I really like your blog. Very well-written. It reflects more than a few things I’m going through right now, Journalism-wise. I’ll be reading regularly.

I’m a PhD student – in history, of all things. So apparently I don’t even *live* in the real world, let alone work there. I once had a relative say to me, very dismissively, "Well, it must be nice to sleep in every morning. In the real world we can’t get away with that." Hmm. Well, in the *real* world, you also get weekends off. And evenings. So yeah, I sleep in. Setting my own schedule is one of the few perks of my job. And yeah, it’s a job: I get paid a decent salary (thank you SSHRC!!**), I have a boss to report to, I’m concerned about career advancement, and I do work. A lot of work. Hard work. That’s what most people don’t get. I tell them I’m a student of history, and they get all weird. Why? I’ll tell you: there’s no *practical* application. "Do you want to become a teacher?" is a question I’ve answered six hundred million times, and every time I hear it I get just a little bit closer to strangling someone.

I’m not in this for practical, hard, material reasons. I’m not building a better bomb or streamlining a corporate portfolio. I’m in this for the advancement of human knowledge and understanding. And as difficult and esoteric as that may sound, it’s an extremely important pursuit. One that I will defend to the death to all comers, and to all the non-beleivers who accuse me of avoiding the *real* world. I see the reality of the world in all kinds of historical dimensions that your average cubical drone can’t even conceive of. I know how all the little laptop coffee jockey jobs fit into wider historical processes. I can trace your cup of coffee to 18th century imperialism and slavery. I know how your affinity for exotic foods and media gadgets is tied to a world-system of globalized capitalism. The nation you call home is a historical falsity, an ongoing project of cultural construction based on Western liberal values born of the Enlightenment. The cars you drive and the nice corporate suburban life you live: these are all products of a mere 80 year process of late-capitalist, post-fordist modernization. They are not God given lifestyles that will exist in perpetuity. They are illusions born of historical amnesia.

What I’m trying to say here is that historians (and academics more generally), in grappling with these issues on a day to day basis, have to live with in a world of constant challenge and change. These are things I grapple with and think about on a daily basis. Seriously, deeply, and with great concern for the future. So if living in an oblivious corporate bubble, blind to the workings of the market economy and cultural commonsense that structure all our lives – if this is the REAL world, I want none of it.

Antonio Gramsci, an Italian socialist imprisoned in the 1920s for his critique of Italy’s fascist dictatorship, wrote in his famous Prison Notebooks: "Many people have to be pursuaded that studying too is a job, and a very tiring one, with its own particular apprenticeship – involving muscles and nerves as well as intellect. It is a process of adaptation, a habit acquired with effort, tedium and even suffering." He was right. But as Eleanor Roosevelt, that great First Lady of America, once said: "What is to give light must endure the burning."

I burn for you. And do so without thanks, understanding, or (if Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have their way**) a regular paycheque. But I don’t mind. Someone’s gotta do it.

[** The Harper government is proposing re-tooling the SSHRC funding for post-secondary research so that money is diverted away from the humanities towards programs that offer Business degrees. Because apparently the humanities aren't underfunded enough, and apparently business degrees don't fund themselves. What's wrong with this picture? If this concerns you, see the NDP petition against these changes, here: http://nikiashton.ndp.ca/sshrc ]