La bohème (wersja polska poniżej)

Fairly recently, I watched in a Krakow cinema Puccini’s La bohème, broadcasted from the MET. Thanks to the subtitles, I was for the first time able to follow the actual dialogues. The opening scene is set at a cold attic which the main character, Rodolfo, is about to heat with his own theatre play, that is – the paper on which it was written. ‘Sorry, my dear audience, hard times call for great sacrifice’ – he says. His roommates comment, while watching flames that consume subsequent acts: ‘It’s great, full of life – but too short’, ‘There’s nothing lasting about your drama’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntg9vXxAia8/ - here La bohème with English subtitles). Listening to these lines, I laughed louder than anybody else in the cinema, being a classic embarrassing companion to people who were out with me. I just knew it so well: that was about us, PhD students in the humanities! From then on, I started to call them/us – la bohème. We are poor, but we still prefer our chosen, independent way of life to finding a stable employment elsewhere. We as well sit around with bright people sharing good jokes about our own condition, this being sometimes the only way to distance ourselves from the harsh realities of life.

And it’s even more profound. I can’t quote here any statistical evidence, but certainly my observation shows that there are far less married couples among PhD students than in other groups of the same age. Also, graduate students have way less children than his peers who don’t pursue academic career. Even conservatively minded people who do PhD are part of this tendency. And nobody gets a loan because nobody would be eligible for one. But it’s not only about money – I find that highly sensitive and highly reflective people have it, for better or worse, just harder to settle. And these are precisely the kind of people who often decide to do PhD in the humanities.