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I promised @mistresssnowphd a thread about class privilege and landing tenure-track employment because, even before the pandemic blew a crater into the job market, it is important to acknowledge how deeply classist this system is and will remain if it ever comes back.
This is a system severely stacked against first-generation scholars, BIPOC folks, but really those without any means and with little financial support from their departments. So in the spirit of Ann Bauer’s Salon article from 2015, here is my story: https://www.salon.com/2015/01/25/sponsored_by_my_husband_why_its_a_problem_that_writers_never_talk_about_where_their_money_comes_from/
I got accepted to a PhD program without funding in NYC. My parents (mom, really) paid for me to go. I was able to pay for tuition, rent, and food on their dime in NEW YORK while I studied and became a less shitty scholar.
It worked. I improved enough and/or impressed the right people and got on the funding train after a semester. When I began to get paid my graduate stipend, I put it away in a savings account because my mom was still giving me money.
She gave me too much, in fact. Whatever I didn’t spend, I put away for a rainy day. I was living my mom’s dream, and she wanted me to be a scholar. I wanted to be one too, but I don’t think I would have gone into debt to do it.
I still struggled though. I was an ok scholar and graduate instructor, but not as good as my more talented cohort. I was slower. Took me years to take exams (year 4) and come up with a dissertation topic (year 5). But I was comfortable, even after I rolled off funding in year 4.
I applied to all the internal fellowships. I didn’t get any. Remember, I was the least talented person in my group. They got the fellowships and thrived. But I wrote a lot. Went to a lot of conferences on the family’s dime. My CV grew.
I also taught a lot of classes as a grad adjunct. CV grew larger, as did my teaching portfolio. I’ll let you in on an open secret: adjuncting is great when you don’t need to adjunct to survive.
Eventually, I began to apply for small fellowships and I got a few. Not enough to cover everything, but I didn’t have to worry about that. I didn’t have to get a service job and fend for myself.
When you have money, you can think. Research without a care in the world. Go to conferences to workshop ideas in expensive cities and pay for your own airfare and stay in nice hotels and go to all the dinners to network with people smarter and more connected than you.
Smart and connected people who may, one day, invite you to their universities to give talks and seminars, all of which look impressive on your CV. All this experience I gained researching and writing and conferencing eventually paid off in a big way.
Finally, in my 8th year, I won a very big prestigious fellowship from the main academic organization in my discipline. I was able to live in a foreign country for a year to finish researching and writing my dissertation.
During my fellowship year, I lived in an expensive city. And I didn’t even spend much of the fellowship money. I put most of it away.
I came back to NYC after the year was up and lived in a one bedroom apartment in the West Village, by *myself* I could afford the rent. I taught on the Upper West Side as a grad adjunct. I finished my thesis.
When I went on the job market, I had 20+ conference presentations, 7 years’ teaching experience, 2 invited talks (one at Cambridge), two journal articles in press, one major external fellowship and little bursaries I won here and there.
I landed a lot of interviews and a coveted tenure-track job my first year on the market. My mentor told everyone it was because of the careful and deliberate CV building I did over the years. All of my hard work. Ok, sure.
But do you know how much damn money was behind all that hard work? What a small fortune it took to make me A Very Impressive Junior Scholar?
A coda: Once I arrived in the city of my new employment, I was able to put a downpayment on a house with the money I had saved. And so now the generational wealth continues... /end
