, Saxonism was a fashion rather than an invasion and there was a thriving tourist industry which took you to a hill fort, fed you royally with beef and wine and then tried to sell you jewellery while you waited for your boat home.
I can’t prove these things but I can back them up.
I really enjoyed this important post. One thing I’ve been very encouraged by is the very high-quality online classes that are now available for some areas of the humanities, where students get instruction from top scholars for a fraction of a university course. I would add one additional challenge for the independent scholar is that, apart from these online academies, it’s very hard to find a community, and so sometimes I don’t know what to do beyond reading another book on the subject. I’m actually fortunate to be in academia — for now — but I have a real passion for some topics outside of my field, and there’s nothing much to do with my interests. To me this is a real challenge that sets the life of the mind apart from other kinds of hobbies or callings.
I did two masters, one fully funded, and was so obliviously happy pouring myself into weird textual analysis and writing detective essays conclusively proving someone in a story somewhere slept with a dead body for a decade using abstract indicators of time in said story and then getting paid to write a bunch of poems about my interior weather.
But I never quite fit in. I was, for a good while, always the only out trans queer person in the room. Constantly fighting for my identity or my ability to walk into a bathroom without getting the evil eye.
Then I found myself in the adjuncting world, trying to eke out a living while all my peers published their first books, desperate to not feel bitterness at my lot in life. Had to sell out to pay the mortgage and the happiest I am day-to-day is not when I get the paycheck but when, in the evenings, I get to make a cocktail, comb through a bunch of books I assume I could read for a PhD, and take notes and think about what to write about it all. Personal PhD. I miss academia but I don’t miss that I never quite felt like I fit in anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think the situation within literature faculties has historically been different to history, which is the angle i’m coming from as all my training/practice is literature rather than history. literature departments in the UK have historically had decent (not good but decent) representation of the medieval period. perhaps the field drying up here is bringing it more in line with other disciplines and countries
Thank you so much I’m glad you liked it! Studying while a bit older, and having spent years working in a field where discussing education/research policy is a big part of the job, makes it a bit easier to go into something lke this with my eyes open. It doesn’t make me any less enthusiastic about doing the PhD but it does mean i’m not under any illusions about how it’s gonna go and what happens next
Thank you!! I don’t start until September this year but I’m having a great time settling into the research in advance and going to a bunch of events at the university
This is such an important topic, thank you for writing this! I just finished my PhD last spring (Early Modern European history, women & gender) and managed to do all the things to make my CV competitive - the presentations and grants and distinction, a pub forthcoming, plenty of encouraging comments from my advisors. A job cycle later, no interviews or prospects to show for it.
I don’t regret doing the PhD, because I’m obsessed with the work itself and feel so lucky to have devoted a chunk of my life to it. But I’m glad to see you’re considering potential routes out of academia for when you reach the other side - as much as academics don’t want to talk about it, it’s essential to be prepared to continue the work in a different way. I’m only now starting to chart a path forward as an independent scholar, and I too am finding so much inspiration and a glimmer of hope from the Substack community.
I appreciate this post so much. Just because there’s not nearly enough academic jobs doesn’t mean that our continued research will be any less valuable.
Thank you so much for this! I’m a Victorianist/19th century person (British and American lit) and I have been working at an academic library as a marketing specialist, which I recommend because it gives me access to databases and books. It’s a great place to be because even when my job is boring, I can escape to the stacks for a minute and find something great to read.
But I really appreciate your take, because it is one I have thought of many times. Many well-intentioned writers about this topic just approach it as an individual problem rooted in the genre of melodrama (the sad stories of people who couldn’t live out their dreams!), but the way you approach it here is more an institutional problem, which is the way I think we should look at it. The reality is that when many, many individuals are not getting jobs in the humanities, well, that adds up to those fields kinda dying, as you point out. And it also means that many of the ways we treat scholars don’t make any sense for the vast majority of people doing scholarly work. Essentially, we have a system that works well for like 3 people, and the rest of us just have to kind of pretend that we are no different from those 3 people or risk not being welcomed into those spaces. What would it mean for conferences and professional societies to run as if everyone at them/in them did not have institutional affiliations? What would it mean for scholarly publishing to start grappling with that reality? A recent example I have of this is how I was doing reviewing work for an award as part of a scholarly society I’m in. Those of us doing the reviews are a mix of tenure track and non-academic folks, but the committee structure still kind of assumes that we all have the time and access to read five monographs in a couple weeks and review them. This is not to mention the fact that I contemplating giving awards to people who are doing what I cannot find the time to do—write a book. It feels a bit like working at a restaurant I can’t afford to eat at! Anyway, I appreciate your take to no end! It is just nice to see some acknowledging the realities here!!
thank you so much for writing such a long, cool and interesting comment. you’re so right that all the conversation i/we see about this is about individuals being or not being special enough, achieving or not achieving their childhood dreams. it’s so easy to slip into that mode and i am absolutely not immune to it. i could write ten elegies to the tolkien-esque professorial life i wish i was good enough for, and i have written that and i will write that again. there’s so much there that isn’t about individuals though and a lot of academia commentary falls into a hole of evaluating individuals’ specialness that we can’t get out of to talk about the actual landscape as a whole.
