reposting from Invisible Adjunct - 8/27/04

Originally posted to Invisible Adjunct 8/27/04

re: regret?

I wouldn't say I regret spending seven years in grad school and getting my degree. I don't stew over the time and effort, and I had soem wonderful times and met some wonderful people during those years. I do regret the student loans, but I'm not sure exactly what alternatives I had, given my family situation at the time.

The last two comments make an interesting pair on one point: I don't generally take a lot of pride in my degree. As I said before, I tend rather to be a little embarrassed by it, and I think that has a lot to do with my class background. Reg'lar folks don't put much stock in book learnin' and members of my family tend to look at me funny because I spent so much time in school. But the roots of that difference from the people I grew up around go deep - I was always carrying a book around as a kid, and people knew I wasn't like them.

If I can muster up a feeling of pride around the degree, it's mostly about the persistence to see it through.

Do I feel like coming from a blue collar background was a disadvantage? Not a crippling one, but it's definitely a cross-cultural challenge that we don't usually acknowledge. I literally entered a whole new world when I started college at 17, and had to start from scratch to figure out how it all works, without a lot of help at first.

Alfred Lubrano's book Limbo is an interesting take on some of these dynamics, and even though I'd quibble with a lot in his book it's very much worth reading.