Comments on: Dear Tits And Sass: What About The Résumé Gap?

By: Angela

Angela — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 02:45:14 +0000

Yep, dittoing on the PhD thing. I’m in the final year, about to submit, and have been living below the poverty line since I started. That is with full funding. If you take the research and thesis/dissertion approach then chaces are you are going to be too busy on your research to do much besides fumble your way through a few strip shifts a week. And, depending on your topic/field, there is a good chance that your research may lead to higher degree research grumps (though I may be projecting).

I’m lucky to work in a place where sex work is decriminilised (I took full advantage of this) and so I have 7+ years as a legit, tax paying small business owner on my CV.

By: Gar Lipow

Gar Lipow — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 07:33:55 +0000

And I’ll second skipping the moral panic about drugs. Lots of people in “straight” professions use em. But good luck with the six figures thing.

By: sarah m

sarah m — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:23:08 +0000

In reply to sarah m. PS. Or, if your chosen career is outside academia, take that in at the job you want first and see if your employer will pay for some or all of the degree (perhaps more applicable to careers where a professional Masters is the degree of choice than ones that require a PhD, though).

By: sarah m

sarah m — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 10:14:52 +0000

Plenty of academics use drugs or drink (plenty of celebrated scholars drank themselves to death, even; cf Neil Smith), so I’ll skip the moral panic about “illegal drugs,” but there really is no 6-figure light at the end of the PhD tunnel. Lots of people (including myself) go to graduate school knowing that and being totally ok with it — I can live perfectly comfortably on 20K/year. I like what I do enough that the gruelling workload I need to carry to be competitive, and the fact that being competitive still likely won’t get me a decent job, is something I can live with.

I would suggest that if you go to graduate school, you do it because you’re smart, you’ve got funding for the whole program from a school with a good reputation, and you really, really, really love whatever it is you’re going to research, as well as loving doing research itself.

By: Gar Lipow

Gar Lipow — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 08:19:54 +0000

I was going to say – A Phd is not a path to a six figure income, at least not for most. Lots of bartenders, janitors and cashiers have Phds. To tell the truth in this economy the odds of getting to a six figure income if you don’t already have one are bad. Not saying it can’t be done. But nobody should count on it. The people who already have are grabbing more, and leaving less for the rest of us. Not saying you shouldn’t try. Just understand that any getting a decent income is harder than it used to be, and will get even tougher in the future. That applies to everybody, not just sex workers. Not that making a living has ever been easy for people not born into comfort. As the great Billie Holiday used to sing:

Them that’s got shall get
Them that’s not shall lose
So the bible says
And it still ain’t news.

By: Karen

Karen — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 04:15:20 +0000

I second the above comment. I’m working on my PhD and it involves living at near poverty level wages (on a teaching fellowship) and constant overworking for 5+ years (I’m on year 8). I now make my income as a sex worker and plan on leaving academia when I’m done with school. Why? Because after killing themselves for years and years, I watched my friends get shitty academic jobs because the job market isn’t great – in locations they never wanted to live, teaching in areas they don’t care about, some of them making just $40-50k per year. In hard sciences its possible to get a job that pays better, particularly if its a commercial and not academic job. But that comes with a lot of experience and something to offer – so starting on internships before going to school would be a huge help.

Also, depending on the grad school – some won’t care you used to be a sex worker. It all depends how you spin it in your personal statement. If you can frame how you learned from it and it applies to the field of study, it could actually be a help. But that totally depends on the school environment.

By: Paul Murray

Paul Murray — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 03:11:53 +0000

Substance issues? Substance issues? That’s a euphemism for something, right? An illegal drug-user is shocked, shocked, shocked that getting a straight job has become problematic? Colour me surprised.

“My aim is to earn a Ph.D. that makes a six-figure income realistic.”

PROTIP: if your field is taught by adjunct professors, then being a part-time, minimum wage academic with no job security or benefits is the best job available to Ph.D.s in your area of study. Take a good, long look at where the graduates in your field really work, on average, before you sign up for more student loans.

After all. At least one of the grads in whatever-it-is got a Master’s and then became a stripper to make ends meet.