If you& #39;re still telling grad students to save their best ideas for their second book, when you know they& #39;re statistically super unlikely to even have a first book, then you& #39;re doing real harm. Dissertations can& #39;t be a mere formal exercise: they have to have intrinsic motivation.

We are post-professionalism. Graduate work that is primarily aimed at justifying one& #39;s academic credentials is meaningless when most of us are temporary scholars, here for a few years and then gone. We have to be allowed to do work that fires up our souls now: there is no later.

The dissertation as a genre must be opened up. It can& #39;t be allowed to remain a superficial, formulaic, deadened mass done mostly for the sake of others. It must allow for personal stakes, for aesthetic and argumentative forms that matter first and foremost for the writer.

If you& #39;re not yes-anding our highest hopes and aspirations, then what& #39;s the point? Otherwise, grad students are being mined for their research, contributing to a field that will not return the favor; otherwise we are jumping through hoops for a circus that has already left town.

There was a time with enough jobs to almost justify pretending that the dissertation as it is made sense. That time has passed. We must reject work in any form that isn& #39;t free and personally worthwhile. That& #39;s the only way we can stop all of this from just being exploitation.