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B | POST: If I have 6 hours of Zoom meetings everyday, can I really be expected to get anything else done? Postdoc in STEM completely overburdened with meetings at the moment. I'm (co-)supervising 15 student projects, spanning the bachelor to PhD level with students in 4 different countries, on top of which I have all of my normal collaborations that I should make progress on. On top of that, there's seminars and journal clubs everyday. It's just impossible to get anything done at the moment! /rant
RESPONSE A: No. :)
RESPONSE B: Cut the meeting times in half, move others to email or slide updates and meeting every other week, have a conversation with your PI about overburdening, and start blocking time on your calendar for your priorities.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: If I have 6 hours of Zoom meetings everyday, can I really be expected to get anything else done? Postdoc in STEM completely overburdened with meetings at the moment. I'm (co-)supervising 15 student projects, spanning the bachelor to PhD level with students in 4 different countries, on top of which I have all of my normal collaborations that I should make progress on. On top of that, there's seminars and journal clubs everyday. It's just impossible to get anything done at the moment! /rant
RESPONSE A: No. :)
RESPONSE B: Also how could you possibly mentor 15 students well? This sounds like a bad situation for everyone involved.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: If I have 6 hours of Zoom meetings everyday, can I really be expected to get anything else done? Postdoc in STEM completely overburdened with meetings at the moment. I'm (co-)supervising 15 student projects, spanning the bachelor to PhD level with students in 4 different countries, on top of which I have all of my normal collaborations that I should make progress on. On top of that, there's seminars and journal clubs everyday. It's just impossible to get anything done at the moment! /rant
RESPONSE A: Solution: You need to start saying no to a lot of things.
RESPONSE B: No. :)
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: If I have 6 hours of Zoom meetings everyday, can I really be expected to get anything else done? Postdoc in STEM completely overburdened with meetings at the moment. I'm (co-)supervising 15 student projects, spanning the bachelor to PhD level with students in 4 different countries, on top of which I have all of my normal collaborations that I should make progress on. On top of that, there's seminars and journal clubs everyday. It's just impossible to get anything done at the moment! /rant
RESPONSE A: No. :)
RESPONSE B: I only read the title. ABSOLUTELY NO is the answer... Meetings are a plague on productivity... edit: typo
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: PhD defense in a few hours Just getting this off my chest. I'll defend in a few hours and genuinely think there is a big probability that I will fail. My thesis is an embarrassment to myself, my PI, and the field. Data is limited, analysis is very simple, conclusions are unclear. I could train a master student and the whole data collection could be completed in 2 months. The analysis approach is like the ones done in the 70s or 80s, product of a bygone era. I don't belong on the modern, cutting edge area of science. I have made peace (slightly) that it's ok if I fail. I will go back to my home country this weekend (will be expensive but I don't care anymore), leave science forever (imagine wanting to understand the brain lol, what a nerd), and start my life anew. I just don't want my family and closest friends see me differently if I fail.
RESPONSE A: If there was a chance you'd fail, your supervisor wouldn't allow you to defend
RESPONSE B: good luck!!!!! please have hope and remember that failing is part of our journey. do your best as there’s nothing else that could be done today. you never know how things might turn out as you’re just nervous..
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: PhD defense in a few hours Just getting this off my chest. I'll defend in a few hours and genuinely think there is a big probability that I will fail. My thesis is an embarrassment to myself, my PI, and the field. Data is limited, analysis is very simple, conclusions are unclear. I could train a master student and the whole data collection could be completed in 2 months. The analysis approach is like the ones done in the 70s or 80s, product of a bygone era. I don't belong on the modern, cutting edge area of science. I have made peace (slightly) that it's ok if I fail. I will go back to my home country this weekend (will be expensive but I don't care anymore), leave science forever (imagine wanting to understand the brain lol, what a nerd), and start my life anew. I just don't want my family and closest friends see me differently if I fail.
RESPONSE A: If there was a chance you'd fail, your supervisor wouldn't allow you to defend
RESPONSE B: All the best
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: PhD defense in a few hours Just getting this off my chest. I'll defend in a few hours and genuinely think there is a big probability that I will fail. My thesis is an embarrassment to myself, my PI, and the field. Data is limited, analysis is very simple, conclusions are unclear. I could train a master student and the whole data collection could be completed in 2 months. The analysis approach is like the ones done in the 70s or 80s, product of a bygone era. I don't belong on the modern, cutting edge area of science. I have made peace (slightly) that it's ok if I fail. I will go back to my home country this weekend (will be expensive but I don't care anymore), leave science forever (imagine wanting to understand the brain lol, what a nerd), and start my life anew. I just don't want my family and closest friends see me differently if I fail.
RESPONSE A: Please check back in this thread and tell us how it went. Good luck!
RESPONSE B: good luck!!!!! please have hope and remember that failing is part of our journey. do your best as there’s nothing else that could be done today. you never know how things might turn out as you’re just nervous..
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: PhD defense in a few hours Just getting this off my chest. I'll defend in a few hours and genuinely think there is a big probability that I will fail. My thesis is an embarrassment to myself, my PI, and the field. Data is limited, analysis is very simple, conclusions are unclear. I could train a master student and the whole data collection could be completed in 2 months. The analysis approach is like the ones done in the 70s or 80s, product of a bygone era. I don't belong on the modern, cutting edge area of science. I have made peace (slightly) that it's ok if I fail. I will go back to my home country this weekend (will be expensive but I don't care anymore), leave science forever (imagine wanting to understand the brain lol, what a nerd), and start my life anew. I just don't want my family and closest friends see me differently if I fail.
RESPONSE A: All the best
RESPONSE B: Please check back in this thread and tell us how it went. Good luck!
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: PhD defense in a few hours Just getting this off my chest. I'll defend in a few hours and genuinely think there is a big probability that I will fail. My thesis is an embarrassment to myself, my PI, and the field. Data is limited, analysis is very simple, conclusions are unclear. I could train a master student and the whole data collection could be completed in 2 months. The analysis approach is like the ones done in the 70s or 80s, product of a bygone era. I don't belong on the modern, cutting edge area of science. I have made peace (slightly) that it's ok if I fail. I will go back to my home country this weekend (will be expensive but I don't care anymore), leave science forever (imagine wanting to understand the brain lol, what a nerd), and start my life anew. I just don't want my family and closest friends see me differently if I fail.
RESPONSE A: i don't know if it helps, but we all felt that way before the defense: i knw i did, and it went great. Best of luck to you. edit: i don't know the american system very well, i'm french and teach in france, but there are no reason to fail you if your supervisor has allowed you to defend: this would be seen as a direct attack on them, and a default to the rules of collegiality. If they had confidence in you, confident enough they would their name on your work, it means your thesis is not the failure you think it is.
RESPONSE B: good luck!!!!! please have hope and remember that failing is part of our journey. do your best as there’s nothing else that could be done today. you never know how things might turn out as you’re just nervous..
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: How do you turn off the “academic” portion of your brain and just be a normal person? I’m always “on” and it’s not helping my relationships. Or is this just an occupational hazard?
RESPONSE A: I find it hard to turn off my academic side. My SO finds it difficult to turn off his sales side. We both listen to each other and learn new things all the time. I have figured out that if someone doesn't want to listen and invest their time in what you're passionate about, they are not worth it.
RESPONSE B: I just had a major surgery and the medication they give to ensure you don’t form memories is fat soluble. So I’m a week out and still wouldn’t be able to give an undergrad mechanics lecture, let alone explain my research. So I guess what I’m saying is go get an organ removed. Or at least take the drugs.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: How do you turn off the “academic” portion of your brain and just be a normal person? I’m always “on” and it’s not helping my relationships. Or is this just an occupational hazard?
RESPONSE A: I just had a major surgery and the medication they give to ensure you don’t form memories is fat soluble. So I’m a week out and still wouldn’t be able to give an undergrad mechanics lecture, let alone explain my research. So I guess what I’m saying is go get an organ removed. Or at least take the drugs.
RESPONSE B: I often tell myself after a conversation "you didn't need to explain it like that". I still laugh about it though.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: How do you turn off the “academic” portion of your brain and just be a normal person? I’m always “on” and it’s not helping my relationships. Or is this just an occupational hazard?
RESPONSE A: I just had a major surgery and the medication they give to ensure you don’t form memories is fat soluble. So I’m a week out and still wouldn’t be able to give an undergrad mechanics lecture, let alone explain my research. So I guess what I’m saying is go get an organ removed. Or at least take the drugs.
RESPONSE B: This might be a bit of a faux pas but... w\*\*d helps
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: How do you turn off the “academic” portion of your brain and just be a normal person? I’m always “on” and it’s not helping my relationships. Or is this just an occupational hazard?
RESPONSE A: I find it hard to turn off my academic side. My SO finds it difficult to turn off his sales side. We both listen to each other and learn new things all the time. I have figured out that if someone doesn't want to listen and invest their time in what you're passionate about, they are not worth it.
RESPONSE B: This is the struggle of an academic. I very regularly cannot sleep at night because I thought of a new study idea or that perfect opening sentence for my grant. I have a few tidbits of advice that have worked for me. 1. Keep a notebook with you at all times and when you have that idea write it down immediately or as soon as convenient. 2. Read for fun. I know this sounds silly, but it is so helpful for me to do some reading that isn’t on the subject I study or even better isn’t science at all. 3. Set and try to maintain specific boundaries on time. It’s important to have time dedicated to you, your partner, your friends, your family etc. 4. And in my experience most helpful, avoid talking about your academic pursuits. Keep it super short, unless the other person is super engaged in the conversation.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: How do you turn off the “academic” portion of your brain and just be a normal person? I’m always “on” and it’s not helping my relationships. Or is this just an occupational hazard?
RESPONSE A: I often tell myself after a conversation "you didn't need to explain it like that". I still laugh about it though.
RESPONSE B: This is the struggle of an academic. I very regularly cannot sleep at night because I thought of a new study idea or that perfect opening sentence for my grant. I have a few tidbits of advice that have worked for me. 1. Keep a notebook with you at all times and when you have that idea write it down immediately or as soon as convenient. 2. Read for fun. I know this sounds silly, but it is so helpful for me to do some reading that isn’t on the subject I study or even better isn’t science at all. 3. Set and try to maintain specific boundaries on time. It’s important to have time dedicated to you, your partner, your friends, your family etc. 4. And in my experience most helpful, avoid talking about your academic pursuits. Keep it super short, unless the other person is super engaged in the conversation.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: hD in the Social Sciences and I've been struggling to be happy for myself and celebrate my accomplishments without the enthusiastic support of my family and some friends? Being the first PhD in my family from an inner city and female and African American, I feel like none of my inner family can relate and are so busy trying to get by the don't have the bandwidth to be truly happy for me and express support. Personally, I am proud of myself as I am fully funded and received additional external fellowship, but I am truly disappointed. It seems lonely at the "top". I worked so hard to get in and stay in during the pandemic but my family just doesn't seem to care and I want to be able to celebrate with them and feel loved/support. This is just not what I expected. It feels like the further along I move in my education the more I alienate or distinguish myself from "normal" non academic peers and family/friends. Do you all have any advice on this subject?
RESPONSE A: Welcome to the club! Almost nobody who hasn’t done it can really understand what it means to earn a Ph.D. But you know, and you can let them know when you do something good. They don’t have to understand to be proud of you. And if you need some validation, post here. We know, and we’re damn proud of you. It sounds like you are doing really, really well. Keep it up.
RESPONSE B: Similar sociodemographics here… I haven’t started my doc program yet but I spent about a decade climbing a pretty lucrative corporate ladder that moved us from dirt poor to upper middle class, so I sort of get the idea of living a separate life from family. One thing that I’d say is that graduate school, just like any other career move is an individual endeavor and no one is really going to cheerlead you every step of the way, save maybe your spouse or children. I suspect that your family is very proud of you and if you are looking for support and ask for it, they’ll be more than willing. With that said, I would hope that you are equally involved in their lives, their accomplishments, etc. and celebrate them, even if they aren’t quite “at the top”, as you say.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Thank you all I finished my PhD in spring of 2020 and stayed at my university in a different lab as a post doc. The new lab is awesome and I was happy there, even in a pandemic. But, I’m happy to say that I’ve accepted an TT assistant professor job in my dream city at a great school for this fall (R2, ranked top 20% in my field (allied health-related). I could literally spend my career there. Scouring this subreddit for guidance, tips, etc. was a lifesaver. You all rock. But, I know I’m lucky and I will strife to be mindful of that privilege.
RESPONSE A: Congradulations.
