Would you become an academic if you could do it all over again?

[tuxthepenguin]

I

At the risk of going into "Its a Wonderful Life" territory, what's the point of regretting decisions made a long time ago? When don't go to grad school essays were in vogue a few years ago, this idea of regret was really central. The theme was that somehow going to grad school was this terrible life altering mistake that ruined the writer's life, rather than just a thing they did that didn't turn out the way they had hoped and imagined it would. Lots of things don't turn out the way we think they will.

I'm not dead yet, so I could certainly decide to go do something else. Maybe at some point, I will.

I found the survey to be very illuminating. It turns out, at least according to the respondents, that academe is not as bad as some people make it out to be.

It's a nice counter to the ex-academics who, in their heart, harbor some regret over entering and/or leaving academe, and spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince people that academe sucks, because they can't get over their own regret.

According to the 89 that voted?

I'll tell anyone that asks that there's nothing special about a tenured position (I'm a full professor at an R1 with an income that would likely shock you, so yes, I understand all the arguments about paradise). If you get into grad school, and if you pass your exams, and if you successfully defend a dissertation, and if you get a tenure track position, and if you can live on a deserted island for your entire life without battling depression, and if you get tenure, and if you are lucky enough to get a job that pays enough to cover all your bills, and if you work at a place with enough resources that the job doesn't suck, it's a great life. But please, let's not skip straight to "it's a great life" without all the if statements. The life of a lottery winner is great. That doesn't mean I'm going to encourage someone to spend $1000 every month on lottery tickets.

[Kron3007]

I

At the risk of going into "Its a Wonderful Life" territory, what's the point of regretting decisions made a long time ago? When don't go to grad school essays were in vogue a few years ago, this idea of regret was really central. The theme was that somehow going to grad school was this terrible life altering mistake that ruined the writer's life, rather than just a thing they did that didn't turn out the way they had hoped and imagined it would. Lots of things don't turn out the way we think they will.

I'm not dead yet, so I could certainly decide to go do something else. Maybe at some point, I will.

I found the survey to be very illuminating. It turns out, at least according to the respondents, that academe is not as bad as some people make it out to be.

It's a nice counter to the ex-academics who, in their heart, harbor some regret over entering and/or leaving academe, and spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince people that academe sucks, because they can't get over their own regret.

According to the 89 that voted?

I'll tell anyone that asks that there's nothing special about a tenured position (I'm a full professor at an R1 with an income that would likely shock you, so yes, I understand all the arguments about paradise). If you get into grad school, and if you pass your exams, and if you successfully defend a dissertation, and if you get a tenure track position, and if you can live on a deserted island for your entire life without battling depression, and if you get tenure, and if you are lucky enough to get a job that pays enough to cover all your bills, and if you work at a place with enough resources that the job doesn't suck, it's a great life. But please, let's not skip straight to "it's a great life" without all the if statements. The life of a lottery winner is great. That doesn't mean I'm going to encourage someone to spend $1000 every month on lottery tickets.

I think that a lot of this is perspective too.  I have all the things you mention and think it is great.  However, I have spoken to some older professors in my department with all the same things I have that do nothing but gripe about the university and their job.  They often go on about how they could make so much more in industry and not deal with all of the bull, yet they never left despite decades in which they could have in a field where it would be fairly easy.  Perhaps my bitterness will grow with time and I will be just like them, but I really hope not

In these cases, I think they just like to complain and have perhaps lost perspective.  As someone who grew up working on farms, construction, etc, I very much appreciate many aspects of this job.  Sure, I will never be rich and have to deal with university bull, but in reality I make more than most, don't have a punch card, and will not have blown out shoulders from repetitive physical labour like some of my construction friends already do.

Some people have won the lottery and don't even know it.  This is not directed at you, and I recognize that many academic positions are not great, but I also sense a lot of entitlement issues from some people in academia who mope about it not being as they had romanticized all their life rather than appreciating what it is.

[Cheerful]

I'll tell anyone that asks that there's nothing special about a tenured position (I'm a full professor at an R1 with an income that would likely shock you, so yes, I understand all the arguments about paradise). If you get into grad school, and if you pass your exams, and if you successfully defend a dissertation, and if you get a tenure track position, and if you can live on a deserted island for your entire life without battling depression, and if you get tenure, and if you are lucky enough to get a job that pays enough to cover all your bills, and if you work at a place with enough resources that the job doesn't suck, it's a great life. But please, let's not skip straight to "it's a great life" without all the if statements. The life of a lottery winner is great. That doesn't mean I'm going to encourage someone to spend $1000 every month on lottery tickets.

