Need to relinquish all motivation and aspiration. Tell me the WORST things about being an academic

[CareersDontGetEuologies]

Five years, almost to the day, since my PhD viva, and today was my fiftieth or so (though I forced myself to lose count) postdoc interview failure. I've had a few pieces of casual work and one very short FTC and have LOVED it all, but with every failure causing me exponentially more distress: clearly, I need to accept my limits and stop applying, if only for the sake of my MH.

So tell me, what is TERRIBLE about being an academic? What do you HATE??

[Poppingnostopping]

I must be the only one desperate to go to a conference then! I'm bored already with all but the most captivating speaker on Zoom and I think most of the rest of the audience on no speaker/camera are not even in the room...

[TrailingLobelias]

For a permanent academic position you usually need several good postdoctoral positions, and usually live in different countries for them. This can be lonely. You won't have enough free time to learn the local language well enough to make friends.

My partner and I both did PhDs and he wants to be an academic. I have to follow him around to each new country. Not many men will do that for their women and this I think is a real barrier for women.

Day to day I am happier and less stressed than him in a boring but still science related job. I have had permanent contracts now (and quit because we moved country) and I really like my colleagues.

I see my partner is often unhappy and has to work too many hours and a lot of his colleagues are becoming ill. Even grown men cry in there. One is an alcoholic and the others don't care because he was such a brilliant scientist they're glad he is destroying himself because he was competition.

My partner gets home near bedtime most days - this is also more difficult for women because this final postdoc push comes in your 30s when you may want to have children and you need a 9-6 Monday-Friday job if you ever want to see them.

[Teenageromance]

Please please look at other jobs within a university - professional services type roles. There are some fantastic jobs that are on permanent contracts with similar if not higher levels of pay and still intellectually challenging.
I made the move and the best thing I’ve ever done. You need the academic background to do them but they are so much more relaxed and fun jobs but with the same university benefits.

[Teenageromance]

Plus the relief of having a permanent is so huge you wouldn’t believe the weight it takes off.

[Pota2]

Yes I can understand why a PS role might be much more fulfilling than a precarious academic one. If you think about it in the grand scheme of things, academic status is fairly meaningless. Nobody cares about it outside the field itself. Would you rather have a steady income, a house and a good work-life balance or be scrabbling around for hourly paid work, moving from city to city and living in substandard accommodation, all for the approval of a small number of people in your discipline? Status is so precarious too. All it takes is for you to say the ‘wrong’ thing and suddenly they can all turn on you and destroy your career.

The older I get, the more I realise how bullshit and illusory it all is. I’m done with breaking my back writing books that maybe 10 people will read and that I don’t get paid for and giving up opportunities to build a life and settle down in favour of chasing some fixed term contract 400 miles away. No thanks. If that means I’m not as ‘prestigious’, so be it. Prestige and admiration doesn’t pay the mortgage.

[DrGilbertson]

I'm 42 and still on a fixed term contract. I'm too old for this rubbish.

[Teenageromance]

@DrGilbertson honestly the relief of a permanent contract is immense.

[lekkerkroketje]

I saw an angry post on facebook today that got me thinking. It was about US colleges making tenured staff redundant, which I know is happening in the UK too.

Something that we never think about as postdocs (just desperate for a permanent contract!) is what a dangerous career choice even tenured positions are. Unless you're in a major international city, the university is normally the only suitable employer for 100 miles. Therefore whilst you've got more job security than in a company, when the redundancies start you're completely screwed. You're maybe 50, with a mortgage and young kids because you started late to allow for all the postdocs. Too old to retrain for a similar level position and facing a long distance upheaval. The normal suggestion on here is university support services, which obviously won't be an option, so that really just leaves teaching. At least when you get made redundant from a company, unless you live in the arse-end of nowhere, there's likely to be another company you can do a sideways move into, even if it wouldn't be your first choice of employment.

[Wildswim]

You wouldn't even be qualified to teach in a school.

