Letters to the Editor
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You should become a sex surrogate
You are comfortable enough with your sexuality to provide lap dances, and you'd prefer a job that was more compassionate. Sex surrogacy could be a good way to go. An intelligent, liberal woman like you could make good money, work limited hours, and provide a compassionate service to those in need, all the while avoiding drunk college students and smoke-filled rooms.
Your family doesn't need to know about it, just like you don't need to know about their sex lives.
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Tom
You're telling to stop stripping to be a prostitute?
WHY?
Oh, is sex surrogates what we are calling hookers these days?
I got words for you, Tom, but I'm going to save them. But trust me they are all bad.
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WELL, GOLLY, GEE WHIZ!
Mr. Tennis makes it sound like just because you want to do this, have it all figured out, and plenty of wit to boot, that there just is not a down side to working as a stripper!
Oh yeah there is. Call it art or whatever else you need to call it to rationalize it, but men don't pay that kind of money when they go to museums.
Since Mr. Tennis doesn't want to discuss the down side, here's a few that I've thought up: If you are found out, it will come back to haunt you. People will make judgments about you regardless of how much wit and charm you possess. Your family will be disappointed, embarrassed, and wonder what they did wrong - all natural reactions, by the way. Potential husbands probably will not be thrilled upon learning about your extra-curricular activities either. I'm sure you won't want to put this experience on your resume, so now you have to lie about your employment history, possibly jepardizing the job-of-a-lifetime.
You could also deal drugs and make more money than a regular job too, but would you do it? It's time to grow up, Chickie, get off the stage, realize that it's not always about you, you, you, and accept the fact that "you can't always get what you want..."
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Stripping
Do it. Later, it will attract male students to your classes, and some female ones.
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For accreditation purposes, universities need PhDs
A four year university requires a certain level of PhDs for accreditation. North Central accredits the universities in my area, and it dings you for having too many MAs as adjuncts (and any as tenure track faculty in any area other than nursing because of the shortage. In nursing they need to be in a PhD program). In a university setting, you need a PhD for a tenure track hire, and increasingly for adjuncting. Even adjuncting with an MA at a university is pretty hard these days. My department, and the others that I know of in the region, will only hire MAs if they are desperate. Then they offer them so little that they can not live on it.
Some jobs require PhDs. Several are in government, and they will not accept MAs.
If you want to teach at a community college, an MA is acceptable. Even then, in areas around a large public PhD granting university, it is harder and harder for MAs to compete with PhDs for adjunct positions. An MFA is a terminal degree, by the way- it is a PhD equivalent.
A PhD is a research/teaching degree. If that's not what you want, don't bother getting it.
A PhD for teaching secondary school or being a principal is overkill.
State schools have something called "moral turpitude" in the contracts. They don't want to hire people with criminal backgrounds for the classroom, and increasingly that also means sex trade. All faculty are background checked in my system. Stripping would be an automatic disqualifier for moral turpitude. Some students at a university are not 18, and the state legislature would have a massive cow if they found out a faculty member had such a background. Hypocrisy always being in among politicians, they'd make a big deal of it. Private universities are worse. Private religious ones would remove tenure for it.
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It's Just Research
Lots of academics in the humanities do research in various fields by participating in that field. Some go to work for toys stores to understand our consumerist culture and the impact on our children. Some work in strip clubs. I don't know what your particular field is, but perhaps you can think of a way to spin some aspect of this work into research. I think this is why it doesn't matter.
Most academics have taken random and sundry jobs to get by. Most grad students in the humanities end up using the knowledge they gained from their employment at some point in their work. There is the socioeconomic aspect, the treatment of women within the field, the right of male bonding. Your work as a stripper can be used to look at lots of things. I think one choice is to think of what you might learn while stripping.
But in the end, your work outside the academy would never show up on a CV and the humanities are broad. Stripping seems like a reasonable choice.
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Stripping
You will probably find stripping much more lucrative and less humiliating than university teaching.
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this grad school talk
is really odd, inaccurate.
The sex worker comments and advice seems to add up to a useful picture-- I hope the letter writer finds it thoughtful and helpful.
But all this UNSOLICITED commentary on how the letter writer shouldn't be in grad school, or should only be in some kind of big pay off in money grad school (mba), or it is a waste of time to get grad degrees in a humanities discipline, or 90/99 percent of ph.d.s in the humanities will never work in their field-- is an obscene collection of cliche, outdated exaggeration, utter nonsense, mendacity, confusion of one's own inner narrative with the objective facts.
There IS something deeply manipulative about the big grad schools bringing in hoards of new grad students / teaching assistants etc. But most of those (as in almost all) who finish doctorates will find work in the field, and even those who only persist a while will gain many life benefits-- including economic ones. Get the facts, don't be dissuaded by "what every knows."