I spoke to two of my profs today. It went well. It was interesting. I went to set up my committee again since 2 of 3 of the profs that were on it are gone this semester. But I also wanted to feel out their perspectives on my prospects for further schooling (i.e. getting into and succeeding in a PhD program somewhere eventually).
One said that the biggest obstacle that would impede me from getting into a good program would be that Incomplete grade I mentioned below. It made my GPA fall from a 3.8 to a 3.3. Not good. "Remember a C is failing in gradschool" (She always says that; it's sorta like her slogan). She asked about my GRE scores and I couldn't remember them but I said I guess they were good enough to get in here and she said that's true (UF's a pretty good school for what it's worth). She said the most important thing would be to explain that incomplete. "Tell them what your GPA would've been without it". And also I might find a program that's less numbers-focused, especially if I end up studying in South America. "Maybe your life story would be qualification enough".
Overall, I felt like the talk with her was very positive. She's very kind and extremely supportive. I'm kicking myself for not having taken a class with her earlier. (I'm in a class with her for the first time this semester). I think my gradschool experience would've been entirely different if I had hooked up with her my first semester.
The other prof, whom I've known for a lot longer, didn't ask about my GPA (so he may not know how low it is) said that my biggest impediment to doing a docorate would be the same one that caused me to take so long to finish my MA: it's a huge commitment, he said. "It's like a full-time job". You have to be fully involved in it. I know. I haven't been fully involved here. I started out being fully involved. Full-time student, eating, drinking and breathing academics. No friends outside the department. No life outside of it either. I hated it. I got A's and B's that semester but after that I said no more full time. Better to have a balanced life. Community. Friends. Even work. But it has taken me six years to finish.
The other thing he said, which was so interesting I kept thinking about it afterwards in the library was his reaction to my idea of studying outside of the country. Or specifically studying IR (lnternational Relations) outside of the country. Basically, he said don't do it and expect to get a job in this country. Unless out of the country means Oxford or Cambridge. Then he told me about his trip to China a couple years ago (one of his books got translated into Chinese) and he said he was asking around there about what is International Relations for them in China ('cause it's interesting to see how people in different countries view this field which is very US dominated, ya know?) and he said that he found out that they were reading Waltz and Keohane and all the same (US) theorists we read here. So, don't assume that studying IR in another country means that their version of it wouldn't be just "an American import". I told him I thought I'd be sensitive to those kinds of things since the whole point of studying elsewhere to be to gain a wider perspective than we tend to get here (we read pretty much just academics in the US and Canada with an occaisonal Brit or German thrown in). But later on, as I said, I kept thinking about this (about his reaction, about how no one here in the US would hire me if I studied IR anywhere in the majority(third) world and I decided that it was all the more reason why I should want to do so! Here's my revelation:
I want to study US (the US and us, the people, the phenomena of Empire) from the perspective of the Majority World (as much as it's possible for me to do so).
You see normally, in this field, the more common thing to do is to sit here within the US and study other people's countries. So we read books about Africa written by some "Africanist" who is some dude in the US talking about "failed" African states!! What's wrong with this picture??? Other disciplines like sociology, cultural studies and lit theory are shocked to find that most IR people don't even consider this to be problematic!
Mine is a very Marxist (specifically, standpoint-ish) view which is probably why it might sound so radical in my field, but the point is... I think it's interesting that there's such a huge gap in this field and I think it's interesting that its foundations are so shakey theoretically for so many reasons and most of them don't even notice. I just see a lot of potential here, ya know. And I'd like to examine it more. That's all.
Other than that, as for PhD work, he said the big thing is writing skills; they're hard to come by. I said I felt quite confident in my writing skills, it was my person-to-person intercommunication skills that can sometimes be lacking. He said that's relatively easy to overcome so I took that as a good sign.
So the upshot is, well, there still might be some possibilities for such a career path in the future. And there are some interesting things to think about as far as me doing IR for another significant chunk of my life. It's something to think about.
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