Hmmmm...
When I was signing on, I allowed myself the small pleasure of putting "Dr" in the title box on the paperwork, purely so that the person behind the desk would have to call "Dr Enzyme" when it was my turn in the queue.

The bastards were always friendly and informal and used my first name instead.

Anyway - I had to explain what I was doing to look for work.
Well, I said, I'm hoping to get a couple of papers or a book out of my thesis. That'll make me much more employable.
"Hmmmm. Have you thought about doing an apprenticeship?"
Um... no. I just explained that I've recently finished 8 years of higher education. If I wanted to be a plasterer, I'd have followed that route instead.
"But you have to be looking for work..."
I am.
"... or in training."
But... but... isn't the training to make you more employable? That's exactly what I'm planning with the papers I want to write. And I'll end up with a much better job.
"Are you working at all at the moment?"
I have a bar job a couple of nights a week.
"Ah. Catering. Have you thought about doing that full-time?"
Hang on. You're saying that I should throw away several years and thousands of pounds to get a full-time bar job that I could have got when I was 18?
"You have experience..."
... I'm genuinely lost for words. You actually mean this, don't you?

The thing is, I can see the sense behind that kind of policy. But, on this occasion, there was an important difference - to wit: it applied to me.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 12:14, 23 replies)

hmm
Out of interest, where did you end up working getting full use of your PhD? Or was all of this recent?
( Terry_Tibbs Coarse and violent nudity. Occasional language, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 12:18, closed)

I did.
It took ages - I was 30 before I paid income tax - but eventually it came good.


My contract ends in 4 months. Then I have to re-apply in open competition to stay working here. Arse.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 12:22, closed)

I hear ya...
One of my friends signed on while she was writing up. Her thesis, which spawned a couple of papers and made it into the national press on a couple of occasions was to do with how you can correlate incidence of respiritory illness with pollution levels - she basically took air samples every day for three years, measured the pollution then compared days with spikes with hospital admission records for breathing problems and found a link. Pretty useful work, I'd say (much more so than mine).

When she signed on the woman asked her what she had done for her PhD. When she explained, the woman said to her "and what use is that in the real world?" Erm, it tells you directly that pollution is bad for old people, children and people with a predisposition to asthma? I'd say it was pretty useful in the real world?

Good job I never tried to sign on - I dread to think how I would explained three years of studying the biophysics of cell membranes.
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 12:19, closed)

Hmmm...
I simply refused to sign on after that. My family had - in a well-meaning way - loaned me some money to tide me over for a bit, but that put me over the means test; and, never having earned anything, I had no contributions-basis from which I could claim. Signing on would've meant missing Start the Week every fortnight for no good reason.

Luckily, I got a couple of stop-gap short-term things - paid-by-the-hour teaching and so on reasonably soon, and so wasn't too enormously badly hit. But, really. The lack of imagination...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 12:25, closed)

I should add...
... that by the third year, the only reason why I was completing the PhD was so that I could use "Dr" on airline bookings and hopefully get upgraded.


Apparently, it's very non-U for you to call yourself "Dr" if all you have is a PhD - it's only honorary doctorates such as those that medics have, or higher doctoral degrees like DLitts that confer that ability. I have never known anyone abide by that convention...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 12:28, closed)

what does
non-U mean? Is it something middle class and pretentious?
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 12:42, closed)

Very much so...
"U and non-U English usage, with U standing for upper class, and non-U representing the aspiring middle classes, were part of the terminology of popular discourse of social dialects (sociolects) in 1950s Britain and the northeast United States."
( Cawl, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 12:59, closed)

It's a disinction dreamed up...
... I think, by one of the Mitfords.

Essentially, it boils down to rules of propriety that are very highly codified. It's not to be taken all that seriously, I suspect.

A couple of years ago there was a flurry of indignant letters to The Times complaining that Paxman had called Mo Mowlam Dr Mowlam. Apparently that was a tremendous breach of etiquette, because she was merely a PhD.

(Doctors have honorary doctorates, so, by that rule, can be called "Dr". The same applies to higher doctorates. Arcane, huh?)
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 13:15, closed)

It does seem a bit silly
As etiquette goes, anyway.

I suppose all it really does is prevent academics pulling out the obvious joke card when somebody collapses in a pub/cinema/theatre/etc., and the staff shout "Is there a doctor in the house?"

"Why yes, but I don't see how my three years of research into Nanoscale Techniques in Applied Underwater Basket Weaving is going to be of much help to this stroke victim."

Other than that, I might as well give up now if I won't get to call myself "Dr Crow" in two years' time...
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 13:56, closed)

I think...
... it has more to do with looking down on middle-class arrivistes for not being quite "one of us". A title for which you have to work indicates that you're something of an upstart.

Gawd bless the Mitfords. Utterly barking mad, the lot of them.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 14:12, closed)

Well, quite
Given that even Esther Rantzen has been given an honorary degree, I think I'd have more faith in a Dr who had actually worked for the title rather than an 'honorary*' one.


*_{This also holds for most of the medics I've met, in fact, as they seem to be rugger buggers who are just off their tits on gin most of the time. Apart from the medics I used to live with. They were nice, and one of them did patch up the hole in my leg. They'll make good medical doctors.}
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 16:33, closed)

It's worth worrying about that on an aircraft
that's about it, since they have seat manifests and may come and have "a quiet word in your ear" if someone is taken ill, and explaining can be tricky.

then again, all else being equal, you stand a tiny chance of an upgrade, so fuck it. Take the risk.

titles are on passports now anyway (well, it's on mine for some reason) so you often don't have the choice.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 15:45, closed)

I'll hope for the upgrade.
And if they ask me to help with a patient, I'll inform them that regrettably I can only help if it's a problem with the aircraft.
(Ltro, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 18:11, closed)

It's not taken seriously at all
at least, not by any academic I know, regardless of social class or standing.