RESPONSE B: Congratulations! I spent my career at one place. It was great and very interesting to become the senior faculty member toward the end of my career.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Do you think that life would be easier if there was just one universally accepted citation style? I know it sounds a rhetorical question. But as a TA, I have noticed that students in my institution often have a very difficult time with correct citation style. My class follows APA. Somehow, even with widely available internet sources (and even citation generators) many still do not seem to get it. Sometimes I wonder if a universally accepted, standardized citation style, across disciplines would make more sense. Perhaps this is more of a rant out of frustration. But I figured I would extend this question to the crowd to see what others think.
RESPONSE A: If I thought people could behave themselves and not keep making their own versions of styles, I'd be delighted if we could settle on two styles: one numbered and one author-date. I think those both have their place. Sometimes author-date is very reader-friendly because it's easy to keep track of who the author is talking about, and at other times it's totally reader-hostile because the flow of reading is broken up by massive strings of names and dates.
RESPONSE B: I think things like Mendeley and Zotero make it manageable for one-off assignments. What I hate is when a journal article gets rejected and you need to convert it to another citation style. If you made some changes after removing Mendeley fields, it sucks to either go back to an old version or fix citations manually. This happened twice and I don't seem to learn my lesson.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Do you think that life would be easier if there was just one universally accepted citation style? I know it sounds a rhetorical question. But as a TA, I have noticed that students in my institution often have a very difficult time with correct citation style. My class follows APA. Somehow, even with widely available internet sources (and even citation generators) many still do not seem to get it. Sometimes I wonder if a universally accepted, standardized citation style, across disciplines would make more sense. Perhaps this is more of a rant out of frustration. But I figured I would extend this question to the crowd to see what others think.
RESPONSE A: I think things like Mendeley and Zotero make it manageable for one-off assignments. What I hate is when a journal article gets rejected and you need to convert it to another citation style. If you made some changes after removing Mendeley fields, it sucks to either go back to an old version or fix citations manually. This happened twice and I don't seem to learn my lesson.
RESPONSE B: Does anyone really care? I'm amazed when I see someone finding out that some ref isn't formatted as they expect. What's the process that someone goes through to be able to notice? To me it feels like like some purely aesthetic residual from another century. To find and download the ref I need a doi or a title exact enough to be googled. Why do people actually care? Then it's up to Mendeley/latex to format everything like editors pretend to like.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Do you think that life would be easier if there was just one universally accepted citation style? I know it sounds a rhetorical question. But as a TA, I have noticed that students in my institution often have a very difficult time with correct citation style. My class follows APA. Somehow, even with widely available internet sources (and even citation generators) many still do not seem to get it. Sometimes I wonder if a universally accepted, standardized citation style, across disciplines would make more sense. Perhaps this is more of a rant out of frustration. But I figured I would extend this question to the crowd to see what others think.
RESPONSE A: The answer is Chicago. 🤷🏼♀️
RESPONSE B: I think things like Mendeley and Zotero make it manageable for one-off assignments. What I hate is when a journal article gets rejected and you need to convert it to another citation style. If you made some changes after removing Mendeley fields, it sucks to either go back to an old version or fix citations manually. This happened twice and I don't seem to learn my lesson.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: My work just got published, it's my first publication What are the things I should do? I've already created a Google Scholar Profile.
RESPONSE A: Congratulations! Some things to consider: * Create an orcid profile. * Check your university's or institution's policy on parallel publishing. Some universities will even require you to upload a final manuscript draft of the publication to their archives where the manuscript will be openly available. * Check other possible actions that your institution requires you to do after a publication has been accepted. * If you have outside funding, it is a very good practice to notify the funding party that you have a new publication; this will make them happy, they have got something back for their investment. * LinkedIn is also a social platform worth considering to disseminate your new work. * Update your CVs. * Update your research plan. These are some things that pop into my mind.
RESPONSE B: I suggest celebrating.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: My work just got published, it's my first publication What are the things I should do? I've already created a Google Scholar Profile.
RESPONSE A: Congratulations! Some things to consider: * Create an orcid profile. * Check your university's or institution's policy on parallel publishing. Some universities will even require you to upload a final manuscript draft of the publication to their archives where the manuscript will be openly available. * Check other possible actions that your institution requires you to do after a publication has been accepted. * If you have outside funding, it is a very good practice to notify the funding party that you have a new publication; this will make them happy, they have got something back for their investment. * LinkedIn is also a social platform worth considering to disseminate your new work. * Update your CVs. * Update your research plan. These are some things that pop into my mind.
RESPONSE B: Congratulations, 🍾🎈 have a pint with your colleagues
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: My work just got published, it's my first publication What are the things I should do? I've already created a Google Scholar Profile.
RESPONSE A: Congratulations, 🍾🎈 have a pint with your colleagues
RESPONSE B: I suggest celebrating.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: My work just got published, it's my first publication What are the things I should do? I've already created a Google Scholar Profile.
RESPONSE A: Congratulations, 🍾🎈 have a pint with your colleagues
RESPONSE B: A couple of other possible things to do:
\- Post it to ResearchGate.
\- Email it to people who you think might want to see it. Maybe someone you cited a lot in the paper? Someone you chatted with at a conference when you said this was a project you were working on?
\- Post on Twitter. Maybe consider writing up a few key takeaways in accessible language as a thread for folks who can't or won't read an academic article.
Also, find some way to celebrate!
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: My work just got published, it's my first publication What are the things I should do? I've already created a Google Scholar Profile.
RESPONSE A: Grab a beer, celebrate with friends/colleagues and focus on your next work 👍
RESPONSE B: A couple of other possible things to do:
\- Post it to ResearchGate.
\- Email it to people who you think might want to see it. Maybe someone you cited a lot in the paper? Someone you chatted with at a conference when you said this was a project you were working on?
\- Post on Twitter. Maybe consider writing up a few key takeaways in accessible language as a thread for folks who can't or won't read an academic article.
Also, find some way to celebrate!
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Posting grades back in the '90s Thinking back to when I was in undergrad (early '90s). You would be in a big lecture course, and after an exam the prof would post everyone's grades on the wall outside the classroom so you could walk up and see what you got. (Not everyone had e-mail yet, and course management systems were years off.) The grades were not organized by name, because that would be too easy to know someone else's grade. No, by Social Security number.
RESPONSE A: I remember this. Ours had alternate green and white bars because the SSN and grade were on OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE DAMN PAGE!!!
RESPONSE B: They did this at my high school in the early 00s too. My poor boyfriend had an SSN that started with a 0, which the school's system didn't recognize so everyone always knew his grade because he was the one with an 8-digit social.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Posting grades back in the '90s Thinking back to when I was in undergrad (early '90s). You would be in a big lecture course, and after an exam the prof would post everyone's grades on the wall outside the classroom so you could walk up and see what you got. (Not everyone had e-mail yet, and course management systems were years off.) The grades were not organized by name, because that would be too easy to know someone else's grade. No, by Social Security number.
RESPONSE A: Some of my undergrad teachers used to do this... In 2015!
RESPONSE B: I remember my Social Security Number being my student ID and being printed ON my student ID. Those were the days.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Posting grades back in the '90s Thinking back to when I was in undergrad (early '90s). You would be in a big lecture course, and after an exam the prof would post everyone's grades on the wall outside the classroom so you could walk up and see what you got. (Not everyone had e-mail yet, and course management systems were years off.) The grades were not organized by name, because that would be too easy to know someone else's grade. No, by Social Security number.
RESPONSE A: They still do this at my university. Not with exams but general course and test marks
RESPONSE B: I remember my Social Security Number being my student ID and being printed ON my student ID. Those were the days.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Posting grades back in the '90s Thinking back to when I was in undergrad (early '90s). You would be in a big lecture course, and after an exam the prof would post everyone's grades on the wall outside the classroom so you could walk up and see what you got. (Not everyone had e-mail yet, and course management systems were years off.) The grades were not organized by name, because that would be too easy to know someone else's grade. No, by Social Security number.
RESPONSE A: Some of my undergrad teachers used to do this... In 2015!
RESPONSE B: UCLA early 90s, we were mailed postcards with final grades. We had comouter access but it was dos and used for informational purposes rather than registration. We could access the library however I believe.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Posting grades back in the '90s Thinking back to when I was in undergrad (early '90s). You would be in a big lecture course, and after an exam the prof would post everyone's grades on the wall outside the classroom so you could walk up and see what you got. (Not everyone had e-mail yet, and course management systems were years off.) The grades were not organized by name, because that would be too easy to know someone else's grade. No, by Social Security number.
RESPONSE A: I remember doing this -- I started teaching in the mid-90s. And I don't recall ever hearing anyone complain about privacy, although obviously it was even back then a huge privacy violation. As awful as the Covid-19 pandemic has been, I frequently thank our lucky stars this didn't happen 20 years ago, or the entire system of higher ed would have to shut down indefinitely ala Oxford and Cambridge during the Black Death. (Although we *did* get calculus from that particular deal.)
RESPONSE B: Some of my undergrad teachers used to do this... In 2015!
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Postdocs under pressure: long hours and a lack of job security, combined with workplace bullying and discrimination, are forcing many to consider leaving science, finds Nature’s inaugural survey of postdoctoral researchers. There is a lot of relevant information here for people in various stages of their academic career, so I wanted to share it with the community: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03235-y
RESPONSE A: Surprise surprise.
RESPONSE B: They aren't leaving science, they're leaving academia. There is plenty of science to do in industry.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Postdocs under pressure: long hours and a lack of job security, combined with workplace bullying and discrimination, are forcing many to consider leaving science, finds Nature’s inaugural survey of postdoctoral researchers. There is a lot of relevant information here for people in various stages of their academic career, so I wanted to share it with the community: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03235-y
RESPONSE A: It's just drumbeating every now and then for letting future grads and postdocs know that "We" are aware of the situation. The survey they need to do is "**How many vacation/summer/wine houses those senior/retired Professors own and keep paying mortgage from tenure salary without retiring at the age at 65-70?**"
RESPONSE B: Surprise surprise.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Postdocs under pressure: long hours and a lack of job security, combined with workplace bullying and discrimination, are forcing many to consider leaving science, finds Nature’s inaugural survey of postdoctoral researchers. There is a lot of relevant information here for people in various stages of their academic career, so I wanted to share it with the community: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03235-y
RESPONSE A: Well, duh.
RESPONSE B: Every single academic post doc job listing I see in my area is for the federal mandated minimum (~47k a year USD). Nobody with a PhD wants to work long hours for that amount of money.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Postdocs under pressure: long hours and a lack of job security, combined with workplace bullying and discrimination, are forcing many to consider leaving science, finds Nature’s inaugural survey of postdoctoral researchers. There is a lot of relevant information here for people in various stages of their academic career, so I wanted to share it with the community: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03235-y
RESPONSE A: Well, duh.
RESPONSE B: Imagine that, people want better work culture, pay and hours like you get in industry instead of spending your 30s into 40s as an indentured servant
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Postdocs under pressure: long hours and a lack of job security, combined with workplace bullying and discrimination, are forcing many to consider leaving science, finds Nature’s inaugural survey of postdoctoral researchers. There is a lot of relevant information here for people in various stages of their academic career, so I wanted to share it with the community: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03235-y
RESPONSE A: I'm not even a scientist/academic, yet seeing all the "postdoc subhuman trash lolol" memes in academic groups I'm somehow not surprised by the OP.
RESPONSE B: Yea, this is why I chose not to do a postdoc after my PhD. Academic research is just a hamster wheel where you work 90+ hrs/week and successful outcomes are dictated more by luck than hard work/knowledge.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: different fields, or even in the same department. **Conclusions** > Academic publishing has changed considerably; now we need to reconsider how we measure success.
RESPONSE A: I have a lot of feelings about indices/rankings/ratings which can be summed up as, they're all bullshit, and I think it's a real shame that the ranking craze has taken over the world (obligatory Romer at World Bank shoutout). Mainly my beef is with the fact that people, even eminently qualified insiders who should know better, keep trying to measure shit that we don't need to measure. Like, what journals are good journals is known to anyone who is active in a field. If you're not sure about subfield journals, you can call up a friend in that subfield and find out. Committees can form a reasonable idea of your work output from looking at your CV. Why do we need these impact factors and h-indices and sundry?
RESPONSE B: There are quite a few interesting figures here but none of it supports the stated thesis. This Goodhart's "Law" (which is really just a vague quip some guy made once) supposes that metrics lose utility once people start exploiting them. In this case that would mean that research metric success has become decoupled with "real" research success. In essence, to provide evidence to the thesis one would have to show that the two quantities are no longer statistically correlated. *Nothing in this paper remotely demonstrates that. Nothing in it even tries to.* Of course if one WERE to try and do such a thing one would have a bit of a tautological difficulty as how does one assess "real" research success without employing a metric? I suppose one would maybe poll people in a field and ask them who they feel are the top researchers and then see if those people also have the top h-indices or the like (I suspect they largely would, invalidating the thesis). Instead this paper basically just shows that more people are publishing shorter papers , with more co-authors and self-cite more. Again, this does nothing to validate their alleged point.
