Apr 9 2021, 10:43 PM
QUOTE(Aquarius33 @ Feb 24 2021, 11:45 AM)
Hi all, I'm reposting my question on r/malaysia here and looking for more response. I think Education Essentials is the right forum to post this compared to Jobs & Careers since it is more inclined to my choice to further postgrad studies or not at the current moment. You can choose to comment on either here or Reddit, whichever is more convenient for you. Thanks in advance.
Original Reddit Post
After working for a year and taking another gap year or so (partly due to covid) to reflect on what I should do with the rest of my life, I decided that I shall pursue an academic career. This decision simply means I'll return to the university once again to continue studying for my Masters. As I was a Mass Comm. graduate, the most reasonable choice for my Masters would be a research-based MA Degree in Communication; and for that, I have chosen a local university to continue my study.
Classes are starting soon in March. As much as I'm looking forward to being a student again, I'm equally uncertain of my own decision in the meantime. I'm not sure if the academia (in my subject of interest) needs more academics or researchers like me. To be frank, I've been reading a lot of posts in this sub about how a comms/social science/arts-related degree is being regarded as a useless "Mickey Mouse" degree". I'm not sure how much of that notion is applicable to higher/postgraduate degree, but it has surely contributed to my dilemma nonetheless.
In addition, having looked into a possible career as a researcher/academic, I've read about the pressure to publish or perish in the world of academia. I even come across a previous post just few days ago saying how Malaysian academics resort to publish in fraudulent/predatory journals to secure the university ranking as well as their faculty positions. Ngl the more horror stories like these I read, the more I question myself if the academic route is really fit for me or not.
Long story short, if there is any academic/researcher/scholar lurking in this sub, I hope you could chime in and share with me your stories and insights working in the ivory tower in order to help me make an informed decision. Thank you so much!
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A context of my previous employment and how it propels me to venture a career in academia
I used to be a content writer in a digital marketing company, just one of the many jobs that having a Mass Comm. degree would guarantee you with (like journalism, etc..). To give you a rough idea, my previous job mainly deals with curating and producing contents (mostly blog articles on my part) to help optimize one or several websites to rank in search engines such as Google (aka make them possibly appear in the first page of search results, thus driving conversions and sales). In short, my job is an essential part of search engine optimization (SEO).
However, after doing that job for about a year, I find no passion in continue doing it further simply because I'm no believer in that tactic. Yes, SEO does work, but only exclusively for big name and top performing companies (think Shopee, Lazada, Grab, etc..). For no-name, small companies like the one I was working for, not even a chance! There's no guarantee of website visibility simply through a few marketing articles or sales copies as there are many other factors to consider like website loading speed, bounce rate, engagement rate, and (insert other digital marketing lingo here). While they are not my specialty but more of that of SEO specialist, I'm still very much concerned by it.
Think about it, let say one day we really manage to make our (no-name) website appear in the first page of search engine, would you choose to buy something from us rather than those big brand names? The answer is obvious. It really takes a long long time and lots of human effort to search-engine optimize a website. Let's face it, we still rely on word-of-mouth or traditional advertising to gain exposure, even more so for companies that are set up in underdeveloped/developing states which I'm living in. SEO is only a sorcery that works in developed states or countries. By the way, this makes me remember I even blatantly blabbered about this very issue to my ex-colleagues last time on our work WhatsApp group lol.
Three months before I called it quits, I remember I ended up copying contents from other websites shamelessly to take the easy way out of my job. I put very little effort to paraphrase just to make them read like they are my own articles. At that stage, I'd lost all motivation to work any longer as soon as I realized we were simply treated as article churning machines. During peak period, we were even tasked to manage the article curation for four to five websites! I didn't understand what makes my ex-company thinks a few articles from only two to three of us could help drive the website traffic. Heck there are even content farms or content mills solely dedicated for this purpose. I don't want to churn out poor-quality articles non-stop soullessly; I want to write articles that HUMANS would read!!! Needless to say, my ex-company had now shut down its operation (long before covid and lockdown somemore!) and the articles that my colleagues and I once poured all our efforts into to craft, had unquestionably turned to dust.
