

Goodbye academia, I get a life (2011) - ramgorur
http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011/02/18/getting-a-life/

======
eugenesia
Original link is down, probably got hit by the HN DDoS. Here's the contents of
that link, retrieved from Google Cache.

===============================

Goodbye academia, I get a life.

===============================

One of my first memories is myself, 5 years old, going to my mother and
declare to her, as serious as only children can be: “I will be a scientist.”

Yesterday night I was in my office in the Department of Chemistry at the
University of Cambridge packing my stuff, resolved to not go back to research
again -at least not in the shortcoming future.

What has gone wrong?

\---

[ Diagram - a rather idealistic plan for life vs the reality:
[http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd082803s.gif](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd082803s.gif)
, original at [http://blog.devicerandom.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/phd0...](http://blog.devicerandom.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/phd082803s.gif) ]

[ Diagram quote: Not exactly my pathway (I finished Ph.D. quite well), but
well, you get the meaning. ]

\---

I could write in detail what was horribly wrong with my project, and for sure
having a lousy project played a big part in deciding to stop and change my
path. You for sure want to change your path if you find yourself in a
mosquito-ridden swamp.

But if this was the only problem, I would have simply switched to another lab.
That’s what I thought until not too long ago (even if the idea of quitting was
really in my mind since a lot of time). But the problem is the practice of
science itself.

Don’t get me wrong. Every scientist goes on to do science for a single reason:
the love of science. Science doesn’t make you rich, it doesn’t make you famous
(can you tell me the last 5 Nobel Prizes for chemistry without looking on
Wikipedia? I can’t either) and doesn’t make you comfortable. The only sane
reason for starting to do science is the dispassionate love of science itself.
And I loved science. Like nothing else. Since I was 5 years old. And I still
love it.

But one thing is to love science; a completely different one is doing it. Like
the proverbial sausage, you don’t want to know how it’s done.

Actually, doing science per se is great. Doing experiments, analyzing data,
making calculations, programming code: I loved it all immensely. However, with
the partial exception of mathematics and theoretical physics, you can’t be a
lone wolf in science. You need funding, you need instruments, you need
resources. You need other people. And here’s where the problems lie. You
basically face two choices.

\---

[ Diagram explaining the "Profzi" scheme, a cynical depiction of the academic
bureaucracy:
[http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd030909s.gif](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd030909s.gif)
, original at [http://blog.devicerandom.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/phd0...](http://blog.devicerandom.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/phd030909s.gif) ]

[ Diagram quote: No, it's not a satire or an exaggeration. ]

\---

The first is going for the sky: doing great science in a first-class place,
make a great curriculum and look for a tenured position in the end. The
problem is that a lot of clever people want to go for the sky, and there is
much more people who want the sky compared to the available positions. In
general, science career is a race, where three people go to the podium and all
the others sooner or later will go back home (See also this article from the
Economist on the problem). The competition for funding and positions means
that not only the hopes of getting a job are really lousy, but that people
become nasty. Like, really nasty.

I know of people that have given a purportedly crippled software to a collegue
to sabotage his project. I’ve been violently attacked verbally for having
dared talking with my supervisor of a project I was collaborating with,
because she feared that I wanted to “steal” her credit. I’ve seen more than
once people “helped” during a project, only to find all credit for their work
taken by the nice and smiling people who scammed them by “helping” them. There
are endless horror stories like that. Everywhere. Now, do you want to work in
a place full of insanely clever people who are also insanely cynical and
determined to do everything to get on top of you? If so, you can do top level
science.

It’s not all, of course. Top level science requires also an absolutely mind-
boggling determination and, overall, confidence in yourself. To properly do
science you must be absolutely sure that, whatever you have in mind, you will
do it, no matter what, and that you’re doing it right, to the point of almost
self-delusion. This is so important that who wins in science is regularly not
the most brilliant but the most determined (I’ve seen Nobel prizes speaking
and half of the times they didn’t look much more brilliant than your average
professor. Most of them were just lucky, and overall were incredibly,
monolithically determined). Combined with the above, this means working 24/7,
basically leaving behind everything in your life, without any doubt on your
skills and abilities and most importantly on your project, while fencing off a
competition of equally tough, confident and skilled guys.

