Academic Altruism

Yesterday I talked to one of my advisers about the state of economy as a whole and our school's financial situation in particular. He told me, with pride, that, despite the global economic turmoil, the school is expecting to raise professors' pay by a few percent this year. And just a few days earlier I saw an article where it was announced that our school, once again, raises tuition. I asked him how he felt about struggling families being forced to pay even more despite that many of them are struggling financially. His response was like: "Well, this school is going to lose its top-notch faculty members if they stop paying well. For example, I constantly get good offers from other schools and if I the pay I get here doesn't satisfy me I may leave".

And then they tell doctoral students that people who decide to pursue PhD are not interested in money...

Disgusting Professors

I consider myself to be an intellectual. I read heavily since the age of 6. I'm fluent in three languages. Based on my standardized test scores, I can say that I have above average intelligence. I've always liked studying and have been a great student.

Nevertheless, I've always had a certain level of disgust towards professors. I think the disgust is on the physiological level. I don't like how most of them look and act. I don't like their haircuts. I don't like their body built. I don't like the kind of clothing they wear. I don't like their nerdy humor.

Sometimes I think that physiologically I'm just not one of them. I'm 6.0 and well-built. I don't wear glasses - I have a perfect eyesight despite years of reading. No one ever picked on me at school - I look like a person who can fight back. At conferences I always feel like I don't belong there, although I'm an outgoing person. I prefer to hang out at bars with local people rather than participate in those boring conference events. Sometimes I think me being physically different from most academics produces a bit of mutual antipathy between me and male professors.

There was a professor in our department who resigned a few years before I joined the program (he got a better offer from a better school). This guy is not the nerdy type either. He is tall, athletic, and very handsome. To make things even worse, he is rich and well-known outside of the academic community. When he came to our school to give a talk, I just couldn't help noticing how much he bothered our professors. I had heard them saying things like "he is not a real researcher" (although he has a publication record comparable to that of many top professors in our department), "he is a clown" (he has a great sense of humor), "he is only interested in money" (his books sold very well), etc. At the same time, these professors would never say anything bad about a nerdy, top 10 professor - they would be all over him or her, making compliments, and joking around.

Well, I guess in order to be a part of academia, you have to be one of them both mentally and physically.

Conversation with my Advisors

I had a conversation with two of my advisers today. They kept telling me that the best thing to do in my situation is not to look for any job. Instead, I should live off my parents and work on papers with them. They said I should not look for ANY jobs until I have at least one paper published with 2 others in the pipeline. They told me that getting a job will distract me from my research.

The only thing they forgot to tell me was how to live on zero money. But they don't see this as a problem.

Taboos in Academia

Most professors will never admit that:

1. They are wrong
2. They don't understand something

Don't do anything unless you are reminded about it 3 times

Don't take your professors too seriously. They talk a lot, they do little. Don't try to put up with all their requests and suggestions. You will end up in a mental hospital. Ignore some of their requests. They don't have the mindset to follow up. They just don't care. They talk for the sake of talking. Then they forget what they told you. They may even ask you to do completely the opposite if you were stupid enough to do what they told you. So here's a useful tip for you:

Don't do anything unless you are reminded about it 3 times

You have to master this skill if you are to survive in academia. Your professors are experts in this, haven't you noticed? They won't do anything unless you remind them several times. This is how they survived in academia.

Lazy Professors

I remember I once wanted to invite one of my advisers to my dissertation proposal. So I asked him: "How about November 14th?". He was like: "If it's in the morning I cannot come!". So I said: "No, it's at 2pm!". And he was like: "So you want me to get stuck in traffic???". What a jerk!!! He made it sound like coming to work for more than 3 hours is a heroic act on his part.

Professors are PAID to help you!

Here's something that simply blows my mind. Professors are PAID to supervise student research. It's a part of their job description. Moreover, they get publications out of the students they supervise. So why do they act like they are doing you a big favor when they agree to meet with you once a month a read through your stuff???

It's all about the money!

Many professors like to preach to their PhD students that being a professor is not about money. One of my advisers once told me after a few glasses of wine: "You know, I didn't go into academia because of money... I could be a millionaire if I wanted to! Yet I chose to do research and help young fellas like you instead".

Don't be so naive my friend... It's all about money. In fact, since there are so few opportunities in academia to make good money, most profs would step over their mom's dead body to pick a few bucks from the floor. I was once assigned to crunch survey data which contained responses from faculty members at a big school. Guess what was number one concern among the altruistic profs? Yep, money! Virtually every prof was whining about money and asking for salary increase.