Yes.  I would add:  "and if you work at a place with enough resources AND NICE PEOPLE...."

[mahagonny]

I think that a lot of this is perspective too.  I have all the things you mention and think it is great.  However, I have spoken to some older professors in my department with all the same things I have that do nothing but gripe about the university and their job.  They often go on about how they could make so much more in industry and not deal with all of the bull, yet they never left despite decades in which they could have in a field where it would be fairly easy. 

Yet if they had left, who would remain to exercise academic freedom? But seriously some of them are unhappy for understandable reasons. See reply to Cheerful, following.

I'll tell anyone that asks that there's nothing special about a tenured position (I'm a full professor at an R1 with an income that would likely shock you, so yes, I understand all the arguments about paradise). If you get into grad school, and if you pass your exams, and if you successfully defend a dissertation, and if you get a tenure track position, and if you can live on a deserted island for your entire life without battling depression, and if you get tenure, and if you are lucky enough to get a job that pays enough to cover all your bills, and if you work at a place with enough resources that the job doesn't suck, it's a great life. But please, let's not skip straight to "it's a great life" without all the if statements. The life of a lottery winner is great. That doesn't mean I'm going to encourage someone to spend $1000 every month on lottery tickets.

Yes.  I would add:  "and if you work at a place with enough resources AND NICE PEOPLE...."

This is where tenure truly is overrated. Because tenure has been awarded after many years of probation and jumping through hoops

(1) People who've developed resentment and arrogance still have a job for life as long as they don't seriously screw up. To the colleagues who have to put up with them, they are "the gift that keeps on giving" (much like herpes).
(2) People who find their department and/or institution is not the fit for them that they had envisioned are getting too old to start over again on the tenure track somewhere else, and off-the tenure track positions would be too much of a drop in salary, so they stay and tolerate the negatives until retirement comes.
(3) (1) and (2) are a good recipe for department infighting, isolation, ostracizing.

[csguy]

Probably. I think the academic life fits my personality.
It hasn't been perfect by any means. I probably made less money (although that depends on luck working in an industry with lots of ups and downs and definite ageism) and it certainly was a struggle sometimes but overall it was a pretty good life.
I do think being retired (as I am now) is probably the ideal work/life balance.

[Caracal]

I'll tell anyone that asks that there's nothing special about a tenured position (I'm a full professor at an R1 with an income that would likely shock you, so yes, I understand all the arguments about paradise). If you get into grad school, and if you pass your exams, and if you successfully defend a dissertation, and if you get a tenure track position, and if you can live on a deserted island for your entire life without battling depression, and if you get tenure, and if you are lucky enough to get a job that pays enough to cover all your bills, and if you work at a place with enough resources that the job doesn't suck, it's a great life. But please, let's not skip straight to "it's a great life" without all the if statements. The life of a lottery winner is great. That doesn't mean I'm going to encourage someone to spend $1000 every month on lottery tickets.

Sure, people who go into academia need to know what they are getting into. I would never tell a talented student that they should think about going to grad school in my discipline. I don't tell students not to do it either, but I do try to make sure they understand the realities. I might have overestimated my chances of beating the odds, and maybe I overestimated my own talent, but I did know what I was getting into. Perhaps that's why I don't feel a lot of regret about things.

[Kron3007]

I'll tell anyone that asks that there's nothing special about a tenured position (I'm a full professor at an R1 with an income that would likely shock you, so yes, I understand all the arguments about paradise). If you get into grad school, and if you pass your exams, and if you successfully defend a dissertation, and if you get a tenure track position, and if you can live on a deserted island for your entire life without battling depression, and if you get tenure, and if you are lucky enough to get a job that pays enough to cover all your bills, and if you work at a place with enough resources that the job doesn't suck, it's a great life. But please, let's not skip straight to "it's a great life" without all the if statements. The life of a lottery winner is great. That doesn't mean I'm going to encourage someone to spend $1000 every month on lottery tickets.

