才看到这篇很 miserable 的帖子。。。 (转载)# Biology - 生物学
S*J
1 楼
看了觉得好堵得慌啊，不能自己独享，大家都来过把瘾。
【 以下文字转载自 Faculty 讨论区 】
发信人: lummy (河马·云何：no due no die), 信区: Faculty
标 题: 才看到这篇很 miserable 的帖子。。。
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Thu Jan 8 15:58:18 2015, 美东)
唉。。。
Anonymous on January 5, 2015 at 10:02 PM said:
I am in my late thirties and from all indications I have been very
successful. I am reasonably funded and I publish in good journals. All of my
colleagues say that I will be a star but what they don’t know is that I
have been trying to leave the profession for over 3 years. I was extremely
gutted when my colleagues gave me tenure. I was hoping that they will do my
dirty work for me so that I could leave academia without any guilt.
I am disillusioned about research in the US and currently highly stressed
due to fear of losing funding. My current grants run out in about two years
and I am scared that if they are not renewed my life will fall apart. I have
been doing high tempo research since graduate school and this is all that I
know. Due to this “unreasonable fear” I write many grants every year to
maximize my chances. Of course many get triaged and that fuels my extreme
unhappiness and anxiety, which then leads to more grant submissions and a
never-ending cycle. In October and November 2014, this fear drove me to
simultaneously write 4 grants, whiles teaching and doing other duties and
when I finally submitted those grants I knew that this craziness can not
continue. I will lose my spouse and children if I continue this lifestyle.
And it has not been lost on me that a few academics that I know have had
failed marriages and I squarely put the blame on our unreasonable working
environment. My children hardly see me because I am always working and
writing grants. I need an escape route from this crazy lifestyle. How could
someone as well educated as me work this hard just to survive in their job?
I was the top of my class from kindergarten till PhD and got “A” grades in
all my classes. I was prodigious in mathematics, physics and chemistry and
also did well in biology. I could have chosen any career and any university
but decided to do a PhD at one of the best universities in the world,
believing that I will save more lives via research. My father was angry that
I rejected medical school and for many years we had a strained relationship
. I thought I was special and my dad did not understand my talent but now I
know that the old man was absolutely right. I am now upset that my former
class colleagues, who had inferior grades than me, but who were smarter than
me to go to medical school are now surgeons and they do not worry about
their careers plummeting before their 40th birthday. I am jealous of my
other classmates who went into pharmacy, dentistry etc and do not have any
fears about their job. I would have been a gret surgeon (I have always done
great in whatever I choose). Basically I was a fool in believing that my
talents should be used for scientific research and for the betterment of
mankind. I should have been selfish and chosen a career that serves me first
. So why should I encourage anyone to choose scientific research? That will
be very dishonest of me, considering how I now feel.
I have thought endlessly about leaving my academic position to go to medical
school but I now have two kids and can’t afford to do so. Also I don’t
want to disappoint my dad again as he has finally warmed up to me becoming a
professor. I feel trapped in this career. I suffer from back pains and I
think it is due to the stress and depression of the job. I think about
leaving academia for industry or a government job almost everyday, but worry
that leaving a tenured position to industrial position is crazy. But what
use if tenure without funding stability?
But a system that funds only 10% of basic scientist and expect the 90% to
survive is just a crazy system. How can the other 90% survive? Every time
that I serve on study panels, I get depressed. We rip each other apart
during the review process over trivial things because they is very little to
go round. Universities also seem to value us based on how much research
dollars we bring in. When new graduate students arrive, I hear some of the
non-academic staff gossip about who has funding and who hasn’t. Very
embarrassing for colleagues who have fallen on hard times. I literally have
nightmares of not bringing in money and the university taking away my lab
space. Don’t say this is an unreasonable fear- as if this has not happened
before! I once visited an institution for a talk and my host was so annoyed
that after 20 years of continuous funding and probably bringing in over $10
million, they were throwing him to the lions because he had lost funding!
What happened to loyalty and the several millions of indirect cost over the
years? This situation is terrible and I wish someone had told me all of this
before I threw my life away to become an academic. Fix the funding system.
Give scientists some stability so that they can enjoy science again. All of
these professors are very smart people who could have made more money in
other professions but chose science because of a higher calling and now the
majority are depressed, I think. The system is broken.
And I haven’t even started talking about the other stress of being an
academic when you do not belong to the majority class and trying to get
funding. If you factor in that blacks are less likely to get funding than
any other group, all things being equal-I am quoting a report in the journal
science, then you can multiply the funding stress felt by the majority of
academics by 10 to get the magnitude of the stress that black academics are
feeling. We are just being crushed!