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B | POST: specific field of biology. Our study shows that the validity of citation-based measures is being compromised and their usefulness is lessening. In particular, the number of publications has ceased to be a good metric as a result of longer author lists, shorter papers, and surging publication numbers. Citation-based metrics, such citation number and h-index, are likewise affected by the flood of papers, self-citations, and lengthy reference lists. Measures such as a journal’s impact factor have also ceased to be good metrics due to the soaring numbers of papers that are published in top journals, particularly from the same pool of authors. Moreover, by analyzing properties of >2,600 research fields, we observed that citation-based metrics are not beneficial for comparing researchers in different fields, or even in the same department. **Conclusions** > Academic publishing has changed considerably; now we need to reconsider how we measure success.
RESPONSE A: I have a lot of feelings about indices/rankings/ratings which can be summed up as, they're all bullshit, and I think it's a real shame that the ranking craze has taken over the world (obligatory Romer at World Bank shoutout). Mainly my beef is with the fact that people, even eminently qualified insiders who should know better, keep trying to measure shit that we don't need to measure. Like, what journals are good journals is known to anyone who is active in a field. If you're not sure about subfield journals, you can call up a friend in that subfield and find out. Committees can form a reasonable idea of your work output from looking at your CV. Why do we need these impact factors and h-indices and sundry?
RESPONSE B: I was thinking the other day that my university has screwed it up a bit because on the one hand everyone goes on about 'team science' and 'collaboration!' and then on the other at appraisal only counts 1st and last author publications. So someone emails you with an idea and it's basically: sorry, not to be a dick but I literally can't justify that.
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A | POST: Goodhart’s Law, according to which, “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” The original study can be found here: https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article/8/6/giz053/5506490 Abstract: **Background** > The academic publishing world is changing significantly, with ever-growing numbers of publications each year and shifting publishing patterns. However, the metrics used to measure academic success, such as the number of publications, citation number, and impact factor, have not changed for decades. Moreover, recent studies indicate that these metrics have become targets and follow Goodhart’s Law, according to which, “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” **Results** > In this study, we analyzed >120 million papers to examine how the academic publishing world has evolved over the last century, with a deeper look into the specific field of biology. Our study shows that the validity of citation-based measures is being compromised and their usefulness is lessening. In particular, the number of publications has ceased to be a good metric as a result of longer author lists, shorter papers, and surging publication numbers. Citation-based metrics, such citation number and h-index, are likewise affected by the flood of papers, self-citations, and lengthy reference lists. Measures such as a journal’s impact factor have also ceased to be good metrics due to the soaring numbers of papers that are published in top journals, particularly from the same pool of authors. Moreover, by analyzing properties of >2,600 research fields, we observed that citation-based metrics are not beneficial for comparing researchers in different fields, or even in the same department. **Conclusions** > Academic publishing has changed considerably; now we need to reconsider how we measure success.
RESPONSE A: It has been known for a while that the impact factor is useless because you can easily manipulate it as a publisher by publishing more reviews, inviting high profile authors and selecting on perceived impact with a high rejection rate. However, it is still regarded as a good parameter by the researchers themselves. So silly.
RESPONSE B: Sort of obvious, but good to hear it regardless
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A | POST: Redditors who work in academia, how much free time do you get for your hobbies, exercising, etc.? How is the work-life balance for you? How would you rate your happiness? Do you think you earn enough for your efforts? From a curious teenager who is contemplating being in academia when I grow up
RESPONSE A: Academia is predatory. Many people are drawn to academia for idealistic reasons; academic freedom, contributing to a greater good, being able to research without fear or favour etc. It is from this idealism that universities prey on you and expect you to be there for solely the mission of a university at the expense of your work-life balance, family, health, hobbies etc. Academia also encourages people to stay in precarious situations of relying on lots of short term contracts due to the mission of teaching and researching. Edit: spelling
RESPONSE B: This is actually a major part of why I left academia. It was too demanding on my time. I didn't have enough time or energy to even get all of the work-related things done that I wanted - including spending extra time helping students, improving course materials, or working on research projects. And that's not even counting administrative responsibilities that I didn't have as a junior lecturer, but most of my colleagues had to do also. Hobbies? Exercise? Forget it! I'm really glad I went through grad school (computer science) and got the research training experience because that has proven extremely valuable. Now I work in industry and, at least at my current job, have a _much_ better work life balance (not all industry jobs are like this of course).
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Redditors who work in academia, how much free time do you get for your hobbies, exercising, etc.? How is the work-life balance for you? How would you rate your happiness? Do you think you earn enough for your efforts? From a curious teenager who is contemplating being in academia when I grow up
RESPONSE A: Academia is predatory. Many people are drawn to academia for idealistic reasons; academic freedom, contributing to a greater good, being able to research without fear or favour etc. It is from this idealism that universities prey on you and expect you to be there for solely the mission of a university at the expense of your work-life balance, family, health, hobbies etc. Academia also encourages people to stay in precarious situations of relying on lots of short term contracts due to the mission of teaching and researching. Edit: spelling
RESPONSE B: In a strange way, life in research-intense academia is like a career in pro-sports. There is intense work and competition involved in getting drafted and then working your way through your rookie contract. Then you land a life-time contract. After that, how hard you work at your craft is up to you and your goals. Most people like what they are doing, want to stand out, and work hard. Some people are Tom Brady's, others coast... The most important thing for me is that I am reaching my 60's and there are still things I really want to do at work while my friends, no matter how much money they make, can't wait to retire.
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B | POST: Redditors who work in academia, how much free time do you get for your hobbies, exercising, etc.? How is the work-life balance for you? How would you rate your happiness? Do you think you earn enough for your efforts? From a curious teenager who is contemplating being in academia when I grow up
RESPONSE A: All depends on where you put your priorities and boundaries. I’m an American doing my PhD studies in Europe right now. I burnt out hard during my MS and then again while I was in industry because I didn’t maintain my boundaries, now that I’ve learned that lesson I wish to not repeat it. There is a stronger focus on work-life balance here compared to the US. But if I wanted to, I have more than enough lab and manuscript writing to do to keep me busy all day everyday. With that said, I have to take efforts to prioritize my non academic interests. So I am getting out cycling 50km 1-2x during the week and usually a 100km ride on the weekend. I’m prioritizing making time outside of work to socialize with people. Unless I have a hard deadline for something, I try not to work after 6 or on the weekends. I try not to answer emails outside of business hours. With everything in life, you have to find and stick to your boundaries. What you value is what you’ll prioritize.
RESPONSE B: Academia is predatory. Many people are drawn to academia for idealistic reasons; academic freedom, contributing to a greater good, being able to research without fear or favour etc. It is from this idealism that universities prey on you and expect you to be there for solely the mission of a university at the expense of your work-life balance, family, health, hobbies etc. Academia also encourages people to stay in precarious situations of relying on lots of short term contracts due to the mission of teaching and researching. Edit: spelling
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Redditors who work in academia, how much free time do you get for your hobbies, exercising, etc.? How is the work-life balance for you? How would you rate your happiness? Do you think you earn enough for your efforts? From a curious teenager who is contemplating being in academia when I grow up
RESPONSE A: Academia is predatory. Many people are drawn to academia for idealistic reasons; academic freedom, contributing to a greater good, being able to research without fear or favour etc. It is from this idealism that universities prey on you and expect you to be there for solely the mission of a university at the expense of your work-life balance, family, health, hobbies etc. Academia also encourages people to stay in precarious situations of relying on lots of short term contracts due to the mission of teaching and researching. Edit: spelling
RESPONSE B: “Work in academia” is WAY too broad. It’s like saying “work in a hospital”. The ER nurses will have a different answer than the oncology nurses, who have a different answer from the x-ray technicians, who have a different answer than the surgeons, who have a different answer than the OBGYN, who have a difference answer than the lab technicians, who have a different answer than the cafeteria workers, who have a different answer than the president of the hospital, who has a different answer than....
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B | POST: colleagues with children just because I haven't got children yet? I feel like a complete asshole asking this, as I know it's an emergency situation and the normal rules go out the window. I'm a lecturer, and it feels like management are giving extra work to those of us who don't have children, or whose children are grown up. I'm not in a stage of my life where children are possible at the moment (hopefully soon), but I feel angry and upset that myself and other colleagues without children are getting all the extra work that is normally shared across all colleagues equally. Obviously I'm aware that colleagues who do have children are having to juggle work and their family situation, so I feel like I'm being unreasonable, but at the same time, this is work that I wouldn't have normally had in the usual non-COVID circumstances. What do you think? I am right to feel annoyed, or am I being a selfish asshole and need to suck it up?
RESPONSE A: No, it isn't wrong. Children or no, each faculty member ought to shoulder a fair load of service, teaching, and research. The problem is that stuff is rarely tracked well (especially service) and people with children often get special exceptions for certain forms of service. > I am right to feel annoyed, or am I being a selfish asshole and need to suck it up? How much do you think you'll get recognition or compensation for doing this extra work?
RESPONSE B: I think it's alright both to feel annoyed, and to need to suck it up. This is an extreme situation. If it would make you feel better, keep a log of the ways you're going above and beyond. It's possible you may be able to use it later as leverage when you need help from others or have a family emergency of your own. Compassion now might save you from being jobless when the recession hits. There is so much uncertainty and fear right now. Shouldering the burden when others can't is one of the ways we're going to get through this. Even if it's a little resentful, I really do thing the appropriate response right now is kindness.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: an emergency situation and the normal rules go out the window. I'm a lecturer, and it feels like management are giving extra work to those of us who don't have children, or whose children are grown up. I'm not in a stage of my life where children are possible at the moment (hopefully soon), but I feel angry and upset that myself and other colleagues without children are getting all the extra work that is normally shared across all colleagues equally. Obviously I'm aware that colleagues who do have children are having to juggle work and their family situation, so I feel like I'm being unreasonable, but at the same time, this is work that I wouldn't have normally had in the usual non-COVID circumstances. What do you think? I am right to feel annoyed, or am I being a selfish asshole and need to suck it up?
RESPONSE A: If it makes you feel any better, I’m frustrated that I’m expected to somehow get all my usual work done remotely, with two needy kids now at home, AND now the older one’s school is starting to send work home too so I’m also supposed to be homeschooling my child at the same time. I’ve been staying up past 1 am each night to get my work done bc I can’t do anything until the kids are asleep. We can all be frustrated/angry/overwhelmed together, just know that everyone is doing their best in a crazy situation.
RESPONSE B: I don’t think it’s right to have different work expectations for those who do and don’t have children. Im a grad student in a department where most PhD students are married and have 1-3 kids. I often find that those students receive substantially more allowances and can get away with skipping things like “mandatory” colloquial because they have kids at home. I think it’s super insulting to treat people who have children as if their time is inherently more valuable than those that don’t. I’m definitely not someone who dislikes kids, I just don’t have any of my own yet. That said, it’s whack to act as if their personal, non-work related choice should affect workload.
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A | POST: I feel like an asshole asking, but is it wrong to feel like I shouldn't get MORE work than my colleagues with children just because I haven't got children yet? I feel like a complete asshole asking this, as I know it's an emergency situation and the normal rules go out the window. I'm a lecturer, and it feels like management are giving extra work to those of us who don't have children, or whose children are grown up. I'm not in a stage of my life where children are possible at the moment (hopefully soon), but I feel angry and upset that myself and other colleagues without children are getting all the extra work that is normally shared across all colleagues equally. Obviously I'm aware that colleagues who do have children are having to juggle work and their family situation, so I feel like I'm being unreasonable, but at the same time, this is work that I wouldn't have normally had in the usual non-COVID circumstances. What do you think? I am right to feel annoyed, or am I being a selfish asshole and need to suck it up?
RESPONSE A: If it makes you feel any better, I’m frustrated that I’m expected to somehow get all my usual work done remotely, with two needy kids now at home, AND now the older one’s school is starting to send work home too so I’m also supposed to be homeschooling my child at the same time. I’ve been staying up past 1 am each night to get my work done bc I can’t do anything until the kids are asleep. We can all be frustrated/angry/overwhelmed together, just know that everyone is doing their best in a crazy situation.
