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Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

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Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#121

Post by gen220 »

godelski wrote: post #96
nextos wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem in Academia is that its too crowded. With crowding, in many fields, the de facto way to progress has become to play corridor and department politics. I know completely clueless and incompetent researchers that made an effortless transition to faculty positions at top 10 universities, whereas some great postdocs were stuck forever, burnt out, and left. Ironically, some of said postdocs did the work the oth…

> I know completely clueless and incompetent researchers that made an effortless transition to faculty positions at top 10 universities, whereas some great postdocs were stuck forever, burnt out, and left. Ironically, some of said postdocs did the work the others took credit for in order to be promoted. I've seen this, and it's happened to me. I'm at a much lower ranking uni and we partner with higher ranking unis an…

In bureaucracies like this, the fish inenvitably rots from the head. The people who offer the faculty positions are incompetent or indifferent. And the people who hired those people are incompetent or indifferent.

As such, it's a mess that literally can't be solved from within, it needs to be solved by the administration, and the boards who appoint them. The tenure system means it'll take generations to resolve.

Academia in the U.S. has seen systemic issues like this in the past (see: eugenics). Unfortunately the implication is that it'll continue to get worse until it's mostly made better by people retiring.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#122

Post by jjtheblunt »

janussunaj wrote: post #119
tnecniv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do love animals, but I’ve always been intimidated about the responsibility of being the person solely in charge of that animal’s life. I’ve always struggled with routines and such (I found out in adulthood I have ADHD). I have thought about it lately, though. Maybe having that responsibility will cause other things to click into place? However, I’m worried about it not working and impacting a life beyond my own.

Your concern is more of a sign that you'd be a responsible pet parent. I don't have experience with dogs (rescue or not), but caring for a cat is relatively straightforward and can bring lots of joy. Writing this with a cat sleeping on my lap, who showed up in my backyard a few years ago.

Caring for two cats is even easier because if their human is boring because of concentration, they can entertain each other. Works here, and with rescue dog in the mix too.

Also, if the dog is fond of walks and hikes etc, that’s possibly super healthy for a break from sitting and working. As the joke goes, "Ask me how I know." :)

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#123

Post by bee_rider »

divyaranjan1905 wrote: post #105
bee_rider wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people aren’t Feynman and won’t get a Nobel prize whatever strategy they follow. Finding a fun way to do things does seem like it produces better solutions, though. I mean, if you dread reading about your solution, what do you expect from people who don’t even want to devote their life to it?

Or, act as if you're excited about it, how visionary you are.

I guess it depends on the audience you are looking for. If you want to specifically target the gullible or you are really good at lying, this might be a great strategy.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#124

Post by glitchc »

godelski wrote: post #101
borroka wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, there’s not really other jobs I’d rather do. I suspect there are many jobs you would do, but you have to allow yourself to let go of the dreams, the ambitions, the identity you have built in academia. A few years ago, almost seven, I decided to leave academia, after a PhD and many years as a post doc, more than 50 journal papers published, awards and recognition in my field. I loved doing research, writing p…

This sounds like you're describing a system that is a failure but that the solution is not to fix the system but to give up and do something else. Can we not fix academia? Is the signal of so many people, especially in CS, abandoning academia for industry not as clear of a sign as you can get? I feel crazy because it feels like everyone either does not want to admit the system is broken or will admit it but not want…

In the academic system, positions are globally accessible and therefore hyper-competitive. Moreover, headcount grows slowly as it depends on funding and attrition through retirement/death. As such, demand outstrips supply. Strip everything extraneous away and that's the heart of it.

If enough post-docs leave, it will reduce the demand for tenure-track positions. Eventually fewer PhDs will become post-docs, further decreasing demand.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#125

Post by JohnFen »

makapuf wrote: post #68
JohnFen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I struggled hard with burnout, I found that hobbies were an important part of fixing that -- but it was important that the hobbies had little-to-nothing to do with computers (I had computer-related hobbies too, of course, but they didn't seem particularly effective in terms of mitigating burnout).