[DragonOnFire]

I really needed this thread today.
I'm ten years post-PhD and have had three post-doc positions at three universities. Haven't managed to get promoted out of the grade 6 /technical/early years post-doc pay bracket. Have undertaken so much training and competent in so many techniques and teaching - but I will likely get made redundant in 6 months time.
My current supervisor promised me a career path with a fellowship in mind for me at this point in proceedings. Now he is telling me he is too busy to do much academic work (he is a clinician) and he is waiting for me to "turn into a pumpkin" next summer.
Covid-19 has turned the funding world upside down and there will be a huge shedding of talented, experienced scientists over the next year or so. Leaving a huge hole in the early-career talent pool of Universities.

[Teenageromance]

DragononFire - it sounds like you are lab based? Move into Pharma/technology companies. It’s booming at the minute and some really interesting jobs

[Spindelina]

Or look at NHS clinical scientist roles if you are bio-sciences or physics/engineering. Might be a pay cut / pause for a bit, but it's really interesting (I think) and you can get promoted quickly, especially if you are mobile.

[DragonOnFire]

Thanks for both your suggestions, they are both things I have looked into and are relevant to me. I appreciate your advice.
My DH is not as mobile in his career as me, and we are very settled in our home with our DS so moving again is not on our agenda (have moved to work in four big cities together so far, so we are fine with staying put for now). I've come to terms with leaving academia but I still think it's such s waste of money to train people for so long then make them redundant just to train more PhD students (no problem with PhD students, just that the pyramid structure of academic careers is ridiculously wasteful).

[changedmynameforChristmas]

Partner's daughter is an academic. Never worked even though she was 7 years at Uni. Had everything paid for by him knowing he struggled to help her. Let him pay for holidays, cars. white goods, driving lessons car insurance etc etc..
Finally got to where the education ended and the real world started and she had a baby to a randomer; but the real crime here was all she ever talked about was herself - her degree, her health, her life.

[DuesToTheDirt]

Too many short term contracts. Too much networking required (not my thing), too much self-promotion necessary (really not my thing....)

I only did research, not teaching, and many years ago I was at a union meeting discussing the prevalence of short contracts and their effect on staff. There was a suggestion that some unis might give people permanent jobs after 10 years (can you even imagine a 10 year probation period for a private company?!) There was some resistance to this on the basis that unis needed to be able to get rid of academic staff if they weren't performing well - these staff being some of the most highly educated people on the country. What an insult!

[JollyGreenGiantess]

Married to an early career academic. Christ if you had told me the impact the job would have on our lives at all levels I don’t think I would have gone through with the wedding. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that every senior lecturer DW has ever worked with has been divorced.

Oh and the pensions have been destroyed.

(Sorry. Hope it’s ok to post a spouse perspective. 💐 to all you lovely academics keeping the ship afloat these past few months)

[Butterfly44]

I came out years ago but at the time it was:

• How your contract is tied to grant funding
• Fixed term after fixed term and not much salary progression
• How you need a substantial number of publications, preferably in high impact journals
• Hours and hours in the lab, failed experiments to repeat....
• The egos

[SuperHansBag]

I hate academia with a passion because:

• There is no space for critical debate and reasoning.
• It's woke as fuck to the point of weirdness.
• Men in academia are very sexist while trying to pretend to be 'an ally'.
• A lot of senior women in academic have very sharp elbows which makes it hard to find genuinely supportive women mentors.
• Workload is unmanageable.
• Email traffic is out of control.
• Students are increasingly consumers and, as such, increasingly rude and demanding.
• Meetings are largely pointless.
• Promotion criteria are vague and easily manipulated.
• 'Emeritus' professors create unrealistic expectations of what a career can/should look.
• 'Emeritus' professors take up space that should be given to ECRs because they refuse to just fuck off and retire.

I'm 35 and a senior lecturer at an RG university. I am doing another 10 years in this sector which will give me a health chunk of savings. Then I'm done. I will walk away one day and never ever ever look back.

[jabbathebutt]

Not an academic but about to work in the higher education sector for the first time, albeit in professional services. fixed term 9m contract, with a 6 month probation.

I've always wanted to make the move into HE and I see this is a foot in the door. Plus close friend kept banging on about how good it was in HE compared to the public sector org I was in before.

Now that I'm asking friend lots of questions about what to expect, I'm finding said friend rather patronising and almost like she's mocking my lack of knowledge and experience.