RESPONSE B: I think you're not wrong to be bothered by a higher workload, but the amount of work that needs to get done per person has increased. While your colleagues have to spend more time each day to take care of their children, you get more of the work they usually do. It sucks for everyone. We have to lower our expectations a little bit if necessary.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: I feel like an asshole asking, but is it wrong to feel like I shouldn't get MORE work than my colleagues with children just because I haven't got children yet? I feel like a complete asshole asking this, as I know it's an emergency situation and the normal rules go out the window. I'm a lecturer, and it feels like management are giving extra work to those of us who don't have children, or whose children are grown up. I'm not in a stage of my life where children are possible at the moment (hopefully soon), but I feel angry and upset that myself and other colleagues without children are getting all the extra work that is normally shared across all colleagues equally. Obviously I'm aware that colleagues who do have children are having to juggle work and their family situation, so I feel like I'm being unreasonable, but at the same time, this is work that I wouldn't have normally had in the usual non-COVID circumstances. What do you think? I am right to feel annoyed, or am I being a selfish asshole and need to suck it up?
RESPONSE A: No, it isn't wrong. Children or no, each faculty member ought to shoulder a fair load of service, teaching, and research. The problem is that stuff is rarely tracked well (especially service) and people with children often get special exceptions for certain forms of service. > I am right to feel annoyed, or am I being a selfish asshole and need to suck it up? How much do you think you'll get recognition or compensation for doing this extra work?
RESPONSE B: If it makes you feel any better, I’m frustrated that I’m expected to somehow get all my usual work done remotely, with two needy kids now at home, AND now the older one’s school is starting to send work home too so I’m also supposed to be homeschooling my child at the same time. I’ve been staying up past 1 am each night to get my work done bc I can’t do anything until the kids are asleep. We can all be frustrated/angry/overwhelmed together, just know that everyone is doing their best in a crazy situation.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: than my colleagues with children just because I haven't got children yet? I feel like a complete asshole asking this, as I know it's an emergency situation and the normal rules go out the window. I'm a lecturer, and it feels like management are giving extra work to those of us who don't have children, or whose children are grown up. I'm not in a stage of my life where children are possible at the moment (hopefully soon), but I feel angry and upset that myself and other colleagues without children are getting all the extra work that is normally shared across all colleagues equally. Obviously I'm aware that colleagues who do have children are having to juggle work and their family situation, so I feel like I'm being unreasonable, but at the same time, this is work that I wouldn't have normally had in the usual non-COVID circumstances. What do you think? I am right to feel annoyed, or am I being a selfish asshole and need to suck it up?
RESPONSE A: If it makes you feel any better, I’m frustrated that I’m expected to somehow get all my usual work done remotely, with two needy kids now at home, AND now the older one’s school is starting to send work home too so I’m also supposed to be homeschooling my child at the same time. I’ve been staying up past 1 am each night to get my work done bc I can’t do anything until the kids are asleep. We can all be frustrated/angry/overwhelmed together, just know that everyone is doing their best in a crazy situation.
RESPONSE B: I think it is wrong of them to give you more work. On the other hand, I don't think there's a way out of it - there is very little to be gained by complaining, or worse refusing to do extra work. I suppose you could always lie. If you say "I know I don't have children, but actually I have elderly relatives that depend on me", whether or not that's true, it could get them off your back a bit, and it's pretty impossible to check. There's an obvious moral question there, which I will leave up to you.
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B | POST: What are the wildest hijinks you never though you’d have to write a syllabus disclaimer about (and yet here we are)? This morning I woke up to an email from a top journal in my field confirming my submission. I definitely did not submit anything there. Eventually I realized that instead of submitting their term paper to Canvas, one of my students had somehow managed to submit it as a manuscript to a journal, under my name and identity. I can’t believe I have to put “do not submit your class papers as journal manuscripts under my name” in my syllabi. I just keep thinking about it and bursting into laughter. So, what are some of your “I can’t believe that just happened” teaching stories? This is not a thread for student bashing - just some good natured, end of the semester stress relief!
RESPONSE A: Not really in the syllabus, but... When I was undergrad, we had to take written tests at the end of the semester for each class. There was one professor who would collect all the tests and then order them alphabetically, by surname (I don't remember the reason, but it was something reasonable, like students could go to discuss the results of the tests in his office and in this way it was easier for him to find them). Every year he had to say this disclaimer in class: "In your test, on the top left corner, please write your surname and name. Your surname is your family name, the one you have in common with your father, your paternal grandfather, etc... Your name is what your friends call you. I am telling you this because every year, inevitably, there is always someone who write Name, Surname instead of Surname, Name (like, John, Smith instead of Smith, John), and then it's a pain in the ass to order the tests alphabetically, so please try to be careful"
RESPONSE B: My syllabus has the line, "if you need to miss lab for medical reasons, please notify me ahead of time via email. Do not include descriptions or pictures of your symptoms in this email." You can probably imagine why.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: What are the wildest hijinks you never though you’d have to write a syllabus disclaimer about (and yet here we are)? This morning I woke up to an email from a top journal in my field confirming my submission. I definitely did not submit anything there. Eventually I realized that instead of submitting their term paper to Canvas, one of my students had somehow managed to submit it as a manuscript to a journal, under my name and identity. I can’t believe I have to put “do not submit your class papers as journal manuscripts under my name” in my syllabi. I just keep thinking about it and bursting into laughter. So, what are some of your “I can’t believe that just happened” teaching stories? This is not a thread for student bashing - just some good natured, end of the semester stress relief!
RESPONSE A: My syllabus has the line, "if you need to miss lab for medical reasons, please notify me ahead of time via email. Do not include descriptions or pictures of your symptoms in this email." You can probably imagine why.
RESPONSE B: Yikes lol. HOW
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: What are the wildest hijinks you never though you’d have to write a syllabus disclaimer about (and yet here we are)? This morning I woke up to an email from a top journal in my field confirming my submission. I definitely did not submit anything there. Eventually I realized that instead of submitting their term paper to Canvas, one of my students had somehow managed to submit it as a manuscript to a journal, under my name and identity. I can’t believe I have to put “do not submit your class papers as journal manuscripts under my name” in my syllabi. I just keep thinking about it and bursting into laughter. So, what are some of your “I can’t believe that just happened” teaching stories? This is not a thread for student bashing - just some good natured, end of the semester stress relief!
RESPONSE A: My syllabus has the line, "if you need to miss lab for medical reasons, please notify me ahead of time via email. Do not include descriptions or pictures of your symptoms in this email." You can probably imagine why.
RESPONSE B: I’d love to know the rationale the student had for doing that.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: This morning I woke up to an email from a top journal in my field confirming my submission. I definitely did not submit anything there. Eventually I realized that instead of submitting their term paper to Canvas, one of my students had somehow managed to submit it as a manuscript to a journal, under my name and identity. I can’t believe I have to put “do not submit your class papers as journal manuscripts under my name” in my syllabi. I just keep thinking about it and bursting into laughter. So, what are some of your “I can’t believe that just happened” teaching stories? This is not a thread for student bashing - just some good natured, end of the semester stress relief!
RESPONSE A: Not really in the syllabus, but... When I was undergrad, we had to take written tests at the end of the semester for each class. There was one professor who would collect all the tests and then order them alphabetically, by surname (I don't remember the reason, but it was something reasonable, like students could go to discuss the results of the tests in his office and in this way it was easier for him to find them). Every year he had to say this disclaimer in class: "In your test, on the top left corner, please write your surname and name. Your surname is your family name, the one you have in common with your father, your paternal grandfather, etc... Your name is what your friends call you. I am telling you this because every year, inevitably, there is always someone who write Name, Surname instead of Surname, Name (like, John, Smith instead of Smith, John), and then it's a pain in the ass to order the tests alphabetically, so please try to be careful"
RESPONSE B: Last year more than one of my colleagues literally had to add a line to their syllabi explicitly requiring students be "fully clothed" when appearing on camera for class. Apparently several men thought it fine to Zoom in from bed, shirtless, and at least one student was zooming from her dorm room when her semi-naked roommate walked behind her on camera. Neither of these would have occurred to any of us before spring 2020.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: What are the wildest hijinks you never though you’d have to write a syllabus disclaimer about (and yet here we are)? This morning I woke up to an email from a top journal in my field confirming my submission. I definitely did not submit anything there. Eventually I realized that instead of submitting their term paper to Canvas, one of my students had somehow managed to submit it as a manuscript to a journal, under my name and identity. I can’t believe I have to put “do not submit your class papers as journal manuscripts under my name” in my syllabi. I just keep thinking about it and bursting into laughter. So, what are some of your “I can’t believe that just happened” teaching stories? This is not a thread for student bashing - just some good natured, end of the semester stress relief!
RESPONSE A: Yikes lol. HOW
RESPONSE B: Last year more than one of my colleagues literally had to add a line to their syllabi explicitly requiring students be "fully clothed" when appearing on camera for class. Apparently several men thought it fine to Zoom in from bed, shirtless, and at least one student was zooming from her dorm room when her semi-naked roommate walked behind her on camera. Neither of these would have occurred to any of us before spring 2020.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: this isnt right. The response of one of the professors was: "We are in this because we love science. If you don't want to work weekends, perhaps you do not love science and you do not belong here. If that is the case, you should leave." I was rather shocked. I admit that I do put in extra hours because I want to and have to because of my horrible productivity throughout the day. However, what was suggested by the "expert" was that it is basically compulsory to do this. Is that really what is expected in the Academia? Why is it like that? Why isn't mental and physical health given their due importance? Burn out is a thing.
RESPONSE A: When I’ve gotten professors to really talk about the weird/extreme hours my favorite thought is that while there’s an “expectation” to work late or on weekends you got the freedom to disappear for random hours during weekdays during work hours. Like taking off a random Wednesday afternoon for a family thing is a lot easier than anywhere else, but that’s because “they” assume you’ll still hit deadlines by doing a couple late hours or weekends
RESPONSE B: I worked for 60 hours per week for my first 2 years. I was burning out and decided to not do that anymore. I didn't tell my professor, I just stopped. I guess my advisor could have fired me, but that would've cost him years of work and training. Now as faculty, I still work just 40 hours. Partly because I learned to get a lot done in 40 hours, partly because I turned down the offers from departments where I could tell they expected more regardless of productivity, and partly because I'm in engineering and good faculty are hard to find, so they'll pretty much put up with whatever I feel like doing. Moreover, I worked 6 hours total in my 4 week winter break. I worked zero hours fall break. I expect to work for 12 hours this week long spring break, simply because I'm behind on grading. My work-life balance is superb. Beyond just bragging, my point is it's possible. Admittedly, If you want to land a TT gig at a top 20 school, then it's probably not possible.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: tell his supervisor that this isnt right. The response of one of the professors was: "We are in this because we love science. If you don't want to work weekends, perhaps you do not love science and you do not belong here. If that is the case, you should leave." I was rather shocked. I admit that I do put in extra hours because I want to and have to because of my horrible productivity throughout the day. However, what was suggested by the "expert" was that it is basically compulsory to do this. Is that really what is expected in the Academia? Why is it like that? Why isn't mental and physical health given their due importance? Burn out is a thing.
RESPONSE A: I think it’s not fair. But, yea, I think it is expected. And, if you don’t, you probably won’t be competitive in the job market (unless your productivity is so high that you can compete with people that work all the time). Even if you work weekend and holidays, I still don’t think you are guarantee a job. I am not a PhD yet, so take it with a grain of salt.
RESPONSE B: I worked for 60 hours per week for my first 2 years. I was burning out and decided to not do that anymore. I didn't tell my professor, I just stopped. I guess my advisor could have fired me, but that would've cost him years of work and training. Now as faculty, I still work just 40 hours. Partly because I learned to get a lot done in 40 hours, partly because I turned down the offers from departments where I could tell they expected more regardless of productivity, and partly because I'm in engineering and good faculty are hard to find, so they'll pretty much put up with whatever I feel like doing. Moreover, I worked 6 hours total in my 4 week winter break. I worked zero hours fall break. I expect to work for 12 hours this week long spring break, simply because I'm behind on grading. My work-life balance is superb. Beyond just bragging, my point is it's possible. Admittedly, If you want to land a TT gig at a top 20 school, then it's probably not possible.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Are you expected to work 60-70 hours a week in the academia? This is part rant and part question. I had an introductory meeting with about 15-16 other PhD students who had just started and the session included a question answer session with professors where anonymous questions could be asked. One individual, whose supervisor expected him to work weekends as well, asked the professors how he can politely tell his supervisor that this isnt right. The response of one of the professors was: "We are in this because we love science. If you don't want to work weekends, perhaps you do not love science and you do not belong here. If that is the case, you should leave." I was rather shocked. I admit that I do put in extra hours because I want to and have to because of my horrible productivity throughout the day. However, what was suggested by the "expert" was that it is basically compulsory to do this. Is that really what is expected in the Academia? Why is it like that? Why isn't mental and physical health given their due importance? Burn out is a thing.
