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The myth busting was way easier for those of us who never, even for a moment, lived the fairy tale. One might wonder why someone who says that even ended up trying to enter that mythic realm, and mine is the story of a poorly mentored, first-generation student. So, yes, power and privilege matter a lot, as those of us without it are easy prey for academic "cannabalism." But my story isn't that different from hoards of people.

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Thank you for this comment. I would be interested to hear more of your story, cannibalism and all!

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Apr 18, 2023Liked by Liz Haswell

Oh, I've told quite a bit over at Recovering Academic.

Basically, I left behind a software engineering job after graduating to go to graduate school in philosophy. My mentors were convinced that I was so good that I'd beat the market, and even said so explicitly to my parents, who were really worried. And, as far as I could tell, I was that good. But ... being good at it was not the same as being good as a professional philosopher. The politics. The prestige-gating. The unspoken curriculum. I was so unprepared for this aspect, and turned down entry to a number of schools to go to the #1 in the world ... but didn't understand that its classification as a third tier school mattered more than having the best scholars of the field as my teachers. I had inadvertently turned down better schools! (In the eyes of prestige, but not ability.) Fast forward, and I eventually discover that the faculty didn't care about the students and just let in hordes for justify their faculty lines. But I figured that out too late to switch schools. So, I stuck it out and survived longer than most any of my peers to graduate. After a few years of adjuncting, I finally landed a FT job at a community college. Just happy not to be homeless, which I was always on the edge of for many years, but I had given up the dream of research. ow, I just wanted to eat and pay off the debt incurred as a full ride never pays all the bills.

I quickly rose through the ranks and became a four-term faculty union president in the third year, as I'd been doing union leadership for years. But that didn't last, as the admin only cared about butts in seats, and the faculty in-fighting... it was so bad that I stepped down. In the years that followed, the admins kept increasing the unfunded mandates while offering no raises. 10 years go by and ... I just can't do it anymore. Especially given the skeletons continually added to the closet that I won't mention here.

Side note. Going from the sciences/engineer to liberal arts is quite a wierd switch. It's amazing how little LA faculty know of basic science in my experience.

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Jason, thanks for sharing the tip of the iceberg of your experiences. The system of grad education - and higher ed, generally - is so irretrievably broken in so many ways it would take many many moons to convey it all.

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I’m still catching up over at RA so thank you for sharing here. I hear you about choosing grad schools--I went so long ago, and had so little idea about how to go about it that I looked at the rankings in some book in the library and applied to the top 5 on the list. It didn’t occur to me to pay attention to anything else. Now I think prospectives do a lot more considering, ask about support structures and expectations and work-life balance.

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As always, a concise, clear, and resonant set of sentiments.... The tangled mix of serving others while serving self is, of course, embedded within a basic exchange: I give the college my labor, they give me some money. To the extent to which they have reduced the money, increased the labors, reduced the autonomy, increased the micro-management, etc...within this, and a lot of other thing, are the seeds, roots, stems, branches, and foliage of my ‘discontent’ and disembodied, mechanized misery with this industry.

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Hard to corral all of my thoughts on this one. I think the relationship metaphor holds up more with institutions than with academe writ large. We make the biggest commitments to institutions -- and they require the biggest sacrifices. When it feels like those commitments aren't mutually respected, or when the relationship feels exploitative, I think your uncoupling metaphor holds quite well.

I hesitate to project the metaphor further, because I think I always felt like an outsider in academe, even if I felt very much at home in intellectual conversation. The life of the mind feels, to me, like a separate pursuit/community. Academe struck me as pretentious from the get-go, and as a first-generation student from a working class background, I always kept it somewhat at arm's length. What I wanted was to be paid for teaching and writing, and for my actual job to not be contingent on certain kinds of teaching or publishing. So in this sense, Dan Pink's three factors for what motivates people held true for me. I wanted autonomy, the ability to define mastery for myself, and the kind of purpose that came from serving others while pursuing my own interests. By the time I resigned, I did not have autonomy with resources or my time, academic assessment was defining mastery in ways I found specious, and I did not find purpose in trying to help students get corporate jobs.

In that sense, I don't think what I loved (and still do) was a fairytale. I'm doing part of it now on Substack, and when I taught an online course a few weeks ago, I think the class enjoyed my all-in emotional investment in the material. It's the only way I know to teach: loving the subject and conveying that enthusiasm to others. I think young people still want teachers like that, so it's a shame that systems aren't able to support it. As I've written to you privately, I thought that recovery from academe might look different, that I'd wake up from a kind of delusion and move on to more wholesome things. I've found that I'm still deeply interested in art, that I need to talk and write about ideas, and that the intellectual part of myself still needs to be fed. All of that was true when I was a firefighter with the Forest Service, and it would be true even if I took a job in an office again or signed on with a company that installs solar panels.

