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Sometimes I get self conscious tweeting my graduate school takes because I think that maybe I’m just the one that came in with inadequate preparation and the things I point out are really my own problem. 1/
I’ve tweetd abt how importnt it is for profs to teach how to write book reviews. Some responses: “I learned that as an undergrad.” I’ve tweetd abt how valuable a question as simple as “what is this book about?” can be. Some responses: “we should expect more from students.” 2/
Sure, the expectations should be high in grad school. It’s not necessarily unreasonable for professors to expect that students know how to write a basic book review, or that they can engage in high level discussion. 3/
At the same time those expectations rest on a particular set of assumptions and experiences. I never had to write an academic book review until grad school. Sure, I knew how to read, but I didn’t know how to read for argument. I got my ass kicked in seminar year 1. 4/
I didn’t know what an intervention was. I didn’t know what ethnography was. I’d never read “theory” or knew its purpose. I pulled away from the text in discussion because I didn’t know what I was supposed to get out of it and I needed to grasp onto something I *did* know. 5/
Sometimes we use “imposter syndrome” to describe this. But I think that hides the fact that many of us really did & do lack some basic skills vis-a-vis expectations! And that doesn’t mean we’re not as smart. It just means we haven’t been taught certain things! 6/
I know my own experience doesn’t map on to everyone else’s. But I’m more & more convinced each day that it’s not far off from that of many others (especially first gen scholars) in terms of a sense of feeling (and sometimes being) so far removed from the expectation. 7/
Many professors went through the pipeline of elite institutions from High school-PhD. What seems like a normal expectation in that context may be so far removed from what many students have been confronted with. We’re all smart. That’s different from having particular skills. 8/
I don’t write this just to say “academia is elitist.” That’s an easy take. We know that. I do wonder though how much mental energy is spent on hiding that we don’t know certain things and how much more enjoyable and fruitful grad ed could be if we dropped our pretenses. 9/
I’ll be quiet now 10/10
