I Told You Grad Sch Was Hard

A few of my colleagues have shared this on Facebook, so you might have seen this floating around on your feed.

But guys, I have to re-post it here just because I need to feel justified in my whining about graduate school- "It's so hard... we read and write A TON... I'm so tired... It's so hard..." Every PhD student goes through the same rigorous process, so fellow PhD students unite!

But here's a glimpse of how much writing a PhD student of history does for their dissertation alone:

Source: http://beckmw.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/how-long-is-the-average-dissertation/

Yes, that's right, history tops the list. And according to one colleague, that doesn't even include the index and gazillion pages of bibliography (how do people even read this much?!). It also doesn't include the pages and pages of writing for semester/ term papers. No wonder historians churn out books that are at least 200 pages in length- they're trained to do so in graduate school!

And this is only the writing part. Who knows how the graph will be if we measured how much reading PhD students do? I bet history will be somewhere at the top of the list too.

You may go, "Well, of course, duh, isn't that what historians like to do all day? Read and write? So stop complaining because you get funded to do what you like to do all day." Or you may say, "History writing requires that many pages in order to make a convincing case."

Yes and no.
Yes, I love to read, but no, I don't really like write. (Other historians may be the reverse from me, or they may like reading and writing.)
Yes, I get funded, but no, it's not a lot of money and it's not a stable income.
Yes, some histories need that many pages to make a convincing case, but no, I don't think every book needs to be that long. Some history books drag on (500+ pages...*bang head against wall*), and sometimes I wonder if historians produce such lengthy works simply because "the system" requires it. What if the system required historians to only write 100-page books? Or the system was based on churning out articles rather than books? Is it possible? Sure, but the current system isn't like that, so we either conform or get out.

Such is the life of a History doctoral student. *sigh*