Bitterness! at the academy

Megan McArdle has a post up on "why professors don't seem to be having more fun" and the general tone of bitterness.

(And I admit to mostly "blipping" over the comments as there are the usual professoriate-bashing "Oh those poor babies they're upset because they have to step down off their pedestals to TEACH sometimes." Um...teaching is why I went into this gig. And yeah, there are some supportive comments, but it quickly -as is so often in heavily-commented-upon blogs - devolves into rather petty arguing).

(I will say some of the commenters comment on her apparent dislike of academia. *shrug*. I see some of the same attitudes a lot in the "regular world." I guess I'm not offended that much by them because I realize that some people may not understand what an academic does all day, just as I have a fairly dim understanding of the true difficulties that, say, a nurse faces in his or her daily round. Or a plumber. Or someone in retail.

The grass only LOOKS greener, in a lot of cases.)

At any rate. Bitterness and jealousy. I've seen both, but they don't seem to be as rampant (at least at the smaller, less prestigious schools I've been associated with) than some of the commenters seem to think.

I've spent (arguably) my entire life around academics - both my parents were professors (they are retired now) and I spent basically 10 years in grad school (if you count a first, failed-but-not-entirely-MY-fault attempt, which I generally don't). And I teach at a small, mostly-teaching-oriented school.

And yes, I have seen the bitter, hardened, jealous types. You see them in every profession, I suspect, and I think it's more a function of who they are than a function of what academia is. Or, at the very least, it's an interaction of the two. (Personality x environment, for you fans of General Linear Models).

I've seen a few people who were just generally bitter and angry - who'd harangue you on climate change if you commented that the weather was fine, or who'd immediately go into a rant about how "article acceptance is ALL political!!!" if you expressed happiness for a colleague who got a paper published somewhere.

And then I've seen people who have what I might call "bitterness blind spots" - they're generally happy, generally fine, but there are just certain topics you don't want to bring up around them. (Or at least I don't. While a little bitter ranting can be amusing in the right context, hearing a lot of it - especially when you're trying to work on something else - is very wearying). I know someone, for example, who will give you a sermon on how Microsoft has ruined the world if you happen to comment that you weren't able to do something you wanted to in PowerPoint or if you found that Word froze up on you earlier in the day.

And yeah, Microsoft products have their problems. And they're designed mainly for the business world and not academe or the sciences. But I find I reach a point where it's a lot easier and better for my blood pressure to shrug, go "it is what it is" and either figure out a work around or just not do that thing that cannot be done easily.

Actually, "it is what it is" is often my philosophy in the face of things I have not the power to change. Because as I said - it can be fun to rant a bit (especially if the story's outrageously good, like the story of my 42 cent refund, below), but at some point you need to move on.

And the problem is it seems a lot of people in academia don't have a reason or motivation to move on. So like a dog with a bone, they gnaw on whatever's been getting to them - be it the current administration, or the state of the nation, or the attitudes of students, or their last break-up. And they stew in that.

I guess I'm different in that I tend to be a "reactor." I react pretty strongly to things (good or bad) - I get angry or I cry or I become ecstatically happy - but then, 20 minutes later, my emotions stabilize and I'm ready to go on to the next thing.

(I also don't believe in holding grudges, except perhaps in situations where they can be used for comic relief, as in, "hating" some sports star because he screwed up your team's playoff chances...)

And granted, perhaps in the sciences (where I am), it's more conducive to being happy and un-bitter because we tend to be better able to believe (or at least fool ourselves into believing) that our research will benefit others. (And I do think that's important, at least for me - feeling like you're doing something to make things better).

I also think perhaps this is once again a gratitude/entitlement dichotomy. It is more in my nature to be grateful for the good things - hell, in the case of my job, the AMAZING GOOD FORTUNE I have had. Because here are some of the things I have in my career:

1. Colleagues that I genuinely like, whose worst personality traits are things that I can generally chuckle indulgently over or at the very least tolerate.

2. The fact that I am generally unsupervised. I hate being micromanaged, and although I have "bosses" in the sense that my department chair and dean have power over me, both of them are people who tend to be hands-off unless there is some problem. So I'm left to do as I deem best, and most of the time it works out fine.

3. Time flexibility. I don't "have" to work weekends. I don't "have" to be in at 8 am if I'm not teaching until 11. I may choose to do both of those things, but it is my choice.

4. When we have meetings, it is actually to fix some problem. Or to plan for the future. They are not the kind of pointless time-suck type of meetings my brother complained about during his corporate days.

5. I will never have to participate in a "trust fall." Or do an "off site" that involves a "team bonding" scavenger hunt. Or all those other dang "We know you're not really friends but we're going to force you to like each other" things that I tend to think adults should be done with once they leave their sorority or fraternity.

6. Where I am, I don't have to publish a certain number of papers in order to keep my job. Yes, I do research, and some of it is pretty interesting and some of it might actually help the environment some day (or more likely, help some grad student write his thesis). But I'm not expected to live in my lab. I come in at 7 and am usually the first one in; on the days when I stay 'til 5 to work on something I may well be the last to leave.

