Inheritance of acquired traits (1936), Yves Tanguy
Dear Polly,
First off, I adore you and your work. A friend recently dubbed me the “Ask Polly librarian” because anytime a friend is struggling, I find an Ask Polly article that pertains to the struggle at hand. Your writing provides the framework for discussing the way forward, or, more accurately, a framework for discussing how to sit in the discomfort of the present without always needing to strategize, plot the way, and charge forth. I am writing because I would love to hear your thoughts on a big question that infiltrates my thoughts constantly. It distracts me from my daily work, yet, at the same time, the possibilities that the question allows for are a source of hope, purpose, and inspiration that makes everything about my life feel shinier. The question is: Should I apply to PhD programs?
I am a teacher at a public high school in San Francisco. I have been doing this work for five years, all of my adult life. I love my job. I love this city. I love my community. I feel extraordinarily lucky. At the same time, I feel extraordinarily bogged down by life, generally, and also specifically by the elements of my job that are mostly outside of my control: tragically difficult student circumstances and the bureaucracy of a well-intentioned school district that doesn’t have the funding or people to staff schools fully and provide much-needed resources to teachers and students, let alone problem solve effectively at a systemic level.
I am in my late-ish twenties and I have gone through a massive amount of growth and learning in the years since graduating college. I moved across the country, leaving behind a beloved community and ending an important relationship, made new friends who support and inspire me to no end, and have learned to enjoy my own company more than I ever have. I’ve learned that the facets of life that make me feel most alive, most myself, my big picture priorities, are 1) strong connections with friends and my community at large, 2) time in nature, and 3) a feeling that I am contributing to something larger than myself, that I am having a positive impact on society. I am a daydreamer and often find myself building stories around romantic attachment that make it difficult for me to move on, even when I know a person or relationship is not right for me. My therapist told me that we (the collective, worldwide we) need people with active imaginations; those who can imagine a better world can try to build one. I love this in theory, but I can’t get myself to stop using my overactive imagination on romantic connection and my feelings rather than societal progress. I want love, but I don’t actually want to spend my time caring about and devoting myself to romance. I want to dream bigger.
My favorite parts of my job have to do with the people. I love working with my smart, caring colleagues. I love figuring out how to support kids who do not fit into the traditional mold of the classroom. They are creative and funny and make me think and laugh constantly. However, I am frequently frustrated by the day to day. The gap between what I imagine schools and classrooms could be and what is happening in front of me is vast, and that panics me. Instead of leaning into this panic and working harder at the details that I know contribute to pushing the train forward, getting organized and staying on top of my paperwork, I freeze. I procrastinate and I know my work is not the best that I can do. This makes me feel shame but hasn’t yet radically changed my behavior. This, combined with family and friendship and romance woes, has me in tears in the shower almost daily. I know that this is a hard season and it will pass, but I also want relief. I find relief in the form of thinking about the ways in which I could change my life, and possibly the lives of others, by attending grad school. I get excited when I advocate for large-scale change, take on new and exciting responsibilities, go to conferences, and ask big questions about the purpose of education and how to better serve our communities. I enjoy thinking about entering a PhD program where I can explore these questions and generate knowledge, talk with people who care as deeply as I do about these questions, and instigate “real change”. This is not a new dream. Since I was a kid, I have loved school and planned on getting a PhD. I have gone so far as to research programs and professors that I want to work with and I feel passionate and alive when thinking about the opportunities out there.
The shadow side: I worry that I am more inspired by big, sparkly ideals more than the daily grind that accompanies any job. I worry that without job stability and regular income, I will spin out. I’m a procrastinator and I worry about the self-guided nature of academic work. I worry about moving somewhere new, away from this place and these people that I love so dearly. I worry that it is my ego commanding this dream, rather than my truest desires. I worry that my vision of a good and full life is tainted by the rhetoric ingrained in me by the “elite” schools I have attended since childhood. At the same time, I want to think bigger, I want to write and analyze and discuss and use my brain in ways that I don’t feel like I have the capacity to within the confines of a high school. I want to be challenged intellectually. When I write about something I care about, I feel a sense of calm and purpose that I rarely feel at work right now. I imagine my life in 10, 15, 20 years, and I know that if I’ve stayed in the same place, both physically and intellectually, I will feel something missing. I am not in a rush to make this change. If it happens, it wouldn’t be for at least a couple years. Still, I cannot stop thinking about it, especially when I feel hopeless, overwhelmed, and uncertain. I want to feel like more schooling is a worthy goal to work towards, rather than a distraction from the very real, agonizing parts of building my own life while working with young people within a broken system. I want to free myself from the romantic daydreams and strive for larger goals. I know I need to dream in order to feel happy and fulfilled, but I want to dream big in a way that has a real impact. Is a PhD the way to do this? Do you believe in the power of higher education?