I think you're agreeing with this: just because love didn't pan out in all the ways we imagined, that doesn't mean it wasn't real. Much of that love is still alive for me, and I see it rekindled (with a little encouragement from me, but hopefully no pressure) in my oldest daughter.

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So much of this is interesting to me. I am beginning to see how my own insider-ness helped created a certain way of relating to academia that is especially unhealthy.

I have to think more on the institution versus academia--to me these are the same thing. But to me, being a scientist isn't the same thing as being part of academic science (I have a whole essay in the works on this topic). Which is maybe what you are saying about institutions versus intellectual conversation.

I definitely agree that the love was and is real.

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Perhaps academe and the institution are inseparable insofar as the institution provides the structure for evaluating and placing value on academic achivements (and maybe evaluation/tenure/promotion = academe?). But I still belong to the Cather Studies community (will be attending this summer's seminar), and so I think there are slices of academe, in the form of library archives, scholarly organizations, or even publications like The Chronicle, that are not the same as an institutional employer. I'll look forward to your essay on science versus academic science!

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Replying to the "love was real."

To connect that to my post, I'd like to distinguish "love of the craft" from "love of the institution." I had the former, and was neutral at the outset on the latter. I think this might also differentiate Liz and Josh's differences?

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Really resonated with your metaphor and am enjoying your series. Thank you!!

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I'm so glad to hear it! I'm happy to hear any additional thoughts.

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I have so many thoughts, but first: I love that you are writing this blog!

Mine was a very difficult academic journey, and ironically (and at least for now) I feel like I am finally finding more peace at the place you left.

I shared some of this with you, and long story short, my academic journey in the US started with intense emotional abuse at my first grad lab, a hurricane, getting used to a country with poor (and difficult to decipher) health care system for a person who grew up in a country that (despite not being a fully developed country) had pretty decent and almost free health care.

Things did not get any easier, and being the "good girl and student" I am, I also sacrificed so much of myself in the name of science, extremely long hours of work (and didn't even get that many publications - for a number of reasons- compared to how much work I put in). All of this culminated in chronic and major depression. What saved me was the free therapy at the academic institutions that were also killing me softly :)

I never lived the romanticized version, but perhaps thanks to that, I was also protected in a way? A long series of therapy, coaching, self-reflection lead me to realize (and is still helping me learn) that I am tired of not bringing my full self to the table, and if that is not appreciated, then it is (it = academia, a particular institution etc) not for me, I will go do something else. This is not an attitude that comes to me easy and it is not without anxiety. But it also is one of my core leading principles. I love professoring for now (majority of the time), but I will not suppress my artist side and give up making pottery for the academic job, because that would be essentially suppressing a version of me that wants so much to survive and exist (it feels like it is a human rights violation).

I like the relationship analogy! But unlike my committed relationship to my husband, my commitment to academia is more fluid. Perhaps because we had a rough start and so many rough patches that I am fed up and my boundaries are strong levees that won't break even for Hurricane Katrina. Academia should know, if it abuses me again, I have no intention to stay in this relationship. (Obviously, like you said, the institution doesn't care, but this thought is empowering for me). This doesn't mean I won't give it my best effort while I am still choosing to stay though. And that is fully in line with my values.

PS: during one of our conversations, you told me how you appreciate that I bring my full self to the table (or something like that), and I felt so seen. Thank you 💕 It meant a lot coming from you.

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Thank you so much for these frank comments and for sharing your philosophy. I realize more and more how much my early ability to fit into the system actually made it more difficult to do anything outside of it. The irony is that those who couldn't fit, didn't buy in, and in some ways had a clearer view of things from the start! The more who bring their full selves to the table, the better for academia. The trouble is just figuring out how to make it possible for them to do so! Thank you for making the way.

BTW I'm SO chuffed to see two (maybe three!?) plant biologists joining up, glad that my departure helps make room for more youngsters. They will be so glad to have you there as a colleague.

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deletedApr 19, 2023·edited Apr 19, 2023
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“The system is what it is and I neither cherish nor despise it”--what a healthy place to be! This whole thread is making me think harder about what it is in my own constitution that makes me identify so much with the job. Thank you for your kind words about my writing. I’m so glad to know that they are meaningful to you.

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