Feeling lost and confused

[sarkcutty]

I'm an ECR and am fortunate enough to have been awarded a research fellowship which I'm halfway through. I should be enjoying it but I am feeling a bit lost at the moment. Part of it is general worry about what comes after and the general state of academia/low morale and just a sense of fear/exhaustion from the constant precarity which I think has caught up with me.

I know I'm so lucky to be paid to read, write and research, but in all honestly, I'm so disillusioned with academia. I'm just not feeling stretched or excited by it (the metrics, REF, the obsession with student satisfaction). All around me, I see male colleagues who do very little work/coast and wait for others to do things first when they are joint tasks and yet they get promoted.

I know research is what I'm good at, but I don't think I'm actually good at academia. I have no interest in teaching/a lectureship and would love to work for a research think tank or the civil service. I just feel lost and guilty and am not sure what's wrong with me.

It was always my dream to research, read and write and for so long, I chased the opportunity to do it at whatever personal cost (weekends, evenings, having fun when all my friends were out and I had to stay in to finish a draft/meet a deadline). I'm in my 30s and don't own a house, having never had a permanent job, I'm struggled to get a mortgage. I took Christmas off properly for the first time this year and it was bliss. All I can think now is how much I'd love a permanent 9-5 job (a genuine permanent one as I know I'm ironically safer in a externally funded fellowship than my permanent colleagues at risk of redundancy), a proper pension plan and my own little place and weekends and evenings to myself where I'm not expected to be emailing people.

Is this a normal thing to feel a few years out from the PhD or is it time for me to move on to something new?

I second the need to move away from things that are draining and do not add value to your role. I will not attend things that have no purpose, are not related to how I do my job or that I would be going along to just to people please. It is refreshing and lightens the load so I can focus on getting things done.

The research group is a weird one. I feel a bit like I keep being given the odds and ends of random things to help others with their workloads. I am grateful because it's good for my development/CV and I can learn how things work, but my god it's draining picking up on random things as the least experienced person. Despite not having any experience, I've been asked to develop a book proposal which was planned/suggested by others before I joined the group because no one else can be bothered to help/actually move it forward - it just doesn't make sense.

There's also so much pressure with REF for me to be writing 'excellent' papers so maybe I should just feel less guilty about focusing on that and saying no to things, but I don't want to come across as not being collegial and feel bad about letting down my overworked female colleagues.

Co-leading the research group has already done its job for you in terms of CV-fodder.

Are you really learning how things work through the group if its sluggish and fragmented? I think research groups can be a great way to learn the ropes but only when they're functional. They absolutely should not be a space where odds and ends are bumped on junior staff.

If you want to stay leading the group, think about how you want it to work for you (and others involved) and try to make steps to make that happen. If it doesn't work, don't internalise the failure, don't flog a dead horse, just move on.

Like @LCM001a say 'no' to anything and everything extraneous that doesn't directly help you or your role. I totally understand the solidarity with supporting female colleagues who're overloaded BUT they're not showing you female solidarity if they're allowing you to pick up their slack. They need to also get better at saying 'no' and calling out the men who consistently slack off. Not your problem.

The fellowship and REF looming combine as the perfect excuse for you to withdraw a little bit. How much of your time does the department have a claim to? Only give this much and make sure what you give is benefiting you. For everything else, just say "I don't have capacity, I need to concentrate on my fellowship and my REF outputs". End of story.

If it's an edited book, think carefully about committing your time when you won't get much academic reward - even if you stay in the profession!

If its an edited book, your colleagues who weren't keen enough to actually move the project forward aren't now suddenly going to engage. If they write chapters at all, they'll send them late, half finished, and formatted incorrectly. You'll spend a lot of time wrangling and harassing people who'll become defensive and difficult.

More likely, though, you'll put in legwork on a proposal and perhaps even get a contract and your research group colleagues won't contribute to the final product.

Don't do it to yourself, OP. Completely useless and thankless work.

The whole thing is just so silly - the idea was floated before I joined, I have no idea what it's about (other than a vague one word title/theme that means very little to me/is beyond my area) and I'm just struggling to understand how people are working like this - surely this isn't normal/productive? I'm trying to make sense of lots of little things like this and keep thinking the problem is me, but now I'm not sure.

Thanks for the push @LCM001a and @KStockHERO I actually want to/need to put in a proposal for a book of my own so will focus on this. What is a polite way of saying no without burning bridges? Does anyone have any stock phrases I can fall back? I always feel guilty so am a massive over-explainer and struggle to say no without going into lots of detail and being very apologetic!

“Thank you for the offer/suggestion/invitation but I am at capacity right now. If anything changes I’ll let you know”

it’s not a lie!

The book thing is just bizarre. I wonder if it was a fairly casual conversation that happened before you joined which was then at the forefront of someone's mind and tumbled out as a suggestion for you to actually do?

What I mean is - how seriously was the suggestion that you lead on the book proposal? Was it an actual instruction and action point? Or was it just something mentioned quite casually in passing?

