This week, Her Campus had the opportunity to sit down with Ellen Kladky, a first year graduate student and Teaching Assistant under the Anthropology department at UC Irvine. Originally from central Pennsylvania, Ellen shared her academic experiences and transition from the rural farmlands in Pennsylvania to the bustling life in Chicago to the quaint suburban life in Irvine.
Can you describe your journey from central Pennsylvania to UC Irvine?
It’s kind of weird because I didn’t know anyone from Chicago at all, and like a lot of students, I applied to a whole bunch of schools: big schools, small schools, urban schools, rural schools, and I was deciding between Chicago and Tufts, which were very different. I think what made me decide on Chicago was that I just wanted to do something totally new. There was something so appealing about it. I went to Chicago and I loved it there! It was a big change in a lot of ways. I got a really good education, and I went in thinking I was going to studying the sciences and I ended up just loving my English classes and I became an English major.
I started working in my second year as a student. I started working at the University of Chicago Press. So I just needed a job basically. I wanted a job that offered skills so I got a part time job working at the press, which was working on philosophy, history, and anthropology books.
I knew that I wanted to go to graduate school but I didn’t want to go for English, which is weird. I think a lot of people think, “What are you going to do with an English major?” And that’s something that I disagree with. There’s a lot you can do with it because it teaches you how to pick apart words and language which is very useful to you in a business setting or in a consulting setting. But I ended up getting a job in publishing, which is great because I got to use everything I learned as an undergrad, and it gave me more esoteric glasses. I was working with philosophy books so things taught in my philosophy classes were directly related to my job, which is pretty cool. I loved my English classes but I wanted to do work with people…At the press, I had to read so many anthropology manuscripts that I became much more attached to it. I thought it answered a lot of the questions that I had much better than sociology, which was nice. I worked for two years at the press, and applied to grad school. Irvine was my top choice!
As a graduate student under the UC Irvine Anthropology department, Ellen is just getting started on conducting her own research project, while taking classes and teaching students in discussion sections for Cultural Anthropology.
What are you currently researching as a grad student?
I’m still a first year, so I still haven’t gotten into it just yet, and on top of that my interests are changing a lot. As an undergrad, I was very interested in media studies, and social media, so I proposed to work on dating apps and basically how the design of different dating apps produces different kinds of romantic relationships and social relationships. Some dating apps match you up with people you already know like friends of your friends on Facebook, and others who match you with people near you. So you get very different kinds of results. So I am trying to understand how different dating apps may cause different social stratifications…And that kind of led me down this path.
I grew up in a rural area, and I went to school on the southside of Chicago. The south side used to have a lot of industry and starting in the 80’s you have that whole move of companies overseas and the steel plants all shut down, and there are still a lot of economic problems because of that. So when I was thinking about “Farmer’s Only” (an app that connects people living in rural communities), and it really made me think back to where I’m from and where a lot of the problems/the social institutions for which you might have met your partner or someone you want to date may no longer exist as people move to cities. Rural areas were really changing and it made me interested in the economic questions of how these changes in agriculture and industry have affected people’s social lives. It’s still a very broad question, but I am still working on it… That is what I love about Irvine’s department. You really get a lot of support, at least from my experience so far, from the faculty here.
Seeing how Ellen was able to carve her own path and pursue her passion and interest in Anthropology was inspiring. It left us wondering about the people who had inspired her and influenced her personal life.
Who is someone you really look up to?
There are a lot of people, but two come to me right away. One is my grandmother, who is 92, she’s about to turn 93. She graduated from medical school in… I think it might have been the early 50’s—a time when very few women went to medical school in Virginia, and that has always impressed me. I think about how when I am struggling with my own academic work, how hard it must have been for her to be in a room where it could only be men. She also came from a very rural background so she went into a more cosmopolitan educational situation.
The other person is my former boss, who is a young woman who is very successful in her career. We are still very close. She taught me about the field of publishing and still whenever I’m not sure about something, I call her up. I think it’s so important, no matter what you’re doing, (publishing, grad school, banking, etc.) to have people whose judgement you trust—people you can go to. I think it’s so important, and my former boss, and now close friend, is one of those people…I see how she navigates problems, then that’s very helpful. When you have someone like a mentor and you hear them say, “I am in this situation and this is what I found challenging and this is how I’m dealing with it”, that is very helpful, and if something similar happens to you further down in your career, then you think “Oh, that’s why that was so hard for him/her”. So I think that’s very important.
Do you have any advice for any young women who hope to pursue careers in publishing or hope to attend grad school?
With publishing, it’s hard to start. So I was lucky that I was able to get the student job, but I think that most people interested should look into internships and entry level jobs because once you have some experience it’s much easier to move up. Let’s say you want to work in fiction publishing at a big trade house but you get working on a contract in a nonfiction books at a smaller press, then that is not the end of the world! You should definitely go for it because what you need is to get your foot in the door and once you have that it will be a lot easier to move forward.
For grad school, one of the problems is that the job market for people who want to become professors is very bad. There are many more people that are graduating with PhDs than tenure track positions at universities. So the advice that I would give someone considering grad school is: you have to be okay with the idea that you can do it and not becoming a professor. If you’re only doing it because you want to get this job at the end, it’s going to be more difficult than, “this is a great opportunity to study something I love and care about, to develop skills whether I am a professor or I work for a corporation or I become a high school teacher or whatever,”. You have to have an investment in what you’re studying not just the goal that you set out for yourself.
Fun Questions:
What are three adjectives you would use to describe your style (clothing and personality)?
Eclectic, colorful, and engaged. That last one (engaged) is probably less about clothing style and more of me as a person.
What has been your favorite experience at UC Irvine?
The obvious answer is that I am coming from Chicago and we’re sitting here outside in October and I’m wearing a skirt and a light sweater. It’s fantastic! But I also love the department here quite a bit and I have really enjoyed being a TA. I’ve had teaching experience out of this context before, but this is my first time being a TA and I that has been really fun so far. My favorite experience has been getting to know my cohort, so there are 12 of us, Anthropology students, and I really like everyone in the cohort. You hear horror stories of how everyone in the cohort is competing against each other…but it’s not like that at all. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know them and feeling like I have that community of people, because it’s hard when you’re starting in a new place…So that has been my favorite part so far, in addition to classes.