This fall, I will begin my doctoral studies in the history department of an Ivy League university. Wondering what to expect, I e-mailed a friend from my undergraduate years (“Tom”), who detailed the academic trials of his graduate career.
In the four years since joining an elite university on the West Coast, Tom had switched departments and wrestled intensively with his research interests, which now included German history and linguistics. Then he asked about my current historical interests.
The first thing that came to mind was an episode of the television program Dora the Explorer in which the heroine, Dora, must free her pet hamster from an Aztec pyramid. I had watched that episode the day before with my 3-year-old daughter, while simultaneously attempting to read a scholarly article about the Constitutional Convention.
Was this what graduate school was going to be like with children?
I have been away from academe for five years. In that time, I have lived in five cities on two continents and worked four jobs. I am married, and my wife and I have two young children, two cats, and an 87-pound dog.
Part of me always knew that I would return to university life, but I never let the logistics of a graduate career with a full family enter into my calculations. Now, with the harried application process behind me, those calculations are front and center.
My wife is starting a master’s program this fall, albeit at a different Ivy League university, and the reality of our future course work is beginning to set in. I plan to chronicle our adventures through graduate school with children over the course of this academic year, and possibly beyond.
In the midst of organizing our cross-country move, searching for a pet-friendly apartment, and worrying about child care, I contacted a number of parents at our respective universities for advice. While their responses have been overwhelmingly friendly and encouraging, they have also done nothing to allay my anxieties.
We heard remarks such as, “I was up all night with my sick daughter while all the other grad students were studying for their prelims” and “I know food stamps weren’t intended for doctoral students, but we have to survive somehow, don’t we?”
In most major cities, the cost of child care now exceeds the cost of public-college tuition. My wife and I have no family in the region to which we will be moving, and the typical familial response to our fiscal worries has tended to be the laughing remark, “Ah, to be a poor graduate student again.” Or, more specifically, to be a pair of poor graduate students with the financial responsibilities of child care that could put two additional students through college.
Luckily, we managed to secure a much-coveted and highly subsidized spot for our daughter at a university-affiliated preschool. When I learned of that coup, I was no less ecstatic than I had been upon receiving my initial admission to graduate school.
The moment one becomes a parent, as every parent can attest, the matter of access to schools -- in particular, to quality child care and good preschools -- becomes a primary concern. Although my wife and I still have no visible means to pay even the modest subsidized tuition at our preschool, I now feel as though we have an ace-in-the-hole: One of our children is covered.
All that’s left to do is coordinate child care for our 6-month-old baby and somehow generate an additional $1,500 a month to cover the costs.
Those financial and parental concerns are precisely why I felt a nervous jag in my stomach when my old friend Tom inquired into my academic interests. Certainly, I am as passionate about my research interests and as eager to expand the breadth of knowledge in my field as any doctoral candidate.
But at the same time, I worry that when my adviser asks about my intellectual ambitions, I will respond with concerns about child-care costs or about Dora’s monkey friend, Boots.
I recognize that I am beginning my graduate career from a different life stage than my peers and that there undoubtedly will be moments in which I will be forced to trade time in a library cubicle for time with Thomas the Tank Engine. But I also recognize that, at a time when a fourth of all doctoral candidates never complete their degrees, I have just as many advantages as distractions.
My time away from academe has given me an intellectual foundation and drive I could never have possessed had I entered graduate school immediately after earning my bachelor’s degree. And my parental responsibilities -- while time-consuming in ways that childless students could not imagine -- have forced me to become as economical as possible with my free hours.
Much of the time-to-degree fatigue in graduate school is blamed on a lack of perspective, in which qualified students burn out as they become further and further removed from the outside world. I will not have that option. My life will contain all of the responsibilities of a doctoral student combined with the joys and sleep deprivation of parenthood.
Ultimately, as daunting as my future sounds, I wouldn’t plan it differently. Yes, there will be debt -- mountains of debt -- just as there will be periods of emotional and intellectual strain, but this is the career path I have chosen.
In most competitive careers, employees work long hours with little flexibility in their personal lives. In academe, there is an intellectual payoff for that. I am passionate about my graduate pursuits, and I believe my familial life might actually enrich my academic potential. We’ll find out if I’m right.