【 以下文字转载自 Faculty 讨论区 】
发信人: lummy (河马·云何：no due no die), 信区: Faculty
标 题: 才看到这篇很 miserable 的帖子。。。
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Thu Jan 8 15:58:18 2015, 美东)
唉。。。
Anonymous on January 5, 2015 at 10:02 PM said:
I am in my late thirties and from all indications I have been very
successful. I am reasonably funded and I publish in good journals. All of my
colleagues say that I will be a star but what they don’t know is that I
have been trying to leave the profession for over 3 years. I was extremely
gutted when my colleagues gave me tenure. I was hoping that they will do my
dirty work for me so that I could leave academia without any guilt.
I am disillusioned about research in the US and currently highly stressed
due to fear of losing funding. My current grants run out in about two years
and I am scared that if they are not renewed my life will fall apart. I have
been doing high tempo research since graduate school and this is all that I
know. Due to this “unreasonable fear” I write many grants every year to
maximize my chances. Of course many get triaged and that fuels my extreme
unhappiness and anxiety, which then leads to more grant submissions and a
never-ending cycle. In October and November 2014, this fear drove me to
simultaneously write 4 grants, whiles teaching and doing other duties and
when I finally submitted those grants I knew that this craziness can not
continue. I will lose my spouse and children if I continue this lifestyle.
And it has not been lost on me that a few academics that I know have had
failed marriages and I squarely put the blame on our unreasonable working
environment. My children hardly see me because I am always working and
writing grants. I need an escape route from this crazy lifestyle. How could
someone as well educated as me work this hard just to survive in their job?
I was the top of my class from kindergarten till PhD and got “A” grades in
all my classes. I was prodigious in mathematics, physics and chemistry and
also did well in biology. I could have chosen any career and any university
but decided to do a PhD at one of the best universities in the world,
believing that I will save more lives via research. My father was angry that
I rejected medical school and for many years we had a strained relationship
. I thought I was special and my dad did not understand my talent but now I
know that the old man was absolutely right. I am now upset that my former
class colleagues, who had inferior grades than me, but who were smarter than
me to go to medical school are now surgeons and they do not worry about
their careers plummeting before their 40th birthday. I am jealous of my
other classmates who went into pharmacy, dentistry etc and do not have any
fears about their job. I would have been a gret surgeon (I have always done
great in whatever I choose). Basically I was a fool in believing that my
talents should be used for scientific research and for the betterment of
mankind. I should have been selfish and chosen a career that serves me first
. So why should I encourage anyone to choose scientific research? That will
be very dishonest of me, considering how I now feel.
I have thought endlessly about leaving my academic position to go to medical
school but I now have two kids and can’t afford to do so. Also I don’t
want to disappoint my dad again as he has finally warmed up to me becoming a
professor. I feel trapped in this career. I suffer from back pains and I
think it is due to the stress and depression of the job. I think about
leaving academia for industry or a government job almost everyday, but worry
that leaving a tenured position to industrial position is crazy. But what
use if tenure without funding stability?
But a system that funds only 10% of basic scientist and expect the 90% to
survive is just a crazy system. How can the other 90% survive? Every time
that I serve on study panels, I get depressed. We rip each other apart
during the review process over trivial things because they is very little to
go round. Universities also seem to value us based on how much research
dollars we bring in. When new graduate students arrive, I hear some of the
non-academic staff gossip about who has funding and who hasn’t. Very
embarrassing for colleagues who have fallen on hard times. I literally have
nightmares of not bringing in money and the university taking away my lab
space. Don’t say this is an unreasonable fear- as if this has not happened
before! I once visited an institution for a talk and my host was so annoyed
that after 20 years of continuous funding and probably bringing in over $10
million, they were throwing him to the lions because he had lost funding!
What happened to loyalty and the several millions of indirect cost over the
years? This situation is terrible and I wish someone had told me all of this
before I threw my life away to become an academic. Fix the funding system.
Give scientists some stability so that they can enjoy science again. All of
these professors are very smart people who could have made more money in
other professions but chose science because of a higher calling and now the
majority are depressed, I think. The system is broken.
And I haven’t even started talking about the other stress of being an
academic when you do not belong to the majority class and trying to get
funding. If you factor in that blacks are less likely to get funding than
any other group, all things being equal-I am quoting a report in the journal
science, then you can multiply the funding stress felt by the majority of
academics by 10 to get the magnitude of the stress that black academics are
feeling. We are just being crushed!