\---

[ Diagram of an evil-looking clown:
[http://www.gamesprays.com/images/icons/i-like-you-so-ill-
kil...](http://www.gamesprays.com/images/icons/i-like-you-so-ill-kill-you-
last-3401_preview.jpg) , original at [http://blog.devicerandom.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/lget...](http://blog.devicerandom.org/wp-
content/uploads/2011/02/lget0003+i-like-you-ill-kill-you-last-killer-clown-
poster-card.jpg) ]

[ Diagram quote: A friendly post-doctoral scientist in your group asking for a
scientific collaboration. ]

\---

The ones I’ve seen thriving in Cambridge, apart from geniuses (there are a
few), are the guys who cling to a simple ecological tenet: Find your niche,
where you are indispensable, and keep it in your claws at all costs. This
means basically that these people do always the same thing, over and over
again, simply because it’s the lowest-risk option. I could have done the same
(I was pretty skilled during my Ph.D. in a quite obscure but interesting
biophysics experimental technique) but I thought that doing science properly
was also about learning and broadening your expertise. How wrong I was.

You can imagine yourself what does it mean also for research in general:
Nobody takes risks anymore. Nobody young jumps and tries totally new things,
because it’s almost surely a noble way to suicide your career.

There is a second option, which is bare survival. You go from postdoc to
postdoc, perhaps end up as a long-term researcher somewhere in some tiny
university or irrelevant research center and basically spend your time with a
low pay, working on boring projects, crippled by lack of funding and without
any hope of a reasonable career (because the career path is taken over by the
hawks above described), nor any hope of stability in your life.

Notice that, again, both paths do not offer you any guarantee of sort. You can
arrive to tenure track (itself an achievement) and being kicked out after a
few years, thus ending up as a jobless 40-year something, with a family
probably, too old to compete in the market of real jobs. And bare survival is
not easy as well.

\---

So basically, if you are not cut for this kind of life, your chances are zero.
I tried, believe me. I tried hard. What happened during my research career is
that I spent 6 months on antidepressants, I got a permanent gastritis, I
wasted at least two important sentimental relationships, and I found all my
interests and social life going down the drain.

All of this for having a couple papers about modeling obscure aspects of
protein behaviour, papers that will be probably lost within the literally
thousands of papers that come out every day? Until not so long, I thought that
it was worth it. It was something that I had never questioned so far. I wanted
to be a scientist since when I was five. I had done everything to become a
scientist. I was a scientist in one of the top universities of the world, in
one of the top five research groups on the subject. I had won a personal
fellowship to fund myself. Most of my self-esteem, of my very concept of self-
realization, relied on myself being a scientist. The very idea of quitting
academia was a synonim of personal failure.

\---

It has been long and painful to discover that it was just an illusion. When I
found that academia was not working for me, I got immediately depressed -my
whole worldview was crumbling. Then I remembered that I had a life. I liked my
life. I had a billion things that I loved to do. I want to do them again.
Quitting and reclaiming back your life is not failing. It is waking up and
winning.

A week ago I was with friends, talking about my job, and I found myself
comparing science to a drug addiction. Being a scientist, from the brain
chemicals point of view, is one week of adrenaline rush when you’re finally on
to something and pieces go together -followed by six months (if you are lucky)
of pain and suffering, only to get again that adrenaline shot.

Well, noble addiction as it is, it is toxic the same. The next month I’ll be
30. It’s really time to get my life back.

\--------------------------------------

------
noelwelsh
A few things worth noting:

\- There is a virtually limitless supply of intelligent and hard-working PhD
students at top-ranking Universities. Thus there is little incentive to
maximise the value of this resource, by treating students well, etc. Basically
it's the inverse of the SF job market for developers.

\- On the other hand, one of the nicest guys I ever met during my PhD also
happens to be one of the best in his field, with incredibly productive
students. I don't think this is a coincidence. [It's Zoubin Ghahramani -- I
can't imagine he'd object to being called on this!]

~~~
singingfish
and the university systems are so bureaucratic that when people uniquely
placed to solve useful research problems who don't fit well into the
hierarchy, the system is unable to deal with them, and spits them out.

~~~
runarberg
I lived in San Francisco as an illegal immigrant, with a bachelors in
psychology and a newly found interest in computer science, not able to enroll
to a graduate program—nor undergraduate for that matter, I thought I could
volunteer as a research assistant in some lab in the Bay Area.

How wrong was I. In the off chance that some professor was interested (some
professors are cool people who don't follow customs for the sake of customs),
the schools bureaucratic system rendered it impossible for the professor to
accept my free (as in beer) service.

Now that I'm back in my home country, with it's free (also as in beer)
education system, I'm unable to tackle the project _I 'm_ interested in, for
professors tend not to facilitate projects that don't fit in _their_ narrow
field of interest (reads, the main topic of their 10 most resent publishes).

