I'm planning on getting into a master's program in philosophy in pursuit of a PhD and professor occupation...

Doubly so. Because you're wasting years of your life to get a Degree from the University of Czeckaslashithole.

If that’s what you love, then do that. The job market is getting tough though.

Female o’clock. Makeup is deceiving.

how would it be a waste if i became a professor in my country?

Same reason buying lottery tickets is a waste of money. Hell you would probably get better risk to return doing that for four years

good luck with that

why do you think it is such an unlikelihood that someone could become a professor in today's world?

Because it's literally a statistical unlikelihood that you will find good (i.e. tenure-track) employment as a phil prof. We're talking 1% chance here

Because by the numbers only 1-2% of PhD grads ever do. Might be even less depending on field. Not to mention the fact tenured positions are shrinking all the time so what you think is a professor is based how they were over twenty years ago is gone and what a professor will be ten years from now is probably going to be even worse

why so fucking unlikely?

>what a professor will be ten years from now is probably going to be even worse

like what?

You won't get a job as a philosophy professor, so I would recommend it unless you are independently wealthy and will not be relying on your degree for money. I was in a fully funded tier-1 history PhD program with the intention of becoming a professor. I attended conferences, got published in revered publications, and had a near-perfect gpa. None of that matters because the job market is such shit you will end up working your ass off, being completely poor, and likely never find stable employment unless you are superhumanly talented and ambitious. I saw the writing on the wall and left with a masters degree

>like what?
They'll probably make you wear silly hats and do dances before work like Walmart employees

jfc it seems like it's easier to be an actor than a professor

why do people keep trying to get into academia if the prospects are so fucking dim?

It is, with a way better lifestyle along the way.
My guess is likely a mixture of naivete, delusion, and a lack of awareness on other career options. If you loved what you studied in undergrad and have a romanticized view of what it would be like to be a professor it is the most obvious path. Most people, myself included, "know it's tough" before joining the program but the sheer extent of the fact that you are not going to become a tenured-track professor does not become apparent until you are in the program, when you watch your extremely talented colleagues publish and defend dissertations that are better than anything you could do and still not be able to find any stable employment and end up going back to teaching high school or something. My advice to OP is to search a lot harder for career options beforehand.

Because it's a pyramid scheme. The guys at the top promise big and use the guys at the bottom as free labor and worshippers promising they'll get to be there some day but just looking at the numbers of both should make it obvious it'll never happen
Its a cult and the sooner you stop believing in it the sooner they lose their power to exploit people

Why do you want to be a professor of philosophy? Because it's a stable job in relation to a thing you're interested in?

Enjoy hating philosophy!

what would be better career options for someone who likes reading and writing?

why would i hate it? i don't understand this post

I'm currently searching for a PhD, albeit in a different field. I've been going through a lot of shit and stress due to that but I'd still say that you should do it if that"s your dream or goal or however you want to label it. Best of luck, OP

I ended up working as a freelance writer for a year, then an editor, then a digital marketer. Now I work in the wine industry because I am passionate about making wine and where I live (Seattle) it's way easier to become a winemaker than a professor. I would explore other passions of yours and see if any of those have potential, and then read and write on your downtime.

If you want to work in academia you should be acutely aware that academics are like hyper intelligent bitchy teenage girls and the web of esoteric drama is fucking unreal and migraine inducing.

Imagine taking your own erect cock. Imagine snapping it like a glow stick every morning. It's a tire fire and it's genuinely reserved for people who love academia more than they hate other academics because otherwise you are going to drink yourself to death.

I'm not saying this to scare you or dissuade you but because you deserve a heads up. You are a human being and you deserve to know. This isn't hyperbole, it's really bad.

I dropped out of undergrad three times
Now all my peers have lapped me. Some more than once and have gone on to notable careers

I'm miserable and penniless

Stay in school kids

This is about PhD not bachelors dummy nocollege

looks like i'll just have to end up trying to be an actor instead of this shit... man, it's depressing

You'd have more time to read and study philosophy if you became a mail man

No great man ever gave something up because he thought it'd be 'too hard' or whatever. If you truly love something you must go for it. Sounds like you did not have the confidence and gave up before even really trying. As for becoming an actor, the odds of that are unfathomably small and nepotism plays a huge role; for every person vying for a professorship, there are thousands of people trying to become actors.

