Heather: It’s frustrating that students’ economic fears are still not being taken seriously–I’m sure there are a lot of people who are nodding along, experiencing what you are.

Even in this economic context some profs still find it weird I would consider not finishing. The one I find most frustrating is, “oh, you’ll find a job” when I mention the lousy job market. How on earth do you know that, I feel like asking. Getting a job seems to be mostly luck (i.e. the right job for you comes up at the time when you are on the market). Most of my friends can’t even find contract jobs at the moment. Plus these are profs who really don’t know my situation, and haven’t even really read any of my stuff in the last five years! So sue me if I don’t have as much confidence in the job market as them!

Here is where I found the example with the ‘cacophony’. It is in an article in the ‘Chronicle of Higher Education’, which was written more than 10 years ago:

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/1999/04/1999040901c.htm

The article might be interesting to read; interestingly, things were not too different a decade before.

While I was in academia, for a long time I had exactly that thought. Professors praised the ‘thrilling’ research, on conferences you saw only smiling people being enthusiastic about their ‘great results’, and my parents took it for granted that I will stand in a university classroom some day, teaching students. But all the time I had a nagging feeling of ’something is wrong here. Deeply wrong.’

I remember one evening at a conference in Spain. I and several other PhD students from different countries were in a nice taverna, enjoying a beer. (Important: No professors were nearby). Suddenly, it erupted out of everybody. “What are we doing here??? What’s the point of this research, of this university, of this academic life??? Why, oh why, are we doing this???”. Sheer, pure frustration.

There I learned: No, you are not alone. There are a lot of other people here who do also seriously *not* enjoy this.

In another blog, I read about the experience of somebody who also left academia. The crucial point was when her professor told her “Academic work should feel like music”. Playing an instrument herself, she immediately thought “This isn’t like anything how I understand music. If this is music, it is a very badly composed cacophony. I’m outta here.”