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This morning I reflected on how adult life is beset by tradeoffs, aka “sacrifices”. Yes, your choices matter down the road. You close of certain future alternatives all of the time. This is being an adult.
Here’s one of the “sacrifices” my career in academics imposed on me. My time is my own. I have been able to choose to leave “work” at just about any time. In grad school for bike riding. In PIdom, for sick kids and then later for any kid sporting event or school thing.
There are a lot of careers / jobs where that would not have been possible.
Another “sacrifice” of my career choices. I get to work on approximately whatever I want. Sure, there’s the funding issue. But mostly I can decide, day in and day out, what areas of research to pursue. Because I choose academic science and not something else.
....but yeah, these choices come with consequences. The flip side of choosing work time is that you have the stress of it *always* being possible to work to “catch up”. Something to be said for having literally nothing you even could be doing after 5pm or on weekends.
There are jobs where you don’t have to stress about not continuing despite doing a good job, as we have at the postdoc-PI transition, tenure decision and grant funding pivot points. But remember, you have to trade off other things for that security.
You can’t choose exactly the job type you want, in a place that treats you like royalty for deigning to work there, in the city or town of your fondest desire. Just like....most people. It’s life. It’s adult life. It’s not unique to academic careers.
Maybe the taxpayers put literally millions of dollars in your hands. Maybe the company did that. Maybe a workplace could live or die because of you. Heady stuff. Other jobs may not require your “sacrifice” for those privileges.
...because you don’t get those privileges. Tradeoffs.
I can never tell, when we touch on issues of entitlement in academic careers, if I am just more appreciative of the considerable benefits, or just less entitled in general.
I grew up academic, so I guess I could feel entitled to this type of career. But I feel as if my attitude was more shaped by the people I saw in my home town and particularly the 40-55 yo ppl working at jobs I took during the summers as a late teen.
I fear, when various forms of entitled-sounding complaining about academics pops up, that these people have never really *seen* the life prospects of vast swaths of fellow-America.
I think what we do in academics is fantastic. I think public investments in academic science are in the top five things we do as a society. I think the people doing this stuff should be treated like rock stars in terms of compensation. But, “shit ain’t like that” - Ice-T
I also understand that everyone wants to agitate for better work conditions. It’s how we fight against the dehumanity and tragedy of the commons and power relationships of life. I just think there has to be some understanding of relative positioning.
This is what Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and AOC are trying to get across to the broader American public. By the way.
