Manifesto

Hi, my name is Nic and I’ll be your cruise director on the maiden voyage of the S.S. Failed Political Scientist.

So what’s this all about then? Long story short: after getting a B.A. in political science from a “New Ivy”, spending five years in D.C. getting my hands and soul dirty, and then returning to academia to get an MA from a top-tier political philosophy program, I applied to a dozen PhD programs and… got in nowhere.

Well, aren’t you going to try again? No thanks. My year in the world of big-time academia has pretty well demonstrated to me that I am not cut out for it. Oh, I think I’d be a pretty good teacher if I could land a gig in a small, liberal arts school that prized instruction over publishing, and I think I’d even do a decent job of publishing if it came to that. But that’s not all of what it means to be a political science professor, and from what I can tell (having not reached that level) it’s not a very large part of what it means to be successful in a PhD program. Shmoozing with professors, seeking grants, networking at conferences, self-promotion… for a student of politics, I’m pretty lousy at politicking. And to teach at a place like my alma mater, I’d need to get a degree from a top-ten program, and politicking aside I don’t have the GPA or CV to get into a Yale or U of Chicago.

More than that, the PhD labor market isn’t exactly plagued by a dearth of willing labor. At the honors dinner my senior year of undergrad – at a cookout designed to honor the three students in the department (myself included) who had completed the honors program by writing a lengthy thesis and then defending it – one of the professors whom I knew very little came over and tried his best to crush my dreams.

Professor: “So I hear you want to get a PhD.”
Naïve 22 Year Old Nic: “Yep.”
Professor: “You know you’re going to be one of 50 kids competing for each spot in a program, right?”
Naïve 22 Year Old Nic: “Uh, Yup,” wondering how he was going to twist this around to congratulating me for surviving a grueling year of thesis-writing.
Professor: “And you realize that once you have your degree you’ll be one of fifty PhDs competing for each open teaching position, right?”
Naïve 22 Year Old Nic: “Er, Yeah,” having abandoned all hope that this would be a pleasant exchange
Professor: “What the hell are you thinking?

In retrospect, I should have heeded his words, but at the time it just made me dig in my heels.

So why a blog then? Why not just go out and get a real job? I have a real job, thank you. I started this blog for three reasons:

1. To stop bugging my friends and family. I’m sure my girlfriend is tired of hearing about how last week’s procedural vote in the Senate totally proves that Machiavelli is right about everything, and a few days ago I caught myself going into a long aside about French policy in 18^th Century North America as a way of explaining my concern about a tax proposal in an email to my parents.
2. To find a style of my own. Depending on the day and the subject, I find myself sounding a lot like Ezra Klein or Matt Yglesias, or occasionally Chez or Andrew Sullivan. None of these are my voice. I have my own voice in my academic writing, but that’s not really fit for normal human consumption. I’d like to teach myself to write in a consistent, approachable style that doesn’t make the lay reader’s eyes glaze over and doesn’t parrot my betters – particularly because I’ve noticed that when I find myself adopting another’s style, too often I adopt their logic as well.
3. To learn how to write efficiently and under normal human conditions. In undergrad and grad school, I’d spend an entire semester gathering notes and jotting down ideas. Then at the end, I’d spend twelve hours outlining, grab a bite to eat, and then sit down and write 30 pages in one 24-hour long session. And then I’d collapse. When I had to write shorter pieces mid-semester – or, for that matter, blog posts while working in the private sector – I’d really struggle without my routine of over-preparation and sleep deprivation.

So is this all going to be dry stuff about whether Machiavelli was a republican or not? No, though I hope to draw on political philosophy more than your run of the mill blog. I’ll predict that most of the posts will be about contemporary American politics, and if I can bring Machiavelli or Plato or Rawls into the conversation, well, that’s just gravy.

It’s also going to be a lot less serious and a lot more vulgar than academic writings. Be prepared for words like ‘fellationics’ and phrases like “masturbatory nostalgia”.

Now wait a second! You like Machiavelli, and you call yourself Nic. That’s not your real name, is it? Nice catch. No, this blog is pseudo-anonymous. I freelance, and I’d like my professional persona to be more than a Google search from both my internet Id and my ill-considered fumblings at becoming a better writer and more mature thinker.

Ha! I can figure you out, you’re leaving clues to your identity all over the place! You’re _____! Please don’t. I’m nowhere near important enough for it to be a big deal if my identity became public; the pseudo-anonymity is essentially to keep this blog more than a Google search away from current and potential clients.

My experience and my beliefs are why I’m writing this blog, and I don’t want to have to couch things in ambiguities that make those experiences less relevant and more difficult to apply to my writing.