A good thing is to remind that you have not to finish hobby projets. Dont feel any shame about putting it aside and start something more interesting, do it : it's not work and you do it to let off steam. You may even come back to it later

Yes!

I think that the real difference between an activity being a hobby and it being a job is that a hobby activity is always optional. If I don't feel like working on a hobby project today (or ever again), I don't have to. On the job, I don't have that option. That makes a world of difference.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#126

Post by gwd »

godelski wrote: post #101
borroka wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, there’s not really other jobs I’d rather do. I suspect there are many jobs you would do, but you have to allow yourself to let go of the dreams, the ambitions, the identity you have built in academia. A few years ago, almost seven, I decided to leave academia, after a PhD and many years as a post doc, more than 50 journal papers published, awards and recognition in my field. I loved doing research, writing p…

This sounds like you're describing a system that is a failure but that the solution is not to fix the system but to give up and do something else. Can we not fix academia? Is the signal of so many people, especially in CS, abandoning academia for industry not as clear of a sign as you can get? I feel crazy because it feels like everyone either does not want to admit the system is broken or will admit it but not want…

> This sounds like you're describing a system that is a failure but that the solution is not to fix the system but to give up and do something else. Can we not fix academia?

The problem with academia is basic mathematics. In a system where there are a fixed number of tenured professorships, where each tenured professor has the job for life, each professor should produce only a single tenure-track PhD student in their entire career.

OK, so to deal with attrition and other unforeseen circumstances, perhaps 10 tenured professors should produce 11 tenure-track PhD students. But definitely not the situation we have now, where each professor produces dozens of PhD students in the course of their career who go on to attempt to get tenure.

The people trying to get tenure don't want to admit the system is broken, because that would be to admit they just weren't good enough to get tenure.

The people who have tenure have every incentive to keep it going, because it means they have an army of highly-skilled and highly-motivated postdocs willing to work long hours for peanuts for a decade or two.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#127

Post by [deleted] »

tnecniv wrote: post #13

As a researcher, I’ve felt largely the same way lately. It’s been hard for me to even wrap up a project I was so excited about when I started it that I missed sleep because I was that engaged. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cozy tenure position at a major research institution to ride out the burnout until I feel inspired again. I’m just a lowly postdoc. I’ve thought about leaving the research life for a regular job, b…

[deleted]

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#130

Post by godelski »

gwd wrote: post #126
godelski wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like you're describing a system that is a failure but that the solution is not to fix the system but to give up and do something else. Can we not fix academia? Is the signal of so many people, especially in CS, abandoning academia for industry not as clear of a sign as you can get? I feel crazy because it feels like everyone either does not want to admit the system is broken or will admit it but not want…

> This sounds like you're describing a system that is a failure but that the solution is not to fix the system but to give up and do something else. Can we not fix academia? The problem with academia is basic mathematics. In a system where there are a fixed number of tenured professorships, where each tenured professor has the job for life, each professor should produce only a single tenure-track PhD student in their…

It's a bit worse than that. Prestige matters a lot too. General rule of thumb is that you can only apply to a position at a university of equal or lesser ranking than the one you were previously at. (obviously can still climb the ladder, in many ways, but this is a strong pattern all throughout the process from High School to Tenure) You're exactly right about the number of positions problem too. Because clearly the result of this is that the quality and methods from higher ranking institutions diffuse into lower ranking ones. Hell, when I was at a community college I had a professor from Harvard and several from Berkeley. Prestigue doesn't make sense in a system like that because you can't maintain an edge when you are literally telling the people you trained to go work somewhere else.

I think you're exactly right about the reasons people keep quiet. But this is not helpful to anyone, especially the universities. They are certainly losing a lot of money and even prestige from all of this. You don't make Nobel laureates with publish or perish. But no one wants to shake things up, which is weird because academia is __explicitly__ supposed to be the place where you can focus on things that aren't profit driven. Or at least short ROI. It is a loss for the country too, as it means a lot of academics move away from low risky TRL research and follow a model much closer to industry research (which is profit driven) Historically industry has (generally) relied on academic research doing low TRL and then they bring it to mid and high TRL.

We've lost sight of what we're trying to accomplish.

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