Despite all the jokes about what one exactly does with art history, you can do surprisingly well with a Ph.D. in Asian art history. It will qualify you to become a professor or a museum curator, as well as to take on roles in the commercial and art advisory worlds. Not to mention, of course, tour guide, consultant, independent scholar/researcher/curator/critic/etc. Both of the women whom I look up to as role models both lead the same sort of multi-faceted careers, which they do because they enjoy the variety it affords as well as the opportunities for having a solid family life. One is an established Ph.D. with a solid reputation for excellence in publications, curatorial work and connoisseurship. The other is a younger former auction-house specialist who now has her own art advisory firm in Manhattan. They both have a zillion projects going on simultaneously, from articles to trips to guest curating exhibitions, as well as husbands and children. This is fairly unconventional, to say the least, especially the part about having a solid career and a family simultaneously.
It's no secret, especially at my university, that young female faculty members are discouraged by the demands of academia from having children until they are somewhat established, or get tenure, or finish their book. Unfortunately, this also means that by the time they get to that point, their age can make it extremely difficult to have a child. Just during my last year in residence alone, three female professors made the decision to adopt because they spent their childbearing years becoming "established." I think adoption is wonderful, but these women did it not because it was their first choice, but because their careers and ambitions seem to have forced them into it.
That's not for me. This doesn't mean I don't want to teach or curate or write or research or tour; I do, but I want to forge a career in which each of those play a role rather than just one or two. Plus, there has to be time for the other important things as well: love, yoga, family, travel. My career attainable ideal is to create a livelihood out of some combination of the mix of things available, to maybe create a few new facets, but to keep it creative and varied. This is something like I'm doing now: a strange mishmash of Ph.D. candidate, language student, researcher, specialist tour guide, teacher, author, appraiser and guest lecturer, with time built in for yoga, friends, family, boyfriend, and myself. It all means I carry around a ton of stuff every day, and sometimes multitask like a fiend. But it feels really good to have all these different, satisfying project going simultaneously, and to be able to essentially create a schedule which accommodates the other important things in my life.
Irony is, it can make for an unstable or insufficient economic situation until you are, in fact, "established." This is a serious fear. Next time: what if your ideals require a huge leap of faith?
Friday, June 1, 2007
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4 comments:
Having life balance as an academic is very difficult. That's one of the reasons I gave it up (I'm ABD in American Lit). I realized there was not one woman in my department whose life I'd want to emulate! It can be done, though, and it sounds like you have a good handle on the process!
I am right there with you, Kiki. In many ways.
Because it's so hard to find women in your dep't you want to emulate -- YM's experience is mine as well, esp because so few tenured profs are women!! -- that's great you have two renaissance women role models.
So you are as smart as you seem! It sounds to me like your role models have much more interesting and balanced lives than those of pure academia.
They do have much more balanced lives, and this is why I want to emulate them. But they also both freely admit that they basically wouldn't try to live on what they make, and still depend on their husbands. I'm still not sure what to make of that...
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