Any other academics feeling totally worn down?

[peppapighastakenovermylife]

Sorry being a bit miserable here. Grateful to have a job etc.

The cuts have started with us - threats of redundancies, departments closing, courses reducing. Management seem to be taking this as a fantastic opportunity to make everyone work harder. They haven't actually said it but there is the expectation that doing our actual jobs is nowhere near enough. People on teaching only contracts seem at risk because they havent done enough research .

There is only so hard we can all work and I am exhausted at the constant working evenings and at weekends. My marking pile is the height of a toddler, we have meetings coming out of our ears at how we are going to work harder and with the best will in the world we can't conjure up papers and grants out of nowhere. Somewhere in the back of all of this the students are unhappy at the amount of face to face hours and feedback they get.

And despite the 60 hour weeks and rarely having a day away from the place let alone an actual holiday we are all worried for our jobs.

Anyone else feel totally miserable about it all?

My experience was that it couldn't be a more macho, less family-friendly environment. I was in Arts, which you might expect to be more civilised - but it was a competitive, testosterone-fuelled race to publish as much crap as humanly possible in the shortest time possible. Most strategic departmental decisions were made by a little cabal of four early-forties men in the staff bar or pub on Sunday...

This is such an interesting thread, thanks OP. I'm just starting out my (academic) career and have got one toddler and must admit I'm completely run-down already. I get up at 5.30 am every day to work before my daughter gets up and do an extra shift in the evenings when she's in bed but still don't see how I'm ever going to be able to do enough. I've not got the massive pressure of teaching or grant writing yet either... I do feel for you who do so much more than I. Although I love teaching my professor (and boss) is shielding me from it for now. I must say though that it seems he has all the RAF stuff sorted pretty well. And I'm going to tell you how he has organised himself so perhaps you academic women can think along the same lines as I, perhaps wrongly, have the sense that this is an arrangement which is typically male. My professor won a big-ish grant for a 3 year period, he then has hired 3 research assistants and has one research fellow (on a separate contract). He pays all of us peanuts. We do all the research legwork for him (collecting data and analysing plus writing up) while he then takes particular parts of our research and writes up his own papers. We are coauthors on those papers. We also get to write papers ourselves but on sections of the project which we agreed was "ours" when we started. So basically he won the work and has then sectioned it up into 'his' parts and 'our' parts. Not sure if this is ethical or not but it was what he said most academics who wanted to further their careers without breaking their backs should do. With us doing the, closely supervised and advised, research ground work he can then concentrate on writing papers, books and teaching. Is this a mans arrangement or perhaps a particular subject arrangement or something you could do too? It still means I'm working at least a 50 hour week most weeks too but that's because I'm not yet at the intellectual level I need to be so stiving to develop myself. My other colleagues work about 40 hours a week because of this shielding which my Professor gives. Now we are just hoping he can win a similar big contract as this one is running out...

Well, you all have what I thought was my dream job! But after reading this thread...
Can I ask you some questions?
I'm 29, got a Masters, not a PHD yet. I'D love to go into academia. My first question: is it too late for me? It sounds like there's no way I'd be able to enter any field against people who've been working in it for years, and rightly so I suppose.

I have to say your last last post shocked me, Snuppeline. I'm not sure I could handle that kind of exploitation.

Also, what you're all saying about some personality types being successful in this line of work reminds me of something I read. Apparently, the more intelligent you are the more likely you are to underestimate your intelligence, and vice-versa. That's not to say intelligent people don't know they're intelligent, it just means that they assume that everyone else knows as much as they do ; the less intelligent don't do this

OK, that was one question. Hmm maybe not the best direction for me.
But I have the scattiness that is apparently a prerequisite.

Sakura, I don't think its exploitation. Or if it is its a two-way street. In fact its an arrangement which I think more academics should have (consortia of researchers pulling together for everyones benefit). My Professor is huge in our field so I'm very lucky just to be working with him. As we get our own part of the project which is ours to mould we get the chance to build a name for ourselves separate from him too, and that is very generous of him. You could say that as he's paying my salary too he's quite entitled to tell me to collect data etc which ultimately benefits him. But also he does put our name on the papers he write. And he's more likely than me to get published so its a big bonus.