I agree! I also have written and thought about the issue that way! I think for those of us who actually have that experience of having to move out of a discipline we love (at least in an institutional sense) it makes total sense! My big issue is when folks who actually have academic jobs seem to not realize that this reality affects them too—like, it’s all of our fields that are dying! But reading this was very exciting for me for real. I’ve been trying to write about being in this weird academic in-between space, and also in a place where the universities are being systemically destroyed (the US south). So it’s just so exciting to see someone else talking about similar stuff!
Oh dear, I hear you! I'm a few years further on than you: I did my postgrad studies in Paris, in English and French literature. Aced the qualifying exams, got the PhD funding, presented at conferences, helped organise conferences, taught classes and seminars, contributed to publications (a little bit), and was awarded my doctorate with honours. And it was great in some ways, horrible in others. And at the end of it all? No jobs. I did everything I was supposed to, and in fields that are not exactly obscure (British, Irish, and French 19th-20th century literature)... But that year, there wasn't a single job I could even get an interview for (nothing in my field). And I *could* have waited around for five or six years, reapplying every year, just as I saw my friends do, only to be turned down in favour of someone who had played the department politics better... But I had a young family and needed an actual job. I became a school teacher. These days, I cobble together teaching in uni and schools, doing creative English workshops at home, writing and publishing. Still a struggle to make ends meet. But unlike Medieval Studies, where I think scholarship is the only way to preserve and promote that whole wealth of culture and literature, my academic field is glutted with bollocks. I still research and write, but I'm not at all interested in academic publishing. Who would be? It's a bunch of intellectual snobs talking only to themselves. They care nothing for the audience, only the prestige. I'll have none of it. (Caveat: of course there are brilliant vibrant scholars in all fields - I know many, and love and admire them. I just cannot. I do love teaching though!)
I totally feel you about needing an ‘actual job’. Whenever anyone says to me ‘there are ways to manage if it if it’s your dream!!’ I’m just open mouthed. I’m nearly 30 already, I have to turn up at friends’ weddings and spend money on respectable presents, I have a partner, I have a pet to feed, I moved back in with my parents twice in my twenties and I can’t do it again
I think you're right to be hopeful about the future of independent scholarship though. There's never been a better time for it! (unless you were a Victorian Gentleman Amateur with an independent income or a cushy "living" as a vicar... And sadly, these positions are harder to find than even they once were!)
Emily, I love this! I’ve dreamed of grad school in my days since university, but I live in the Philippines and there are so many material hurdles… First of all, the lack of diversity in available grad programs here would require I leave the country - and my community behind. That plus the immense costs has made it an increasingly unlikely option for me.
I’ve had to self-direct my studies, but like you said, it can be so frustrating! Our bookstore selections are thin and our only libraries are university-exclusive. I didnt think I would desire structure and mentorship so much 😅
It’s made me really passionate about nonformal educational spaces. Recently I joined one such workshop run by a university professor who felt it was urgent to provide more resources outside of the ivory tower. And to your point - it has accelerated my learning. What I learned in one session equaled months of self-direction 😂
For all its limitations, one thing that makes me excited about our educational landscape here is the emergence of many nonformal educational spaces! There’s a lot of resource-sharing and discipline-blending going on. I dont think it assures expertise or the deepening of knowledge bodies, but it does make for very interesting learning environments. We’ll see how it evolves!
Thanks again for your piece - I agree, we should talk more about unconventional learning spaces!
This is so fascinating for me to read! I know so little about higher education in the philippines. paying for books to study on your own is so hard. i’ve just had a taste of it in my ‘gap year’ between my masters and phd and it’s so expensive and painful.
Something I could have written more about but didn’t want to because I have no personal experience of it is the requirement a lot of people face to leave their country (or go to the other end of it) to study something. I know a lot of international students in the UK who’ve had a wonderful time and really loved it but it’s so much work, so much money, so much potential isolation and culture barriers and leaving so much behind. Studying abroad is awesome for people who want to do it but it’s just not workable to ask it of people en masse with no way of staying at home. I’m so lucky I live in London where there’s a lot I can access near my workplace. I’ve had people tell me ‘you really ought to go to America’ and it’s just, like, sure jan i’ll abandon my partner, my pet and my family and go off to america, with what money, with what job, with what visa
Emily, this resonates with me so deeply. I feel like I’ve “given up” on academia to pursue a career as an attorney. I’m in between having made that decision and law school applications, so I’m trying to read lots and figure out how to keep learning about the things I love while having a career outside of academia. I have a friend who is in a similar position (she’s a classicist, I an eighteenth-centuryist) and I’m going to point her to your substack :)
Also, what is this book club you speak of??? Where do I find one???
