Readers! Hello. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything on here and, to be honest, I’m pretty nervous about this post.
It’s been a tricky one to write this, mainly because I hate the thought that it might come across as whiney or self-indulged in some way. But a little gentle nudging from friends and family has pushed this out into the world, predominantly in the hope that someone else might find some comfort or support in the content.
If it’s necessary, please note that this post deals with depression and associated issues, so it’s not exactly a laugh a minute and some people might find it unpleasant.
So how to start?
I’m not crazy. I’m not.
Hi reader. I’m BloggerNotADoctor: I’m 30 this year. (That’s the trigger right there- 3 decades- it’s not a lot, but enough to supposedly have a few things figured out.) I have a beautiful wife, a wired Jack Russel Terrier, a mortgage on a 3-bedroom house in a small midlands (UK) town and I’m very close to my family geographically and emotionally. We don’t struggle with money, partly because of my wife’s salary and partly because I’m tighter than a gnat’s bum. I can play (and I own) several instruments, I have both a B.A(hons) and M.A. degree and I have a full time, permanent job. But despite all of this I wake up every day feeling like I’m a total failure.
And there you have it: the strangest paragraph I’ve ever had to write, or more specifically, come to terms with writing. It’s hard to look at all the things you have and not feel incredibly selfish for not feeling as happy as you think you should be. So I’m writing this, partly to come to terms with it, and partly to see if I can work out where to go from here. This is catharsis in its most traditional form, thanks for bearing with me.
If I’m going to address this, I guess I have to start at the very beginning.
Its a very good place to start.
That, dear reader, is more complicated than it sounds. You see I could talk about how the education system in the UK when I was growing up programmed my generation with the notion that ‘able’ students are only successful of they go to university. I could talk about how my English teacher in 6th form reacted with utter disdain when my university of choice turned out not to be a member of the Russell group (a bit like the ivy league for our US cousins) but instead an ex polytechnic college (that happens to be consistently ranked amongst the top new universities globally, but that’s another story). I could talk at length over how my undergraduate course was the greatest years of my life and inspired me to want to learn as much as I could, how the loss of my Granddad in 1st year hit me harder than I realised at the time or how my postgraduate course was so intense- and its students so dismissive of my alma-mater- that I suffered from a largely undetected breakdown that was spotted far too late. All of these things were stepping stones to now, but I have neither the emotional fortitude or the time to go into them here.
The best place to start is by saying what was missing in my first paragraph. I refer you to the title of this blog, specifically the part that informs you that I am, in the most concrete of ways, ‘not a doctor’.
You see, I should be. Jeesh How whiney and self-indulged does that come across? If you’re sat there thinking ‘bully for you mate, I should be a millionaire/professional footballer/rock star/president/CEO’ then thank you very much. Thank you for being the perfect example of the thought process that leads you to consider yourself as ungrateful or unworthy or think that you should be ashamed of how you feel. It’s not your fault you had that reaction to me throwing my toys out of the pram and whining about not getting my PhD, and I don’t think any less of you. I really don’t, simply because I went through exactly the same set of thoughts. It’s that conflict that is leaving its mark on all of the other wonderful things in my life. And I would seriously love to be done hating myself for it now.
Let me elaborate. I was doing a PhD. I shan’t be telling you where or with whom, but I shall be telling you the basics. My degree is in English Literature and my Masters was in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Culture. I passed my MA by a measly one mark after spending 6 months sat at a keyboard in tears unable to write a damn thing.
Like this. If instead of a block it was a crippling fear of failure and an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. And without the imaginary tiger.
My major passion lies in the evolution of literature and hypothesising about where the future might lie. I look at the weird things, the odd corners of the literary landscape in which lie the books written backward/with holes in/ upside down/graphic novels/text-based adventure games/digital literature etc. etc. etc. There are only a couple of places that would be able to support postgraduate research, and I got a place at one of them. My painfully poor master’s degree mark alas made me (narrowly) miss out on a scholarship, so I funded it with a government-backed bank loan called a PCDL. This was for £10,000. This loan would cover my tuition fees, but it would not enable me to do other luxuries besides study, such as eat and sleep under a roof. So my aforementioned amazing family stepped in and I lodged with my parents for the duration of my studies. To bring in enough money to travel to Uni and buy books, I did some temporary work as what is known as a Cover Supervisor. A clever position invented so that schools could employ staff to cover for absent colleagues without a teaching qualification, thus making them cheaper than a fully qualified teacher (More on that later). I also did some work for the university, but as a member of teaching staff and in the design and implementation of peer support networks within the department. As you can probably guess, education is something I’m very passionate about.
