If I got a job that focuses on teaching or low quality research, what will life become of after graduate school at VHRM? Any transition cautions?
Teaching in lower ranked universities, what's the real feel of life?
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Your giant ego will implode. This can happen in a healthy if painful way (“Oh, I’m not that important after all”) or as a crisis (“OMG I’M A LOSER!”).
The alternative is denial - “There must have been some kind of mistake! I’m not supposed to be *here*!!!” This usually leads to you being a huge jerk to your colleagues, among other issues.
In short, get over yourself ASAP.
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In short, get over yourself ASAP.
This is the best takeaway. Nobody cares that you're an Ivy grad with an ASR and you're probably only nominally smarter than your colleague with a PhD from a LRM. The students who you look down on for attending, *scoffs*, Eastern Illinois State will go on to be social workers and counselors will have more of a substantive impact on that world than your precious ASR article.
In before accused of being VLRM -- HRM grad at directional R1.
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OP:
For the first few months it will feel strange. You'll miss the resource$ for sure, and you may get less attention (I.e. seminar invites, conference acceptances) as a faculty member than you did as a VRHM student...really.But then two things will start to become apparent:
1) you are making more of a difference in the lives of the students you teach. Face it, the Harvard and Stanford kids will be *fine* with or without your instruction. But you can help tip the balance for someone who lacks that pedigree.
2) you will be introduced to a huge population of brilliant researchers who for whatever reason -- health problems, bad luck, family stuff, getting backstabbed -- ended up at "lesser" schools. Your famous advisor probably taught you to ignore these people, but you will come to know and appreciate them. (Bonus: they're not jerks like so many famous profs.)
That said, the transition will be rough. Don't feel bad if you don't "get over it" quickly. Our profession is a real statusfest and it is hard not to feel that your self worth depends on your affiliation.
Good luck to you.
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The main adjustment coming from a HRM PhD program is that you are suddenly a nobody. I got more attention and respect from journal and book editors and grant agency people and HRM profs in my specialty when I was ABD than I ever have since. No one has ever been rude, but it’s clear that I am no longer relevant in their eyes.
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4142 is right that frequently people aren't rude, just ignore you. But many times people will be outright rude. I've been kicked out of section council meetings (I wasn't on the council, but that didn't use to matter when I was ABD of big name in the section), had my job compared to being a high school teacher, etc.
But for me the biggest shock in going from HRM to VLRM is just how big a gap there is in terms of how people view sociology. In VHRMs (and you can see this reproduced here to some extent), sociology, especially at the undergraduate level, is taught from this perspective of people who are going to be academics or go to grad school. Heavy on basic, theoretical research. To the extent that there is discussion about the curriculum, it's the usual "science versus activism" debate that you see here as well.
Well, at a VLRM, all of that is useless and irrelevant. Students aren't concerned over whether there's too much activism or not enough, or understanding the nuances of Bourdieu. Maybe 1% of my students are interested in any type of graduate education. So the real challenge in terms of recruitment here is the "what jobs can I get with this?" question, and lots of our students are students who wanted to go into social work but for one reason or another (schedule, SW requirements for internships, etc) couldn't make it there. So one of the big challenges that I have is trying to make my classes and our curriculum relevant to their professional concerns, even as there isn't much out there (because VHRMs ignore this part completely). So it's a big challenge of trying to teach 4 classes while trying to adjust existing materials to try to make it relevant to my students, who are mostly non-traditional, frequently part time, and generally just trying to get a job out of this.
It has made me see how a lot of the problems of the discipline in terms of maintaining relevance is this attitude that starts at the top that sociology can be either aca
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I went to a VLRM and now I teach at a 4/4 regional with many people who went to VHRM. It gives me a good chuckle to know we ended up in the same spot.
In all honesty, teaching a 4/4 can be very emotionally exhausting. I’ve gotten to know my students really well which is rewarding, but it can also be a lot at times.
However, I rarely work on weekends. I don’t have demanding publication pressure so I also enjoy my holiday and summer time off without worry. That’s the best part.
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I teach a 3/3 at an all-undergraduate public university. What others have said above is true. The job can be fairly easy, if you are ok not doing research. That's the road many of my colleagues have chosen, and they can skate by producing almost nothing, even though research is technically expected. If you want to keep up an active research program-- like I do-- the workload can be very heavy.
The hardest thing to adapt to is how little my colleagues care about my research. When I get articles published, nobody notices. When I get grants, nobody cares. There's little celebration of anyone's research successes. I think this occurs because the more attention that gets drawn to my successes, the more they fear that they'll have to start producing. Or, at very least, they fear that admin will look at it and say "She produces X articles a year; why can't you?" So, I mostly do my research in isolation and without a lot of support or recognition.
I think it's easy for faculty members in my shoes to feel bitter because, deep-down, we feel like our productivity should earn us more respect, more money, or more influence in institutional/departmental decision-making. It took me a long time to figure out that it doesn't. It's a total non-factor. Nobody cares. Seniority matters more than productivity.
Last thing I'll say: Nobody cares where you went to school. Ranking and pedigree are total non-factors for anything. They might matter within the discipline (i.e., at ASA where people look past you) but within the university, nobody cares if you did your PhD at Harvard or at Iowa State. The Harvard parchment doesn't impress anyone.
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I'm at a LRM LAC where you can skate by without researching post-tenure and be fine. Probably half of my colleagues never publish at all post-tenure. That said, research here is rewarded. Merit raises only go to people who exceed the bar. But the bar is low. Put out one book every three or four years and you're easily in the top 5% on campus, even if the book is one step above self-publishing.
It was different at my previous directional, where hardly anyone published anything at all, and there was no reward for doing so.
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effective teaching of sociology at the college level is less likely to help students, on average, than effective teaching of whatever material at the high school level.
And of course people hate to here what someone previously said "I don't think teaching sociology, or any social science including econ for that matter, will make any visible impact on students at a teaching school. "
It is generally true. Sorry!
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effective teaching of sociology at the college level is less likely to help students, on average, than effective teaching of whatever material at the high school level.
And of course people hate to here what someone previously said "I don't think teaching sociology, or any social science including econ for that matter, will make any visible impact on students at a teaching school. "
It is generally true. Sorry!I mostly disagree with that, and I'm someone who is very disillusioned with sociology. A good teacher can help students develop critical thinking skills no matter what the subject content of the course is -- even sociology.