Fueled by a desire to become a teacher, Loren Mayshark entered Hunter College in 2008, with the intention of gaining a master's degree in two years. Six years and tens of thousands of dollars later, he abandoned his studies without attaining the deg...
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12/16/13
I just received comments back on my latest chapter from a friend of the family who has been helping me with this process since my editor quit. The man has multiple English degrees and a PhD in education, and said that my work seems solid, coherent, and every bit what Professor Rosencrass had requested. Judging from the various pertinent documents and the seventh version of chapter one, which he was kind enough to edit for me before I send it in to Rosencrass, he said that I seemed to be on track. He thinks that Rosencrass's demands are excessive and he must be "on some ego trip and seems to be taking it out on you." The other professional editor who had been working with me found it impossible to believe his demands and she eventually quit. In my seventh draft I have produced the most dryly academic draft yet.
The expense of the thesis is not simply the money paid to Hunter College. It is the up-front costs plus the number of penalty fees because their rigid policies and bureaucratic ineptitude made it nearly impossible to pay. Also, there is rent in New York, transportation, etc.; I am still paying to go to New York City for thesis-related minutiae. Additionally, there is the cost of books bought for the classes, the theses, side reading, etc. I have found that in the course of writing my thesis I have incurred a great amount of unforeseen expenses. I think of the hundreds or thousands of dollars spent on food, supplies in the Hunter bookstore, coffees, etc. The tens of thousands of dollars spent, the debt incurred, the mental pain, the frustration, the stress, the lost wages in cutting back on my hours at the many part-time jobs I have worked to support myself the best I can during this marathon run at an MA in history is maddening.
There continue to be logistical costs, book costs, paper costs, etc. My personal debt since enrolling in the program (which was advertised at a cost of about $10,000) is over $16,000, and the amount of money spent, considering how I have altered my life, is more than $30,000. All the while I have not been able to settle into a permanent position because of the time and effort grad school has taken: the mental toll, lack of time, etc. Constantly thinking that I am about to finish while having the finish line cruelly moved further from me has worn me down. The life I have been forced to live because of my academic pursuit has been causing me to fall back on bartending or other impermanent part-time work.
This is an excerpt from a journal entry on 3/8/14:
By hijacking the entire process yesterday, Rosencrass made it impossible to ask the questions I wanted to ask and it has made the process much longer than I thought it would be. His controlling style, in which he talks over me and insists upon his dominating the discussion of my paper, inhibits my ability to have a two-sided discussion and receive answers to the questions I have about my paper.
3/14/2014
Professor Caraja and Professor Rosencrass are both grossly hung up on the minutest details of my writing. Both have cited my paragraphs as a problem in my construction. When speaking of my paragraphs in reference to my first failed exam, Caraja said that two-sentence paragraphs were unacceptable at the graduate level. But in the test there was no time to reread it, much less alter something like paragraph structure, which is impossible to fix without a fresh bottle of whiteout. I had no time to revise. Professor Rosencrass also has been adamant about my paragraphs rigidly following a topic sentence with a single thought. I was excoriated by both professors on many aspects of my writing; interestingly, they both came down hard on my paragraphing. This got me thinking.
Paragraphs are more of a subjective aspect of writing than many others. In fact, there have been several studies that show paragraphing is not a standard objective aspect of writing and even topic sentences can be handled differently by different writers. Arthur A. Stern and Edgar H. Schuster conducted a paragraphing experiment where they had one hundred teachers divide a five hundred word chunk of text. The results varied significantly, with only five participants dividing the piece as Stern and Schuster had. This led Stern to wonder, "If, as the handbooks declare, a paragraph represents a 'distinct unit of thought,' why is it that we can't recognize a unit of thought when we see one? If every paragraph contains an identifiable topic sentence, then why don't all of us identify the same topic sentence?" Although the paragraph was a subjective unit, their versions of it were presented to me as fact and I was treated like a clod who simply could not grasp the proper technique. Ultimately this contributed to my failure of my comprehensive exam and evidence that I was an inferior student by Professor Caraja. It was also one of the shortcomings in my prose that inhibited me from producing an acceptable first chapter.
On a side note, it is interesting that the PhD in English who edited my chapter thought my paragraph structure was more than adequate, and overall he said that my prose was solid. When looking just at the writing style and structure, which professor would have the deeper understanding gleaned from experience? The point I am making here is, of course, both sources should be efficient, but not so drastically different in ultimate evaluation of the quality of writing: content is a different matter.
Many professors, but not all, carry themselves seriously and seem to have some hidden agenda that exists in their mind, and any way that I present the material that does not meet that expectation is unacceptable. After being bludgeoned thoroughly by Professor Caraja and continuously assailed by Professor Rosencrass, I am mentally exhausted. It is to the point that I have lost my focus, drive, and passion, and now I am simply gutting this process out in a joyless slog. Therefore, I don't know how to write, I am no longer concerned with the craft of writing history, the artistry; I'm simply trying to get it done, coldly, so I can gain a piece of paper so I can be paid to teach. Now I don't work hard to artfully craft an engaging and well-put-together paper. I am reactive. I'm trying to guess at what he wants, please his predilections, for the lone purpose of finally ending this torment.
