PROS
Although I'm not a fan of writing jargon filled scientific prose, I do enjoy writing. I love thinking about the form and structure of an arguement, the logical flow of ideas, and synthesizing material from various disciplines.
One-on-one mentoring. I get a great deal of fulfillment in training the three undergrads that I currently have working under me. They come bereft of knowledge and they leave, hopefully, understanding a little bit more about how science is done.
Solving problems through experimentation and observation.
Believe it or not, I really enjoy writing R code. It's like a puzzle and so very satisfying once you've solved it. Booyah!
I enjoy the intellectual jousting and brainstorming around ideas, design, and analysis in the name of a common goal. I had a taste of this in one collaboration where I truly felt engaged in a team. Each member took on a major task of the work and committed time and energy to doing both the grunt work and the high level thinking. From my experiences and those of my friends, "academic team work" is often when all members of a "team" get together and the people at the top the pyramid tell one person (grad student or postdoc) to do all the work. A friend once described one of his collaborators as a lazy sack of puss.
Project management. I enjoy organizing, delegating, and managing the experiments of my undergrads.
I enjoy the vibe of a large group of smart people all coming together to think about a common problem.
Starting an experiment, getting the data, and then taking that data set to find out the outcome. When I read novels, I always read the last chapter first. For two reasons, first because if I start something I need to know how it ends. It's so bad that after I watched the first season of Alias, I spend two solid days reading the summaries to the rest of the series just to find out how it ended. A second reason I do this is because enjoy knowing how the author crafted the narrative. With science, I get similarly obsessed about the outcome. I need to know how the story turns out so when I first get a dataset, I am single-minded and spend all of my work time analyzing the data with R of course!
I enjoy using experimentation, observation and synthesis to try and get as close to an answer as possible. But then when you don't, I enjoy trying to figure out why and what some alternative explanations might be and then pursuing those. The recursive nature of science is very attractive to me.
CONS
I despise the idea of spending the rest of my career scrounging and chasing money to have the "freedom" to follow my intellectual curiosity. Eighty-percent of a professor's job, seems like it is spent looking for grant money. Not interested. Money and its lack thereof make people behave in ways they shouldn't. I think that more often than not, intellectual curiosity is shelved if it means that a question or idea won't get funded or published. But, please correct me if I'm wrong.
The pretense of informality. Yes, we call each other by first names. And we even socialize with those at the top of the pyramid, but frankly it's not really a good idea to be friends with people you have to evaluate.
The creation of an underpaid, highly educated class of cheap workers in the name of a training opportunity.
Hate spin. Lots of scientific work seems to now be about the spin as opposed to the science. If I wanted to write fiction, I would've stayed in the arts.
Teaching, lecturing, marking, and preparing lectures for students who spend most of their time in class either picking their nose (and yes I can see you), facebooking, or just sleeping.
Tenure. There I said it. Although in some ways the original intent of academic freedom is very important, in the race to get it, people act well... The Visiting Dude told me that he advises his students to do whatever they have to in order to get tenure and then once they did they could do science. I guess I wonder what that says about what you do until you get tenure.
Spending the rest of my scientific career doing one thing. Ugh.
All consuming, exhausting nature that breeds an unhealthy lifestyle depauperate of a true work-life balance.
Unrealistic expectations that leads to the exploitation of those with little or no power (grad students, postdocs) and to the point above soley in the name of collecting and publishing fast and furiously because of an upcoming grant deadline.
The same set of colleagues for the rest of your tenure, who, although have similar world views and values to my own, have very little experience outside the Ivory Tower. As one person put it, "Looking back it amazes me that I sought advice and career counseling from advisors who I think had troubles finding their pants in the morning."
Any thoughts?
6 comments:
Great post, you should make it a meme! May I?
Also, I have to admit, I looove writing R code, too.
Perhaps research at a government lab would satisfy a lot of your pros without hitting too many of the cons.
Great exercise. My entire blog has been an exercise in figuring out what was bothering about academia, and what else I should be doing.
If you don't enjoy teaching or administration, don't want to be constantly applying for funding, and don't want being tied to narrow field of research, then academia has very little to offer you.
How do you feel about research?
Why do you want to DO science?
@fia Sure go for it.
@Anonymous
I've thought that too. I think its really hard to get Canadian government research jobs. And US citizenship is required for USDA jobs.
@Dr.Girlfriend
Yes, it appears that academia does have very little to offer. But there are plenty of opportunities to do scientific research outside academia. Industry science is one example. And as Anon 6:31pm pointed out government research is another.
"How do I feel about research?"
I love research. I see myself doing scientific research for the rest of my career.
Why do you want to DO science?
I've added another PRO to the list that I think might answer this question more specifically.
great thing to do.
I think I could copy your lists by half... both the pros and cons but for me, at the moment the pros would also included "working with driven, smart people who are curious and want to do a great job". That is of course, in the utopia lab ;)
I described the feeling I am currently going through as "trying to reprogram my brain from 10 + years of indoctrination that if I was smart enough I'd become a professor". The abusive relationship between science and I, if that makes sense?
@chall
Yes I agree about working with smart, dynamic people - a must wherever I end up. I think in some ways, academics can't believe that their jobs sucks otherwise why would they be doing it? It's just too bad that some can't accept that others don't want to be them or have their jobs. I'm sorry that you had to experience that put down.
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