The university system truly suppresses spontaneity and unorthodoxy.

~~~
amerika_blog
There's a great article on this here:

[http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-
head-g...](http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-head-girl-
syndrome-opposite-of.html)

Basically, academia loves those who conform to its thinking. This promotes
robots, and alienates creativity and intelligence.

This is from someone with impeccable academic credentials and experience in
multiple disciplines.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
Personal anecdote:

Something I find interesting: We're taught not to put all our financial eggs
in one basket, so we diversify our financial investments - cash and a variety
of stock, maybe your own house.

And yet, people typically invest all their energies in one career path, and
then lock themselves into that career with commitments that disallow job
flexibility.

People often get made redundant, or their employee goes under, or the industry
they work in collapses. And if that doesn't happen, they're stuck in a job
they hate because... commitments.

Or maybe I'm just lucky. I'm 32 and I have, as Deepak Malhotra put it[1] "quit
often and quit early".

I'm 32 and have, in sort-of-chronological order:

* a trade certificate in metal fabrication and welding (I'm a "Boiler-maker / Welder" as it's called in the trade) and have worked nearly 10 years in that industry

* I am a qualified Naturopath - I have studied Clinical Nutrition and Western Herbal Medicine (214 herbs)

* I have worked in IT Infrastructure and Physical Security, and have assisted in project managing a AU$1.4 million dollar data centre upgrade

* And I am currently, and for the second time, working with Physically Disabled men (just two guys) providing in-home independent living carer

I've never been without employment, nor felt stressed thinking I might have
trouble finding a job.

Only _now_ am I prepared to go to Uni. I've got employment covered. Now I can
go do with Bachelor of Arts I want to do, and have no delusions about getting
a job at the end of it.

Is there a point to all this? Surely. I'll make one up.

Why do people invest all their academic energy in one career path? Then get
angry at that industry when they realise, like every form of employment, it
sucks when you don't want to be doing it any more.

1\.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D73mm29XXAw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D73mm29XXAw)

------
plg
Getting a tenure track job offer in academia is a very tough prospect. I wish
we academics would be more honest with incoming graduate students (or even at
an earlier stage) about how much of a filter there is between 1st year grad
school and the tenure-track job offer. It's not like there aren't other
examples of dense filters in the working world. We just aren't very honest
about it with our trainees.

The other thing we fail at as academics is helping trainees understand and
take advantage of non-academic tracks after grad school, without attaching a
stigma of failure to them. There are many, many ways to succeed, have a
rewarding and exciting career, and contribute to society as a non-academic
with a graduate degree... not to mention the higher salaries! Too many
academics treat their trainees as failures if they even initiate this
conversation. It needs to stop.

Imagine if students entering med school, who wanted to be pediatric
neurosurgeons, for example (sub-sub-speciality requiring many post-med school
years of study) found out at the end of all their training, at age 35 or 40,
that oops, perhaps only 25% of them will ever get the job they want?

~~~
xanmas
When I started my PhD last year, my department head gave us a speech where he
told us that college football players have better career prospects in the NFL
than we will in academia. While that was probably a bit of hyperbole, it
certainly made us realize how unrealistic most of our goals were.

~~~
plg
This is fine ... but what he ought to do as well is to tell you that going
through the program is still beneficial to you even if you don't thread the
needle and land that academic job ... and that the Dept or University has
resources that will help you find a non-academic job where you can make the
most of your skills

~~~
xanmas
That's rather presumptuous to assume that he didn't. In fact, he did and as
part of our grad student resources, we have access to a whole host of school
specific recruiters. While students from our programme regularly go into the
postdoc mill, many go to work at startups, at industrial labs, in finance, at
consulting firms, etc. Even more important, though, none of these options are
denigrated.

~~~
plg
wow that's awesome then! I wish more academic departments were like that

------
bonchibuji
Google Cache link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011/02/18/getting-
a-life/)

------
return0
Sometimes people forget that being a scientist is a job like many others. And
everything that is rewarding is more or less an addiction. So, yeah,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz)

------
Create
"How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years
in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified
to find other possibilities?" \-- H. Schopper

This policy, which leaves the staff member in the unknown for almost five
years concerning the possibility of obtaining an IC, ensures too great a
flexibility to the Organization and imposes too much precariousness and
insecurity on the staff. [...] Unfortunately, and to our great regret, this
situation will create even more anxiety and insecurity. This will be difficult
for LD staff to cope with. Indeed, even while giving complete satisfaction,
they have no forward vision about the possibility of pursuing a career at
CERN.

~~~
ubercow13
What do you mean by LD and IC?

~~~
Create
Limited Duration: read temp job

Indefinite Contract: read permanent job (with PIPs, alas)

IC slots are only available to LD holders (ie. multi-year probation).

------
eli_gottlieb
The vast majority of everyone gets washed out of academia eventually. It's
like being tortured or persuaded or bled to death: it _will_ happen, the
question is how long you can stay standing before it happens. The only way to
avoid it ever happening is to bail out completely well before your breaking
point.

So the question is: how much can you accomplish for yourself by staying in the
Pain Game of Academia for how long, versus bailing out _earlier_ to go do
something else?