If that seems like a bit too much information, let me assure you it’s all relevant to understanding where I am now and how the hell I got here.
Fast forward a couple of years to the end of the second year of my PhD and the brown smelly substance hit the bladed whirly thing at great velocity. I won’t go into very much detail, but you’ll get the basic facts:
- My supervisor left the university rather quickly and didn’t really inform me of the fact and also had not scheduled my annual review. Ever.
- My first annual review was 6 months late and at that time my second supervisor had become my first supervisor. A new member of staff became my second.
- The review panel decided that a lack of supervision had led to my project being ‘well written but unoriginal’ and I was forced to reconsider the direction of my research
- My second annual review is scheduled on time giving me 6 months to re-write the entirety of my thesis to the new direction
- At the second review I am informed that he project is interesting and original but that I will not be able to finish it on time if it to be good enough.
- Also the university will not be able to fund any extension to my studies.
What to take from this: I’m £10,000 in debt by this point. University is saying I need at least one more year, by which time I must start paying back the PCDL loan. Poor supervision and management lead me to needing an extension, but despite this being the universities fault they were unwilling to provide me the financial means to finish the course. So I’m 2 years into a 3 year course with half of my thesis written and I’m forced through no fault of my own to abandon my course with no qualification, a gap on my CV and a £10k debt. Needless to say I involved my student’s union who fought hard during a lengthy tribunal resulting in the university accepting fault for the first 18 months of my course and refunding me for this time only. It’s very hard during all of this to not feel like I was simply a cash piñata for the institution all along. With no monitoring of my supervision and no compassion regarding my situation shown at all. To an institution which had devoted considerable time and effort into working for and improving (don’t forget the peer support project they were in talks about rolling out across more departments!) I have no value save the money that I have managed to secure through personal hardship and significant debt.
It’s a great boost to a chap’s confidence I can tell you.
So what’s a guy to do? Remember the cover supervisor gig? The bit of pocket money I needed to get by on? That. That’s it. That’s all I have. My CV reads studied, qualified, studied, qualified, studied and did a bit of part time work, carried on doing a bit of part time work. Thankfully, a school for which I did a lot of cover was looking to employ a cover supervisor full time and here I am: 2 and a bit years later, pushing 30 with 2 degrees earning approximately £12.5k (about $16k USD, give-or-take), just over half as much as my wife and nearly a third of my best friend.
Now I know money isn’t everything, and I’m certainly not enough of a troglodyte to believe a man must earn more than a woman. I’m so phenomenally proud of all my wife has accomplished and continues to accomplish and have nothing but respect and admiration for the bestie, who never went to university but is one of the most successful men I know. And therein lies the rub. All of the time, money and effort invested in chasing these qualifications to become BloggerNotADoctor B.A.(hons) M.A. to earn very little and work in an environment I hate. Its soul destroying to think that I have, in all honesty, wasted a decade of my life chasing a dream that I will now never likely realise that to the emotional and financial detriment all of the other elements of my life.
You see education in this country is broken. Not only are we still pushing an outdated and dangerous notion that success is quantifiable; that if you have certain grades or go to certain seats of learning it increases your value to society, but we are doing so to the emotional and social detriment of children. I know first-hand, I see it happening every day. Teachers should be able to inspire, to encourage, to develop their students into leaving school as well-rounded, productive, active and engaged members of society and to have to broadest skill set they can in order to apply them to wherever they want to go. Instead we have them take their options, choices of subject that define their entire trajectory, at 13. Christ when I was 13 I couldn’t decide what to eat for breakfast let alone what I want to do for…well…ever. Teachers aren’t allowed to engage and inspire, no; they must test and re-test. Children are too painfully aware of the fact that must hit targets and achieve pre-determined grades based on numerous tests that we have students suffering from mental breakdowns and stress related illnesses at as young as 10. Teachers are pulling 60-70 hour weeks and constantly monitored. Their pay (which has been frozen for at least the last 10 years) is related directly to their ability to push kids harder and force them to hit bigger and more insane targets. And all the time the most vulnerable, least academic children are made, unconsciously on the part of the system I will admit, to feel second class.