RESPONSE A: I think it’s not fair. But, yea, I think it is expected. And, if you don’t, you probably won’t be competitive in the job market (unless your productivity is so high that you can compete with people that work all the time). Even if you work weekend and holidays, I still don’t think you are guarantee a job. I am not a PhD yet, so take it with a grain of salt.
RESPONSE B: When I’ve gotten professors to really talk about the weird/extreme hours my favorite thought is that while there’s an “expectation” to work late or on weekends you got the freedom to disappear for random hours during weekdays during work hours. Like taking off a random Wednesday afternoon for a family thing is a lot easier than anywhere else, but that’s because “they” assume you’ll still hit deadlines by doing a couple late hours or weekends
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B | POST: Female Grad Student in Engineering having Challenges working with Men I’m noticing this pattern where I get sidelined by men who take over something I was working on, or male colleagues opening talking down to me in front of our superiors, or even the male students that I TA blaming their mistakes on me and I am getting extremely frustrated. Even with the men in my cohort that I consider my friends, I have moments where I am talked down to, talked over, or my input is not taken as seriously. These moments like often derail me for the rest of the day, and reinforce all the icky imposter syndrome feelings I have going on. I tried to google but all I got was icky misoginistic “lean in” type rhetoric that just tells me to have less feelings and be one of the boys. Do you have any advice? Or any good reading material that you have found on this topic?
RESPONSE A: As long as you keep evidence of the way you practice and work there should always be evidence to back you up and let them know that they can't blame their mistakes on you. On the other hand regarding the comments and treatment you can try to escalate things: correct them either in the spot or privately as it fits the situation, make a stand of your view and why x behaviour is offensive, take things up with a superior if things go out of control, and take note of the policies of where you are at so you can be protected. You can check r/twoxchromosomes and post in there to, is quite a supportive community and I have seen posts alike where other women offer their insights and experience.
RESPONSE B: Not in the exact same situation, but I feel you. Men consciously or subconsciously do still treat women as inferior in STEM. It sucks.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: working on, or male colleagues opening talking down to me in front of our superiors, or even the male students that I TA blaming their mistakes on me and I am getting extremely frustrated. Even with the men in my cohort that I consider my friends, I have moments where I am talked down to, talked over, or my input is not taken as seriously. These moments like often derail me for the rest of the day, and reinforce all the icky imposter syndrome feelings I have going on. I tried to google but all I got was icky misoginistic “lean in” type rhetoric that just tells me to have less feelings and be one of the boys. Do you have any advice? Or any good reading material that you have found on this topic?
RESPONSE A: Find a woman mentor. I am a female professor (geology) who used to work in a Civil Engineering department. There were 2 other women faculty, and the rest were men. I spent a lot of time trying to increase the number of women in our program. The key to survival is to find other women in your program (ideally professors, or more advanced grad students) and connect with them. They don't necessarily need to be doing what you do, and I'm not suggesting you should switch advisors (based on what you wrote so far), but you need to find a safe space to commiserate, give guidance for actions you can take, etc., etc. And to all the men in STEM reading this, you also need to be active in the fight for equality in STEM! If you see a male colleague/fellow student talking over a female, or taking over a project, or making an off-color joke, speak up! The "boys club" mentality will never change unless the "boys" are also fighting for the change! Hang in there, OP, you are not an impostor!
RESPONSE B: As a male researcher, I know I probably do this inadvertently and I would appreciate knowing when I’m doing it so I can train that behavior out of myself. I know it’s not fair to ask this of you, but I think we would all benefit from being told when we’re stepping on our female colleagues.
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A | POST: often derail me for the rest of the day, and reinforce all the icky imposter syndrome feelings I have going on. I tried to google but all I got was icky misoginistic “lean in” type rhetoric that just tells me to have less feelings and be one of the boys. Do you have any advice? Or any good reading material that you have found on this topic?
RESPONSE A: Find a woman mentor. I am a female professor (geology) who used to work in a Civil Engineering department. There were 2 other women faculty, and the rest were men. I spent a lot of time trying to increase the number of women in our program. The key to survival is to find other women in your program (ideally professors, or more advanced grad students) and connect with them. They don't necessarily need to be doing what you do, and I'm not suggesting you should switch advisors (based on what you wrote so far), but you need to find a safe space to commiserate, give guidance for actions you can take, etc., etc. And to all the men in STEM reading this, you also need to be active in the fight for equality in STEM! If you see a male colleague/fellow student talking over a female, or taking over a project, or making an off-color joke, speak up! The "boys club" mentality will never change unless the "boys" are also fighting for the change! Hang in there, OP, you are not an impostor!
RESPONSE B: As long as you keep evidence of the way you practice and work there should always be evidence to back you up and let them know that they can't blame their mistakes on you. On the other hand regarding the comments and treatment you can try to escalate things: correct them either in the spot or privately as it fits the situation, make a stand of your view and why x behaviour is offensive, take things up with a superior if things go out of control, and take note of the policies of where you are at so you can be protected. You can check r/twoxchromosomes and post in there to, is quite a supportive community and I have seen posts alike where other women offer their insights and experience.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: over, or my input is not taken as seriously. These moments like often derail me for the rest of the day, and reinforce all the icky imposter syndrome feelings I have going on. I tried to google but all I got was icky misoginistic “lean in” type rhetoric that just tells me to have less feelings and be one of the boys. Do you have any advice? Or any good reading material that you have found on this topic?
RESPONSE A: Find a woman mentor. I am a female professor (geology) who used to work in a Civil Engineering department. There were 2 other women faculty, and the rest were men. I spent a lot of time trying to increase the number of women in our program. The key to survival is to find other women in your program (ideally professors, or more advanced grad students) and connect with them. They don't necessarily need to be doing what you do, and I'm not suggesting you should switch advisors (based on what you wrote so far), but you need to find a safe space to commiserate, give guidance for actions you can take, etc., etc. And to all the men in STEM reading this, you also need to be active in the fight for equality in STEM! If you see a male colleague/fellow student talking over a female, or taking over a project, or making an off-color joke, speak up! The "boys club" mentality will never change unless the "boys" are also fighting for the change! Hang in there, OP, you are not an impostor!
RESPONSE B: Can you tell us more about how you got sidelined on this project? Usually it's the advisor's job to make it clear who is in charge of which project. Don't let people just take things from you... I think the best thing you could do is to try to find a female professor to discuss your problems with. Doesn't even need to be in the same department. Either send them a cold email or show up to their office hours sometime and ask if they wouldn't mind talking to you about a couple of these kinds of things. I'm a guy so take it with a grain of salt.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: and reinforce all the icky imposter syndrome feelings I have going on. I tried to google but all I got was icky misoginistic “lean in” type rhetoric that just tells me to have less feelings and be one of the boys. Do you have any advice? Or any good reading material that you have found on this topic?
RESPONSE A: As long as you keep evidence of the way you practice and work there should always be evidence to back you up and let them know that they can't blame their mistakes on you. On the other hand regarding the comments and treatment you can try to escalate things: correct them either in the spot or privately as it fits the situation, make a stand of your view and why x behaviour is offensive, take things up with a superior if things go out of control, and take note of the policies of where you are at so you can be protected. You can check r/twoxchromosomes and post in there to, is quite a supportive community and I have seen posts alike where other women offer their insights and experience.
RESPONSE B: I can only speak from my experience, but I frequently get talked down/over in my lab group as well. It is hard to ignore, but after 4 years I realized it is a lot easier just to learn to not worry about it, plus realistically what can you do? I think my advice for not taking it personally is trying not to stew, when I sit and think about what happened for hours at a time it just makes me feel awful, but if I actively just move on right after it happens and try not to stew it seems to help me not feel so belittled. It may be worth noting anecdotally that lots of people in academia are condescending as fuck; I think a common theme is people thinking they are always the smartest person in the room and implicit biases don't help this. I am a male in an all male group with a female advisor, so there aren't really the same misogyny vibes of your lab, but I find it easier just to not worry about it myself versus trying to talk to/change people who are just going to be assholes by default. Just my two cents.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: The university that I teach at (NYU) has gone remote because of the coronivirus. I teach two classes of over 100 students and give multiple choice exams. Is there any possible way to stop them from cheating on the exams?
RESPONSE A: So I don't know if this is used in the USA, but it's widely used in Canada. We use this thing called Lockdown Browser, it's mainly used with students who are online. When a student opens it, it blocks them from using external applications on their laptops/computers. Professors can also enable the browser to video/audio record when students enter their tests, to ensure students don't cheat.
RESPONSE B: You can't stop it but you can minimize it. Assuming you will offer exams on your LMS (e.g. Blackboard): 1. Set the time for the exam in such way that it is 35-45 seconds per question. This makes it harder to Google or look up the answers. Advanced: Google your questions to make sure the answers are not readily available. If they are, restructure the question. 2. Make questions appear one at a time (not the entire exam). This makes it harder for one student to print out the exam and have others work on it. 3. Randomize the order of how questions appear so there is no way to create a solutions key with question numbers. 4. Make the exam available only at the same time as the on-campus exam time so everyone takes it at the same time. 5. Do not provide the correct answers or the student score immediately, you can release those after everyone has taken the exam. Hope this helps, good luck!
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: The university that I teach at (NYU) has gone remote because of the coronivirus. I teach two classes of over 100 students and give multiple choice exams. Is there any possible way to stop them from cheating on the exams?
RESPONSE A: You can't stop it but you can minimize it. Assuming you will offer exams on your LMS (e.g. Blackboard): 1. Set the time for the exam in such way that it is 35-45 seconds per question. This makes it harder to Google or look up the answers. Advanced: Google your questions to make sure the answers are not readily available. If they are, restructure the question. 2. Make questions appear one at a time (not the entire exam). This makes it harder for one student to print out the exam and have others work on it. 3. Randomize the order of how questions appear so there is no way to create a solutions key with question numbers. 4. Make the exam available only at the same time as the on-campus exam time so everyone takes it at the same time. 5. Do not provide the correct answers or the student score immediately, you can release those after everyone has taken the exam. Hope this helps, good luck!
RESPONSE B: No.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: The university that I teach at (NYU) has gone remote because of the coronivirus. I teach two classes of over 100 students and give multiple choice exams. Is there any possible way to stop them from cheating on the exams?
RESPONSE A: You can't stop it but you can minimize it. Assuming you will offer exams on your LMS (e.g. Blackboard): 1. Set the time for the exam in such way that it is 35-45 seconds per question. This makes it harder to Google or look up the answers. Advanced: Google your questions to make sure the answers are not readily available. If they are, restructure the question. 2. Make questions appear one at a time (not the entire exam). This makes it harder for one student to print out the exam and have others work on it. 3. Randomize the order of how questions appear so there is no way to create a solutions key with question numbers. 4. Make the exam available only at the same time as the on-campus exam time so everyone takes it at the same time. 5. Do not provide the correct answers or the student score immediately, you can release those after everyone has taken the exam. Hope this helps, good luck!
RESPONSE B: You could create several versions of the exam where the questions/answers are ordered differently. It would stop wholesale copying. But it wouldn't stop people from working together.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: The university that I teach at (NYU) has gone remote because of the coronivirus. I teach two classes of over 100 students and give multiple choice exams. Is there any possible way to stop them from cheating on the exams?
RESPONSE A: You could use online proctoring services like Proctor U. They have remote access to the student's screen, and will watch the student via webcam the entire time until they submit their exam. They need the student to verify ID and also ask you to move your webcam around the room before beginning the exam.
RESPONSE B: You can't stop it but you can minimize it. Assuming you will offer exams on your LMS (e.g. Blackboard): 1. Set the time for the exam in such way that it is 35-45 seconds per question. This makes it harder to Google or look up the answers. Advanced: Google your questions to make sure the answers are not readily available. If they are, restructure the question. 2. Make questions appear one at a time (not the entire exam). This makes it harder for one student to print out the exam and have others work on it. 3. Randomize the order of how questions appear so there is no way to create a solutions key with question numbers. 4. Make the exam available only at the same time as the on-campus exam time so everyone takes it at the same time. 5. Do not provide the correct answers or the student score immediately, you can release those after everyone has taken the exam. Hope this helps, good luck!
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: The university that I teach at (NYU) has gone remote because of the coronivirus. I teach two classes of over 100 students and give multiple choice exams. Is there any possible way to stop them from cheating on the exams?
RESPONSE A: So I don't know if this is used in the USA, but it's widely used in Canada. We use this thing called Lockdown Browser, it's mainly used with students who are online. When a student opens it, it blocks them from using external applications on their laptops/computers. Professors can also enable the browser to video/audio record when students enter their tests, to ensure students don't cheat.
RESPONSE B: No.