>Sounds like you did not have the confidence and gave up before even really trying.

i don't have the confidence if it's a 1 percent shot. that's too damn low. and in terms of being an actor, i'm not thinking i'm going to be mr. hollywood.

I would only do it if you have a super clear research interest, have relationships with professors who can get you places, and dont mind living in the middle of nowhere. Academia is a pretty bad idea desu but do what you have to

>No great man ever gave something up because he thought it'd be 'too hard' or whatever
I'm sure almost all of them did

Really? Even my professors attested to how hard it is to get a job in academia

Typing this on one go and using reddit spacing on mobile so my apologies for any mistakes.
The point is that even when trying hard the odds are against you.
I'm currently at Tulane as a research assistant and thought about this a lot since I was originally here because I was offered a PhD spot. I turned it down and did this temporary job instead.
Here are some reasons why I didnt do it based on what I saw in my field (intermediate stem) and read about in other fields.
A PhD would take 4-7 yrs getting paid 18-23K for a good to decent student. Then you post doc for 2-5 yrs getting ~30 K and moving around the country while you apply to jobs mostly at universities you've probably never heard of. Even if you land a good spot in a city you like at a good school you have ~5 yrs to publish as much as possible and secure as much funding as possible (assuming you are at an R1). Even when all this happens you might still get denied tenure and have to pack up again and make a new life elsewhere (happened to my advisor's advisor at an Ivy even after winning all kinds of awards and grants).
Because of this, there is a pressure to take in as many students as you can afford so you can pump out as many publications as you can. The science or research itself doesn't matter once the paper gets accepted so intellectual growth is actually harmed. Meanwhile you just added way more students that are only trained to be academics to a saturated market. This is how you become a higher part of the pyramid scheme. The system rewards you for it. Keep in mind that this is if you're lucky.
If you're not lucky and/or you underperformed during application time you will either have to lower your standards and possibly end up as an adjunct ("temporary" teaching faculty that sometimes do research on the side and sometimes do the bulk of teaching at a university for shitty pay(30-45K I think? Correct me if wrong)). During the PhD you will likely gain no skills relevant to a non academic career making it difficult to leave and get a respectable job for a 30 something year old. Throughout all this, did you have time to settle anywhere? Did you find a spouse? Did you have kids? How did you pay for all that? It's not about being the best, its about being lucky.
Again, this is just what I saw. I still might do a PhD if I believed that it would help my job prospects and let me earn skills. If you are destined to be a scholar whose findings will have a wide impact you wouldn't be reading this and you wouldn't be on this site. The field is already saturated with people trying to "contribute" (by following trends and doing pointless research). Would it not be better to do a PhD to improve yourself and hopefully contribute to a field during the process? Unfortunately an advisor might not eve know what that means.

Why do you think it's 1%? You justified this figure by the number of philosophy majors who become professors but obviously not all of them try to do it. Filter it to the people who are passionate, disciplined, hard working and talented and it'll be a different statistic.
To be a great man requires sacrifice and hardship. These men accomplished things that had never been done before and in many cases were thought to be impossible. If you're not willing to go for a relatively pedestrian goal (compared to wanting to change the world or something) of being a professor, well...

>To be a great man requires sacrifice and hardship
It also requires having a brain and having a sense of reality. Thank God Hitler didn't keep knocking on the art college door like a bitch because don't give up bro :^)

hitler also wanted to write an opera and gave up on that too

So another field destroyed by the capital

Good. Europe needed a savior like it does today. Not another pencil pushing academic or self indulgent artist

>hitler
>great man
>not the primary reason for the failures of nazi germany
top kek. should've stuck to the art, certainly did a lot better with that than as a leader.

