New Thesis Topic
Question of the day: Does one have to be insane to embark upon an academic research career, or does academic research actually induce mental instability?
Or do people who decide to pursue PhDs* have certain predispositions to insanity that can be exacerbated by prolonged exposure to academic research?
Discuss.
*Or any advanced degree, such as architecture, which requires a thesis/dissertation and which you have to "just love doing" so much that you pretend not to mind the ridiculously long hours and ridiculously low pay.
Or do people who decide to pursue PhDs* have certain predispositions to insanity that can be exacerbated by prolonged exposure to academic research?
Discuss.
*Or any advanced degree, such as architecture, which requires a thesis/dissertation and which you have to "just love doing" so much that you pretend not to mind the ridiculously long hours and ridiculously low pay.
posted by Joolya at
2:01 PM
18 Comments:
by experience, i'm pretty sure that it's door number three: "people who decide to pursue PhDs have certain predispositions to insanity that can be exacerbated by prolonged exposure to academic research"
at least on a personal level, that's how i feel about my mental health/research balance (or lack thereof)
totally agree
Thrusting young, shy and introverted people into a very competitive environment with little professional support, in which you are supposed to compete with those who have twenty or thirty years more experience than you = recipe for mental instability. So I suppose I would go for option no. 1.
I mean option no. 2.
PS. Hi Brookburg and Boomy! See you soon.
PPS. Hi Brand Ave. too! Didn't they say that if you weren't prepared to "live" for your subject there was no point doing it at your school? Nutters. It seems as though we can add ridiculous institutional pressure as option #4.
Maybe ridiculous institutional pressure is inherently part of the whole "acadmemic research" thing, which would make #4 a sub-heading of #2.
There's a lot of research fields in which it is tacitly acceptable to be a huge asshole so long as people say about you: "Well, but he/she is a really good _______."
Let us all privately ruminate on examples of these people that we know from our own lives.
Yeah. Also add in professors who claim to have your best interests in mind, but don't even really remember who you are half the time.
Or profs who you have to email seventeen times and stalk to get them to talk to you or read your papers or attend your meetings.
i see a lot of my own worries here, although i usually eschew private rumination in favor of excessive complaining, which is much more cathartic.
either way, clearly we are a group in need of an awareness bracelet. let's get some printed.
http://www.shanrene.com/custom-wristband-tool.php
but what should it say? "anxiety awareness" "live nervous"? "PhDs are for pussies?"
Not awareness bracelets - SURVIVOR bracelets!
Yay! I want one! Or profs who you have to email seventeen times to try to find out what to do next because something has gone horribly wrong, and then when you do talk to them, give you no information and then hustle you out of the room because they are very busy and important and then yell at you later when you done anything after things have gone horribly wrong.
I have an idea for a greige magnetic car ribbon:
"Five Years ABD - And Lovin' It!!"
I blame the liberal elite.
You know, eliteness plus stress and poverty is kind of a bum deal. We totally deserve ribbons and bracelets. (Although it is technically our own faults; we could all be lawyers or i-bankers.)
Well poverty in the sense that we can't buy Porsches, and stress in the sense that we're congenital worriers anyway. You're right though, lawyers get to have richness to counteract the stress. Not fair.
Springy-- Word to that. I have a "real" job, and I worry every single day, sometimes to the extent that I can't sleep. Ugh. Where do you think I got that from?!
hmmm...I thought #3 was a conglomeration of #s 1 and 2. In which case I would go with #3.
http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/like/there_is_a_fine_line_between_genius_and_insanity/217694/
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