Beyond Selidor

I wasn't talking about myself personally. In actual fact, what my sister and I were told, once it became clear that a) we were both better at, and inclined towards, the humanities and b) that we both had fairly certain careers in mind, was that an Arts degree alone wouldn't be enough to get into those particular fields. And so I was encouraged to submit articles to newspapers (which I managed to do successfully), to do a short internship at a paper (which I did), to write for the student newspaper (which I did) and to do an internship as a blogger for the Radio National Book Show (which I did). And so my sister was encouraged to do internships at advertising agencies and event management companies (which she did). Oddly enough, I am no longer a journalist and she is no longer an event manager, but we both initially found work in those fields. And I certainly didn't go into my postgraduate study with the expectation that I would get a job at the end of it in my chosen field. I've said all along that the point of doing the MPhil, the point of doing the PhD, is to have an MPhil and a PhD. An academic career would be a bonus, but certainly not something I felt I deserved.

But as I was saying to tsarcasm above, I've heard that kind of complaint from so many people our age, especially in the US (where, as you correctly point out, a tertiary education causes a massive financial burden), and I've read articles where people said they trained in specifically vocational careers and still can't get any job besides working in restaurants, to know that this belief is widespread, incredibly damaging, and goes beyond people being bitter about doing degrees without clear career paths.

I find the naming discussion important because it's ultimately about how human beings use various methods to establish identities as people, and how these identities tend to be exclusionary. It's not that I think 'I'm so clever - PAY ME!', but more that I think that anything that furthers our understanding of the human search for identity enriches us as human beings. Does that make any kind of sense?