academic conversations

It's time for the annual Getty Graduate Student Symposium, preceded, this afternoon, by a get-together of Directors of Graduate Studies/Chairs and lots of Getty Research Institute staff, discussing - discussing what, exactly?  The state of graduate studies; the form that PhDs should/might take; preparing grad students for a world in which they might start thinking earlier in their graduate careers than they do of ways in which their skills might be used for things other than academic jobs and high-flying curatorial positions.  But we never got to the nitty gritty of how to manoeuvre students away gently, ever so gently, from the fantasies of jobs that just don't exist ... (and that carry with them, of course, the privilege of having a glass of wine outdoors on a warm February night, with the sun setting on the Pacific in the background).