This is a beautiful piece that will resonate with many (and get sent to many colleagues and children, I’m sure).
My kid just graduated and was warned off of academia for precisely these reasons. I’m incredibly grateful. That said, my kid is a gifted teacher, an insightful researcher, and someone I’d love to see write and help define the w…
This is a beautiful piece that will resonate with many (and get sent to many colleagues and children, I’m sure).
My kid just graduated and was warned off of academia for precisely these reasons. I’m incredibly grateful. That said, my kid is a gifted teacher, an insightful researcher, and someone I’d love to see write and help define the world in their subject.
It really, really kills me that folks like AHP, the many commenters in this thread, my brilliant kid, and the friend who warned them off, can’t contribute to our culture in the ways that would benefit us all. This cancer of overwork, undervaluing, and underpay is killing k-12 education (which I recently left), medicine, and so many other vital fields. It breaks my heart, and it’s breaking our country.
I'm an academic, tenured (full) professor; 30 years of experience. Your kid sounds wonderful, and I hope they can open the doors to non-academic careers. I know -someone- will Do All the Things to possibly end up with a college teaching job, but I'm hoping your talented child will choose other ways to do the things at which they excel. I would love it I didn't have to write one more ref letter for a student hoping for a PhD. I try to talk them out of it, spend loads of time helping them do values clarifications, exploring job ads and markets, and thinking deeply about themselves. I try to give them insight into the quotidian existence of this profession. For many of us, we do not "get the summer off." We don't get scheduled time or support funds for academic research. We don't get more than two raises in a career, and that's if we get promoted the two times available to tenure-track employees. We don't get trained in the student support that is now needed to ensure that learners make it through four years. Etcetera, etcetera.
So beautifully put. It hurts my heart that our culture simply doesn’t value the arts and humanities, even going so far as to mock artists and writers and educators for wanting to do something meaningful with their lives.
This is a beautiful piece that will resonate with many (and get sent to many colleagues and children, I’m sure).
My kid just graduated and was warned off of academia for precisely these reasons. I’m incredibly grateful. That said, my kid is a gifted teacher, an insightful researcher, and someone I’d love to see write and help define the world in their subject.
It really, really kills me that folks like AHP, the many commenters in this thread, my brilliant kid, and the friend who warned them off, can’t contribute to our culture in the ways that would benefit us all. This cancer of overwork, undervaluing, and underpay is killing k-12 education (which I recently left), medicine, and so many other vital fields. It breaks my heart, and it’s breaking our country.
I'm an academic, tenured (full) professor; 30 years of experience. Your kid sounds wonderful, and I hope they can open the doors to non-academic careers. I know -someone- will Do All the Things to possibly end up with a college teaching job, but I'm hoping your talented child will choose other ways to do the things at which they excel. I would love it I didn't have to write one more ref letter for a student hoping for a PhD. I try to talk them out of it, spend loads of time helping them do values clarifications, exploring job ads and markets, and thinking deeply about themselves. I try to give them insight into the quotidian existence of this profession. For many of us, we do not "get the summer off." We don't get scheduled time or support funds for academic research. We don't get more than two raises in a career, and that's if we get promoted the two times available to tenure-track employees. We don't get trained in the student support that is now needed to ensure that learners make it through four years. Etcetera, etcetera.
So beautifully put. It hurts my heart that our culture simply doesn’t value the arts and humanities, even going so far as to mock artists and writers and educators for wanting to do something meaningful with their lives.