Goodby, Mr. Keating

Thomas Benton, an assistant professor of English, offers his take on academic life and work.

He writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that "to succeed as an English Ph.D., you have to give up all of the things that attracted you to the subject in the first place."

He treasured the film "Dead Poets Society" in which Robin Williams plays an English professor, Mr. Keating. That portrayal reinforced many of the romantic feelings that led Benton to become an English major.

In the end, he decided that the romanticized Keating model was not for him. "It is not that I want to privilege some form of literary dilettantism as a substitute for professionalism. I simply want to demonstrate that the reasons most people get into English are different from the motives that will make them successful in graduate school and in professional life beyond that. They must, ultimately, purge themselves of the romantic motives that drew them to English in the first place -- or pretend to do so. If you want to be a literary professional, you must say goodbye to Mr. Keating."
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education