Jealousy rears her ugly head. How could anyone have anything but admiration for her?
I sincerely hope you never become a caregiver to anyone— human or animal!
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Wow. That is a terrible way to live to be that angry and cruel. I am just left feeling sorry for you. You seem very bitter and angry. How unfortunate.
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I mean, you’re not wrong. People are still trying to exonerate the man that we all knew for a very long time pulled a ton of shady crap.
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Spoken like someone who has never been a grad student…
I know this is a major tangent, but I couldn’t scroll past this comment. When I was in grad school (07-09, so not THAT long ago), I was paid $800/month. I was contractually obligated NOT to work any job outside my research assistantship. I logged an average of 110 hours per week between the lab, my courses, my teaching duties, and the farm. I worked 7 days per week, including ALL holidays and weekends. Because who was going to feed the horses on my research project if I wasn’t there? No one, that’s who.
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What? I’m not sure you understand the higher education industry, as it has stood in general and how it is now.
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There are no limits to the number of hours academics can work. None. And the “face time” that anyone sees them teaching or in office hours is the tip of the ice burg.
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ABD (“all but dissertation”) grad students are the most valuable product a university has and makes. That’s because they are the very cheapest form of teaching labor there is. The industry can’t actually afford for all of those folks to finish their PhDs and then stay for professorships where they need to be paid like the experts they are.
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And since the tenure track has all but died out, there are a whole bunch of grad students and bona fide PhDs who did, in fact, work for slave wages without any career to come from that. It’s not as bad in the sciences as in the humanities, but the point stands about even the PhD as leading to nothing that the university industry itself wants to use and pay for.
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Yes, I have in fact been a grad student. Twice. Once getting an MEd and once getting an MS. I have also been a working student and a groom. And yes, you’re correct - office hours and time spent grading papers and the like IS time “outside” of normal work hours, and yes, there is a lot of hard work in being a Grad or PHd student.
But it was definitely nothing compared to the literal back breaking labor and exploitation I felt as a working student or groom (in most cases) where there was no recourse, no University system in place, no oversight of any kind, and no health insurance (both graduate programs included health insurance in the University system).
I just do not believe that being a PHD or Grad Student, both things that come from receiving a higher education already and therefor a plethora of other life and career choices if you so desire, compares to being a groom forced to ride with horses in the back of a semi truck for an employer or any number of other ridiculous and dangerous job requirements for some people who have very limited career options.
One is a choice. The other is exploitation.
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Well, literally no one claimed that it was, so…
But YOU claimed that there were regulations on hours worked by grad students, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
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It’s literally what started this tangent, by someone making the supposition that the “education” and salary received by being a working student was comparable to salary and experience received being in a PHd program. In that at the end, you came out with the ability to go on to do bigger, better things. That’s what I originally responded to and what I’m responding to now.
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Well, then you shouldn’t have quoted MY post, which was responding specifically to the BLATANTLY FALSE claim that grad students work limited hours. My post was a refutation of that ridiculous ignorance, not to the general topic of mistreated grooms, which I made clear in my post.
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I was a grad student on a survival level stipend for 5 years. I worked flat out for that time. But it was self directed work with a strong creative element and the hope that I would have a very good career in future. It was tough but it worked out and I had no debt.
There may be an equivalency to a WS position if you could exit that WS program as a competent young trainer and pro rider. The ideal WS position could be effectively grad school for riding.
There is no comparison to being a groom which is a skilled trade.
For sure, I agree with the theoretical situation above. But Grad programs are at least in part specifically designed to have the graduates go onto bigger/better things. While many don’t, if there wasn’t at least that promise and a track record of the graduates doing just that, the programs would have a harder time attracting students and keeping the machine running.
There is currently no such structure or oversight put into any working student positions, at least in this country. How many times are such promises made, only to have them not come true and another working student waiting in the wings to take the place of those who get burnt out or injured?
I don’t think that the context of the original thread should be lost in my original claim that most WS positions are not akin to PHd programs, even if the salaries might be close and even if there is an original promise that said WS would get contacts and a leg up in the industry AND even if I was incorrect in my belief that most Grad programs do have some sort of limit on the number of hours worked as mine both did.
Ah I was just trying to differentiate between groom and working student.
I agree really that most top riders seem to get their crucial early riding experience as juniors without being working students. And if they do go as a WS it’s incidental not crucial to their riding career.
The best way to become a top rider is to have talent, drive, and the cash to fund the best lessons and horses. You can be the client, you dont need to he certified by anything.
However you can’t become a doctor, scientist, professor, etc without post graduate or professional school. There just is no other way to be certified. You don’t just learn by doing on your own time.
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Well… that wasn’t actually, or the only, comparison you made. And those glorious “options” you mention for finished PhDs aren’t really there, at least in the sense of that degree being a research degree that qualifies you to teach at the university level.
Truly. The higher ed industry has some major problems. Google “adjunct professor” and learn about that poorly paid career. Look up the lawsuits that have been filed by students against schools who would not release placement data for their new JDs, or lied about it. Hell, ask any grad program to show you the placement data for their students for the past 5 years and see what you get. Ask yourself whether or not it makes financial sense for anyone to pay for any part of their PhD or a Master’s degree. And those suckers are cash-cows for the university. To me, getting graduate-level people to pay tuition is, from the university’s perspective, extending the bachelor’s degree “product” by 2-3 years. If you can convince those paying students to teach, so much the better. But I don’t know why they would.
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