So there are a lot of things I love about my work, and the minor annoyances I face are just that - minor, and annoyances, and I can usually roll my eyes and laugh over them the next day, or at least use them as an amusing story when a colleague and I go out for lunch.


But McArdle lists a number of points:

1) The money is so low relative to the professions they might have gone into.

I make a comfortable living. I may never become mega-rich, but I own my own house, I have a decent car, I can replace my shoes when they wear out, I have funds for the essentials of life (books, tea, chocolate, yarn, fabric...). I can pay my utility bills without worrying. I'm putting aside money for my retirement. I can even give to charity.

Could I make more elsewhere? Um...I'm an ecologist. Not terribly likely. When I was applying for jobs there were some gigs open with The Nature Conservancy that paid something like $300 a month and the use of a tent during the field season.

Also, where I live, the cost of living is pretty low. Housing is cheap. Gas is below the national average (at least right now). Food isn't exorbitantly expensive and some of the nice little luxuries of life are actually pretty reasonable (there is an outstanding Italian restaurant in my town that has $7.95 dinner specials, where you get a small serving of manicotti or lasagne, plus a salad, plus garlic bread...)

And yeah, I will admit some passing jealousy when I hear about someone who gets to retire early because they have a sweet book deal, but meh...I don't think I could deal with reading the bad reviews. (And I'm not sure I have the stamina, writing-wise, to be an author).

As I said: I tend to be of the opinion that the grass only LOOKS greener on the other side; when you're looking from far off (to stretch the metaphor), you fail to see all the fire ant mounds or the sandburs that would bedevil you.

Besides, I enjoy what I do. And there are a lot of intangible gains. For example: if I've taught my classes and held my office hours, and done the necessary grading, and finished my (self-imposed) time-stint of research work, and it's only 3 pm, I can pack up and go home if I want. Or I can go home for lunch (if I don't have class at noon) and come back when I feel like it. And my chances of being told I need to come in Saturday to deal with TPS reports are essentially nil.

If I work on Saturdays, it's because I want to. Or because I took the time during the week to go do something - like do my grocery shopping or run errands at a time when not everyone and their brother is out doing the same.

And I do get a certain satisfaction from what I do. While I gripe about students (mainly because I feel there are a lot of folks who don't live up to their potential), I also get people coming back and thanking me for the preparation I gave them. Or folks from a class thanking me for explaining something a second time because they didn't quite get it the first time. Or a grad student who's thrilled because I said I'd be happy to help her figure out the statistical analyses she needs to do. (She doesn't realize that that's one of my favorite parts of the job).

2) It's so easy to tell exactly where you rank in the academic hierarchy.

If you care about such things. I try not to. I have tenure, I'm told that I'm well on track for full professor in another couple of years.

It's kind of like anything in life - compare yourself too much to other people and you either become insufferably smug (because you think you're better than them) or scared and bitter (because you think you're so much worse, and you either eat yourself up with self-loathing or invent reasons to "explain" why you've been kept down).

(And I wonder if one of the comments about "the most brutal politics come from the least productive people" isn't at least partly true here. I'm too busy to care a whole lot about status - I'd rather tend my research plants or go look at trees or come up with a new way to teach my students about natural selection or read new books in my field).

And I think being primarily involved with teaching helps with this - it's more immediate, there's less of a pissing-contest aspect to it than there can be with research. (And generally the students don't talk too much - at least to your face or where you can hear them - about where they think you stand).

I don't know. Perhaps this is where having been an unpopular kid helps...the whole popularity-contest aspect of things STILL baffles me. And I don't care that much about it. I have my friends, they care about me. I have one colleague in particular who takes some effort to build me up when I'm being overly self-critical. I don't particularly know where I stand in my department or the university as a whole, but as long as I'm not being called on the carpet for not doing what I'm supposed to do, or not doing it sufficiently well, I'm generally content.

I think also having "successes" such as they are (people generally compliment my Sunday School lessons; from time to time I successfully finish a quilt or some kind of knitting project) outside of academia helps to dilute the sense of I Am My Job.

(Been there, done that, don't want to be there any more. Believing You Are Your Job is an awfully lonely and cold place to be.)

3) It's so hard to switch jobs. Job mobility is so low that you can't salve your ego by telling yourself that your current job is merely a waystop en route to something better.

Well, I'm happy where I am so this doesn't really apply but...I've seen an awful lot of people move on to "bigger and better." Maybe it's different in the sciences than in other fields but there does seem to be a certain degree of mobility.

I also think there's a place for accepting sideways (or even downward, at least as far as status is concerned) mobility. There's a lot to be said for having sane co-workers. There's a lot to be said for being somewhere where you get to teach classes in your specialty instead of having to be one of a "stable" of 10 junior professors who teach the 700-person "service" courses.