Thank you for everything.
Dreaming While Drowning
Dear Dreaming While Drowning,
I absolutely believe in the power of higher education, particularly when it’s fully funded and the student in question has a ravenous hunger for learning. The more cost and the less hunger, the less I believe.
You sound very hungry, and life is short. Even though you can do anything at any age, it becomes less likely that you’ll pursue certain ambitious goals after the age of 40, or after having kids, or after cementing your entire life in one city or town. You’re intellectually curious and this has always been your dream. You crave a community where smart, inspired people work together crafting visions of a brighter future. Go get a PhD.
Is that hopelessly idealistic? Hundreds of academics are rolling their eyes and stretching their fingers to type out dispiriting screeds in the comments section.
You can listen to them, too, but I say dive into the environment and the circumstances that match your dreams. Be unrealistic. Be daring. The darker and stupider and more chaotic the world becomes, the more I believe in bold and courageous plans to wrestle our global crazy train back onto the tracks. Dreamers have a crucial role to play in the darkest of times.
Yesterday, I proofed my daughter’s application to a university so prestigious that the whole effort feels like buying an expensive lottery ticket. Why even bother? But when I read her earnest words about what she loves, believes in, and wants to study, I felt this conviction that she should become some combination of academic, creative entrepreneur, and crusading grassroots organizer. She’s a natural leader, she’s patient and generous and thoughtful, she’s insightful and energetic. She’s everything I have never been and could never be. There’s no joy on the face of the planet like looking at a sparkly young human and saying to them, “You can do any motherfucking thing you want to do. Believe that today and tomorrow and the next day, because it’s true.”
Imagine having the opportunity to spread that optimism among the kids who need it the most! You can do that. You have what it takes. You can always go back to teaching high school, too, if you want. Why not take a big risk right now?
I am a little bit cynical about your average private college. The costs are exorbitant and in my opinion, binding early decision is a trap designed for rich people with a hard-on for status. My daughter’s applications are non-binding, but I still have no idea how we’ll pay for this prestigious university if she gets in. I do think that this place is worth it. I don’t feel that way about most other places. I went to a very good school and mostly got drunk and followed men around.
Oddly enough, I’m not cynical about PhDs. I know all of the shitty things about the state of academia. My husband is an academic, my dad was one, I grew up in a college town and know tons of academics, and I understand that there are way too many PhDs and everything is all falling to pieces before our eyes. I honestly don’t care if the whole system is fucked and a giant scam. Throwing your entire body into a field of study is magnificent and pure. Having the opportunity to inspire and encourage young people in this trash heap of a world is a rare and precious gift. If you’re an academic who’s reading this nonsense and grumbling audibly, I want you to remember that you’re an important person who has the ability to make a difference in other lives, every single day. Eat that up and renew your vows.
Of course it’s not easy. I hear what you’re saying about procrastination, daydreaming, romantic love, blarga blarga blarga. I feel you 100 percent and I’m right there with you on every front. Working from home as a writer requires me to finely tune my routines, my attitude, and my expectations all the time. Conditions change constantly. My professional universe went from wild and magical to flatly discouraging over the past few years. It takes a lot of courage to just DECIDE that I still have a lot to offer through my words, particularly in the absence of a gigantic ego. GODDAMN DO I MISS MY GIGANTIC EGO!
But when my ego left me, all of these other forces rushed in to fill the void: intellectual curiosity, humility, compassion, a hunger for meaningful collaboration. What could be better than becoming an academic? NOTHING. It’s fucking paradise, full stop. Move into that fantasy and live there.
That’s what I’m doing with my novel right now. Sure, it’s all doomed. Of course it’s impossibly difficult to put words on the page. I am inefficient, distractible, ridiculous. Who could possibly care what stories I have to share? It doesn’t matter. Writing a novel is paradise. I am the luckiest idiot on the planet.