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B | POST: What are some of the more absurd journal article titles you're come across? Having recently come across "The hitchhikers guide to flow chemistry" and "Will Any Crap We Put into Graphene Increase Its Electrocatalytic Effect?" journal articles, I was quite amused by them. What are some other articles that you've come across that have weird/absurd/funny titles? Also, what did it make you think of the authors who wrote them?
RESPONSE A: I Just Ran Two Million Regressions
RESPONSE B: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1465-5922.1996.00165.x You are welcome...
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A | POST: What are some of the more absurd journal article titles you're come across? Having recently come across "The hitchhikers guide to flow chemistry" and "Will Any Crap We Put into Graphene Increase Its Electrocatalytic Effect?" journal articles, I was quite amused by them. What are some other articles that you've come across that have weird/absurd/funny titles? Also, what did it make you think of the authors who wrote them?
RESPONSE A: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1465-5922.1996.00165.x You are welcome...
RESPONSE B: I came across a genetic screening approach called Big Papi yesterday 🤦♀️
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: What are some of the more absurd journal article titles you're come across? Having recently come across "The hitchhikers guide to flow chemistry" and "Will Any Crap We Put into Graphene Increase Its Electrocatalytic Effect?" journal articles, I was quite amused by them. What are some other articles that you've come across that have weird/absurd/funny titles? Also, what did it make you think of the authors who wrote them?
RESPONSE A: Effects of packaging, equipment, and storage time on energy used for reheating beef stew. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=beef+stew&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DSj-zvXQpWGkJ
RESPONSE B: Classic favorite for these threads, be sure to check the figures. https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0001969
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B | POST: What are some of the more absurd journal article titles you're come across? Having recently come across "The hitchhikers guide to flow chemistry" and "Will Any Crap We Put into Graphene Increase Its Electrocatalytic Effect?" journal articles, I was quite amused by them. What are some other articles that you've come across that have weird/absurd/funny titles? Also, what did it make you think of the authors who wrote them?
RESPONSE A: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/556640/ You might regret this thread, I have a few, we had a bit of a competition going a while back at work to see who could find the best/worst/weirdest papers
RESPONSE B: The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1322240/
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: What are some of the more absurd journal article titles you're come across? Having recently come across "The hitchhikers guide to flow chemistry" and "Will Any Crap We Put into Graphene Increase Its Electrocatalytic Effect?" journal articles, I was quite amused by them. What are some other articles that you've come across that have weird/absurd/funny titles? Also, what did it make you think of the authors who wrote them?
RESPONSE A: Effects of packaging, equipment, and storage time on energy used for reheating beef stew. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=beef+stew&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DSj-zvXQpWGkJ
RESPONSE B: The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1322240/
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B | POST: this, and now this is has become the highlight of my stay abroad. Even my hosts and colleagues in Spain first and foremost remember this incident better than anything else from my stay. The host professor wanted to know who it was, but I only saw the guard once after this, and none of my Spanish colleagues were with me that time. TL;DR walked in on naked security guard during stay abroad.
RESPONSE A: It was more a situational strangeness. I was at a large conference in a Vienna. Given the size of that conference, the city was full to the brim with my fellow attendees. Everywhere you went you could spot people with blue lanyards around their necks. I shared the hostel room with three others, two of which also attended that conference. (We didn't really speak at first as our schedules were a bit different but I saw their lanyards lying around.) The third one was a regular tourist. One of the two fellow scientists was an man in his forties, a quiet fellow and seemingly pleasant. One evening we started talking before going to sleep. We were sitting on our beds, discussing the struggles of working in academia, me in my PJs, him in his underwear (he had been quite comfortable shuffling around the room like that all week, though not in a creepy way). The next day, I wandered around the conference halls thinking about how I'd feel if I met him again, back in a professional context, and the whole thing felt absolutely comical. I didn't see him again, though, but I still think of him as the Prof-I-Saw-In-Underpants and it brightens my day.
RESPONSE B: I worked in a building that was locked 24/7. I started noticing things going missing from the fridge, and the freezer had things that belonged to none of the researchers. I started trying to convince everyone that I thought someone was living in the building. There were private showers in the building, empty offices, it was perfect. No one believes me until we walked around and opened all the empty offices. There it was, a room filled with axe body spray, clothes, a computer, etc. An undergrad had been living in our locked building.
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A | POST: said yes. He let me out and I left. I told my colleagues this, and now this is has become the highlight of my stay abroad. Even my hosts and colleagues in Spain first and foremost remember this incident better than anything else from my stay. The host professor wanted to know who it was, but I only saw the guard once after this, and none of my Spanish colleagues were with me that time. TL;DR walked in on naked security guard during stay abroad.
RESPONSE A: I was in my second year and a new student came in to do a rotation. He was very eager about publishing and wrote up a commentary and asked me to read it before we submitted to our PI. The first citation was a link to his baking website...or rather pictures of him and a woman baking naked. For the record the topic was food materials. There were lots of photos of a bdsm baking session complete with rolling pins in private parts. He never joined our lab and the piece was never submitted. He also had a lot of sick cats he would talk about a lot... But that was long ago now.
RESPONSE B: My weirdest experience was being in a locked lab where everyone else was older and more mature than me. Everyone else in lab was doing their own experiments and publishing papers. I had been the target of weird pranks in the lab, and I never suspected anyone in lab. Seriously everyone was mature and had like 10 years on me. Someone stole my phone when it was charging and put it in the chemical hood to charge. That was super creepy. Another time, I came late to my desk at 5 PM. There was only 3 people in lab. I went to the bathroom, and came back 10 minutes later to find someone put old quizzes and exams in my bag. These quizzes were dated 7 months old and belonged to another lab member who was out of the country.... Yet in that 10 minute span that I was gone, someone put prior old quizzes into my bag... I asked the 3 people in lab and they all had no idea. Plus they were all post docs who didn’t need the quizzes. So I was dumbfounded as to why or how the quizzes ended up in my bag in 10 minutes. It was super weird.
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A | POST: Is academia so competitive now that it's pointless to try if you aren't exceptional/remarkable? People will suggest to major in engineering instead of physics or mathematics due to academia being so extremely competitive. Has it reached a point to where if you're not, say, winning math olympiads during secondary school, you should probably not bother with a mathematics degree & academia, and instead default to engineering & industry instead? I'm wondering how the landscape looks for any and all fields right now, but especially STEM. Do you need to be effectively the #1 best applicant out of 300-3,000 applicants to recieve an offer? Do you actually need 1-3 post-doctoral positions to have a chance? Is all of that just hyperbole from bitter people? It reminds me of how some children in europe begin training at 5 years old in these expensive soccer camps, so that they can have a chance of being on a team when they grow up. Is that what it's like now? Are you competing with people like that?
RESPONSE A: I don't think being exceptional/remarkable is as noteworthy as people make it out to be. Plenty of geniuses can't get a job. Plenty of them quit before they evem graduate Being average and knowing how to play the game (publishing, schmoozing with faculty, getting into tje right subfield, etc) is more important. Work ethic is more important etc
RESPONSE B: The top will always be competitive, no matter what field. I also suggest getting off the Internet and talking to some people who are doing what you want to be doing, and also those who are on the path but maybe not yet as far (ie not tenured but are in the grad program/postdoc/getting the experiences you want to have or feel you need to have). The Internet (and esp. reddit) is incredibly negative. I'm also kind of inclined to believe the people who are getting the jobs are NOT the ones freaking out about it on reddit/twitter/etc, so take that with a grain of salt. (and FWIW I am not in STEM but I pay attention)
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Is academia so competitive now that it's pointless to try if you aren't exceptional/remarkable? People will suggest to major in engineering instead of physics or mathematics due to academia being so extremely competitive. Has it reached a point to where if you're not, say, winning math olympiads during secondary school, you should probably not bother with a mathematics degree & academia, and instead default to engineering & industry instead? I'm wondering how the landscape looks for any and all fields right now, but especially STEM. Do you need to be effectively the #1 best applicant out of 300-3,000 applicants to recieve an offer? Do you actually need 1-3 post-doctoral positions to have a chance? Is all of that just hyperbole from bitter people? It reminds me of how some children in europe begin training at 5 years old in these expensive soccer camps, so that they can have a chance of being on a team when they grow up. Is that what it's like now? Are you competing with people like that?
RESPONSE A: The top echelon of academia (regardless of the field) will always be competitive. It is up to you to decide if you're ok with a top 10 or a top 50 university. The right question to ask is, "are there enough jobs (both academia and industry) after a (insert major) degree". You could always end up in (say) finance with a math degree. It's just a question of identifying non-traditional career paths.
RESPONSE B: I don't think being exceptional/remarkable is as noteworthy as people make it out to be. Plenty of geniuses can't get a job. Plenty of them quit before they evem graduate Being average and knowing how to play the game (publishing, schmoozing with faculty, getting into tje right subfield, etc) is more important. Work ethic is more important etc
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Is academia so competitive now that it's pointless to try if you aren't exceptional/remarkable? People will suggest to major in engineering instead of physics or mathematics due to academia being so extremely competitive. Has it reached a point to where if you're not, say, winning math olympiads during secondary school, you should probably not bother with a mathematics degree & academia, and instead default to engineering & industry instead? I'm wondering how the landscape looks for any and all fields right now, but especially STEM. Do you need to be effectively the #1 best applicant out of 300-3,000 applicants to recieve an offer? Do you actually need 1-3 post-doctoral positions to have a chance? Is all of that just hyperbole from bitter people? It reminds me of how some children in europe begin training at 5 years old in these expensive soccer camps, so that they can have a chance of being on a team when they grow up. Is that what it's like now? Are you competing with people like that?
RESPONSE A: >People will suggest to major in engineering instead of physics or mathematics due to academia being so extremely competitive. Has it reached a point to where if you're not, say, winning math olympiads during secondary school, Yes, it's very hard to get faculty positions in physics or mathematics, but winning math Olympiads secondary school is not the best predictor of success.
RESPONSE B: I'm not sure I can speak about math here. But as a professor in a social science, I can say with 100% certainty: if you are interested in going into academia in the humanities or social sciences, you absolutely ***must*** be exceptional and even being exceptional is no guarantee of success.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Is academia so competitive now that it's pointless to try if you aren't exceptional/remarkable? People will suggest to major in engineering instead of physics or mathematics due to academia being so extremely competitive. Has it reached a point to where if you're not, say, winning math olympiads during secondary school, you should probably not bother with a mathematics degree & academia, and instead default to engineering & industry instead? I'm wondering how the landscape looks for any and all fields right now, but especially STEM. Do you need to be effectively the #1 best applicant out of 300-3,000 applicants to recieve an offer? Do you actually need 1-3 post-doctoral positions to have a chance? Is all of that just hyperbole from bitter people? It reminds me of how some children in europe begin training at 5 years old in these expensive soccer camps, so that they can have a chance of being on a team when they grow up. Is that what it's like now? Are you competing with people like that?
RESPONSE A: I'm not sure I can speak about math here. But as a professor in a social science, I can say with 100% certainty: if you are interested in going into academia in the humanities or social sciences, you absolutely ***must*** be exceptional and even being exceptional is no guarantee of success.
RESPONSE B: yes IMO
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Why is academia so TOXIC? As title.
RESPONSE A: invincibility from tenure, ego, entitlement, ego, celebrity status
RESPONSE B: Because it is disproportionately populated with extremely privileged people who have rarely had to interact with people in situations in which they werent in the advantageous position. Do y'all *reallllly* think academia is so much more taxing on your body, mind, and soul than, say, ohhhhhh working in a shitty blue collar job where your boss treats you like a stupid asshole and you have to put on a smile for fuckface customers all day? Do you really think academia is so much more taxing than working in fast food or a million other places? Haha, go work on a city work team and get back to me. It's just that people in academia, myself included, are not used to not being in control. Oh I'm so sorry. A stressful, underpaid work environment in which you are never quite sure what future opportunities will materialize? Yeah, welcome to the club.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Academia made me forget how to read, need advice This is my 3rd year working in a research lab (am STEM grad student). I've downloaded and read/skimmed at least 200 papers on my research topic (or related topics) at this point. But I think there's something seriously wrong with me - I can't seem to be able to read more than two paragraphs at a time nowadays. Skimming papers at a rapid rate to finish my literature reviews and satisfy my PI has conditioned me to skim, and I think I've forgotten how to actually read a piece of text. I literally have to force myself to resist the temptation of skimming to actually get through a paragraph. I've also pretty much stopped reading anything that isn't social media or research papers. This sucks. I used to be someone who read widely and for pleasure, going through an average of like 5-10 novels or paperbacks a month. Now, it's a pain to even get through one. Any advice?