I'd give up status in return for sane co-workers. (I probably HAVE, given that I teach at a small university that's not really a research I or II or even VII school, but as I said before - I'm happy and I don't see any reason to nearly kill myself in the name of "status")

And heck, there's always the option of chucking it all and apprenticing with a plumber or something. (But again: see The Grass Only LOOKS Greener).

4) Academics have few alternative status hierarchies. Getting tenure is an all consuming process that leaves very little time for developing other hobbies. And the job virtually definitionally does not attract the kind of people who will be happy putting their career on a back burner to family or lifestyle.

I think this depends tremendously on the school. Where I am, I know several women who have had small children (one as a single mother, though through no desire of her own - her husband passed away a few years after their child was born). I know other faculty who are caring for aging parents or who are raising grandchildren their children are not able to.

And I have hobbies. I had them before I even applied for jobs and although I may not have the time to devote to them that I had in grad school, I still keep them. I have a life outside of my work. And I think that's incredibly important for an academic (and maybe that's counterintuitive, but I do think we need ways to "succeed" outside of our work). We need to do things that are satisfying to us - be it raising a family, growing a garden, teaching Sunday School, playing the piano, fishing, whatever - that has nothing to do with academia and how we are judged within it.

I know after some of my "bad days" the best sanity-saver I have is coming home and cutting quilt blocks or doing some sewing. Because it's something I'm good at, it's something no one is going to judge me on, and it's something that stays done.

(I think also having a life outside of work is a useful check on the ego. I know I've come home humbled many times after Youth Group.)

Maybe some of the "Research I" schools don't permit this kind of thing, timewise, at least during the tenure process. And that's a pity. I remember at my undergraduate institution, my Organic Chemistry prof telling us (and now, I think it was irresponsible on his part) that tenure time was supposed to be monumentally stressful and that he personally knew several marriages that broke up as a result of one of the partners going through tenure, and he knew of at least one suicide attempt.

And you know? I was kind of scarred by that a little because during my tenure process I felt like, "I should be more scared, I should be more worried." Because, according to my old prof's words, it was a case of "Pre-tenure: UR doin it wrong!"

And it wasn't, not at all. I got tenure and in fact the chair of my committee (an older woman who actually reminds me a tiny bit of my mother) stopped me in the hall one day during the process, and told me, "You are stressing out way too much about this. I probably shouldn't tip my hand but it's all going to be all right" and then she gave me a hug. (So even though I "wasn't stressing enough" by a Research I school standard, I guess I was stressing too much by my school's standard)

I don't know. Some days I look at it and think: I have a job. It is highly unlikely I will be downsized. I have enough money to keep a roof on my head and food on my table. I have the respect of at least a few people. I get some time off now and then. I don't feel like I have to check my ethics at the door when I go in to work. I'm probably better off than 90% of the people out there.

5) Academics have virtually no control over where they live They usually seem to go where the best job is, regardless of whether or not the local area suits them.

I concede this point.

But the flip side of it is - in academia, you may wind up living somewhere you never planned on, but which suits you very well. I'm happy in the town where I live.

And it also taught me something - after years of operating in the (incorrect) paradigm of "people don't like you because you're weird" (something I "learned" from my peers in grade school), I have come to realize that most people like me (or at least make a reasonable front of it). And some people - who would otherwise have absolutely no reason to, seeing as they're not related to me or anything - really genuinely like me for me. I think the "bitter, isolated island" is that way partly because they choose to be. Or because they're not adaptable. Or something.

A commenter also brought up the point that politics in academia are vicious precisely because the stakes are small. And that is a point with which I totally agree. But you don't have to let yourself get sucked in to that. I've walked into meetings where I told myself, "You don't have a dog in this hunt. Just keep your mouth closed and your ears open." And not having to contribute can be very freeing (not to mention that it reduces the time spent in-meeting). You choose your battles. You don't have to fight everything.

You don't even have to have an OPINION on everything, which can be very freeing. The future tense of "it is what it is": "It will be what it will be." I'm good at seeing pros and cons - both sides- of an issue, so sometimes I just choose not to invest in either side, just sit back and see what other people say and see what happens.

Someone else mentioned the concept of the "zero-sum game," in the sense of "if Bruce gets his paper published in Big Prestigious Journal, that means less chance of my paper getting accepted, because there are limited slots." And again - maybe if you're at a large, pressure-cooker school. Where I am, I mostly publish in second- and third-tier journals. Good enough for tenure (and presumably promotion), but it's not as ulcer-inducing. And also, in my department, we all have different research and different specialties. So if my buddy the ornithologist gets a paper accepted in a good journal, I'm genuinely happy for him, because I'm glad to see him get a paper out, I'm glad for his success - and if it has any bearing on my future success, it's positive, because it gets our school's name out there, and makes people less likely to see us as a Podunk U. where nothing worthwhile ever gets done.

One last comment from the comments on that site: "I teach for free. They pay me to grade." Hah ha ha ha ha! That pretty well captures it, in my book.