Were there really letters to The Times? what a bunch of wankers. I generally use my title for anything official, fuck it, I earned it.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 15:42, closed)

After I got my masters
I was living for a while with my parents in Towcester - the Jobcentre drone asked if I'd considered a career in horse grooming...

Strange, didn't really feel studying economics for so long qualified me for that.

I told them I was terrified of horses.
( SpankyHanky, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 12:34, closed)

Glad to see you see sense in that policy...
but your post implies that because you have a PhD you're above things like catering or other such perfectly respectable jobs.

If you're incapable of finding a job that's relevant to your qualifications then shouldn't you work full time in another industry in the meantime?

Arguably it's much easier to get a job if you actually have one in the first place.

Lots of 2009/10 graduates are going to have to do this methinks.
(jackhiggs no longer a v!rgin as of..., Mon 6 Apr 2009, 12:48, closed)

It's not about being above the job...
But, in order to get an academic job, you have to have published or done something else to show that you're research-active. And, in practice, this does militate against having a day-job.

Yes, there was any number of other non-academic jobs I could have done - and I did walk into one shortly after. (It didn't last.) But the point is that I would not have been wasting my time in front of the telly - in writing papers, I'd've been doing something that would help me, and would have been capitalising on the (alleged) education I'd had.

Moreover, I have a slightly romantic idea of what work, and the benefits system, should be. Very roughly (and I don't have anything better), the thought goes that the point of work is that we aspire to be a certain kind of person: we want to flourish in some sense. It's unlikely that anyone will flourish if they're just herded into the first minimum-wage gig that crops up.

For sure, I can see that there has to be some limit to that - it's unreasonable to expect the state to pay indefinitely so that people can pursue their vague dreams. But I also think that you can be too quick to demand getting a job for its own sake.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 13:08, closed)

Has anyone seen that Spaced episode?
Where Daisy has to be a caterer?

With Nurse Ratchet?

I feel just like that most days.
(Angie the Redneck Wonder, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 13:43, closed)

I see what you're saying
but the world will grind to a halt if nobody does the shitty jobs. There's absolutely no possibility of *anyone* living a lovely life if there's not an army of people on the bottom rung of the jobs ladder, emptying the bins and serving the food and cleaning the toilets and driving the buses and entering the data and answering the phone lines.

I do a fairly shitty and low-waged job at the moment - I pick and pack CDs for an internet order firm. Believe me, neither myself nor any of my past or present co-workers wake up in the morning going "gee whiz, another day of packing CDs! This is truly what I want to do with my life and I am blessed to have the opportunity!"

For the most part, we're intelligent people with varying levels of qualification and experience and all sorts of talents and aspirations. We're there for all sorts of reasons. Some are just starting out; some are filling a gap; others have previously been successful but been knocked back down to the bottom by life.

Are we going to flourish in this job? No. It's not that sort of job.

But the bills have to be paid and benefits are supposed to be a last-resort safety-net for people who have no choice, no other way of supporting themselves - not for people who would just prefer to be doing something else and are happy for others to carry them.

There's not one set of people marked "these people can do the crap jobs and like it" and another set of people marked "these people don't have to do the crap jobs". Everyone takes a turn, or two, or three, doing the crap jobs while working towards something better.
( Batsgirl, Tue 7 Apr 2009, 9:30, closed)

JobCentres
Are indeed, a pile of pants.

I tried one for a few weeks after graduating from University. 2:1 degree in Computer Science, all that malarkey, and looking to become a Web Designer / Developer. Not only did I get a blank look when I told the Billy No-Stars behind the desk what I wanted to do with my life, but I also received the suggestion "Maybe you'd like secretarial work, since you know how to use a computer".

Epic fail, right there.
(Kitimariana, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 13:21, closed)

I hear ya too...
I've held positions of very senior responsibility in my career field. When I was made redundant last year I attended a Job Seeker's interview and my details were apparently "matched" to appropriate vacancies. I was asked whether I'd consider working as an administrator for the National Minimum Wage and travelling forty miles a day for my trouble.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Mon 6 Apr 2009, 13:30, closed)

This ^^
I might get around to writing my own post but sitting explaining to the deskmonkey who's soul was ripped out many dreary good for nothing lazy plebs ago that a Masters in Theoretical Physics and a PhD in Particle Physics does not mean that I'm looking for a job "with computers".

Or when trying to explain that I am looking for a job in my field and my field only that looking in the local paper is most likely pointless. (There's an ad for a job studying CP violation and searches for New Physics in the local paper this fortnight? Well, fuck me sideways I wasn't expecting that!)

The look on their faces when I told them I was moving to Switzerland in 2 weeks and they could stick their 6 month review up their arse*. :)

*figuratively of course.
(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 16:05, closed)

I've got nothing to add...

Because I didn't go to Uni, was kicked out of school and am currently enjoying life being as thick as Whale jizz with added cornflour.

But in some cirlces*...I'm known as 'The lurve doctor'...

*raises eyebrow*

*very, very small circles. In fact a circle consisting only of me.

So with that, I'll just *click* and be on my way.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Tue 7 Apr 2009, 11:51, closed)