10 Things I Hate About Graduate Philosophy

With papers due and final exams on the way, we here at Summaphilosophiae are in a sour mood.  The following is a heartfelt vent:

1.  After devoting 2hrs to a close reading of Heidegger, you realize that you have no idea what you’ve just read.

2.  That sinking feeling you get when you’ve spent the last five minutes in class insisting to the professor that Aristotle did hold such-and-such a view and then he opens the text and shows you that Aristotle held the opposite.

3.  Your wife refuses to understand that Plato has priority over house-hold responsibilities.

4.  It’s always during the most intense debates that you can’t seem to remember those killer arguments your prof. had mentioned in class.

5.  For every philosophical view, there seems to be an equal and opposite philosophical view.

6.  Similarly, for every intelligible philosophical view, there is an equal and opposite Heideggerian view.

7.  You’ve finally worked up the courage and proceed to challenge your professor’s position, but your fellow classmates refuse to come to your aid, letting you go down in flames.

8.  The awkward silence and blank stares that follow when well-meaning lay persons ask you to explain the thesis that you are writing, and you oblige.

9.  Phenomenology.

10.  The last two weeks of the semester.