There’s read-and-discuss-in-real-time project to read Clarissa by Richardson on all the dates the letters are dated being run by CUNY. they have zoom reading group meetings anyone can join and the people who run it are super welcoming and nice, and then people from all different corners of literary studies can contribute newsletter issues at different points through the read. as an eighteenth century specialist you’d probably be way more at home there than me! It’s called @Clarissa 2025
Dude. I wrote my honors thesis on Jane Austen and Samuel Richardson. It was all of Jane Austen’s works but only Pamela by Richardson because Clarissa is too damn long. I will for sure look into this! Thank you!! 🩷
I truly enjoyed your piece, and I wanted to say: you are exceedingly wise. It's over twenty years since I began my PhD, in Old and Middle English Language and Literature, and I only come to your realisations about the realities of the job market until after I was done, and had struggled to find a foothold in academia for a year or so. It was a crushing blow to me, mentally. So, for you to already know the value of your PhD - to hold your thesis, to connect with students while you can, to have *done the work* - all I can say is, you're more astute than I ever was. I wish you luck. I would not change a single thing about my PhD or my experience, and I wish you that same sense of satisfaction and achievement. Thanks so much for your work.
I feel quite lucky to be starting this degree age twenty nine and after having worked adjacent to university policy for a lot of years - I spend eight hours a day understanding exactly what the funding landscape is looking like and what it’s doing to people all around me. People always say ‘How can you know all that and still want to do it’ and its a hard one to answer - I just love the content of the work and want to be here however I can. Truthfully I’m sure I will be a bit crushed when I finish and there’s no path to becoming Tolkien at the end of it, there’s a little bit inside me that I can’t quite eradicate that says ‘what if it really did happen for you though?’ and I’m gonna have to deal with that when I finish
I hear you about the ‘crushing blow.’ I have to say that I think it’s so, so neat that you did a PhD in Old and Middle English!!
Thank you for writing this piece! Would you be willing to share some of the medievalist substacks you love?
i can put some more organised thought into this later but the first one that comes to mind is @zombie grrrl ⚔️ - it’s not exclusively medievalist but her close reading of jeff buckley lyrics and old english elegies lives rent free in my head forever and ever https://substack.com/@zombiegirlzine/p-155622860
thank you!!
I finished a degree with the Open University last year, so it was heavily scaffolded but distance learning and required a huge amount of discipline. I have been thinking about doing a masters but I think I have come to the conclusion I just want to keep learning. My intention was never to go into academia, I did the degree just because I felt under-educated and that I needed a kick in the bum to get my brain going so there is no real reason for me to worry about a formal system but it would be great to have the guidance, like the say it can be like floundering in a dark forest, or even like being a bee, flower to flower, never settling just going ‘ooo that’s interesting ‘ and moving on. Not going into any depth with everything is fine but doing it with nothing isn’t particularly satisfying.
I have so much respect for the open university and everyone who studies with them - it’s an amazing institution. You’re so right with what you say about direction, there are a lot of people who don’t want or need a career as a professor but would love to have more structure and direction than reading on their own. It’s a pity there are so few in-between spaces
Hi Emily, I deeply enjoyed this piece. I have been out of academia for 10 years now (I only did a BA in history and english lit) but am still incredibly curious about these topics. I am lucky to work as a library assistant at a university library which means I get full library privileges and can explore my interests generally without a charge.
Your comments about how academics view independent scholars is really interesting. As a library assistant much of the older tenured faculty tend to view us as uneducated dolts but many of my colleagues hold masters degrees and we all still like to read deeply and discuss the topics that interest us (for me its medieval and early modern women among other topics). I have noticed that newer faculty/contract instructors tend to treat us as regular people and are incredibly kind.
I have also witnessed first hand how academics treat independent scholars. One of my best friends is THE expert on the queer history of our province and they have co-authored a book and numerous articles on the subject but because they do not have an advanced degree many academics attached to a university do not always view them as the expert they are.
Your thoughts about the cost of advanced degrees also really resonated with me. One of the perks of working at my university is we can audit 2 courses a year for free and we get half off tuition. I have toyed with the idea of doing a masters here but what is preventing me is A) neither the English or History departments focuses here align with my personal interests and B) even with half off tuition and a job that will let me study part time the cost on my university staff salary is still too much!
All this to say I will continue to be an independent studier and I hope to come across the kind of discussion groups you mentioned to be able to learn and engage with others.