The fact that academia is hard, doesn’t pay that well, makes you neurotic and isolated, and embeds you in dysfunctional systems and communities means nothing to me. Most things worth doing require a ton of determination, tolerance, patience, courage, hard work, and persistence. If you want a good marriage, if you want a creative outlet that fulfills you, if you want to raise a kid, if you want to feel robust and healthy, if you want interesting, sensitive, smart friends who can relate to your traumas and fears, you’re going to suffer and toil a lot of the time. All of these pursuits demand an enormous amount of effort and investment, with uneven returns.
But my gut tells me that you want to do hard things. The key is to lean the fuck in with an exuberant spirit. An exuberant spirit demands embodiment, presence, immediacy, intimacy, and daring. That means that, aside from living inside the PARADISE OF ACADEMIA (or writing!), you have to set fantasies and neurotic stories aside OVER AND OVER in order to live in your own flawed, crumpled reality with other flawed, crumpled people.
Make that part of your course of study. Study living in this fucked up, dented, collapsed world as an ordinary, stupid-looking, deeply mistaken jackass like any other. Be your savage and incomparable self out in the open anyway, without apology or explanation. Embrace the art of silent, illegible delight in the presence of others.
How? You apply your mind to your education, the arts, philosophy, and your ideals. You create structures and commitments and stick to them, and you pat yourself on the back constantly for that. You forgive yourself constantly for falling short. You understand in your heart that falling short and falling behind are the meat of life. You relish your own inadequacy and you keep enjoying what’s here in spite of everything that torments you.
Do you apply your formidable mind to matters of the heart? As little as possible. You try to keep your invasive and controlling stories away from your body and your deep love for life. You let yourself be present and grounded in the moment as often as possible. When you’re not working? BRAIN OFF. You practice feeling everything, being vulnerable, being soft and gentle and lost, every single day. This provides relief.
You are wrong most of the time. Your stories are inaccurate. Remember that. You don’t need them to keep you safe. Let go of control. Accept how wrong you are.
And the second you develop a new, invasive story – “I will never, I am not, I can’t” or “This person is x because y and z” – say “NOPE!” and move into your body instead. How are your toes doing? Is your core tense? Can you relax your spine and your neck?
Let people be who they are. Let the world be fucked up. What do you have to offer? What magic and wonder can you share? How can you supply more compassion to the people who need it?
That’s the main thing you’re going to need in order to pursue a PhD. I’m not fucking kidding. You need to move out of your neurotic stories and into your body with stunning regularity. You need to be present and let the corrosive, disturbing, absurd world be what it is.
Living inside your body and powering down your mind and navigating with calm presence in ACADEMIA? My god. Vanishingly few academics manage that. You’ll bestride the narrow world like a colossus!
Anything is possible for you. Yes, even now. That’s the shared religion of us dreamers. As idealists, we look in the mirror and see our ridiculously dumb faces and we say to ourselves, “I can inspire other people to feel how wide and bright and big they are. I can bring this world more love, more raw joy, more freedom, more delirious beauty.”
Your letter makes it crystal clear that you were meant to spread your wisdom far and wide. Think past the typical bullshit ways that people seem to do this. Take those romantic daydreams and surgically remove the HANDSOME PRINCE from them. He’s a sidekick. He might matter eventually, if he shows up out of the blue and understands that YOU ARE THE HERO OF THIS TALE. Otherwise, fuck that guy. You don’t need him.
You will do big things. I can feel it. Build your faith. Stoke the flames of this desire. Don’t look at other grad students and professors who report that academia is a big bummer and a giant disappointment and it’s all fucked forever and ever. There are people making those sounds in every field, all over the place. Absolutely understandable, but you can’t guide your ship with a map to sharp rocks. Give them your love and empathy but guard your private paradise. Attune yourself to the forces that live inside you already — that deep belief in beauty, that romantic swagger, that love of the sun and the moon and the stars and the infinite string of planets beyond your reach. Surrender to your own absurd and unreliable compass, your disturbingly messy, scribbled maps, and your divine, whimsical certainty.
Swagger and spirit and a big heart: Not everyone has these things. Celebrate! Your life will be so big and beautiful. It already is. CELEBRATE.