RESPONSE A: I don’t know if this would help but my postdoc creates PowerPoint documents (themed by topic) of papers with important notes/figures relevant to the claims in the paper. Alternatively, I make sure to write notes on each figure of a paper. It helps me think critically and slow down. Or you could try to read some really fun/unique (not necessarily relevant) papers. Might pique your interest in reading again :).
RESPONSE B: I also lost my ability to read for pleasure after grad school, now I’m about a year and a half out and I’ve only slogged through a handful of books since finished whereas in the past I’d have finished maybe a dozen or so in that same time period. I think it’s maybe something to do with the joylessness of reading academic articles. I’ve never felt satisfied reading an academic article, the feeling I get after finishing one is a combination of drained and skeptical.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Academia made me forget how to read, need advice This is my 3rd year working in a research lab (am STEM grad student). I've downloaded and read/skimmed at least 200 papers on my research topic (or related topics) at this point. But I think there's something seriously wrong with me - I can't seem to be able to read more than two paragraphs at a time nowadays. Skimming papers at a rapid rate to finish my literature reviews and satisfy my PI has conditioned me to skim, and I think I've forgotten how to actually read a piece of text. I literally have to force myself to resist the temptation of skimming to actually get through a paragraph. I've also pretty much stopped reading anything that isn't social media or research papers. This sucks. I used to be someone who read widely and for pleasure, going through an average of like 5-10 novels or paperbacks a month. Now, it's a pain to even get through one. Any advice?
RESPONSE A: Exact same boat. Didn't ever read your post tbh.
RESPONSE B: I feel the same, I still find myself skimming novels to this day. I think it's important to designate some time to yourself, think of reading kind of like pampering. Make sure you've got a relaxing space, you're not likely to be interrupted and you're reading something you know you want to read, especially as you're getting back into it. Maybe something you've read before or if you don't like re-reading then a favourite author or comfortable genre. If you're starting to feel yourself skim, start reading aloud, like you're telling the story/text to someone else. This may seem strange but it's the best way to slow yourself down and it makes you pay attention to the words and the image they're painting.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Academia made me forget how to read, need advice This is my 3rd year working in a research lab (am STEM grad student). I've downloaded and read/skimmed at least 200 papers on my research topic (or related topics) at this point. But I think there's something seriously wrong with me - I can't seem to be able to read more than two paragraphs at a time nowadays. Skimming papers at a rapid rate to finish my literature reviews and satisfy my PI has conditioned me to skim, and I think I've forgotten how to actually read a piece of text. I literally have to force myself to resist the temptation of skimming to actually get through a paragraph. I've also pretty much stopped reading anything that isn't social media or research papers. This sucks. I used to be someone who read widely and for pleasure, going through an average of like 5-10 novels or paperbacks a month. Now, it's a pain to even get through one. Any advice?
RESPONSE A: Exact same boat. Didn't ever read your post tbh.
RESPONSE B: I don’t know if this would help but my postdoc creates PowerPoint documents (themed by topic) of papers with important notes/figures relevant to the claims in the paper. Alternatively, I make sure to write notes on each figure of a paper. It helps me think critically and slow down. Or you could try to read some really fun/unique (not necessarily relevant) papers. Might pique your interest in reading again :).
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: 3rd year working in a research lab (am STEM grad student). I've downloaded and read/skimmed at least 200 papers on my research topic (or related topics) at this point. But I think there's something seriously wrong with me - I can't seem to be able to read more than two paragraphs at a time nowadays. Skimming papers at a rapid rate to finish my literature reviews and satisfy my PI has conditioned me to skim, and I think I've forgotten how to actually read a piece of text. I literally have to force myself to resist the temptation of skimming to actually get through a paragraph. I've also pretty much stopped reading anything that isn't social media or research papers. This sucks. I used to be someone who read widely and for pleasure, going through an average of like 5-10 novels or paperbacks a month. Now, it's a pain to even get through one. Any advice?
RESPONSE A: I feel the same, I still find myself skimming novels to this day. I think it's important to designate some time to yourself, think of reading kind of like pampering. Make sure you've got a relaxing space, you're not likely to be interrupted and you're reading something you know you want to read, especially as you're getting back into it. Maybe something you've read before or if you don't like re-reading then a favourite author or comfortable genre. If you're starting to feel yourself skim, start reading aloud, like you're telling the story/text to someone else. This may seem strange but it's the best way to slow yourself down and it makes you pay attention to the words and the image they're painting.
RESPONSE B: I don’t know if this would help but my postdoc creates PowerPoint documents (themed by topic) of papers with important notes/figures relevant to the claims in the paper. Alternatively, I make sure to write notes on each figure of a paper. It helps me think critically and slow down. Or you could try to read some really fun/unique (not necessarily relevant) papers. Might pique your interest in reading again :).
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Academia made me forget how to read, need advice This is my 3rd year working in a research lab (am STEM grad student). I've downloaded and read/skimmed at least 200 papers on my research topic (or related topics) at this point. But I think there's something seriously wrong with me - I can't seem to be able to read more than two paragraphs at a time nowadays. Skimming papers at a rapid rate to finish my literature reviews and satisfy my PI has conditioned me to skim, and I think I've forgotten how to actually read a piece of text. I literally have to force myself to resist the temptation of skimming to actually get through a paragraph. I've also pretty much stopped reading anything that isn't social media or research papers. This sucks. I used to be someone who read widely and for pleasure, going through an average of like 5-10 novels or paperbacks a month. Now, it's a pain to even get through one. Any advice?
RESPONSE A: Audiobooks!!! They are, for some reason different. Until I get out of this mess, and my brain has dome time to recover, I'm sticking to the . Podcasts and audiobooks work very well, both for my often tired eyes, and for what I can only describe as attention deficit. It gives me the opportunity to walk or fiddle with something in my hands, which makes me calmer and more focused. Hope that this helps!
RESPONSE B: I still work in research 11 years after grad school and find that I can't read anymore. I do too much of it for work. Instead, I've had to switch to audiobooks. Hopefully it will get better for you, but for me it has only gotten worse with time...
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Serious question - do admins really think people are excited to read their regular 20 paragraph emails? Because I rarely get one that has useful info. Why is this a thing? No, I don't care what you think about "mental health awareness" when you provide nothing to support it. No, I don't care what you think about race relations unless you mean it and make meaningful changes. These almost always read like a self pat on the back. /endrant
RESPONSE A: Slight modification: > Serious question - do admins really think people ~~are excited to~~ read their regular 20 paragraph emails?
RESPONSE B: Yours have paragraphs? Sometimes I just get a wall of text.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Serious question - do admins really think people are excited to read their regular 20 paragraph emails? Because I rarely get one that has useful info. Why is this a thing? No, I don't care what you think about "mental health awareness" when you provide nothing to support it. No, I don't care what you think about race relations unless you mean it and make meaningful changes. These almost always read like a self pat on the back. /endrant
RESPONSE A: Yours have paragraphs? Sometimes I just get a wall of text.
RESPONSE B: As someone who has been involved in sending emails like this, a decent number of the items in any given email are a CYA so that no one comes yelling that you're not doing anything about X or yelling that you did something without telling people about it or without asking for community input.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Serious question - do admins really think people are excited to read their regular 20 paragraph emails? Because I rarely get one that has useful info. Why is this a thing? No, I don't care what you think about "mental health awareness" when you provide nothing to support it. No, I don't care what you think about race relations unless you mean it and make meaningful changes. These almost always read like a self pat on the back. /endrant
RESPONSE A: Dear Students, Faculty and Staff, Platitude platitude platitude platitude. Patting self on back patting self on back patting self on back. Attempt at hopeful platitude in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Trying to sound empathetic by using my nickname, Dan
RESPONSE B: I’m not kidding, at least half of the emails I get from my grad program (students’) mailing list are from 60-70 years old tenured professors congratulating each other for some new award they got.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Serious question - do admins really think people are excited to read their regular 20 paragraph emails? Because I rarely get one that has useful info. Why is this a thing? No, I don't care what you think about "mental health awareness" when you provide nothing to support it. No, I don't care what you think about race relations unless you mean it and make meaningful changes. These almost always read like a self pat on the back. /endrant
RESPONSE A: Somehow ours have a formatting that just doesn’t work well with the university email and Outlook. They try to included staggered indents and bullet points, but they wind up shoved over to the far right of the page, making the emails even more obnoxious to read. You’d think that since every person on campus has to use the same email client and thus (I assume) see the same garbage formatting every time, that they would fix it. But nope.
RESPONSE B: Dear Students, Faculty and Staff, Platitude platitude platitude platitude. Patting self on back patting self on back patting self on back. Attempt at hopeful platitude in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Trying to sound empathetic by using my nickname, Dan
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Serious question - do admins really think people are excited to read their regular 20 paragraph emails? Because I rarely get one that has useful info. Why is this a thing? No, I don't care what you think about "mental health awareness" when you provide nothing to support it. No, I don't care what you think about race relations unless you mean it and make meaningful changes. These almost always read like a self pat on the back. /endrant
RESPONSE A: I’m not kidding, at least half of the emails I get from my grad program (students’) mailing list are from 60-70 years old tenured professors congratulating each other for some new award they got.
RESPONSE B: Somehow ours have a formatting that just doesn’t work well with the university email and Outlook. They try to included staggered indents and bullet points, but they wind up shoved over to the far right of the page, making the emails even more obnoxious to read. You’d think that since every person on campus has to use the same email client and thus (I assume) see the same garbage formatting every time, that they would fix it. But nope.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Does the feeling of “the more you learn the more you know you don’t know anything” ever end? Not sure if this has been asked before but it’s getting to my head, the more I study the more I feel behind or as an imposter..what are your stories/reflections on this
RESPONSE A: Nope. Not in my experience
RESPONSE B: The thing that has gone away for me is that panicky grad school feeling that I missed something. I was always convinced that a reviewer or colleague would point out that I had missed an important and basic theory. Now if I have several papers in an area I'm not concerned about that. So now the things I don't know are interesting questions to explore, rather than possible pitfalls for exposing my stupidity.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Does the feeling of “the more you learn the more you know you don’t know anything” ever end? Not sure if this has been asked before but it’s getting to my head, the more I study the more I feel behind or as an imposter..what are your stories/reflections on this
RESPONSE A: The thing that has gone away for me is that panicky grad school feeling that I missed something. I was always convinced that a reviewer or colleague would point out that I had missed an important and basic theory. Now if I have several papers in an area I'm not concerned about that. So now the things I don't know are interesting questions to explore, rather than possible pitfalls for exposing my stupidity.
RESPONSE B: I stopped caring a long time ago. I learn as much as I can and as much as I need to know. I'm just trying to contribute to the scientific literature that's all. I'm a small cog in a big machine
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Does the feeling of “the more you learn the more you know you don’t know anything” ever end? Not sure if this has been asked before but it’s getting to my head, the more I study the more I feel behind or as an imposter..what are your stories/reflections on this
RESPONSE A: I think of this as being the opposite of Dunning-Kruger. Ultimately I rely on knowing that I have the skills to find information if I need to know something and remind myself that I do know plenty (think of explaining something you’re doing to a person wholly outside of the field/outside of academia for context, it helps).
RESPONSE B: The thing that has gone away for me is that panicky grad school feeling that I missed something. I was always convinced that a reviewer or colleague would point out that I had missed an important and basic theory. Now if I have several papers in an area I'm not concerned about that. So now the things I don't know are interesting questions to explore, rather than possible pitfalls for exposing my stupidity.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Does the feeling of “the more you learn the more you know you don’t know anything” ever end? Not sure if this has been asked before but it’s getting to my head, the more I study the more I feel behind or as an imposter..what are your stories/reflections on this
RESPONSE A: I stopped caring a long time ago. I learn as much as I can and as much as I need to know. I'm just trying to contribute to the scientific literature that's all. I'm a small cog in a big machine
RESPONSE B: No it just eventually turns into “*we* don’t know anything”. But sometimes you know that even if you know nothing it’s still more than almost anyone.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Does the feeling of “the more you learn the more you know you don’t know anything” ever end? Not sure if this has been asked before but it’s getting to my head, the more I study the more I feel behind or as an imposter..what are your stories/reflections on this
RESPONSE A: I think of this as being the opposite of Dunning-Kruger. Ultimately I rely on knowing that I have the skills to find information if I need to know something and remind myself that I do know plenty (think of explaining something you’re doing to a person wholly outside of the field/outside of academia for context, it helps).