As a fellow humanities student, specificly in the realm of engish education (but my interests lies in african/caribbean women and gender literature) your essay really hit hard for me. My first interest in college education was literature and I wanted to study it for the rest of my life, yet despite my teachers encouraging me to do so in high school, I am nowhere near wealthy and the career market for it wasn't something I was interested in. Thank God and the universe I found and fell in love with education and the stars aligned with me becoming an educator but I am not blind to the fact that many HBCU's funding for humanities, especially education, is being attacked and underfunded. Without the professors who genuinely fight for me and my field of study, we would have fallen victim to the broken model of creating teachers who care not about the humans they are teaching but the robots they are "meant" to create (thank you Horace Mann). The opporutinity for me to explore digital humanities and continue the educational path is turly a gift and a privilege not many students nor people have, especially in America where being able to go to a good college ( not an IVY but a college that cares about each of its deparmtents) is rare and is like searching for a needle in a haystack. It wasn't easy falling into the studies that I am in and I'm thankful it aligned with my heart and soul but I know so many future teachers who are only doing so because they either felt like it aligned with their souls or because it was the only path they considered (yikes). Thank you for your honesty and heart because this post not only encourages me to fight for the accessibility of education and finding ways to bring it to all people no matter the interests but because of the genuine joy it is to learn! Learning is soooo fun and especially when it aligns with your interests, it can be life altering. I'm thankful I found a career in English Education but its not just about the surface level of education, the rich history and fight for Black Educators is something that cannot scratch the surface of what people think it to be. I hope you are able to find joy and success in furthuring your education, no matter the doubt and obsticales because your writing bleeds with passion and I truly hope it never dies out.
This is an important post. Opportunities are becoming very limited and there’s a distinct impression that Medieval studies are not worth doing. Obviously, I disagree strongly with this.
I did my MA about 20 years ago, when my daughter was tiny. It was part-time and distance learning. I received a Distinction. I only say that because I want people to know you can succeed under those circumstances. Like you, my University department, course director and supervisor all disappeared mid term, just as I had submitted. As I had written my dissertation exactly as my supervisor had recommended, I was understandably pretty upset.
I have not had the chance to continue my studies. Until now. My daughter is 24 and working and but still living with us. I have a lot of free time to read and immerse myself in my subject. However, I probably won’t do a PhD.
I think I will write a book. In that book, I will puncture many much-loved and long held beliefs about the Dark Ages. For instance, there probably wasn’t a King Arthur. However, Saxonism was a fashion rather than an invasion and there was a thriving tourist industry which took you to a hill fort, fed you royally with beef and wine and then tried to sell you jewellery while you waited for your boat home.
I can’t prove these things but I can back them up.
I really enjoyed this important post. One thing I’ve been very encouraged by is the very high-quality online classes that are now available for some areas of the humanities, where students get instruction from top scholars for a fraction of a university course. I would add one additional challenge for the independent scholar is that, apart from these online academies, it’s very hard to find a community, and so sometimes I don’t know what to do beyond reading another book on the subject. I’m actually fortunate to be in academia — for now — but I have a real passion for some topics outside of my field, and there’s nothing much to do with my interests. To me this is a real challenge that sets the life of the mind apart from other kinds of hobbies or callings.
I did two masters, one fully funded, and was so obliviously happy pouring myself into weird textual analysis and writing detective essays conclusively proving someone in a story somewhere slept with a dead body for a decade using abstract indicators of time in said story and then getting paid to write a bunch of poems about my interior weather.
But I never quite fit in. I was, for a good while, always the only out trans queer person in the room. Constantly fighting for my identity or my ability to walk into a bathroom without getting the evil eye.
Then I found myself in the adjuncting world, trying to eke out a living while all my peers published their first books, desperate to not feel bitterness at my lot in life. Had to sell out to pay the mortgage and the happiest I am day-to-day is not when I get the paycheck but when, in the evenings, I get to make a cocktail, comb through a bunch of books I assume I could read for a PhD, and take notes and think about what to write about it all. Personal PhD. I miss academia but I don’t miss that I never quite felt like I fit in anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think the situation within literature faculties has historically been different to history, which is the angle i’m coming from as all my training/practice is literature rather than history. literature departments in the UK have historically had decent (not good but decent) representation of the medieval period. perhaps the field drying up here is bringing it more in line with other disciplines and countries
Thank you so much I’m glad you liked it! Studying while a bit older, and having spent years working in a field where discussing education/research policy is a big part of the job, makes it a bit easier to go into something lke this with my eyes open. It doesn’t make me any less enthusiastic about doing the PhD but it does mean i’m not under any illusions about how it’s gonna go and what happens next
Thank you!! I don’t start until September this year but I’m having a great time settling into the research in advance and going to a bunch of events at the university