When I first started pursuing a Ph.D.--lo! all those many years ago--I received a fabulous gift from the professor teaching the discipline's introductory graduate seminar. His gift came in the form of an observation that I wouldn't have made myself for many years.

"In grad school," he said, "everyone feels like a fraud."

He continued: "You feel as if everyone else has read everything important, and somehow you missed out. You're not smart enough, you don't work hard enough."

He assured us these are completely normal feelings, and that they're completely misguided. "The very fact that you're here means the program saw something significant in your work. You've already made the first cut, the big one."

Honestly, even if 20 different distinguished faculty had pulled me aside to tell me this throughout my first couple years of Ph.D. work, I wouldn't have believed them. Or, rather, I would have corrected them: All grad students think they're frauds, but me, I really am one. (For a nice example of typical grad student thinking, see AcadeMama's fabulous post "What I Want, What I Tell Myself.")

This kind of thinking is reinforced by all the facts of grad school life.

I mean, if I weren't a fraud, would I be bringing home only about $1300 each month to teach 50 or 100 undergraduates? If I weren't a fraud, they would actually pay me a reasonable rate for my labor, yes? More than $300 above the average cost of rent in this town, certainly! But no, they've found me out--they've admitted me to the program through some horrible mistake, and they'll let me stay as long as I tell no one how crappily they're paying me. We'll keep up this little charade until I burn out.

If they really wanted me to be in graduate school, they'd help me find lucrative summer work so that I could focus on research during the year, right? So that I and my fellow graduate students aren't staring quite literally hungrily at our mailboxes waiting for the student loan check for the fall term. Because if you really wanted us there, you'd pay us enough to have electricity and to eat, wouldn't you?

And after all this hard work, if we did finally manage to earn the damn degree, the university system would surely reward us and our peers with well-paying jobs, yes? Styleygeek has the answer for that one:

Anyway, I've just realised how much better things won't get when I graduate:

I just discovered that the payscale for casual and sessional lecturing and tutoring here goes up for people with a PhD by a whole—wait-for-it—$5 an hour.

I guess it adds up fairly quickly if you are doing a lot of hours.

I really hope it adds up quickly.

And I hope I can get a lot of hours.

Want more? See also Ancrene Wiseass's comment on Half An Acre's hungry-mailbox-gazing post:

I so know what you mean. I'm taking out more gigantic loans this year than ever, and resenting the hell out of just about everyone/thing involved with the process. The "it's an investment in me!" rationale doesn't really seem to cut it when you can't get adequate treatment for crushing migraines because you can't afford it, but are simultaneously taking out loans in the six figures.

I'd say more, but I'm so exhausted by it all that I really can't muster much of anything else.

Here's the kicker: Now that I have a Ph.D., I'm making what is, for the average American, a decent salary. Not a fabulous salary, but if I didn't have grad school debt and daycare tuition, we'd be solidly, happily middle class. And I'd be able to put all that certified intellectual prowess to use where it really matters. I could afford, in short, to work for one of the legions of small nonprofit organizations I admire. Instead, the only place I can afford to work where I still feel I'm doing some good? The same university that underpays its TAs and that doesn't offer them such perks as, oh, disability insurance (and doesn't pay into state disability pool, either, so if you're in grad school and get hurt or ill enough that you can't work, you're on the streets or couch-surfing, babe).

I know--there are people out there with much larger problems. But if we can't even get graduate education--and by extension undergraduate education, which in many places is largely a graduate student undertaking--to at least feel like a worthwhile endeavor, let alone be one, then we're in trouble.

Sad but true: When the university you support with your taxes and tuition money pays me a living wage, I'm more motivated to teach your son or daughter to think critically, to write, to argue thoughtfully, to become invested in something besides that first post-graduation job.

There is good news, however, for those of us in grad school or still feeling its lingering effects: there are other opportunities to be valued, and choosing them is rarely as painful as we think it will be. I've seen it happen again and again: people step off the wannabe-tenured track, and they're actually satisfied with their decisions and their lives. The latest one is Working Writing Wailing Mama, who asks, among other questions in her post "What Would YOU Do?," these:

- If you were coming to the end of the dissertating road that had been hell on you and your family, and then you realized its pressures looked a heck of a lot like the ones you'd meet on the tenure-track road?

- If you woke up one day and started believing what your mother and spouse and close friends had always told you: that you were worth more and deserved better?

- If, in your new found self-awareness, you finally understood that nothing has to be permanent, and that you really can choose to view life as a series of opportunities rather than a series of limits or disappointments?

Click through to see what decision she made. Congrats to WWW Mama! May others also find such peace, happiness, and self-respect.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks opted to step off the tenure rat-wheel in favor of helping university faculty improve their teaching. She tries not to be too smug about her good fortune. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toy Box.