What is a polite way of saying no without burning bridges? Does anyone have any stock phrases I can fall back?

This is where your fellowship actually becomes really useful because people don't know about your workload, priorities, progress etc. So you can blame and hide behind that. Don't apologise, don't overexplain - this screams that you feel vulnerable in saying "no" and people will keep pushing.
Some stock phrases:
"I don't have capacity for that at the moment"
"I don't have scope to take anything else on"
"I need to concentrate on my project right now"
"I need prioritise my REF outputs for coming months"

Another thing is to just be less available. Take a while to answer emails. Don't volunteer for anything. Don't go above and beyond (e.g. PhD feedback). Don't go along to every event like department seminars or coffees.

Does your fellowship fund 100% of your time? How much time does your department have a claim to? If people get snotty, this is a good way to push back.

surely this isn't normal/productive?

It's normal!

It's not productive!

Don't fall for it 😂

They will also respect you more for saying no.

I got a very similar anecdote OP re editing a book and I would suggest you run a mile.
For me it was as follows: before I arrived, the idea was floated in my department to write an edited book on pedagogy in our discipline. A senior-ish guy had committed to edited it but he needed a co-editor. Cue in the female (in a department at the time more than 80% male), young-ish, foreign, starry-eyed post-doc... the pressure was on almost from day one. It was also subtly suggested to me that co-editing this book would enhance my teaching & learning credentials... which should have rung alarm bells, I was meant to be a research fellow so wasn't it odd that the first opportunity the department offered to me had to do with teaching? (in the end I did end up having a teaching load equivalent to that of a teaching fellow, even though my contract was research only)
The book did eventually get published (5 years later) and while I've heard much worse horror stories re other edited books (which are in themselves notoriously protracted and difficult processes) it wasn't a walk in the park: people ignoring deadlines, people acting surprised that they had to revise their chapter (in a lot of my department there isn't a culture of developing written, peer-reviewed outputs, and man did it show), people picking fights over stupid things like referencing systems, people phoning it in after initially being oh so committed and submitting a transcript of a quirky conversation they had with each other on pedagogy instead of, ya know, developing a proper chapter. My co-editor at the beginning of the process "encouraging" me to revise my chapter (which had to be written before everyone else's because of course no one else volunteered to write a sample chapter to go with the proposal) by saying that if my chapter stayed at the standard it was originally the book would never get published.
I do understand it feeling flattered, I really do. I also felt flattered when it happened to me. Sadly I have since learned from bitter experience that certain senior academic men are very good at using flattery to get younger academics, especially women, to do things they don't want to do themselves.

Lots of good advice here, and I’m sorry it’s feeling so miserable. A decent mentor should be a priority: are there are uni schemes which would offer you a second mentor?
It also sounds to me like you are gesturing at negative aspects of uni life in very general terms (obsession with student feedback and REF). Teaching, in small doses, can be energising and deeply rewarding. REF is measuring grant income (which you have won at an early career stage) and outputs (which I assume you still have some commitment to producing). There will be groups/individuals under horrible pressure due to both, but perhaps try to distinguish things that are actually negatively affecting you/ that you dislike from the general binfire vibe of the sector.

I’m a bit hesitant to post this, but would actually say there are still some happy academics in this country, including people who joined the sector very recently. But we tend to keep quiet and feel a bit sheepish about it, while people who are miserable are (appropriately!) complaining and seeking much needed support from others. Don’t let that negativity make you hate your job, as opposed to actually hating your job.
Have you had work experience in the sectors you think might be an alternative? Because I have and there are different pros and cons to each. Could you apply for one of the funded civil service placements or something, pausing your fellowship, to try it out?

I am just waiting on the last couple of revised chapters for an edited book for which I am editor. DON'T DO IT! It is SO much work. Several chapters needed extensive revisions - I could practically have written them myself in the time it took me to go through and indicate the changes. So then those chaps always need a second 'normal' set of revisions - and maybe a last round of getting missing refs etc. I am so stressed trying to get this finished and constantly promising myself never to do this again. Work on your own back - maybe write a chapter to contribute to other books (that's how I got suckered into this one...) but do not take on an edited book unless you are maybe retired and have nothing much else to do.

I echo what @EBoo80 says:
"I’m a bit hesitant to post this, but would actually say there are still some happy academics in this country, including people who joined the sector very recently. But we tend to keep quiet and feel a bit sheepish about it, while people who are miserable are (appropriately!) complaining and seeking much needed support from others. Don’t let that negativity make you hate your job, as opposed to actually hating your job"

🙋I'm one of those happy academics.
I've been at it a while but I think the conditions in academia are incredible compared to other sectors and roles. We're very well-paid for easy and interesting work with huge levels of autonomy and freedom, plus additional earning opportunities. Compared to other sectors our jobs are very safe. I believe a lot of the pressure people talk about is imagined, internalised and rooted in incorrect priorities.
I'm not wedded to my job. It's not part of my identity. It's just a job and I treat it as such. I think this attitude helps me be happy in the role.
^ This isn't a manifesto for staying in academia, do what makes you happy.

