Weddingbee boards

So I have been trying to keep details of my life and private stuff more off the bee, but I think I've complained to my friends and family enough and I still don't know what to think. They're all wonderful and supportive, and this is mostly to spare them hearing it again!

I make no secret of the fact that I am in grad school for my PhD. I have full funding, so this costs me nothing but time. My expect to graduate date is 2015. But my school is 1.5 hrs from "home" and while DH and I had originally been planning to move out there, he really wants to stay and, the big part, hopefully is getting a permanent, full time job around here. We're waiting to hear on the interviews. I wrote this post in the spring, and when I'm honest with myself, the commute may as well be 2 hrs till I leave, drive what is really about an hour and a half, then walk in from my designated parking area. Four months ago I thought commuting was the solution, but now that I did this through the summer, I don't like that any more than living out there. I feel disconnected from my program and my peers.

The thing of it is, I don't love it anyway. I want to teach at the college level. Research is interesting, but it's not my passion or anything. I do it because I have to. I'm not in it for its own sake; I'm in it because I need a PhD to do what I want to do. And as awful as this is going to sound, my program isn't even in the concentration I want. It was the closest, admitted me early, and gave me funding, so I took it. I'm a bad grad student.

So I'm sure you can see where this is going. The reason I did it is because that was the only job I thought I wanted. And I knew I'd always wonder "what if" if I didn't go for it. But now I've seen it, and I'm not impressed. I'm not that happy. A lot of things have changed since then just in my life and how I think about myself and my life. First, there is only one university close to "home" and I already know that I do not want to have a huge commute like this for the rest of my life. I know DH wants to settle here permanently, so I worry that I'll get this degree and not be able to find a job with it around here, or I'll end up commuting an hr+ for the rest of my life. Second, I hate living this way. I want to settle down myself. It's a long, complicated story of putting my self-worth in academics, but my priorities are shifting. I never entertained the "good-enough job." I also hate how much time -- paying down student loans, saving for a house, saving for retirement, etc -- we lose every year that I'm not working full time.

But. Of course there's a "but" or I would have just quit grad school considering all that. I like what I do for the most part. I'm smart and good at school. I am scared of writing my dissertation, but who isn't at least a little? Also, it's fairly secure. With funding issues in education, it may not always be so (and I hear incoming cohorts are not going to be fully funded). And it will ultimately get me the job I want (if I can find one), although "the job I want" is not a firmly held concept. I never really knew what I wanted to do, and teaching in a university for me is the best of the options, not really my dream or anything. I don't have a career dream. I have a life dream -- home ownership and a family. And while I know that a PhD is not precluding me from either of those, it sure does feel like it these days. Though I try to tell myself that in the long run for the future it will help me be more successful.

Sometimes I think about applying for jobs, but I don't know how to get around references. Obviously, it would be hard to explain what I've been doing for the last 8 months without mentioning my PhD program. But there is no way I'd want my program to know that I am looking elsewhere for fear that they'll give my funding to someone more committed. Sometimes I think about doing student teaching. I'd have to pay for one undergrad semester at my "home" school, but I worry that jobs in education are really hard to come by and it's a really bad time for that right now. I'm scared to quit grad school (with a comfortable paycheck and health insurance) to then not be able to get a job anyway.

See why I'm so confused? My semester starts at the end of the month, and I know that I'll go to it and it'll be fine. As I said, I like it enough; it's just the lifestyle and delaying "real life" that I don't know about. Is it worth it?

Do you mind if I ask what field you're in? You don't have to say the exact field, but it might help knowing if it's humanities, sciences, or social sciences.

@mightywombat: It's a social science. There is only one private industry around here outside of academia that I could possibly work at, and it would be doing research, which is the part I like the least about what I'm doing now.

@7SEVENJ9: I worry that, given the above, I'd be over-qualified to do anything outside of academia if we settle down in this area.

@MrsSl82be: I watch job postings all the time. I've found a few along the way that I've thought about applying for; the reference situation above is what holds me back. Ideally, I'd just start applying for jobs and see what I could get while staying in grad school, just so I could know what my options are. I don't want my "current employer" to know that I'm looking, though, and they'd be my best references so I feel sort of stuck. Like if I'm going to apply for jobs, I need to be prepared to at least tell my advisor and hope she'd be a reference/not tell the rest of the department or do anything that would get my funding cut. I'm afraid that to pursue a job would be to lose my funding, which would work out OK if I were to get the job. But in today's economy, I would expect having to apply for a few over a length of time, and I'm worried about being entirely unemployed while searching if I were to lose my funding at school.

I think the bottom line is that you don't sound one bit happy and maybe all this worrying is telling you something you might not be ready to hear or change. It also sounds like you're doing what you THINK you should be doing and not what your head and heart really want.

Probably 30+ years ago, some guru told women they could have it all and juggle everything successfully. Some can,but many can't. Something has to give. I always knew that family was and would always be the most important thing to me,so my decision was an easy one. You sound torn.

One of my friends told me just a few weeks ago that one of her patients teaches at a local university in a program for people wanting to be college professors (?). She went on to say she felt so guilty even teaching the course knowing there were NO JOBS out there,especially since most professors were tenured. What will they do upon graduation? Keep going to school since they can't find a job? A few of my friends were like that,just playing around to avoid being in the real world. I didn't understand it then, and I still don't now.

Sometimes you just have to take the plunge and move on. Living with the fear that you might make the wrong choice will get you nowhere.