The call was made late one evening in January of 1980. I called one of my advisors at grad school to confirm that I was leaving the ph.D program. In that call, I formally ceased my quest for the doctorate in anthropology.
I had been working in an operating room for two years after drifting away from the grad program. My oral examination had not been a success. I’d be finishing up my master’s degree and moving on to a career as a practicing anthropologist. Dreams of university work and professorships were permanently sealed away.
In the two years before this, I had spent much time in counseling and therapy. I had managed to successfully move the calendar of my life from an immature sixteen to a fairly grown and responsible twenty-one. But the rift between me and the department was deep. Never the wise one, I had not been reluctant to lower my voice when I felt right. I had been intemperate and undiplomatic. My brashness could overcome all, I felt.
At my oral examination, I found out how wrong I could be. Walk in expecting a zephyr, walk out after experiencing a hurricane.
I think that the day after, I confounded many. I did the rounds of everyone who’d attended, thanked them for their comments, and their useful advice. One or two seemed to be waiting for the tantrum. No tantrum, it didn’t matter that I felt firmly that my research proposal had merit; I had learned to accept the consequences of my juvenile behavior. Mind you, I was accepting the consequences for my behavior, not that of others. I had learned well that my burden was my behavior.
Way Forward
My graduate advisor had tried to warn me of the potential consequences of my actions, but to no avail. Maybe his warnings had been too subtle for me to grasp at the time. But it was he who sent me the funds needed to get my master’s thesis edited and typed. With the master’s degree in hand, I was able to look for jobs where my anthropology background would be a plus.
One blustery day in January of 1981, I took charge of a newly created program where my anthropological background was an essential ingredient. About six months later, I was also an adjunct professor teaching anthropology to nursing students studying for a bachelor’s degree in nursing.
A year after that, I was visiting two of my former grad advisors and able to show them what I’d started doing with the master’s. I’d also found ways to incorporate their work into my programs and curriculum.
Leaving grad school was wrenching. My place as an anthropologist was everything I wanted, and when I had made that call to leave the program, that dream slipped away forever. But growing up gave me command of an entire set of skills that allowed me to take the bitterness of defeat and transform it into a new life.
Do I miss it? After all these years, my perspective has drifted, and I am glad for the path that I took. Originally, it may have been forced on me. But later on, I appreciated the freedom of action I had, the variety of experience, and the freedom from the strictures of the academy.
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Bizarre the parallels… I didn’t pick any fights, but I was different enough that my graduate department did not give me the third year stipend/teaching assistantship others got to work on their theses. It didn’t matter to the bloodless lechers who ran the department that I had good grades and was president of the Arts and Sciences graduate student and had organized a fund-raising band expo that had worked. Nope. I was out with a “good luck writing your thesis. You have a year.” When I showed up at the Dept Head’s desk with my typed and bound thesis he just said, “I can’t believe you actually wrote one.” He couldn’t even find anything wrong with it. My thesis advisor was one of the greatest people I’ve known in my life and later I understood that there was a philosophical rift between the bloodless lecher faction and the “holy shit we’re actual human beings” faction. I had to buy two theses one for the university library and one for the dept library. I wanted one for myself, but I couldn’t afford to pay for 3. Guess where that department library copy is. It’s just not easy being green, sometimes.
I was certainly not “clubbable”, too combative, which was OK if you were on the right side. Also among the things that I was told was that the Anthropology at the Ivy League I was at was an elite club for the well-to-do, and I did not fit…a bit too scruffy. Later on, I was told that if my research was for the Solomon Islands or Malaysia, it would have been acceptable, but not Coastal Maine.
Good grief. I should write my grad school saga. It’s got some very surreal chapters, like being hit on by a very grotesque professor…never mind. I’ll save it for another day. 🤣
You’ve sunk my hopes that idiocy was restricted to the Ivy’s…Sob!!!!
Nope. I spent a good percentage of my life in academia and it’s ubiquitous.
It must be soemthing in the water. Surely I never ran into anything like that in practice…well just the politicians, I guess.
It sounds like you chose the right path forward. And you certainly had an interesting life, and lots of good stories