@EBoo80 I'm not hesitant. I love my job.

But I enjoy all its facets (and academics are nothing if not multi-taskers). I'm in it for the research, first & foremost, but I I have been in a variety of leadership roles for over 20 years, I still enjoy teaching & admin is good if it gets stuff done. Better we run our departments ourselves than have non-academics managing us. I have had a string of research grants and have helped numbers of post-docs into careers.

Doing leadership roles is important to me ethically - it's a kind of feminesse oblige. If I want to critique patriarchal structures, then rolling my sleeves up and trying to make change is important. I can also make change through teaching: introducing students to stuff they don't know about, opening up the world to them.

But if @sarkcutty doesn't want to do this array of stuff, and thinks her talents are better developed elsewhere, then good for her! It doesn't suit everybody, and it's too much like hard work (and pretty depressing at the moment) to do it because you think you should.

Frankly I am always a little in awe of people in academia who can see past academia. I've drunk the Kool-aid, I suspect I think @sarkcutty is very courageous in thinking beyond the "obvious" career.

I agree with @EBoo80 and @KStockHERO re the issue of happy academics. I had a rather bad patch recently with being HoD but I left the role 6 months ago and things have improved dramatically.
I do not want to minimize that there are people in academia who are in really desperate situations... at risk of redundancy, or juggling multiple precarious contracts. But I do think that in some corners there is huge pressure to perform negativity. I am not sure this is an A&H thing but even when I've been at my busiest with teaching and admin, I would still make an effort to clear up a few hours a week that I could dedicate to my research, or to what I call 'blue-skies' teaching preparation (i.e. not marking assignments or tidying up your moodle, but rather immersing yourself in readings you don't know to populate your course with content). Even if I did get a job say in arts administration or heritage (to name the natural 'industries' for my discipline), it would be extremely rare that I could spend that amount of time at all (let alone every week!) dedicated to just thinking about things that interest me.

You could work in market or social research, or for a government body that decides on policy. Like department for business, DfE, HMRC, Treasury?
Or for somewhere like the ONS?

I don't want to be negative, but I suspect that a lot of long-term contented academics (until recently I was one of them) are likely to become stressed and discontent over the next few years as the financial crisis in UK universities unfolds, and is potentially accelerated by the impending changes in UKRI funding, see thread in Higher Education. Some institutions and sub-fields will be immune to this, but many won't.

I remember this stage well, OP.

I stayed the academic path and have mixed feelings. I know I had some good luck and on paper it looks fine, and when I was coming up it probably was the safest path.

But the facts are that as you say, it is no longer, and also, in my observation, those who made the transition to think tanks, national labs, government, industry, etc, have been at least as happy and successful and not incurred greater precarity. (Well, I am in STEM and there are sometimes big re-organisations leading to redundancies of even excellent people, but this isn’t a mark against them, and they tend to land on their feet). Also, in many fields you can return to a university position later if you stay research active.

I think you should listen carefully to your heart and then make a plan to follow it. Very best wishes

@xxuserxx I've been at this game for over 40 years from starting my PhD in 1984, in the arts & humanities. There was very little funding then. I've seen funding increase, opportunities in the A&H sector for post-docs, research grants etc. When I finished my PhD in the early 90s, you either got a JRF (but only if you had either/both Oxford or Cambridge in your CV) or you got a standard teaching & research lectureship, or you did something else.

The cliff you could fall off was nearer the end of your PhD than it is now. There were fewer jobs. The year I finished my PhD there was 1 job in the whole country that was in my precise specialism. I had a couple of other strings to my teaching & research bow, so I was able to mix & match a bit more, but it means I've always had to be flexible and fit my research into three different humanities disciplines across my career.

In my career, the only time universities were resourced in any way near what they needed was the series of Blair-Brown governments.

It's been bad before. It's becoming differently bad now.

@ParmaVioletTea I've only been around for 30 years, and am currently at the 'thoroughly embroiled in institutional and national committees and leadership roles' late-mid career stage. Overall, the situation is currently nowhere as bad as it was in the 80s. However, for many individual mid-career academics who thought they had stable long-term careers, things may well get much worse on a short timescale.

Yes, @xxuserxx I think that is coming, and very sad & wasteful it is too. When established mid- to late-career scholars are made redundant we lose so so much. More than we can quantify.

Blast the 14 years of austerity and the neglect of knowledge engendered. It is wrecking one of the best (probably second only to the USA) HE systems in the world.

It's great there are still happy people and happy places. I guess the OP needs to make a judgement as to how likely it is they will win funding after this fellowship/find a happy place.

Many early-career fellowship schemes assume that at least some fellows will be able to transition to permanent academic roles, or at least to roles which promise progression.

Of the roles which are still available, it's not unreasonable to be concerned that it's very difficult to tell, ex ante, which roles and institutions will be solid - things are changing quickly and individuals are carrying a lot of risk.