Getting a lot of emails like this:
Hi, Jonah.
I received my Ph.D in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998. I’m not sure what the situation is there now, but there were always “humanities” grad. students pining for a grad student union of some sort. Most of us in the hardcore sciences wanted nothing to do with this. We got paid little, worked ridiculously long hours, but we expected this going in. Our time and money was precious and the idea of staging a protest “walk out” was absurd. Our motivation for getting away from the small stipend/long hours life was to…are you sitting down?…work harder to graduate sooner and find a real job. Doesn’t take 8-10 years of an English Lit. dissertation to figure that out. Well, for most graduate students anyway.
(please don’t print my name if you post this…thanks)