Academics are a weird bunch

[retro_andi]

I don't mean weird, talks-aloud-to-themselves-in-the-back-of-the-room sort.    I mean the sort of weird-but-true group, the one that you wouldn't expect to do what you just saw or say what you just heard.  Case in point:

"Every time I look at a Welsh man, I'm always struck at how much their mouths look like a little anus."

Completely said to

Comments

[karendy]

I could write a book on this subject, but I'll try to refrain from doing that here (I warn you that I might not succeed).

I think that your experience and perception of academia is shaped mainly by the corner of academia in which you reside and how you choose interact with academic culture. I would say that your experience at that art show probably says more about Harvard and environs than it does about academia as a whole.

The majority of professors in my department at UMass are generally lovely people who would much rather talk about the bike trip they just took than their research. Most of them are gigantic nerds and many are pretty socially awkward. They're very capable of talking your ear off about their research of course, but usually only if you ask them to. Ironically though, I think it is precisely because my department is somewhat of an academic backwater (for Massachusetts) that there are nice people here. Most of the people who wanted to be politicians and celebrities went to Harvard. The people who like being able to do lots of hiking on the weekends came here.

That isn't to say that I haven't struggled with these same issues though. There is a ton of pressure in the broader academic culture to strive for that Ivy League job and to transform yourself into a monograph-producing machine. I suspect that in order to successfully do that though, one needs to spend all of their time on research and writing, which means that when they go to an art opening, they talk only about their academic research because they've excised all of their other interests. This culture fucking scared the shit out of me and I definitely had some second thoughts about whether or not to pursue a PhD.

At some point near the end of my first year at UMass though, I made a decision to take control of my academic destiny. I spent a long long time thinking through what I liked and disliked about academic culture. I realized that I didn't want to totally devote my entire waking life to academia and that I had no patience for egotistical careerist assholes. I still wind up dealing with the less savory aspects of academia occasionally, but for the most part I absolutely love how I spend my days. I can't say for sure that I will wind up in a job that I love after I finish my PhD, but by keeping my priorities straight and my options open career-wise I am pretty optimistic that things will turn out in my favor.

[retro_andi]

Location certainly plays a role. To the best of my knowledge, no Harvard people were at the gallery--it was largely a BU set. That said, perhaps they felt the need to keep up with the academic Jones?

Truth of the matter is that I am strongly considering Boston as a academic home base. I don't mind if there are many different flavors, so long as there's one for me. Like you, I know that I don't want to devote my entire life to academia--I left St. Andrews because there was only one variety. I guess what I was (am) afraid of is that I might get suckered into a black hole without knowing it (I could go on about this particular fear but I won't). Perhaps I just need to check out other haunts to get a better feel for different interpretations.