Attached: 1549225386219.jpg (898x653, 94K)

yeah i'd like fries with that.

philosophy phd here

FIRSTLY if you are thinking of going to an unfunded master's degree, 100% do not do that because you will never pay those loans back. it is, i shit you not, THE BIGGEST MISTAKE YOU COULD POSSIBLY MAKE. the MA is not a fast track to a PhD.

the good:
- if you aren't a complete pushover, you get to work on stuff you actually want to work on. i really enjoy doing academic work. i am doing a dissertation on derrida's philosophy of life, and it's supremely fun and interesting.
- conferences are cool, and philosophers are often pretty fun people for at least one or two nights
- avoid the soul-crushing banality of working for some bullshit corp
-being in the academy and school in general is good. period.

the bad:
- the actual phd is a fucking shit hole. if you are predisposed to depression (and, let's face it, you probably are if you're posting here) you are going to face some major personal issues very soon. it's hellish. constant isolation plus the extreme variability of your actual colleagues is a terrible mixture.
- the money. it's cool if you are 20 and making $20k a year, but it is nightmarish when you are 30. don't underestimate this. it's actually the worst part of being in the phd if you are a bit older. living hand to mouth is constantly terrifying, and good fucking luck if you go to a program in a HCOL place.
- the job prospects. are effectively nil if you don't go to a top ten university. when i say that, i mean that you should right away dispel any sort of thought that says "oh there are probably plenty of jobs out there for a phd." you're wrong and there aren't. competition is *insanely* competitive. imagine competing against 500 PhD holders for one position. **that's every job.** more than likely, you will desperately try to hop to some post-doc and extend your misery, then, if you're lucky, accept a position at some fuck ass university in the middle of nowhere teaching basic logic courses to undergrads. ask yourself this question: would you be OK to live in rural Utah making $30k a year for ten years?
- the academy is destroying philosophy and the humanities at large, turning to permanent adjunct positions, and the tenured professors don't give a flying fuck about it. your job prospects may exist, but the trajectory of professional philosophy is utterly abysmal. no benefits, no job security, shit pay, high class loads, zero free time.
- everything else. it's what you make of it, in good and bad ways. girls have it much easier than guys do for a number of reasons.

my experience personally was that the first two years were utterly hellish and then things leveled off significantly from there. i don't consider myself to be a terribly good fit for my program, but i make it work. i also have a second job that requires almost no work and pays me $3500/m in addition to my salary, so i am 100% a marginal case. i make more money now than most of the adjuncts at the the university. without that job, i would've dropped out.

What's funny is I only see replies online discouraging you from pursuing this path. It's almost like the people who succeeded on this path are busy doing other things...

t. not interested in this path

sauce pls

i want to be really clear about one thing: you are probably some fucking teenager with no idea what you are talking about, because this "just rub dirt in it" idea is absolutely fucking poisonous to making decisions like a real adult. yeah, if you literally cannot bear to do anything else with your life but teach philosophy, then you'll do whatever you need. but one of the most pernicious and dangerous ways of thinking that one can adopt is to think utterly categorically and thereby not constantly reevaluate what your priorities/goals are, and if the path you are on is helping you achieve that. sometimes, steps backwards are really steps forwards.

>t. unable to take risks

>if you literally cannot bear to do anything else with your life but teach philosophy

i'm OP and this isn't me, and i'd be paying my way (not getting paid by the institution to do my schooling), so i guess it's a no on this idea then

i have the money saved up for the program, and i could live with my parents, but the prospects seem too dim. i guess i'll try to become a librarian

There's people in this very thread refuting that

reading this thread, is it worth doing a philosophy undergrad? are there worthwhile masters options to pursue after graduating with a philosophy undergrad?

Not really

philosophy undergrads are among the top scorers of all grad school tests. it's ironically one of the best undergrad options.