I tried teaching. I had responsibility for 3 classes as an –unqualified instructor’ last year and it was hell. I didn’t have a weekend off for 6 months. I lived, ate, breathed and defecated statistics and targets. Despite feeling like a glorified administrator, the kids enjoyed my lessons and I felt like every now and then I got through, I inspired them. So much so that I enquired about getting qualified. I found a course that would have me qualified in 3 months- a fraction of the usual time – based on my experience in the classroom over the last 6 years. It would cost £4,500. See above for how affordable you think that is. But knowing the school needed staff in my department, and that male English teachers are somewhat rare, I gathered my evidence and paperwork and submitted them to the school and suggested that I could continue my role as a UQT (earning, £5k less than the next, most newly qualified teacher) and train on this course if the school would pay for it, offering I might add to take the £4,500 fee as a pay cut.
The answer was no.
No to a teacher who already knows the kids. No to a teacher who is settled in the department. No to a teacher with 2 degrees. No to a teacher with experience of teaching at the highest level possible. No to a teacher who is willing to be paid less than their worth to provide all of this because they genuinely care about the students. And it’s here that we meet. You, a reader with a passing interest in mental health and education and me, A former higher education cash piñata turned school doormat with two very, very expensive pieces of paper gathering dust atop his bookshelf.
“And this kids, is why you can’t have nice things…”
This is the crux of the problem with education in the UK: it thrives on failure. Over everything else, the overwhelming mentality of those at the upper echelons of the education system is one that actively encourages feelings of overwhelming failure. We constantly assess to move the goalposts because it would be too much for students to believe they are a success; no they must instead believe that they are not achieving what they should. And I choose my words carefully here. It isn’t they aren’t achieving what they could what we know they are capable of; but that they aren’t achieving what they should. what we are constantly told to do is push them harder and harder, move the goals further and further. Well you know what happens when you apply enough pressure to an object? Here’s a hint:
And it’s not just the kids. The constant, unrelenting pressure of a system that is incapable of acknowledging success is causing teachers to leave in droves. If the kids are the pavement in that picture, the teachers are the tip of the jackhammer. And like any tool under constant strain, they soon wear out.
As both a product and a tool of this system, no wonder I’m a little bit broken.
‘Just Get Out!’ I hear you cry ‘Get a real job!’
Try it with my CV. Try applying for the private sector when the only experience you have is part-time supply teaching that graduated to full time cover work. Where your qualifications were so tailored to research that they are practically useless in any other sector. Where all of the jobs in field that involve writing copy or working with words are so saturated with graduates who have done their internships and worked in the real world. Where there are fully qualified teachers just as disillusioned as you applying for the same jobs with the added bonus of another very expensive piece of paper. Try averaging 15 applications a week and getting 1 interview in a 10-month period. Try desperately wanting to leave education and constantly getting offered nothing but education jobs and tell me to ‘just get out’ again.
My other great passions asides from TV and Film are playing music and woodworking. It’s therapeutic to make things and I’m told I do it really well. There’s a certain personal irony to taking bits of unwanted, valueless scrap and turning it into beautiful, functional and valued objects. I might even pop some on the blog soon.
Only thing is, I can’t even get an entry-level training post in either of those areas because I’m too old now. I’ve looked at training as a cabinet maker, and there are some lovely looking courses that will let you pay on a PCDL loan…
I’ll just leave this here…
And you can put one of those weights in both hands if you want to set up on your own.
So Hi reader.
I’m BloggerNotADoctor. I’m 30 this year. I have a beautiful wife, a wired Jack Russell Terrier, a mortgage on a 3-bedroom house in a small midlands town and I’m very close to my family. I have never earned enough money to pay even a small amount from my student loan. I still owe £12k for my PhD fees despite never actually getting my PhD. I wasted my 20’s chasing an ideal sold to me by a broken system and then hypocritically ended up working in that self-same system selling the same broken ideals to the next generation. I’ve been looking for a career change for the best part of a year now and I’ve had one interview. I wake up every morning feeling like a failure and I’m trying really hard to do something about it.
Thanks for reading.
J.
*disclaimer. In no way do I intend to insult, demean, belittle of demonise my amazing (second) primary PhD supervisor or seem ungrateful to my current employers for actually giving me a job. It’s the systems you work in that are abhorrent, not you.
Now I know Lorre is playing on a fantasy. But it’s a fantasy based on horrible, horrible stereotypes and cultural ‘norms’. Lorre is no stranger to objectifying women, his female characters have traditionally had all the depth of a puddle and acted as nothing more that the object of male desire and/or scorn. See 2.5 Men. This is a common criticism of his work and I’m not going to dwell. What I will do is say how fed up, I been how genuinely sick to the back teeth I am of Lorre’s god-awful characatures. You see, all he has done is take essence of geek, the vaguest, most superficial stereotypes and grafted them onto generic, lecherous males and misogynistic, objectified females in order to do something ‘different’. The result:
I'm a Blogger, Not a Doctor. 