to ask what people's impressions are of academics/the job role

[anotheracademic]

I see there are quite a few of us and also see from the recent money and salary threads how much people are earning, working conditions and qualifications .
Im wondering what non academics impressions are of what we do, what they think/thought we earn and what we are like.

Im a non academic and my last working salary local to my home (five mins travelling) paid 37k.

Im currently studying or a degree now though. Thinking career change.

I hope you approach your exam questions better than you have the OP question fabby

DP is one. Seems entirely fulfilling, a good sort of stressful, lots of time off research leave.

A few of many reasons I'm trying to become one and am starting PhD in October :)

impressions - depends which area you are in. sociologists = low expectation of producing anything useful. Mathematicians = very useful skills which can be applied to business. Life sciences = can be extremely useful and so could do well if lucky.

Salaries - i expect that they are way below what people in industry get, but that's based on knowing what my lecturers were on and how poorly it compared to my salary after a few years into my career, even though they were infinitely more intelligent than me.

I'm not an academic but would love to do PhD and maybe become one in the future

My impressions (and that of most of my friends who are in a similar position/post grad students etc) are...

Very very stressful, especially for women 'cause babies get in the way of research
Similar salary to a teacher (£35k ish?)
But 'good' stressful and research leave in exotic countries sounds great!
My impression of academics is that most are lovely people, and very clever if usually a little scruffy and lacking in common sense (i.e. can talk about quarks and electrons but can't set the skyplus)

Am I close?

Sorry! to the OP. My brain is mush.

My Dh was an academic for some time but found it underpaid, competitive and stressfuL. No time for his own research. Much happier out of academia. He is a classical philosopher though - no clue about other fields.

Yes mine too. Bang on the philosophy, he could spot a fallacy from 20m but cannot wire a plug and thought the Arctic was a real land mass.

Agree Adverse.

Dh decided he was better off teaching latin and greek at a private school.

SCRUFFY???????

ok, yes, maybe just a little

I think you are all intelligent, academic (obv ) and probably not paid as well as an engineer (but close?). Most likely love your job, particularly if you are good at and take pride in publishing papers etc

my only experience is of academics who make sure their 'research' involves a month in Australia during the summer holidays. They also seem academically gifted but emotionally dim. Sorry

And usually mad hair and an old car...

A bit neater than a classical pianist

I could plot careers on a hair chart.

What makes you think only of men euphemia? There are many women academics.

Erm...I have plenty of common sense, am not emotionally dim, never had research leave and certainly never had a long holiday research project somewhere hot and sunny. And I have never considered rivalry with another field.

My hair is rather boring (although have a lot of colleagues with purple and pink hair)

Oh and I am certainly not neat!

This thread is so going to go wrong...

I was an academic, but research and family life are totally incompatible. I was working 50 hours/week and the weekend work was very unpredictable, depending on how my cells were growing and how much competition there was for equipment during the week.

I think there's this image that you get employed as a lecturer (not true; most researchers are on grant contracts of 2-3 years) and sit staring out of the window, contemplating the meaning of life.

I have been unable to get a job since having children. I want to work part-time, fixed hours and that's just unheard of.

I used to be a full time research academic and also do a bit of lecturing on the side. My DW and me still help out at our local University on a sort of pro bono basis. I have lots of friends who are academics and liked academic life in general but the money was so bad I really could not carry on - even though I was a fairly senior academic at the time.

Junior academic life is indeed rubbish and low paid. There has been a gradual trend I suppose over the last 20 years of the senior academics and professors gradually shedding their lecturing duties and taking relatively higher pay awards than junior staff. In this sort of 'winner take all' environment female academics have naturally lost out badly.

I have the strong suspicion that now university fees have gone up a lot of that money will flow straight thorough to senior academic salaries but not junior academics. If you are stood in a lecture hall more than once a week and have little research funding of your own you are increasingly in the death zone of academic life.

As much as I used to enjoy interactng wth students and supervising PhDs I have to be honest and say if I were going back into academia now I would go for a senior role in the non academic finance/admin side of the University.

Quite - the stereotypes on here seem to lean towards males somewhat ....

I hope it doesnt go wrong. I was just really curious to see what people think and what their impressions are. Some of these may be cliche or extreme but I find that quite interesting :)

Incredibly hard to get a post, generally short tenure, may have to move worldwide (consequent disruption to personal life), need to be good at networking, not very well paid given how hard it is to get into.

I have no idea what an academic does.

I should have put a after the hair thing.