I don't think your too old to start an academic career. I'm 27 and am still doing my PhD as I got pregnant in my first year. I worked in industry for 2 years after my MSc and then started my PhD. I got pregnant in my first year so re-registered as part-time and got this job which allows me to work full time on research, some of which is relevant to my PhD which I am allowed to use for it. I'll probably be about 30 when I complete the PhD. I have a colleague who is pregnant with her 3rd child and will be starting a PhD in September. Her due date is end of August.

Peppa I think I may have come across you on another thread - I had major job woes in December. I think I've worked where you are, as well as where you were briefly! And driving (or can I call you miss crazy ) you know where I am, and people do commute! My head of dept is one but not necessarily a good thing in that case. Anyhow, I could in theory; my DH already commutes massively which is part of the problem. I'm also happy here (well ish, problems aside) and this is where I want to be - I'm like a terrier with a rat!

Totally also in arts, and my particular subject is strangely male-dominated. I sometimes wonder what they have to prove - is it to do with size...?? And Unseen also v. good comments and true. I think what we have is a particularly female problem (unsurprisingly, this is mumsnet!) but the overbearing, overconfident, arrogant colleagues with big mouths do tend to be the men, and then as a result it may be that the women get seen as not as good, because we don't blow our trumpets very loudly at all. I've certainly suffered from that - the 'can't be much good because she doesn't say she is' thing.

Sakura, I should stress that it is also my dream job. My problems are, um, contractual maybe - it's the insecurity that gets to me (and perhaps the fact that I'm in the wrong dept and feel marginalized...) but the actual work, I love. Love teaching, love research, love the way I can be flexi, try not to complain about marking too much etc.
And I wouldn't say you're too old: it can work in your favour. I was very young when I got my PhD (well, not child-prodigy young - 25) and that worked against me sometimes - I was seen as the 'baby' of the dept etc.

Dewin - ah ha! So did you take it or stay in the end? We had a FB conversation right? At least I don't have those miseries where I am back at now (and no longer driving for miles )

Sakura - I would not see any exploitation in Snuppeline's situation - especially if she does not have her PhD yet. That is normal I am afraid but actually how you get places because you make contacts, your name is known etc.

It depends on how much you want to get into academia really. We all seem to love our jobs just its a way of life not a job if you see? It is overwhelming and full of pressure at the moment due to economic reasons.

You are definitely not too old - we have a few profs here who didnt get their phd's til their 30's and 5 - 10 years later are profs!

Peppa no, I turned it down (and cried down the phone at the Prof whilst doing it - they probably thought they had a lucky escape from an hysterical nutcase!). It sounds quite strange to turn down a better job for something poorer here, and a permanent contract for a temporary one, but my current institution has made arrangements and promises, backed up with an actual payrise (quite an achievement in this climate!) so we can but hope...

ah well, mahoosive pile of scripts and essays just arrived from a University That Shall be Nameless (but one of the ones fighting cuts and redundancies) where I am external examiner...which brings me to all the activities that we do that are not formally recognised as such (peer reviewing, externalling - though that is at least paid work), open days, promotions boards and rounds, interview boards (one of the downsides of being a woman at professorial level who isn't obviously insane is that I get asked to be on zillions of things - often for 'gender balance', not because my expertise is valued - often the opposite in fact).

Having said that Sakura totally worth pursuing - I would consider you to be young - and I know of several academics for whom it was a second career, after raising families etc. The teaching is often great and research can be rewarding - I think everyone here is simply venting about a systemic issue and a sector that is currently in a bad place.

Male pretension and wankiness is common, I am afraid (and some of the women leave a lot to be desired) - it's inevitable when you have a lot of egotistical and very clever people competing, however subtly. My dept is now quite female dominated at the lower levels (and has good representation at senior levels), but there is a real gender divide, with the women often being over-identified with teaching and pastoral matters (I was really shocked at the extent of this when I was doing performance reviews) and taking up way more than their fair share of routine administrative tasks (she says, off to look at timetabling and scheduling for the nth time this week - but I am deputy head of School)...

