Leaving Academia

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here is an essay about a professor leaving academia. 

I went to U of I.  There were parts of it that I enjoyed, and the culture wasn't that bad.  But I can see parallels.  For me it was more a matter of looking at the way education was going, and deciding not to get involved in public education as a teacher.  It was obviously going down the tubes, and that was decades ago; it's infinitely worse now.  So too, many colleges.  :/  I couldn't stop it.  I could sure get the hell out of the way.

Comments

[nanila]

Interesting perspective, although this pissed me off:

Human connection was virtually impossible Early in my first summer I asked a colleague in English if she’d be free for lunch one day. “I’m sorry, I’m on a strict writing schedule. I only have the nanny from 8 to 5 four days a week over the summer, so those days are out. I could schedule you in one of my off days I suppose.”

I would've left off the "I suppose", but this is exactly the sort of thing I (and many other of my colleagues) might say if asked to lunch. I have a schedule I have to keep to because of child care and also my living circumstances, and I would rather be totally up-front about that with anyone trying to do something sociable with me. I don't believe that makes me unfriendly or "unwilling to make time for human connections", as the author suggests. Scheduling social outings with my lab is a nightmare because everyone has young children and lives miles outside London, but we do it (yay Doodle). It's just not spontaneous, which sounds like what this person wanted from everyone. And that strikes me as rather unreasonable.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

When one person has a schedule that's difficult to fit new people into, it's not a big deal. When everyone is doing that, the new person is shut out and unhappy. That's probably a random example and someone else's would've been a second job or exercising at the gym or whatever. The more high-pressure the local culture, the more densely people tend to schedule things.