Polly
Are you celebrating your swagger and spirit and big heart? If not, WHY NOT? Do you need a blast of compassion? Are you starving for gentleness? Throw yourself into the comments and prepare to be hit with a firehose of empathy, from me and everyone else here. Today, let’s be as warm and caring to each other as our cynical, doubting brains can stand! The comments will be open to all free and paid subscribers today, so let’s get into the weeds together. xoxoxoxox
I agree with Polly 99% of the time. But...I am a refugee from a PhD program that I entered for all of the reasons you state. I really don't mean to be a downer, but a PhD program can destroy your life. The idealism you have now is usually mostly beaten out of grad students within a few years, and entering the PhD job markets tends to finish it off. It is not a place to go to search for wisdom and truth, though there will be patches of that here and there. It's a place to go to get advanced job training to become a professor. Think of it as deciding to go to medical, dental, or law school.
Most of my friends who became professors are now in their 50s and burned out or never got a job and have been struggling ever since. All of the problems you have with your current situation are there in huge measure, along with a high degree of gaslighting and infantilization. When I was a grad student, I saw things in my cohort like divorces and going to the emergency room with stress-induced acute illness. These things are not unusual. You want to be free of "drowning" but entering a PhD program may just make that happen even more intensely.
Also, I work as a higher ed staff in an academic-adjacent position, and you really need to understand that AI is in the process of utterly consuming the university. Generative AI is eating the brains of administrators, faculty and students alike with horrifying speed, and in my opinion the world there seems to be rapidly evolving into people with some version of AI psychosis and the rest of us who feel like we are being indoctrinated into a cult or are on an episode of Pluribus. My prof friends say that it's now routine for even grad students to just write their papers with generative AI. No not all students do this and most of them don't even want it, but in most universities AI appears to be basically being crammed down their throats even though many of them want nothing to do with it.
There are still great things that happen in PhD programs that are like what you describe. But understand that right now you will be surrounded by people who now use Claude to do everything. You didn't say what field you were interested in I don't think, but know that education PhD programs have, for instance, people developing "ed tech" that most schoolkids and teachers would regard with horror. Also most of what people do research on in PhD programs in education rarely makes it into actual classrooms.
Recent federal changes have also gutted university budgets for many reasons, and programs are being cut back or ended. It's a dumpster fire in so many ways right now.
If you really want to do a PhD I suggest several things: Do NOT go to any program where you have to take out loans. Most good programs will fully fund grad students. Also: Highly recommend you check out PhD programs in Europe, which are not only cheaper and shorter but do not suffer from many of the problems American ones do. Canada is an option also. Because you have been in the real world for a while, you will be better off than many people who went directly into a PhD from undergrad. You also have a profession you can go back to. Keep that stuff in mind when you do your PhD. Also do a hard look at the job market for whatever you want to get your PhD in.
You wrote "When I write about something I care about, I feel a sense of calm and purpose that I rarely feel at work right now." Have you considered MFA writing programs instead of a PhD? Because academic writing is now being consumed by generative AI, and in many programs you will be told to use it even though real writers regard it with horror. Creative programs also see ChatGPT-generated work but I wonder if you would find much more of what you are looking for in a creative writing program. (Again, though, don't do an MFA unless you have full funding or an outside source of of income unrelated to whether you get a job related to your degree.)
Again, I don't mean to be a downer. But please look into the practical realities of a PhD program and make sure you go into it with a clear head. It can be the things you want. But it can also be very much not that.
Ahh, the very same question I went back-and-forth on a million times many years ago in my mid-twenties! The best advice I got at the time (there was no Heather, so y'know...) was from my friend who had just finished his own PhD and is now a writer and professor - he said:
"Whatever subject you pick to do your PhD on, make sure it nourishes you".
It was such great advice, especially because PhDs are so long, and you need to love it enough deep down, I guess, to keep being able to come back to it.
And fwiw – I didn't do one in the end because I never found the topic that truly nourished me - I kept flipping between things that never felt quite right. But it was probably because I wanted to write novels much, much more – that was my own paradise. So maybe really honing in on the right subject for yours and making sure you'd get what you're hoping for out of it, as much as possible, will give you even more information as to whether you can hack the boring, hard and lonely bits?