Wednesday, April 1, 2009
It's April Fool's day. I, for one, was fooled into believing K's blog entry about getting out of academics. It wasn't until she said that she was going to get a job in sales for a South American rubber company that I could see that something was up. It wasn't the rubber company part that tipped me off; it was the part about getting into sales: I can't think of any line of work for which she could be more unsuited than sales. I think it has to do with the requirement that you have to pretend that the sun rises and sets on your customers, and that their requests are always reasonable. I've had the misfortune of being responsible for making every client's every whim a reality just because a sales guy promised that it could be done (without first consulting me). That's why I got IN to academics: it's one of the few lines of work where cleverness is rewarded. Back when I was being paid by the hour, when I got all clever and figured out a faster, better way of doing something, I found I was actually cheating myself out of money. If you're part of a big union or organization, being clever either gets you ostracized for rocking the boat (by raising expectations) or else leaves you like a salmon swimming upstream against a raging river of bureaucratic policy. Salmon die once they get to where they're going.
However, I know that many of my colleagues have recently been stomped by the system that restricts the flow of newly hatched PhDs into the academic stream, which is why K's ruse seemed quite plausible. Heck, I'm still waiting for a couple of rejection letters from faculty positions to which I had applied, as well as the letter from NSERC that no doubt will tell me that the competition this year was exceptionally fierce, and that there were many, many qualified applicants that they were forced to decline. Of course, applicants who were indeed qualified wouldn't be rejected at such a high rate if the Canadian government provided adequate funding for research and development -- and not just research that is explicitly tied to business interests. So yeah, if she did decide to call it quits, I can't say I'd wonder why.
2 comments:
i apologize. you're right...it was a bit too plausible to be a good goof.
i did go in and spend 4 (not 5 thankfully) hours doing my thesis students' work for them. who knew both of them thought looking at means and seeing a difference actually meant they could declare it significant, and then when we did analyses and follow-ups, together (12 hours total for both of them), they had no idea how you put these things into words.
i am preparing an excellent last seminar day for tomorrow, so far more than minimal prep.
however, i am depressed, degraded and somewhat humiliated by being unable to get anything from this large piece of fancy paper with the gold seal of approval. i am waiting on word from my promising phone interview (apparently things are held up in admin. and it may take another full week before there's word.. surprise, surprise) and will be applying for one more job next week. but both of these are limited term.
so as i face the fact that i will likely be here another year and as i start begging for courses (which itself is a bit of a humiliating sales pitch) I have contemplated looking outside, seriously, academia. i just can't believe that i want anything outside of academia. so i think i'm giving this one more year and either i will die from an aneurism next phd picking season or i will do the reasonable thing and find something else to do.
oh, and that traffic side bar thing is freaky. i can see myself visit!
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