Hello,

I've read through some of the other letters, and while I don't have a particular opinion on the fetish videos, I do have an idea about your professional path: how about getting a Master's degree in Library Science? I am currently a Library Science student - I came to this after a BA in Classics (dead languages) and a concurrent MA in Japanese Linguistics (which has all the baggage everyone has been talking about, few prospects for jobs, etc) - and I love it! Not only is it really interesting, but I've met some incredible people (librarians are very friendly!), I've already done some teaching, and the job market for librarians is wide open.

Contrary to the PhD market, there's an expected opening of jobs from 2009-2011 as some of the older generation of librarians retire, and new librarians are needed to take their places - you can work in public libraries, school libraries, or at the university (as a full faculty member, if you stay long enough, with just as many benefits). You can also teach - librarians are all about educating people , our main field is "information literacy" which basically means "how to get and use information" but if you are a specialist in a field, you can work and research and teach in that as well.

You don't need a PhD to be a librarian, but you do need the MLISc. If you choose to work as an academic librarian, you might need a PhD down the line - but if you work for the University already, they'll pay your tuition as a faculty member!

I don't mean to sound like a salesman, but as someone with a huge pile of student debt and a strong love of learning and the academic world, I have found friends, mentors, and the promise of an interesting career at Library school.

If you're interested, you can go to the website of the ALA (American Library Association) and see their list of schools in the US:

http://www.ala.org/ala/accreditation/lisdirb/lisdirectory.htm

I would encourage you to at least look. I never though I would become a librarian - I too had hopes of a PhD and a prestigious teaching job - but it was the best decision I ever made.

Good luck in whatever you do! Stay safe, and remember that you can do anything, with a little planning and lot of persistence.

But be very sure it's really YOUR BLISS you are following. I'll won't reiterate all of what's been said about the academic job market, but I do want to emphasize one point: you need fellowhips, assistantships, and grants. If you look like a worthy prospect to any of the schools you apply to, they will offer you one. However, if you can't qualify for assistantships, etc. before you begin grad school, I would honestly look into non-academic ways of pursuing your interests. If you aren't competitive with grad admissions candidates going in, the likelihood that you will be competitive with all the job candidates cmoing out is probably rather slim. It's not necessarily a matter of not having enough talent with the material either; a lot of what admissions committees are looking for is someone whose application shows that they would be compatible with the institutional environment.

I wish I'd looked closer at the academic life than I did before I went into grad school, instead of thinking only about my love for my particular field. Reading, writing, and teaching philosophy is a wonderful thing. Doing so under the conditions many academics have to tolerate (low-paying adjunct work, a "publish or perish" mentality that results in sub-par work from otherwise talented people, ridiculous teaching loads) is not so wonderful at all.

Why not have some kind of regulating agency for these workers? Capitalism allows them to live in the economic grey to black area. At least in terms of strip clubs these businesses are fronts for activities that definitely exist in the economic black areas. These businesses provide a shelter for people to avoid taxes. It is the largely untaxed economic Wild Wild West. The government lets it make a big mess and nobody cleans it up. Why not make them responsible?

There is so much moral relativity surrounding the existence of sex work in today's economy. It is yields high in terms of financial reward, but I suspect that overall it yields even higher in terms of an array of dangers and residual ailments experienced by sex workers.

At least with other morally questionable capitalism such as in the alcohol and tobacco industries, there is a disclaimer on the packaging.

One should be required to take some kind of class, or at least watch an informative video explaining both sides of the sex work coin. Then they should be examined by a mental health professional and evaluated for devastating vulnerabilities.

I can see many parallels with sex work and other hazardous but legitimate work. Coal mining comes to mind. One arises from the a dark pit with soot all over his or her face and black lung.

Another strange parallel I see is between sex work and people who are police officers, ambulance drivers and soldiers. These individuals must be strong enough to tolerate images of peoples guts spilled out over the street along with splattered brains on walls. These things are not required of sex workers. At the end of the day, as a sex worker snippets of different troubling imagery, conversations, and mini dramas can dance through your head. They cloud so many aspects of one's life.

People who do these things in the name of money ought to be required to know what they are doing. They should know that it is playing roulette with one's career, mental health, and possibly even their physical health. They must provide a 1000 word essay to be reviewed by a panel of experts explaining why they think that this is a good idea. At this point, many would be redirected to basic English classes, where they would have to spend some time analyzing their logic and communication skills.

To stretch it even further into some advanced social and economic realm, since the government allows it to exist, maybe government should give an automatic scholarship to someone who choses sex work in the name of education. One could take advantage of fewer work hours and a flexible schedule, high pay of sex work. As a recipient of this sex work scholarship, one would be required to attend the educational program of their choice (they would of course have to be accepted to said program). If this was really their intention and the basis of choice in the sex work field, one would have to report to the panel of experts and document their progress in order to maintain their endorsement in the program.

To stretch it even further, the government ought to give these ambitious, scholarly oriented sex workers a protected status. As it is becoming harder for business and education organizations to discriminate on the basis of sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, make it harder for them to discriminate against people on the basis of their prior sex work employment.

Yeah right.

The system allows and encourages these highly dysfunctional economic arrangements to exist. Sex work damages people with they need to resolve out of their own pockets. I doubt many sex work jobs offer much in terms of paying out when someone is crippled with some sort of long term disability. Sex work creates and feeds on disabilities. Most people don't give a shit about most sex workers. After all it is a Darwinian thing. These are people who have selected themselves out from other areas of the economy, probably due to some inherent flaw. I believe it to be that most people believe that any sex worker is deserving of being the object of Schadenfreud.

Higher wages acquired through sex work may result a cap on further earnings in non sex work occupations. Sex work may reduce the ability to function in a non sex work environment. A sex worker or ex sex worker may have to constantly censor large area of experience and mental landscape with people who have never been sex workers.