I’d like to think that won’t happen, and I’m doing my best to ensure it doesn’t (maintaining good GPA, building strong relationships with professors, doing as much research as possible)
I’d probably be okay with it though, from experience. Not getting into any schools that I “wanted” happened in undergrad, and I absolutely love the one I’m at right now.
Grad school seems to be a bit different in that you’re advisor almost matters more than the school itself,
Depends on how geopolitics and climate change go. If the US and Chinese government both go to crap or climate change makes life unbearably difficult in either, I’m moving to New Zealand and probably starting some kind of farm
If earth just becomes a mess or that I don’t have the financial resources to avoid the consequences, then I hope I’m dead before that point
So again: a middle step.
At what point do you stop doing and start being?
I’m not sure what you mean by this
My observations are that you tend to define yourself based off what you do vs who you are. You talk about working toward a future, but from what you describe, you’ll never actually LIVE in that future: you’ll just keep working FOR said future until you die. And in many cases, such approaches reach THAT end state much sooner than anticipated.
Why are you so concerned about your future when you have no plans to actually BE in it?
I’m not exactly sure how I would verbally express living/being or not define myself based off what I do
That would be an outstanding mental exercise to undertake sometime. That’s a key component of existentialism.
I’m sorry to inform you of this Anna, but academia is not going to shield you from these things. My sample size is small, but I have two close friends with PhDs - one who works in private sector and another who works in academia.
One of my friends loves his job, he works on a great team of people, working towards a common goal is their primary focus, and he makes fantastic money.
The other friend likes his work, but he does not care for the backstabbing, stealing of ideas, and rat race of trying to secure a stable position in a place with limited funding. He also makes about 1/3rd of what he could get elsewhere.
Do you have any guesses as to which friend may be in academia?
Interesting, I guess it’s a good thing I still have 6-8 years to figure that out then. All this is contingent that I actually get INTO and make it out of grad school
Seriously, as someone who craves predictability, you are on a highway toward the opposite… academically, professionally, and physically.
I by no means claim that I have it all together. But I do know that I would doubt my ability to stay sane while in grad school – both inside and outside of my job – if I had your current mental and physical state.
Bold to gamble on being able to physically train X years from now given how much you’ve wrecked your body, despite small steps you’ve taken to remedy a fraction of the damage, and to survive in a PhD program. How much longer can you keep ignoring this?
You need to go read Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert.
She was the scientist who discovered the opiate receptor in cells, and subsequently paved the way for the paradigm shift back to the scientific study of the human being as one complete whole — mind, body, nervous system, gut, etc etc, even “soul” — and away from the belief that we’re separate parts inhabiting a robotic shell.
Aside from the tangible benefits of her points in the book (there’s a lot about mindfulness and listening to what your body is trying to tell you through emotional and physical signals), she goes into the history of her discovery and the road of scientific academia.
I’ll reiterate Dr. Pert’s observations, based on what @cyclonengineer and @mr.v3lv3t said as well: if you want to avoid being graded and judged, the bureaucratic circus, have to play diplomacy and schmooze, then DO NOT go into academia. Everyone is trampling over each other to get to the top, and they WILL absolutely crush you to get there. Collaboration rarely happens without some other type of agenda, because academia is nothing without personal glory and recognition.
Found the book- starting it today
I think this is more or less unavoidable. I’d also imagine that the degree to which this happens varies significantly between schools/ departments. Could be wrong though.
I know that life is going to be very very hard for a very very long time if I choose academia, but idk if life is going to be any easier if I get another job
Is this any different outside of academia?
Not much collaboration takes place in corporate culture. Barely any even interdepartmentally, and between corporations only when it’s to both of their advantages (profitable).
Even then, it’s all just a knife fight mediated by attorneys.
It’s not about being easier or harder, it’s about the fact that your stated desires for going into academia are literally the opposite of what you can expect.
A job does not define you, it’s just a way to make a living. It’s convenient when it more closely aligns with your passions, but it doesn’t have to be the case, and sometimes that’s not what you want; many people have started careers out of their passion, only to have that passion turn sour by making it an occupation. Vocation ≠ occupation.
Aside from Molecules of Emotion, you should look into some philosophy of the self and do some “soul searching”, as it were. @T3hPwnisher touched on this before, but I agree that it would do you a world of good to find for yourself what it means to be Human.
This is 100% why my blog is free. I’m actually writing an e-book right now that I intend to release for free as well. I don’t want to tie what I do for a hobby into what I make money on. I like having a very clear separation between what I do to make money vs who I am as a human. Could not agree more with what you’ve written here.
I will definitely be reading that e-book.
It was the same at the peak of my martial arts coaching. I was in the studio for 6-8 hours a day, 4-5 days a week, just coaching. I’d be exhausted and just wanted to go home at the end of the day, so I probably only trained 2-3 hours weekly for my own development. It absolutely crushed my desire and wasn’t a great period in my life.
And while I’m on a fiery roll here, here’s another thing you should consider (I believe @Bagsy has made a similar point): you say you’re interested in behavioural studies? Well, the fastest way to learn is to immerse yourself in the subject. In this case, it’s being around people.
I know simply studying the subject is your preferred way of learning about it, but that won’t cut it. We say it here all the time with regards to weight training, but learned knowledge can only take you so far, and in many circumstances practical will far outweigh the intellectual.
You want to understand people? Get out from behind a desk and into the world, where real people are interacting with each other in real scenarios. Someone studying elephants isn’t going to read up on elephants in the library, they’ll go to where elephants are and observe them. Fun story: I had a security job that was boring as hell, but I watched the seagulls close by all day. I watched their behaviours and pieced together what they meant, and when I later went and found sources on seagulls, it turns out my observations were 100% correct.
Go join as many clubs as possible, or better yet, find a part-time job, that will allow you to experience as many different people as possible. It’ll look far better to potential employers, in academia or not, if you have some life experience instead of being trapped behind books for almost a decade.
The problem with me is that if I’m tired doing other things, I find that I lack the discipline to learn. I seem to have a very low threshold for doing productive work
For example, when schoolwork is getting more stressful, I find myself having difficulty getting myself to learn extra maths, write, or even cook and instead opt for watching netflix.
BUT, even though having a bunch of projects to work on is stressful, I still enjoy the work and having work prevents boredom, which prevents depression.
I don’t give up on working out though, but I do find that I get less interested in listening to exercise science content.
I’ll be reading it
I am perpetually surprised at the amount of high quality free content available
I love people watching, and since starting to learn behavioural science, I’ve been paying more attention to the things they mention in class.
It’s actually made adverts less annoying and I’ll sometimes intentionally watch them to see if I can ID the logic behind using certain imagery, the appeals…
My brother was browbeaten by his sociopath of a PhD professor for 7 years because the guy was threatened about being less capable than my brother, so much so that my brother left academia to avoid that, and now makes awesome money working for a private company with people who appreciate him and reward him for his efforts. It’s a shame, because my dad was a PhD professor and we still have a few of his old students to Thanksgiving dinner, 8 years after his death. But yeah - you’ve got all types, and the politics are there, just as much as anywhere else.
I’m not grasping how your initial paragraph pertains to the first of my quotes you used, but I think there’s a disconnect.
The development I was referring to was my own martial arts development. Because I was coaching martial arts, and therefore had made a profession out of my passion, I ended up not enjoying the thing I cared about — martial arts.
The point I was trying to make, and maybe I needed to be more blunt, was that you want to go into academia because you enjoy learning and researching, but the nature of academia as a profession might very well lead you to hate that which you love. It was intended as a warning.