ABSTRACT
‘Don’t do it. Just don’t! [...] [G]raduate school lasts at least six years and will ruin your life in a very real way’. This is the bottom line of a 2013 article by Rebecca Schuman in the online newspaper slate.com. Noting that she is not the first to issue this warning, Schuman adds: ‘well-meaning academics have already attempted to warn you, the best-known screed in this subgenre being William Pannapacker’s “Graduate School in the Humanities? Just Don’t Go”. But this convinced no one. It certainly didn’t convince me!’ Looking back, she explains: ‘In 2005 when I began my own Ph.D., I should have known better, but I didn’t. Now that you know better, will you listen?’