RESPONSE B: No it just eventually turns into “*we* don’t know anything”. But sometimes you know that even if you know nothing it’s still more than almost anyone.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Is it emotionally valid to steer away from academia due to its lack of empathy and compassion? I'm a graduating student in the university and it was my dream to become a professor and a researcher one day since our country lacks them. It was always the statement of our country's Department of Science and Technology and I was thinking before that I want to heed the call. This pandemic however broke my belief towards the academe. I can manage the burnout and the stressful learning curves of the academe. My problem however was the lack of empathy and pedanticism of the professors. Even though the Omicron surged and some universities in our country suspended classes and deadlines, our university did not even budge. The professor did not even ask if our late submissions were due to sickness. Scores were slashed off. Everything was cut-off and deducted as if there's no surge in our country. My partner became positive with Omicron and she begged almost all her professors through e-mail. **Her** deadlines were just extended by a few days as if a person can recover from it in just a week. I just realized "fk it!" I can't work with such people if I become a researcher and a professor one day. I realized that my dream to be in the academe is a sham. I can't be with people with no empathy and don't get me started with the low salary. I'm done with pedanticism. Did you guys also feel the same way at some point?
RESPONSE A: Just to be clear OP, the grass isn't greener on the other side. Institutions (public, corporate) are not human. Humans are humans and so prepared to be disappointed. My recommendation would be to search for people who are empathetic.
RESPONSE B: That is one of the most reddit titles I have ever read.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Is it emotionally valid to steer away from academia due to its lack of empathy and compassion? I'm a graduating student in the university and it was my dream to become a professor and a researcher one day since our country lacks them. It was always the statement of our country's Department of Science and Technology and I was thinking before that I want to heed the call. This pandemic however broke my belief towards the academe. I can manage the burnout and the stressful learning curves of the academe. My problem however was the lack of empathy and pedanticism of the professors. Even though the Omicron surged and some universities in our country suspended classes and deadlines, our university did not even budge. The professor did not even ask if our late submissions were due to sickness. Scores were slashed off. Everything was cut-off and deducted as if there's no surge in our country. My partner became positive with Omicron and she begged almost all her professors through e-mail. **Her** deadlines were just extended by a few days as if a person can recover from it in just a week. I just realized "fk it!" I can't work with such people if I become a researcher and a professor one day. I realized that my dream to be in the academe is a sham. I can't be with people with no empathy and don't get me started with the low salary. I'm done with pedanticism. Did you guys also feel the same way at some point?
RESPONSE A: Just to be clear OP, the grass isn't greener on the other side. Institutions (public, corporate) are not human. Humans are humans and so prepared to be disappointed. My recommendation would be to search for people who are empathetic.
RESPONSE B: No one can meaningfully tell you your emotions are valid or not. It's not my experience that non-academic environments have more empathy or compassion. Both are very hit or miss.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Is it emotionally valid to steer away from academia due to its lack of empathy and compassion? I'm a graduating student in the university and it was my dream to become a professor and a researcher one day since our country lacks them. It was always the statement of our country's Department of Science and Technology and I was thinking before that I want to heed the call. This pandemic however broke my belief towards the academe. I can manage the burnout and the stressful learning curves of the academe. My problem however was the lack of empathy and pedanticism of the professors. Even though the Omicron surged and some universities in our country suspended classes and deadlines, our university did not even budge. The professor did not even ask if our late submissions were due to sickness. Scores were slashed off. Everything was cut-off and deducted as if there's no surge in our country. My partner became positive with Omicron and she begged almost all her professors through e-mail. **Her** deadlines were just extended by a few days as if a person can recover from it in just a week. I just realized "fk it!" I can't work with such people if I become a researcher and a professor one day. I realized that my dream to be in the academe is a sham. I can't be with people with no empathy and don't get me started with the low salary. I'm done with pedanticism. Did you guys also feel the same way at some point?
RESPONSE A: Just to be clear OP, the grass isn't greener on the other side. Institutions (public, corporate) are not human. Humans are humans and so prepared to be disappointed. My recommendation would be to search for people who are empathetic.
RESPONSE B: Absolutely. I also wanted to be a prof - I wanted to help people learn, and share my passion for STEM. Academia is so toxic and demotivating, my current plan is to finish my graduate studies then work in the private sector. If you think your mental well-being would not be protected in academia, leave.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: Is it emotionally valid to steer away from academia due to its lack of empathy and compassion? I'm a graduating student in the university and it was my dream to become a professor and a researcher one day since our country lacks them. It was always the statement of our country's Department of Science and Technology and I was thinking before that I want to heed the call. This pandemic however broke my belief towards the academe. I can manage the burnout and the stressful learning curves of the academe. My problem however was the lack of empathy and pedanticism of the professors. Even though the Omicron surged and some universities in our country suspended classes and deadlines, our university did not even budge. The professor did not even ask if our late submissions were due to sickness. Scores were slashed off. Everything was cut-off and deducted as if there's no surge in our country. My partner became positive with Omicron and she begged almost all her professors through e-mail. **Her** deadlines were just extended by a few days as if a person can recover from it in just a week. I just realized "fk it!" I can't work with such people if I become a researcher and a professor one day. I realized that my dream to be in the academe is a sham. I can't be with people with no empathy and don't get me started with the low salary. I'm done with pedanticism. Did you guys also feel the same way at some point?
RESPONSE A: Just to be clear OP, the grass isn't greener on the other side. Institutions (public, corporate) are not human. Humans are humans and so prepared to be disappointed. My recommendation would be to search for people who are empathetic.
RESPONSE B: This is 100% what I did. Never looked back and I am so glad I decided to ditch.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: Is it emotionally valid to steer away from academia due to its lack of empathy and compassion? I'm a graduating student in the university and it was my dream to become a professor and a researcher one day since our country lacks them. It was always the statement of our country's Department of Science and Technology and I was thinking before that I want to heed the call. This pandemic however broke my belief towards the academe. I can manage the burnout and the stressful learning curves of the academe. My problem however was the lack of empathy and pedanticism of the professors. Even though the Omicron surged and some universities in our country suspended classes and deadlines, our university did not even budge. The professor did not even ask if our late submissions were due to sickness. Scores were slashed off. Everything was cut-off and deducted as if there's no surge in our country. My partner became positive with Omicron and she begged almost all her professors through e-mail. **Her** deadlines were just extended by a few days as if a person can recover from it in just a week. I just realized "fk it!" I can't work with such people if I become a researcher and a professor one day. I realized that my dream to be in the academe is a sham. I can't be with people with no empathy and don't get me started with the low salary. I'm done with pedanticism. Did you guys also feel the same way at some point?
RESPONSE A: I wanted to be a lawyer… and then I started working with lawyers and saw the corruption and loss of humanity and greed and… it just sickened me. So disheartening. I don’t want to become like them
RESPONSE B: Just to be clear OP, the grass isn't greener on the other side. Institutions (public, corporate) are not human. Humans are humans and so prepared to be disappointed. My recommendation would be to search for people who are empathetic.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: (wtf!), one time I didn’t even set foot outside my house for nearly a month, and still nothing but negative feedback. Pretty much only hear bad news, from students and from grants. I don’t understand how other people find within themselves the will to keep working (or to even keep living - seriously). It just seems unyieldingly terrible. Everyday I have some experience solidifying what a worthless piece of shit I am, and never does anything good happen.
RESPONSE A: Dude. I just resigned from my TT position after having a mental meltdown and, frankly, embarrassing myself through it all. I've forgiven myself because there are a lot of resources you can find where people talk all about their misery in academia. "Academia is Killing My Friends" tumblr comes to mind. You're not alone, but know that its okay to quit if you are not happy. Ultimately, you should be devoting yourself to finding your balance and happiness where you can because that comes first. Academia is inherently miserable, if its not your passion. The general consensus seems to be that when you have a PhD, you pretty much have a number of competitive and transferrable skills to get you into an industry position where you A) make more money, B) have time for work-life balance, and C) aren't slogging through negative BS from every angle. Your post really resonates with me because I've experienced a lot of what you have. My mental meltdown, and eventual resignation, was a surefire sign that this is not for me and I need to get out. No one will give a fuck if you quit because at the end of the day, its a job. Go find what works for you and get out if you're miserable. Don't suffer needlessly.
RESPONSE B: Imposter syndrome is a real thing with academics, particularly when you're working towards tenure, and I can't imagine how much it must be exacerbated if your first year was during COVID. At least when we were all together, it was easier to see how incompetent your senior colleagues also were.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: my house for nearly a month, and still nothing but negative feedback. Pretty much only hear bad news, from students and from grants. I don’t understand how other people find within themselves the will to keep working (or to even keep living - seriously). It just seems unyieldingly terrible. Everyday I have some experience solidifying what a worthless piece of shit I am, and never does anything good happen.
RESPONSE A: My best advice would be to do the job because of your own internalized interests in your field; no matter how much you achieve (eg big paper, big grant, recognition, whatever), the external validation from those achievements is only temporarily uplifting. Do the science for *you*, not for your colleagues or peers or students. Just remember your smart enough and good enough and gosh darn it people like you.
RESPONSE B: Dude. I just resigned from my TT position after having a mental meltdown and, frankly, embarrassing myself through it all. I've forgiven myself because there are a lot of resources you can find where people talk all about their misery in academia. "Academia is Killing My Friends" tumblr comes to mind. You're not alone, but know that its okay to quit if you are not happy. Ultimately, you should be devoting yourself to finding your balance and happiness where you can because that comes first. Academia is inherently miserable, if its not your passion. The general consensus seems to be that when you have a PhD, you pretty much have a number of competitive and transferrable skills to get you into an industry position where you A) make more money, B) have time for work-life balance, and C) aren't slogging through negative BS from every angle. Your post really resonates with me because I've experienced a lot of what you have. My mental meltdown, and eventual resignation, was a surefire sign that this is not for me and I need to get out. No one will give a fuck if you quit because at the end of the day, its a job. Go find what works for you and get out if you're miserable. Don't suffer needlessly.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
B | POST: , but it’s more than that. Nothing good happened, EVER. It was incredibly isolating, I worked 24/7, I GAINED 50 lbs (wtf!), one time I didn’t even set foot outside my house for nearly a month, and still nothing but negative feedback. Pretty much only hear bad news, from students and from grants. I don’t understand how other people find within themselves the will to keep working (or to even keep living - seriously). It just seems unyieldingly terrible. Everyday I have some experience solidifying what a worthless piece of shit I am, and never does anything good happen.
RESPONSE A: I won't tell anyone who hates their job to not quit if they can do something else, but are you connected with anyone else who is TT or otherwise? I have found, after being FT for a few years, that my professional connections have sustained me more than anything else.
RESPONSE B: I’m TT (year 2) and think about quitting every day. I work constantly. I have become numb to rejection and the good news no longer brings me joy, it’s just a tiny bit of relief at most. I did recently get a grant but I am honestly almost resentful of it because now I feel tied to this position for several more years. The flexibility of this career is great and overall I like each task I do, but there are too many of them, and in an under resourced dept, we are all taking on way too much such that everything is devoid of joy. The salary is peanuts and the rewards are perverse. Just because you got here doesn’t mean you need to stay. I don’t think I’ll make it long term unless things get dramatically better in the next 2 years. This career path has relied on antiquated ideas of prestige for too long and those entering now realize that that’s not enough to sustain us, mentally or financially. You’re not alone and I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this. Take care of yourself and know it’s okay to leave for a healthier life. The academy will never love us back. Having a therapist and getting exercise most days is helping me get through.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |
A | POST: isolating, I worked 24/7, I GAINED 50 lbs (wtf!), one time I didn’t even set foot outside my house for nearly a month, and still nothing but negative feedback. Pretty much only hear bad news, from students and from grants. I don’t understand how other people find within themselves the will to keep working (or to even keep living - seriously). It just seems unyieldingly terrible. Everyday I have some experience solidifying what a worthless piece of shit I am, and never does anything good happen.
RESPONSE A: I’m TT (year 2) and think about quitting every day. I work constantly. I have become numb to rejection and the good news no longer brings me joy, it’s just a tiny bit of relief at most. I did recently get a grant but I am honestly almost resentful of it because now I feel tied to this position for several more years. The flexibility of this career is great and overall I like each task I do, but there are too many of them, and in an under resourced dept, we are all taking on way too much such that everything is devoid of joy. The salary is peanuts and the rewards are perverse. Just because you got here doesn’t mean you need to stay. I don’t think I’ll make it long term unless things get dramatically better in the next 2 years. This career path has relied on antiquated ideas of prestige for too long and those entering now realize that that’s not enough to sustain us, mentally or financially. You’re not alone and I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this. Take care of yourself and know it’s okay to leave for a healthier life. The academy will never love us back. Having a therapist and getting exercise most days is helping me get through.
RESPONSE B: The negative feedback is going to come whether you work yourself to death or not, so I'd suggest to take care of yourself rather than not setting a foot outside your home. I used to overwork myself and I can't say I get better feedback now, I probably get the same, but I'm not as tired. I do the best that I can without tiring myself out.
Which response is better? RESPONSE |