Bret Devereaux

The personal statement that got me into the PhD that accepted me said that I was fully aware that there were no jobs, and that getting a PhD was no guarantee of anything, but I was applying anyway. I guess this sort of realism counts for something, at least.https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1368694196916338690 …

And honestly I'm grateful to the 3+ professors I had at every stage of my BA and MA who were brutally honest with me about my odds of achieving an academic career. It didn't stop me, but it's definitely made me feel a certain kind of confident about what I want.

I hope this is changing to be more like that. I think a lot of professors were in a degree of denial post-2008 because they thought the jobs would come back, like after the late-70s/early-80s slump. I think my advisor was truly fluxxomed when the job market didn't recover.

Ywah, I did my degree in the late 2010s and by then I was being DIRELY WARNED that a Classics degree would get me precisely nowhere and that pursuing it even in undergrad should only be a consideration of the heart, not of logic.

Yeah. I finished my PhD in '18. By the time I was finishing, I think my advisor was very much concerned, but his placement rates were quite high and most of his last chunk of grad students had landed well and I think he thought recovery would continue and so we'd land well too.