I reckon, if I were to put effort into my writing, why not doing it in academia aka writing thesis or research papers. At least I can find interesting insights during my research in my subject of interest, which is not possible in my content writing job because we just had to write for whatever topics we were assigned. I could feel more valuable of myself and my research could contribute to the society, who knows? Though nobody would really read academic journals, except academics themselves (of course, lol). I'm aware of the fact that the "article churning mechanism" does happen over in academia as well, after reading that news, where the quality of research paper has suffered due to public and perish culture. Since I have yet to step into the academic realm, I might think of this industry too naively or one-sidedly (positive or not) so I need somebody inside to give me a reality check, if possible.
As to why I study Mass Communication and what is its appeal to me, I want to make an impact to the society through the means of communication and media, I guess. Maybe taking part in the production of a thought-provoking documentary or video that addresses the social issues plaguing the country? Think influencers or youtubers but focusing on societal issues lol, but I don't think I have the capacity of being one as of yet. If all of these are not reachable, I wonder if pursuing a higher degree by research would move me one step closer to my goal, since I could take this opportunity to become a subject matter expert in social issues lol. One fact I couldn't deny is that during my undergrad studies, I do have a strong interest in a particular subject that talks about people, cultures and social inquiries. I could barely remember what I had learned by now since it was nearly three years ago (shit, time flies so fast).
When I took my gap year last year, I did a lot of personality tests to understand my own behavior and find out just what kind of career path is really suitable for me. One test says my public and private behavior is of "The Researcher". Not sure how much does it correspond to being an academic researcher in the university, but it definitely gives me some assurance in my plan to explore the academic route. Also, just for the sake of mentioning, my personality type in the 16Personalities test is Architect (INTJ). If there is one thing about myself I could learn from my previous employment, it would be that I'm probably not somebody who has strong pursuit of worldly success like money, luxury and fame. I have absolutely zero interest in climbing the corporate ladder. Instead, I'm more of a person who put higher priority on personal development and professional growth.
It seems that a lot of media and communications graduate are not able to find a sustainable and well-paying job after graduation. I was a media and communications graduate here too from one of the private universities in Malaysia. I've been through several job changes in the last few years due to several reasons. I also have the same thought as you do: go back to university to do a Masters and PhD, then go into academia. The only problem here is one that people haven't exactly addressed yet: the fact that there are so many media BA grads who worked for 2-5yrs before going into academia are exactly like you. The bigger problem? When they've completed their MA/PhD, they weren't able to get academically published. As a matter of fact they have higher chance of getting published when they are working with a media company. In short: there are many like you, and the field is over-saturated and way too competitive. In fact, back in my university years, a lot of my media lecturers are also working in major newspapers like The Star, Malau Mail, etc. They also did a myriad of jobs and gig to make that extra money. So if you wish to pursue this line of of work, I can only say good luck as you are not just competing against people in your batch, but also people from before.Original Reddit Post
After working for a year and taking another gap year or so (partly due to covid) to reflect on what I should do with the rest of my life, I decided that I shall pursue an academic career. This decision simply means I'll return to the university once again to continue studying for my Masters. As I was a Mass Comm. graduate, the most reasonable choice for my Masters would be a research-based MA Degree in Communication; and for that, I have chosen a local university to continue my study.
Classes are starting soon in March. As much as I'm looking forward to being a student again, I'm equally uncertain of my own decision in the meantime. I'm not sure if the academia (in my subject of interest) needs more academics or researchers like me. To be frank, I've been reading a lot of posts in this sub about how a comms/social science/arts-related degree is being regarded as a useless "Mickey Mouse" degree". I'm not sure how much of that notion is applicable to higher/postgraduate degree, but it has surely contributed to my dilemma nonetheless.
In addition, having looked into a possible career as a researcher/academic, I've read about the pressure to publish or perish in the world of academia. I even come across a previous post just few days ago saying how Malaysian academics resort to publish in fraudulent/predatory journals to secure the university ranking as well as their faculty positions. Ngl the more horror stories like these I read, the more I question myself if the academic route is really fit for me or not.
Long story short, if there is any academic/researcher/scholar lurking in this sub, I hope you could chime in and share with me your stories and insights working in the ivory tower in order to help me make an informed decision. Thank you so much!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A context of my previous employment and how it propels me to venture a career in academia
I used to be a content writer in a digital marketing company, just one of the many jobs that having a Mass Comm. degree would guarantee you with (like journalism, etc..). To give you a rough idea, my previous job mainly deals with curating and producing contents (mostly blog articles on my part) to help optimize one or several websites to rank in search engines such as Google (aka make them possibly appear in the first page of search results, thus driving conversions and sales). In short, my job is an essential part of search engine optimization (SEO).
