Prudentiae sal. — Advice for Classicists

Last week we announced the Legion Project, an outreach program to find people who have studied Classics and then gone on to other careers. In the process, though, we felt that we weren’t necessarily doing enough to explore why so many people leave the field. Many of those people have a lot of (very justified) anger and frustration about their experiences during and after graduate school. If we want to do better, we need to listen to what they’re saying.

Prudentiae sal. is an advice column targeted at junior classicists, although we hope our advice will also be useful to those in other disciplines. We’re especially interested in questions from those who:

• have been criticized for doing public intellectual work
• are considering engaging in risky scholarship for which they might experience pushback
• are figuring out how to adapt their work for a wider audience
• are trying to complete Ph.D.s but aren’t sure whether they want to pursue a career in academia
• are engaged in or interested in getting involved in activism on campus
• are trying to decide whether graduate school is the right choice for them
• are curious, frustrated, or opinionated about the direction in which Classics as a discipline is moving

Prudentia won’t give job market advice — if that’s what you’re looking for, check out The Professor Is In. Instead, Prudentia is about giving advice on how to be a classicist, even if your professional future in academia is uncertain.

If you have a question for Prudentia, send it to eidolon@paideia-institute.org. All questions will be kept strictly confidential, and they may be lightly edited or condensed for publication.