I start next week and I'm very nervous about how I will adapt to using Moodle for example and figuring out how to record via Zoom and do transcripts via Zoom (rather than just doing a meeting request). All of a sudden I feel really thick and scared when previously I felt excited.

I made the mistake of asking friend what the university is like in the summer vs term and she replied "FFS we will still be working". Well, yeah I knew that but I was thinking Covid wise, how things would change etc and wondering if staff would be still WFH.

So in terms of motivation, mines has gone before I've even started and I feel really nervous! I have been lurking on academics corner to help me prepare for my new HE career. I hope I'm welcome!

[murmuration]

Oh, jabba, sorry you're so concerned! I know a fair number of academics who have moved into professional services and are very happy there - so at least it ought to be better than the purpose of this thread :)

I think no one knows where people are going to be working - even the higher-ups. You probably hit the sore spot in many Uni workers that the general public assumes we "do nothing" in the summer, and in many parts of professional services summer is the busiest part of the year - new systems made and trailed and all the things you can't do while students are actually using them, and only a short period before they're back for resits and everything needs to be working smoothly. Is the friend at the Uni you're going to be working at? We've got an online community within the Uni all about dealing with the remote computer-stuff - perhaps ask if there is something like that when you arrive? It's got the people who run the systems to answer questions about them, and also peer-to-peer support as people figure things out.

[CaraDuneRedux]

7 years as a junior academic, followed by 20 years outside academia, but still doing science R&D. Still in an environment where I get to do research (and there's an expectation on me to publish).

Things I do not miss:

• Long hours culture
  
• Thinly veiled sexism (under a veneer of "but we can't be sexist, we're nice lefty intellectuals, we even have a 'this is what a feminist looks like' t-shirt kicking around somewhere.")
  
• Being dumped with the highest teaching load in the department, then sacked the year (against the odds) I got 5 papers into print! (The sacking being due to wanting to make the books balance because of an economic crisis in an entirely separate department!)
  
• Marking
  
• The esoteric pursuit of the latest academic fashion even if it's pointless (I get a great deal of job satisfaction from thinking the work I do now doesn't just lead to papers, it leads to applications which make a big positive impact on people's day-to-day lives).
  
• The insane back-stabbing competitiveness of academia (and the sheer nastiness of some academics.
  
• Not having an employer whose default setting is "shit on your employees from a great height." (My experience was horrible - and I have heard equally bad horror stories from other universities - including one Russell league university where a man with Parkinsons got a visit from someone from HR every sodding day asking him when he was going to take early retirement! )
  
  The thing I miss:
  
• Teaching. There's something about seeing a class of students' faces light up when they "get" something difficult, or taking a student who's really been struggling with something and helping them to understand.
  
  Walk away with your head held high, OP. There are intellectually challenging, interesting careers outside academia which will make you much happier.

[sonjadog]

Incredible lack of professional behaviour at meetings. Really jaw-dropping stuff.

The back-biting and gossip. Academia can be a very lonely place.

There are many, many more people who want to be academics than there are jobs. It is soul-destroying for many people trying to get a job. If it is making you bitter, give it up. Getting a job is more about luck than talent, so don't feel bad about yourself if you are getting rejection after rejection.

Being creative and self-motivated day in and out gets tiring. Sometimes I wish I had a job where I just turned up and someone else told me what to do.

[lekkerkroketje]

Well, I think my career is over. It's a bizarre feeling. 6 weeks since the closing date for the last ditch attempt to save it and not heard from them. I've turned down an interesting postdoc (first time I've ever said no!) in a very nice but completely impractical city and told my collaborators so no backing out now. So now it's just waiting my contract out. Planning to disappear on holiday over the summer, so I've got 3 months to tie up the loose ends and 2 conferences to survive. Zeros motivation, obviously!

But I'm going home!!! I'll be able to get a job with more than a two year contract, that doesn't force me to move and where I have a pension. I'm not sure if I'm excited or terrified. I'm going to have to live with DH full time too. That's going to take some getting used to...

[DrGilbertson]

@lekkerkroketje all sounds quite positive to me, except for the not hearing bit which is horrid. Next steps all sound quite positive too really. Having lived in a different country to DH for 3 years until we married I really liked it when we started living together.