However, after doing that job for about a year, I find no passion in continue doing it further simply because I'm no believer in that tactic. Yes, SEO does work, but only exclusively for big name and top performing companies (think Shopee, Lazada, Grab, etc..). For no-name, small companies like the one I was working for, not even a chance! There's no guarantee of website visibility simply through a few marketing articles or sales copies as there are many other factors to consider like website loading speed, bounce rate, engagement rate, and (insert other digital marketing lingo here). While they are not my specialty but more of that of SEO specialist, I'm still very much concerned by it.
Think about it, let say one day we really manage to make our (no-name) website appear in the first page of search engine, would you choose to buy something from us rather than those big brand names? The answer is obvious. It really takes a long long time and lots of human effort to search-engine optimize a website. Let's face it, we still rely on word-of-mouth or traditional advertising to gain exposure, even more so for companies that are set up in underdeveloped/developing states which I'm living in. SEO is only a sorcery that works in developed states or countries. By the way, this makes me remember I even blatantly blabbered about this very issue to my ex-colleagues last time on our work WhatsApp group lol.
Three months before I called it quits, I remember I ended up copying contents from other websites shamelessly to take the easy way out of my job. I put very little effort to paraphrase just to make them read like they are my own articles. At that stage, I'd lost all motivation to work any longer as soon as I realized we were simply treated as article churning machines. During peak period, we were even tasked to manage the article curation for four to five websites! I didn't understand what makes my ex-company thinks a few articles from only two to three of us could help drive the website traffic. Heck there are even content farms or content mills solely dedicated for this purpose. I don't want to churn out poor-quality articles non-stop soullessly; I want to write articles that HUMANS would read!!! Needless to say, my ex-company had now shut down its operation (long before covid and lockdown somemore!) and the articles that my colleagues and I once poured all our efforts into to craft, had unquestionably turned to dust.
I reckon, if I were to put effort into my writing, why not doing it in academia aka writing thesis or research papers. At least I can find interesting insights during my research in my subject of interest, which is not possible in my content writing job because we just had to write for whatever topics we were assigned. I could feel more valuable of myself and my research could contribute to the society, who knows? Though nobody would really read academic journals, except academics themselves (of course, lol). I'm aware of the fact that the "article churning mechanism" does happen over in academia as well, after reading that news, where the quality of research paper has suffered due to public and perish culture. Since I have yet to step into the academic realm, I might think of this industry too naively or one-sidedly (positive or not) so I need somebody inside to give me a reality check, if possible.
As to why I study Mass Communication and what is its appeal to me, I want to make an impact to the society through the means of communication and media, I guess. Maybe taking part in the production of a thought-provoking documentary or video that addresses the social issues plaguing the country? Think influencers or youtubers but focusing on societal issues lol, but I don't think I have the capacity of being one as of yet. If all of these are not reachable, I wonder if pursuing a higher degree by research would move me one step closer to my goal, since I could take this opportunity to become a subject matter expert in social issues lol. One fact I couldn't deny is that during my undergrad studies, I do have a strong interest in a particular subject that talks about people, cultures and social inquiries. I could barely remember what I had learned by now since it was nearly three years ago (shit, time flies so fast).
When I took my gap year last year, I did a lot of personality tests to understand my own behavior and find out just what kind of career path is really suitable for me. One test says my public and private behavior is of "The Researcher". Not sure how much does it correspond to being an academic researcher in the university, but it definitely gives me some assurance in my plan to explore the academic route. Also, just for the sake of mentioning, my personality type in the 16Personalities test is Architect (INTJ). If there is one thing about myself I could learn from my previous employment, it would be that I'm probably not somebody who has strong pursuit of worldly success like money, luxury and fame. I have absolutely zero interest in climbing the corporate ladder. Instead, I'm more of a person who put higher priority on personal development and professional growth.
My only advice for you is to actively work in media field while you study. Build up your contacts and get more jobs. This is one of the many downsides of being a media grad. Perhaps start your own LLC media company? Do a 1 man show first, which means you will have to do everything yourself. Web design, writing and publishing, graphic design, etc. If it didn't work out then I guess it's best you have to change your life direction, and do it fast.
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