Sure, people who go into academia need to know what they are getting into. I would never tell a talented student that they should think about going to grad school in my discipline. I don't tell students not to do it either, but I do try to make sure they understand the realities. I might have overestimated my chances of beating the odds, and maybe I overestimated my own talent, but I did know what I was getting into. Perhaps that's why I don't feel a lot of regret about things.

I recommend grad school to students in our program, but we have a good non-academic market.  Many of our students stop after the MSc and feel that there are actually more opportunities with that than a PhD, or at least there are more opportunities relative to the investment, and they may be right.  I definitely make it clear that faculty positions are few and far between, so do not go to grad school with that expectation.     

[Diogenes]

I teach a majors course that includes a large section on career exploration and readiness. Most jobs in my field require some level of graduate study, but very few end up going into academia-most are going into professional degrees.
Because of the impending enrollment cliff of doom, the dismantling of FT faculty, low wages, high debt, and all those other great things we always talk about on here I tell my students interested in going into academia to make damn sure they are building a clear translatable skillset they can articulate to outside employers. I walk right up to the line of saying, "don't bother trying to be a professor."
But I'm happy. I would only change what I could have to minimize my massive debt.

[tuxthepenguin]

I'll tell anyone that asks that there's nothing special about a tenured position (I'm a full professor at an R1 with an income that would likely shock you, so yes, I understand all the arguments about paradise). If you get into grad school, and if you pass your exams, and if you successfully defend a dissertation, and if you get a tenure track position, and if you can live on a deserted island for your entire life without battling depression, and if you get tenure, and if you are lucky enough to get a job that pays enough to cover all your bills, and if you work at a place with enough resources that the job doesn't suck, it's a great life. But please, let's not skip straight to "it's a great life" without all the if statements. The life of a lottery winner is great. That doesn't mean I'm going to encourage someone to spend $1000 every month on lottery tickets.

Sure, people who go into academia need to know what they are getting into. I would never tell a talented student that they should think about going to grad school in my discipline. I don't tell students not to do it either, but I do try to make sure they understand the realities. I might have overestimated my chances of beating the odds, and maybe I overestimated my own talent, but I did know what I was getting into. Perhaps that's why I don't feel a lot of regret about things.

I don't think regret is necessary to say you wouldn't become an academic a second time. You have a lot more information once you have a bunch of years of experience under your belt, after you've been living in a small college town, and after you see the effects on your family (the ones you live with and the ones you don't get to see). Part of it is that when you're young and ignorant and single, you focus on your career alone, but then you get older and other things start to matter more.

[mleok]

I agree that the endless round table discussions can be draining, but where I am that is a very small percentage of my time.  Most of the time, I act essentially as an independent researcher overseeing my lab, setting my own priorities, applying for funding (more than I would like) and doing what I want.  This is the beauty of a (good) academic appointment, there really is no boss telling me what to do for most things.  That being said, fro the years of reading this forum (including it's previous iteration), I do get the sense that my department and school is more functional than many, so I understand that your experiences may have been quite different.

Yes, this pretty much sums it up for me. I enjoy the freedom to pursue my own research agenda, and the relatively light touch that the administration takes in my regular activities. Competing for shared resources like departmental postdocs or faculty hiring are much less pleasant, but if one has a vibrant externally funded research program, such issues are less critical to your research. But, such a freedom tends to be limited to the small number of tenured faculty at good research universities, and I can understand how without that freedom that comes with tenure and external funding, academia is much less attractive.

[mahagonny]

I agree that the endless round table discussions can be draining, but where I am that is a very small percentage of my time.  Most of the time, I act essentially as an independent researcher overseeing my lab, setting my own priorities, applying for funding (more than I would like) and doing what I want.  This is the beauty of a (good) academic appointment, there really is no boss telling me what to do for most things.  That being said, fro the years of reading this forum (including it's previous iteration), I do get the sense that my department and school is more functional than many, so I understand that your experiences may have been quite different.

Yes, this pretty much sums it up for me. I enjoy the freedom to pursue my own research agenda, and the relatively light touch that the administration takes in my regular activities. Competing for shared resources like departmental postdocs or faculty hiring are much less pleasant, but if one has a vibrant externally funded research program, such issues are less critical to your research. But, such a freedom tends to be limited to the small number of tenured faculty at good research universities, and I can understand how without that freedom that comes with tenure and external funding, academia is much less attractive.

'Functional' is in the eye of the beholder.