Sakura, I don't think the set-up that that Snuppeline describes doesn't sound too unusual and I must admit, it is not dissimilar to how I run my own research group. I get the money in and provide the ideas for projects and then get postdocs or postgrads to do the actual practical stuff. It's not exploitation as they get work, the opportunity to co-author papers which they could not do alone, the good ones will present their work at conferences but I can not do the practical leg-work in the lab and write grants to get money in to run my lab (where basic running costs just to keep things ticking over are vastly more than most of my postgrads appreciate). They seem to think the university supply me with money for my research, but the university gives me absolutely no financial research support so everything I do is funded by money I have generated. It takes about 1 month full time to write a decent grant, 6 months for a research council to get back to you with a yes or no (in the meantime you are not supposed to submit the same idea elsewhere), and only a 10-20% chance of the grant being funded. This means that if I want a grant funded each year, I need to be writing for basically 10 months of the year full-time and in the meantime I'm supposed to fit teaching, supervision, paper writing, conferences, generation of pilot data for future applications etc etc into that too.

I also don't think 29 is too late to enter academia, although I would say that in my field after a PhD it is usual to do 6+ years of postdocs before getting a permanent position. I was lucky and got mine just 4 years after getting my PhD, but that was mainly because my field was just starting to become fashionable at the time and there were not many people around with much experience in the field then (until all the undesirables started drifting into the area, as I already whinged about...).

oh, sorry, just re-read. Double negative there I of course meant that I don't think the set-up that Snuppeline describes sounds too unusual. (You see this is why I'm a scientist, not a linguist )

Sakura, I think it depends on your subject and department. I had a PhD by the age of 23, and had a list of publications a mile long by 28, when I was headhunted by a department that bypassed all the rules to give me a job. I boosted their RAE rating by an entire notch (hence their efforts to employ me. I had this list of publications because I'd never had a job (I renovated properties instead). Once I had the job, I was expected to keep up a similar publications output - along with teaching, marking, meetings, pastoral care, etc, etc, etc, etc. That itself took up 100 hours per week. Where the research time was, God only knows. I published precisely nothing after I got my job. I just struggled to get on top of teaching ten topics that I knew nothing at all about. There is no way on earth that they would even have interviewed someone aged 29 with a Masters. Sadly, as such a person may have far, far more important qualities that every university department needs along with the academic high-fliers.

To add insult to injury, my HoD scheduled a Dept meeting for DS's first birthday "to test your commitment". Well, he did test it - and the Department lost.

Being male was a huge advantage in my department, and I say that as someone who has always pooh-poohed the whole business about women being disadvantaged. I've always thought that if you're good, it matters not a jot. Well, it does matter in academia in my experience. Though I concede that others' experiences may be more positive.

If you're not male, you jolly well have to act like one if you want to be accepted and 'get on' in career terms. Two men of my age were made professors while I was there: one is married to a SAHM who was happy for him not to be involved in their child's life and to be researching at 2am, and the other was married to someone who was happy to have their baby in nursery for 10 hours per day, most of the year.

In short: choose your subject and department very carefully!

Good post, Totally. Are you arts or sciences (or is that too much...I'm outed good and proper on this thread! )

I was in arts. Science may be more civilised!

Science, civilised? No way! I'm a scientist and that is really, really testosterone fuelled. They did a survey recently of the numbers of men/women in science at different levels. It turned out that at PhD or postdoc level the split was about 50/50. For lecturers it was at best about 70/30 men/women, by reader level it was about 85/15 and by full professor level the number of women in science was

Sounds just like the arts, UAM. That said, I was offered (namely I had it dumped on me) a top dog admin task on top of everything else in my first year as a lecturer. Something had to give, and it was my sanity.

Men love committees, though. They just can't get enough titles, in my experience. I knew one who was Departmental Art Officer. This meant that he put up posters.

ROFL Wipedout. Also in Arts here.

Thank you for all the replies!

TotallyWipedout Oh, I absolutely realise that I wouldn't get anywhere with just a Masters. Well, I'm not sure of which field yet, but I am a published writer and currently writing my first work of non-fiction so if that actually gets published I was hoping that would work in my favour if I decided to go into a similar field of the topic. I'd love to do a PhD just out of interest rather than to get a job.

But yes on the whole, I didn't realise just how much work it was and how much experience counts for a lot. I'm 29 now, and would need to do a PhD. But the plus side is that I may have had all my children so I wouldn't take time out for that in the future.

