Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The PhD Odyssey

The PhD Odyssey SASI KIRAN R. MALLAM Retrospective Reflections on the Notion of “Care” [Neoliberalism] has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world. INTRODUCTION My critical autoethnographic account reflects on the lived experience of being a PhD scholar inhabiting a neoliberal public education space. It is written from a position of caste and class privilege, mindful of the trials and tribulations of less privileged fellow research scholars, who face unimaginable obstacles in the pursuit of their doctoral degrees. The attempt is not just to highlight the inconvenience caused to me but to reflect on the structures erected by neoliberalism that make pursuing a PhD a traumatic experience prone with vulnerabilities. I reflect on the precarity of doing a PhD in a public university in India after the normative age, the resulting anxiety, and notions of care. When I discussed my plans of pursuing my PhD with a friend and colleague, he asked me to consider the opportunity cost, given that I would be abandoning a lucrative corporate career to follow my interest in academia. He also arrived at a ballpark figure http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Autoethnography University of California Press

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-california-press/the-phd-odyssey-WouO8N0AKM

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of California Press
Copyright
© 2023 by The Regents of the University of California
eISSN
2637-5192
DOI
10.1525/joae.2023.4.2.283
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

SASI KIRAN R. MALLAM Retrospective Reflections on the Notion of “Care” [Neoliberalism] has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world. INTRODUCTION My critical autoethnographic account reflects on the lived experience of being a PhD scholar inhabiting a neoliberal public education space. It is written from a position of caste and class privilege, mindful of the trials and tribulations of less privileged fellow research scholars, who face unimaginable obstacles in the pursuit of their doctoral degrees. The attempt is not just to highlight the inconvenience caused to me but to reflect on the structures erected by neoliberalism that make pursuing a PhD a traumatic experience prone with vulnerabilities. I reflect on the precarity of doing a PhD in a public university in India after the normative age, the resulting anxiety, and notions of care. When I discussed my plans of pursuing my PhD with a friend and colleague, he asked me to consider the opportunity cost, given that I would be abandoning a lucrative corporate career to follow my interest in academia. He also arrived at a ballpark figure

Journal

Journal of AutoethnographyUniversity of California Press

Published: Apr 1, 2023

There are no references for this article.