Academic world

I am a philosophy student. I am currently deciding whether continuing into a PhD or not. According to my professors, I am very good at this and should continue, but I don't really feel motivated.
I like reading books for the sake of what they teach me. I feel that academic research is mainly a form of masturbation made by university for university. I have always felt that books were somehow useful in teaching me how to live.
The time I spend on doing academic research, exploring every minutiae of a book, seems to me not to be worth the results. I believe books are not made to be experienced in this way, especially novels. I feel that reading, as a form of experience, should not become as totalizing as it becomes in academic life at high levels. There are books and there is life: books are supposed to be related to life and to produce something in life by modifying the way you see the world. When you are working nine hours a day on your research, reading literature that in most of the cases is not worth your time, you are missing on life. You do not spend nine hours reading a masterpiece: you spend most of the time reading opinions on masterpieces. Could you not spend your time better by reading other masterpieces? Or living?

I feel that academic life would separate me more and more from actual life. Faculties of the humanities are somehow "segregated", separated from most field of study. They revolve around themselves.

This is just my opinion. Do you think that academic life is good? Would you take PhDs? Do you think humanities, as they are studied in universities, mainly revolve around themselves?

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Amazing that you got through undergrad Phil with such a Nietzschean opinion. Wasn't it 99% will-to-systems?

Anyway, thanks for convincing me to remain as interdisciplinary as I can.

It doesn't seem like you want to so why would you? If you want to get paid to read go to grad school, if you want to get paid to write, be a writer. If you want to get paid, go to industry.

Why do people lie on the internet

No prof would tell you to pursue grad studies if you didn't like researching. I bet you're some freshman so up his own ass that you think you deserve to be in academia without doing academic work just because you're smart. Do you even talk to your profs, little dog?

Literally what the fuck is the point of this thread, what the fuck

Go kill yourself. I go to Princeton.

Not OP but how would his prof know if he likes research or not? All the prof would know is that his work thus far is good. That doesn't necessarily entail full motivation.

Oooooo big man, bragging about his institution to a stranger on the internet. I'm so humbled rn
In the scenario OP has created, presumably they would have actually talked about a career in academia, rather than a prof off handedly saying "lol I think you should also be a prof xDDD"

This is foolish

Exactly, which is why I am asking Veeky Forums. I'm a senior at Princeton.

I'm a woman, not a man. Please do not use male pronouns or assume anyone's gender.

So you keep saying

No one in their right mind would ask this place for real career advice. Do you not see how much of a cancerous shit hole this board is? If you, a "senior at Princeton" can't see that, academia is truly doomed
Apologies

What do you study, specifically?

Philosophy

You have no specific interests? Areas where your research up to this point has focused?

Philosophy

What are your research interests specifically btw?

Being so well-suited to academia as your profs think, you must be doing the senior thesis option, yes?

What are you writing on?

Folk narrative and oral tradition in Medieval England

Philosophy

Oh it's one of these.
Just a story that is only there to inflate your ego, because you really crave for it.

Ok I'll bite!

"Yeah you seem a very smart philosophy princeton student. Your view on life says it all to be honest. I love being smart and being fake humble about it"

youtube.com/watch?v=Q-pe3MBRPhA

>"im an undergrad at IVY SCHOL"
>being this spooked
Do what the fuck you want. If you want actual advice, ask professors and recent grads.

school is helpful to some, not for others
especially with more creative-centric degrees - while you'll learn some things most of what you learn is on your own.

If you are not able to separate academic necessities, as in its investigation rigour and parameters, and your personal development as a reader and interpreter you should quit the endeavour towards a PhD.

I tend to agree with you, OP. I graduated with a philosophy degree last year and had a similar revelation. My job history + skills got me an internship in IT (business analysis) and got me started in the career. Pay is much better than academia and it's easy enough... and I can actually enjoy philosophy and literature. I feel like I've made the right choice but sometimes my life still feels hollow.

I might go back sometime, but right now I feel like I'm enjoying my life.

Lmfao that was quick

Hope you're not the one paying for that champ

>There are books and there is life: books are supposed to be related to life and to produce something in life by modifying the way you see the world.

Christ you are stupid. Yeah I don't advise going to grad school

Found the Cornell cuck