HOME LETTER SITE PLEDGE COMING SOON LINKS


"I rose, I rose./ Forget those suckers who dissed me: I rose!"
-- M.C. Hammer

"And still I rise." -- Maya Angelou


WHAT THIS SITE WILL NEVER DO

  • Label you weak, lazy, or stupid for taking a leave from a doctoral program.

  • Suggest that you are intellectually deficient, academically incapable, or devoid of political savvy if you have found yourself required to withdraw from a doctoral program.

  • Intimate that there are "no second acts" in graduate studies and that you have no hope of starting your graduate career over again at another school if you so desire.

  • Promote the mindset -- as abundant as coffee and cigarettes in graduate school -- that 'pushing forward' through fatigue, serious misgivings about a program/advisor, or any of a host of other potential red-flags is always the best course of action.

  • Argue that you are a failure, flake, dilettante, or sell-out for realizing -- part-way through a graduate program -- that you don't want to be a professor or academician when you grow up after all.

  • Make you feel that you've torched your future if you have permanently walked away from -- or been asked to leave -- a doctoral program.

  • Dissuade you from using a leave of absence as an opportunity to explore possible careers or areas of inquiry wholly unrelated to teaching, researching, or academic life.

  • Lead you to beat yourself up over any decisions that you yourself might have made about your graduate studies after a period of long and probably painful introspection.

  • Provide links to any source or person who might be inclined to do any of the above.


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Flaming bullet courtesy of the amazing Mr. Fire, http://members.tripod.com/mrfire/. All other graphics by "Carine Bichet." Invaluable site-building and coding advice provided by S. Blackmon, T. Jankowski, K. Rhodes, and R. Williams. Seminal site name and mandate suggestions provided by C. Chin, C. Gallagher, C. McDevinney, K. Rhodes, C. Romanowski, and R. Williams.