Are you already in school? God I hate school so much, I didn't even bother going to University. Are you sure you fathom going to University everyday to teach philosophy to college kids until you retire? And if you don't make it in what are you gonna do with that degree? Maybe you can become a lawyer(maybe)

not sure if it's different because i'm UK based but i've never really heard of grad school tests. you usually just get to go into something semi-related to your undergrad if you have a 2:1+

>girls have it much easier than guys do for a number of reasons.
based + redpilled. care to go more into this? also how'd you get into this second job that takes no work? sounds comfy

Undergrad user here. I wanted to go for a philosophy PhD but this thread is making me seriously reconsider. The problem is that there's nothing I really want to do other than teach philosophy. I mean I'd love to be a successful musician but that always seemed more impossible than academia. Am I just doomed to a life of doing shit I don't enjoy? Should I just neck myself?

Attached: 5B7816EE-5E07-4D5E-B1E1-FA28060A2A66.png (761x605, 1.35M)

I'm and wanted to add that some people are fine with moving around for work. Some people enjoy it. Some people find a spouse because of their program. Some don't take on more students than they can give attention to. Many are okay with being at a state school or community college. If you think you'll like teaching and learning I hope you're not discouraged by the prospects. It might be worth trying it and having some back ups on the side by also learning skills that will let you branch out a bit if needed.

>The problem is that there's nothing I really want to do other than teach philosophy. I mean I'd love to be a successful musician but that always seemed more impossible than academia.

are you me (OP)?

tried law but hated it

You can either choose a life of comfortable mediocrity, or strive for something more which will involve risks. If you prefer the former and are okay with spending your one chance at life on this earth in such a way and dying wondering 'what if?' then so be it. Framing this mindset as that of a 'real adult' is pure cope.

> based + redpilled

please stop. women in philosophy definitely face tons of shit but the pendulum has swung very far in the other direction in the last half-decade or so.

what i mean by women having it easier in this moment is that being a woman in academia is like being a unicorn. my university pretty much decreed that they were only going to hire women, and have indeed done so, in fact over some much more qualified male candidates. it's just a fact that programs are hyperfocused on hiring for diversity now, which literally means prioritizing women and minorities.

this may be different elsewhere, but female students at my university are given a much longer leash. many of them are absolutely insufferable, but their behavior is tolerated because the GPD (who is female) is there essentially to cheerlead female students. at my school in particular, female students seem to mysteriously be the only ones who get intra-department research grants and shit like that.

likewise, there are just tons of opportunities within departments for female students. there is no "white males in philosophy" club but there are literally __endless__ "women and minorities in philosophy" associations that become not only nice-feeling but really important networking tools that often aren't available to male students.

i really don't have a chip on my shoulder. but the drive for diversity and conservative tribalism have combined forces to make philosophy a very hostile place at times, especially for a regular white dude like me. i have been targeted and asked/told not to contribute in many different venues by female colleagues because they did not think that "another white man" needed a seat at the table.

that is a ridiculous false dichotomy, and undoubtedly one that comes from someone with very little life experience. risk is inherent with any choice worth doing. i'm doing a fucking philosophy phd. obviously i took a serious risk. all or nothing, however, is not just wrong, but it's backwards. if you lack the nuance to be able to negotiate your life and read tea leaves every once in a while, then blockheadedness is your worst enemy, not mediocrity.

sounds awful. is there any pushback at all? I assume no one dares speak out against it, but do your peers share your concerns off the record? Also, do you think that becoming trans would help for the sweet diversity points?

fucking niggerloving faggots, the lot of them

institutionalizing philosophy was the first mistake, this is just the inevitable outcome of it

I am I am relatively young, all the girls my age I graduated with that study humanities/arts(which is probably the majority of humanities these days) now are HUUUUUGE virtue signalers and self-righteous harpies. One look at their twitter says it all. They absolutely adore LGBT people as an accessory to their victim complex.

As I've said, all great people face huge challenges and choose to persevere despite the risks. The great philosophers of the future are facing the same problems you've described but are choosing to go on, even though they could've taken easier paths. I'm not talking about you; as you've said, you have chosen to take this risk (although you have it easy with your side job apparently. Your peers who soldier on with only their stipends are closer to what I have in mind). I'm talking about guys who wouldn't have tried because of how hard it is to get to your position, which is who I was replying to when you decided to jump in and call me a teenager with no life experience.