Compost #9
A belated mix of links and recommendations intended to inspire and distract
Tomorrow, look out for a special post. It’s an edited email conversation with Josh Doležal from The Recovering Academic. How are we, two ex-academics, thinking about college for our children? I’m also testing the waters with an audio version of this post, accessible as a “Voiceover”at the top of the post in the Substack app and in the email. Let me know what you think, both about the conversation, and the audio file!
Reading and Listening and Watching
Cathy Mazak’s thoughtful and thought-provoking review of Cal Newport’s latest book, Slow Productivity, on her podcast Academics Amplified. Do you agree that academics rely too much on “pseudoproductivity” like email and review articles?
My enthusiastic review of Erin Zimmerman’s new memoir, “Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood, and the Fight to Save an Old Science.”
This post from Emily McDowell at Subject to Change about quitting versus completing really hit home!
“In conversations about quitting, failure, and walking away, there’s a word and concept I think is underused: completion.
Unlike all these other terms that come loaded with judgment (our own, other people’s), and the implication that we’ve done something wrong or are lacking in moral fiber, “completion” is neutral. It says “this was a thing, this thing is now over.” It acknowledges that the thing was never meant to last until the end of time. A completed relationship isn’t a “failed” relationship; a completed business venture isn’t a “failed” one. There is infinite value in a completed experience. You can be proud of it AND be done with it.
Declaring something complete also means actively calling back your energy from that thing, which allows you to choose to re-allocate that energy somewhere else.”
I haven’t been able to make myself watch this video, but it definitely struck a chord with the ex-academia crowd:
I don’t know where it gets ingrained that we have to keep all the people ever in our lives, but it does. So I really like that positioning, “complete” vs “failed”.
Thank you for the Zimmerman book review! The attitude towards descriptive, observational work is something that bothers me so much. I noticed it is sometimes impossible to have an intellectual conversation and just celebrate a piece of work without having to elaborate on "but what's next after this descriptive work?" I am not personally excited about knowing the function of every gene in every single research organism (but without these "functional" studies you can't get funded). I'd much rather know more of the undescribed species out there.