Cash, Rules, Everything, Around, Me
C.R.E.A.M.
Get the money
Dollar, dollar bill y'all

Professors are greedy

Many of the professors I met suffer from greed. Of course, there are fields where professors don't make much money and they are simply forced to live a frugal lifestyle. But the ones that I met were making well above 100K a year for sure and yet were driving old rusty cars and wearing washed-out 3 dollar t-shirts to school.

I think the roots of this problem lie in the PhD program. Most professors have to undergo years and years of poverty before they become profs. So being frugal becomes a permanent trait.

Not being rude to people is a rare quality in academia!

Reading this passage from another blog will give you a good idea on the type of personalities you will have to deal with in academia. I think a story similar to the one below can be told by ANY graduate student. NOTE: "larger-than-life historian", "big name" usually means "known to a few hundred grad students and faculty members". Your local high school band may have a much larger fan base than one of those big names in academia.

John Hope was a "larger-than-life" historian. Many will laugh, but in the historical profession, John Hope was a rock star. He attended two of the same professional conferences that I regularly frequent--the Southern Historical Association and the American Historical Association. At annual meetings he was always mobbed. There would be throngs of historians coming up to say hello, a sort of "kiss-the ring" moment.

And John Hope always took the time to stop and talk to them. Always. Regardless of what he was doing, this famous person, famous historian, always took some time to give some words of encouragement to the newer generation of historians.

Not everyone is like that. I remember one conference when I was a graduate student. I had approached a historian--let's call hir Professor Doe--whose work I greatly admired. I walked up to hir and said "Ah, hello, Professor Doe. My name is AndrewMc, I'm a graduate student. I've read your [well-known book] and really enjoyed it. It's really shaped how I think about the subject."

Professor Doe looked at me as if I were a bug and said [with no small amount of scorn] "That's nice," and walked away. OK, whatever. Grad students can be a pain in the butt. Historians can have big egos. I didn't take it personally.

For John Hope, though, there was always time to speak to everyone. Around the time he got the Presidential Medal of Freedom I asked him about this. I said "You know, you can hardly make it across a room without getting mobbed. And yet you always take time to speak to everyone. How do you have the patience?"

Here was what he told me.

Decades ago, he was the second African American ever to enter graduate school at Harvard University. The first was WEB DuBois. One day John Hope was on campus--I believe it was the library--and he saw DuBois at a table, working. So he went over to speak to him. John Hope walked over (nervously, as he described it) to DuBois and said "Um, hello Mr. DuBois. My name is John Hope Franklin. You were the first black grad student at Harvard. I'm the second." He said that DuBois never looked up to acknowledge him, mumbled something, and then ignored him.

John Hope told me that at that moment he decided that he would never ignore anyone, especially grad students, who wanted or needed a moment of his time. And there were many conferences where I saw that vow in action. As I said, he was always mobbed, and always patient.

I thought that was a great story, and a great example of professionalism on the part of John Hope Franklin. Always take time to talk to people. Never let your ego get in the way of your encounters. My work in the professional is minor, and not well known. But John Hope's example is one that I hope I can always follow.

Academic Types

Folks, in a way, I'm a nerd myself. I have a lot of respect for bright, inquisitive minds. However, I often feel uncomfortable being around academic types. I've met some academics I really liked, but those were rare cases. I once realized, to my great surprise, that I feel much more comfortable and happy around a group of uneducated, drunk, and cursing dockers from Louisiana than around professors at a conference.

In my mind, there are two archetypes of academics.

Type I: "Loser"

• Nerdy-looking
• Bold
• Looks exhausted
• Likes to talk, but doesn't like to listen
• Divorced/never had sex
• Doesn't even look like a man
• Works at a teaching school
  

Type II: "Harvard Business School Professor"

• Tall
• Good looking
• Successful with women
  
• Smiles a lot
• When you talk to him he smiles and acts very polite yet you read "I don't give a fuck about you" in his eyes
• Doesn't look like he is full of himself, yet he really is
• 
  

Type III: "Imbecile"

• Seems to be very exited about the useless things he works on
  
• Looks and acts like he is on Prozac
• Laughs a lot
• Despite his cheerful ways has a bad sense of humor: laughs at things which are not funny
  
• After returning from a conference in an exotic country, all he talks about is his hotel accommodation and food he had eaten

Type III: "Teenager"

• Somewhat of a rebel, i.e. does very fuzzy qualitative stuff in a field dominated by quantitative research
• Very critical to the corporate world
• Has a sober and cynical judgment
• A bit intoxicated by his "coolness"

Type III: "Satan"

• Seems to enjoy torturing PhD students
• Is obsessed with power
  
• Very manipulative
• Will not tolerate anyone disagreeing with him
• Full of himself

Type III: "Senior Scholar"

• Seems to be very happy with his life
• Has a good sense of humor
• Very hard to surprise or impress: he has seen it all!
• Achieved a lot mostly due to his good personality and excellent people skills