Bill of Rights

Response to Feedback Rights

Dear François,

On the rights and responsibilities of graduate students, your comments about the lack of feedback resonate - I can remember thinking a lot about academic loneliness and lack of support. I chose my thesis topic partly by what I could get feedback for. I found someone responsible and found something I wanted to do that would interest him. Having at least one interested interlocutor, I also pursued feedback and opportunities from others.

Some of my conclusions after my stay at U of T were:

If you are concerned about support don't do your MA at U of T - it is too impersonal. Go to a small supportive place for the MA and come to U of T for the Ph.D. This may vary from department to department.

Part of what you learn in doing a humanities Ph.D. at U of T is to survive alone and to make your own opportunities. You are learning to write books that no one else thought to write or wanted enough to commission. This self-sufficiency is only acquired when you are abandoned.

While no one will guide you, you can get a lot of help if you are driven and call on the ample resources available. The virtue of a big impersonal place is like the virtue of a city - you can do whatever you want and there will probably be other people doing it, unlike a village where there is a lot of support for the strengths of the small place and antagonism towards deviant behaviour. U of T taught me to make my own opportunities, and the benign neglect of the department was part of that. Elsewhere I could not have worked full time while getting my Ph.D. because my not participating in all the departmental functions would have been frowned on.

As I mentioned above, one way to get an interested interlocutor is to try to work on a subject your supervisor is genuinely interested in. This does not mean sacrificing your own interests, so much as discovering the interests you share with your advisors.

Some of my friends, who for various reasons did not flourish alone, ended up dropping out of the department bitter. This is the dark side of the gift of abandonment. Those who don't finish, often end up leaving embittered and without any sort of closure. How many people are there who let their Ph.D. drift and spend the rest of their life just about to restart it while fearing that they are failures. Those of us who finished, succeeded only because we were fortunate to have had partners who encouraged us, friends who supported us, good luck with our choice of supervisor, or children to feed. In retrospect it seems so random who gets through and who doesn't.

Counselling services is aware of this problem and runs groups to help. I joined a "Procrastination" group that helped me immeasurably during a low point in my studies when I was very close to being kicked out. If you have friends tell them to see what counselling is available, there is no shame in admitting that one is alone and feeling unsupported - and that this is leading to problems. Often these feelings of loneliness are compounded by other things and it is useful to think through just why you want to do a Ph.D.

The hardest thing that we face in the humanities is the lack of jobs. The knowledge that nothing you do may be good enough to get you a job can just about close down any ability to research. One ends up setting such high expectations (based on what is needed to get a job) that there is no point trying to fulfill them. For me getting work outside philosophy was an enormous relief, once I knew I could get interesting work, the thesis became a hobby and it did not have to be so good that I would be immediately acclaimed the successor to Derrida, Gadamer, and Plato. (Though as soon as I publish I expect that to happen anyway. :-))

The other side of this coin is that some of the faculty know it is almost impossible to get jobs so they hold back on any encouragement or praise for fear of misleading us about our real chances (which they think are nil.)

I have gone on too long, but that is because I too spent a lot of time thinking about these issues at the time (and still do.) Anyone who finishes a Ph.D. at U of T deserves to be proud of what they have done if only because it such a long and lonely struggle. The best advice I got, which I did not listen to at the time, was "Just finish it." Such advice is, of course, only appreciated after the fact.

Yours,

Geoffrey Rockwell

Bill of Rights