Grad school is in many ways, a test of one's socio-economic upbringing. A student is expected to already know cultural/lifestyle things, and loses credibility for trying to find them out. For instance, one should not ask one's department chair for information about teaching (it's a concern for those of a lower class), but can certainly ask him about an appropriate balance of teaching and studying. But don't trust the answer.
This class-based "testing" to see if a student already "belongs" in the social strata dominated by the over-educated and wealthy is a form of class prejudice reinforced institutionally, but undermined by openly subversive individuals. I don't know if you know any of these individuals, but this is my best graduate school advice: find her, and make her your committee chair. It opens the range of information you receive exponentially, from the specifics of exam topics and writing a good dissertation, to meta-information about surviving in the foreign country which is a PhD-based career (for those of us raised by lower-middle-class families in pre-fab neighborhoods).
I have been studying race and racial mixing in my American Lit. class, and language is a pertinent issue. Our class is written on our outsides, perhaps markedly so in some cases. I probably notice clothes as quickly as I notice gender or race, but it can all be overcome if we could learn the language. Is this what the cockney faced? Their faces were white, if clean, but their class was obvious the moment they opened their mouths. Is there an Academic equivalent of Professor Higgins? And would I kill the misogynistic bastard before he had proceeded two sentences?
No comments:
Post a Comment