How late is too late then in your opinion?

BTW are you serious about that 'test your commitment' comment?

Sakura, yes I am perfectly serious. Unfortunately.

I'm not sure there is a 'too late' as such. I think that if you're really, really driven and really, really competitive, age doesn't matter - but it is generally expected that you'd have followed the more traditional undergrad/PhD route. I had had two books published prior to getting my job (unusual in my subject area, where it's very hard to get books published), and they did help me to get the job - but the expectation was that I'd be able to keep up that level of productivity. Of course, I'd only been that productive because I hadn't had a job!

If someone had a PhD and a vast list of publications (including at least four books) by the age of 40, I think they would still stand a chance. But IME they stand very much less of a chance than an ambitious 26-year-old high-flier. The latter will always be placed at the top of the list.

As for doing a PhD out of interest: that's why I did mine in the first place. But I'm not sure I'd have been able to do it with children around. PhDs nowadays are very much seen as a means to an end - especially given that most people now have to fund themselves (I got a full British Academy grant, fortunately). Ah, academia ain't what it was...

Dewin I really think you did the right thing. I am not sure whether different departments had the same approach but where I was just was like being in a parallel universe!

Totallywipedout I am so sorry they wore you down so much. It is unfair. Are you happier now? Are you able to do the bits you still liked (many people still write that book for example). It sounds like you were really talented and one of the high fliers (or getting up there).

I am really lucky in that I do not work in a male dominated department - and the men I work with are actually the sane normal ones. Rare to see anyone still in my department by 4pm! However it is the over arching
'academia' that pushes and pushes.

I am trying to think more like a male academic in a few ways - believing in myself, pushing myself and saying no ( or alternatively what can I get out of this).

I am lucky in that I have a lot of people at school level watching my back - it is just the ones higher up / academia in general that are the problem.

Hmmm not sure what I am actually counted as really - not science or art!

Sakura - it takes a long time. If you want to work in a research based university as a lecturer then you probably have 10 years work ahead of you (depending on whether you can do your phd full time or not.)

I have just got to lecturer level - it has taken me 11 years of study, research and teaching overall (but that is from undergrad to phd achieved). I am now 28 (with nearly 3 kids done and dusted). I am a bit like totally I think in that I am seen as a high flier and would have probably been here sooner if I hadnt had the kids too. Often it takes 10 years post doc to get a lectureship.

It is not just about getting the PhD - that alone will mean very little. Its about getting some teaching as well (but actually they dont really care about that either). You need to get involved in the research - first most likely through research assistant posts, then some more, then your own studies. Conferences, paper writing - cv building really. Are you prepared to move from short term contract to short term contract as its unlikely you would walk into a permanent lectureship (unless you are in a teaching based uni).

What you publish depends on your field. In my field no one gives a crap about books. Its papers, papers, papers all the way with a million grants chucked in for good measure .

Too old? No. However if I am honest it will add to the struggle. It is hard at any age to get into academia - unfortunately harder if you are older yes. At 28 with a PhD you are seen as having 40 years ahead of you and worth investing in...at 40 less so. That is not to say you stand no chance but reconise it as a struggle. However I work with a number of people who have moved to academia in their 30's and 40's.

You say you want to do a PhD out of interest. But what in? (Not asking you to name your topic on here). Do you have an area e.g. english literature and then a specialist area within it? PhD's are very specific to do and if I am honest if you are not passionate about the area it is unlikely you will follow it through. A PhD is hard work - a bit like running a marathon. You need to fight for your niche and develop it...and then keep going.

It is hard to do a PhD with children (I had 2 and got pregnant again within mine). You will have to work all hours and late into the night to get it done (when you fellow 21 yr old phd students are down the pub). Sunny afternoons writing. There is also the financial aspect - if you dont get funding it is a struggle to pay fees alone (£3500 a year I think). There is funding out there though.

I am sounding really miserable here but just wanting to be realistic. To me if you dont have a specific passion, the way academia is going (and its awful out there in terms of pressure and cuts) then I dont think people would keep going. I love my subject, I am determined to keep researching it. I love teaching and the students - its the only thing keeping me in it really.