College Guide
Blog
October 30, 2009 11:00 AM
Pleasure, Pain, and PhDs
From the Times (U.K.) Higher Education magazine:
It should be a time of pleasure gained from feeling one’s knowledge expand and the anticipation of a fulfilling academic career. But instead, most accounts of doctoral study are typified by a “passion for despair”, with the PhD cast as a period of gloom, loneliness and uncertainty.
This assessment is made by Christina Hughes, professor of gender studies at the University of Warwick, in a paper that calls for the academy to change its ways and embrace the pleasure inherent in becoming an academic.
…
“Pleasure, if it is considered at all, carries with it concerns that it leaves the individual unchanged,” Professor Hughes writes. “It is predominantly understood as an emotional moment that occurs when desire is met.”
Despite this, she writes, rare moments of intense “orgasmic” pleasure in intellectual achievement are possible, for example when the PhD student realises that becoming a fully fledged academic is an achievable goal.
Professor Hughes suggests that these moments of jouissance explain why doctoral students persist with their work.
I’m not sure I believe in this “runner’s high” view of academic fulfillment. Don’t most doctoral students, as frazzled and stressed out as they are, derive a steady stream of pleasure from the work they are doing and the academic milieu in which they are immersed?
Facebook
Twitter
rotkin on October 30, 2009 12:17 PM:
I agreed with this statement. this is really true.It should be a time of pleasure gained from feeling one’s knowledge expand and the anticipation of a fulfilling academic career. But instead, most accounts of doctoral study are typified by a “passion for despair”, with the PhD cast as a period of gloom, loneliness and uncertainty.
Thanks for the great reading, we have college
dating site .I will pass this on to our ira clients to read.
collegedating on November 20, 2009 7:41 PM:
This is a great blog, we are going to add it to out free online dating internet and college information blog college dating . http://www.universityloveconnection.com/blog so our visitors can read your news, as you are a reputable source. Thanks for the free college dating.