Anyone who hasn’t been scared off a PhD program yet by reports of thousands of grads competing for scarce tenure-track positions and the growing specter of grad school debt should take a look at this New York Times profile of a recent grad looking to make it as a professor in New York. Like many of his peers, James Hoff has spent the past year and a half since he graduated piecing together adjunct lecturer gigs at various schools while applying for highly competitive full-time jobs. These gigs are unstable, low-paying and offer no benefits, leaving him in a precarious situation.