Interesting comments, particularly since I live in Sackville, home to Mount Allison University. The town has a pop of ~5,000 and there are about 2,200 students here. I’m not sure sure how the single professors can live in a such a small town. Maybe there’s a potential niche business here – connecting rural profs via some kind of social networking service. hmmm?
Hope you’re feeling better soon.
Yuhong YANsays:
It is not easy to meet the right person at the right time and at the right place. When you hold a ph.d., the constraints are exponentially increased. I like Daniel’s idea to actively hunt a partner. Taking it as a full time job. The problem in a small village is that you probably approach someone too close to you at work. It is embarrassing if the relation does not work.
But on the other side, I just wonder if it can change in big cities, because I met many single professors from big cities like Paris, Munich. Some are married once. As a woman, I probably understand why these professors can’t keep a family. Since they love their career so much that it appears to be they love themselves too much. And they are trained to be so “picky†in any work. They need some really intelligent and prefect women to understand them, better someone who work as equally hard as them. Womon professors have all the same problems and in addition they have problems from their gender. Many books said it is nearly impossible to get a tenure position while raising a child. Then what is your choice? Olympic separates men and women in the game, but not in academic.
Maybe professors are just a lonely group. It is the side effect of the career, or the career disease. We need to ask compensation for this if the statistics prove that we are really suffered comparing to other professionals. But many other professionals also have their career diseases. I just saw the movie “million dollar babyâ€. I do not understand why a woman chooses to be a fighter so as to be punched. I feel the same for a man fighter too. But she seems to understand the game and enjoy the game, from training to competition. Then nothing to complain. Anyway, you enjoy the game.
mtl3psays:
Interesting entry. I’m glad you wrote it. I was just at the Northern Voices blogging conference and I’ve been thinking a bunch about topic-related entries vs off-topic entries vs personal entries. I think this is a great kind of post because a lot of your readers have similar characteristics (intellectual, very involved in their work, can easily spend too much time in front of computers). Thanks for not sticking too closely to your “topic” and for sharing some advice.
Great topic! My blog, “Confessions of a Community College Dean,” may
be of interest to you. It, too, deals with the intersections of academia
and family.
I am basically ‘giving up’ an academic career for the sake of my personal life. Not that I think there would have been a career for me anyway. When I look ahead at academia all I can see is instability, insecurity, a lot of relocation and an exceptionally poor chance of ultimate success.
Satsuma: I think it is almost always possible to pursue an academic career if your standards (salary, relocation,…) are low enough.
There are people, after sacrificing everything for 12 to 15 years who become big shot academics. There was one such case in my morning paper… 12 years as a post-doc very far away… on top of his Ph.D. which took several years… after all of this, he came back to his home town with a great job offer. Of course, this could have never happened… maybe he would have been stuck another 10 years in some underpaid job. Maybe also he sacrificed a lot for his career… how much did he sacrifice to it? Was it worth it?
From the outside, such stories look great. The guy is a brilliant scientist with a decent job (he doesn’t make a ton of money, despite what people think). He looks like a winner, and he is… but people have no idea what he had to sacrifice.
We easily forget that guys like Einstein had terribly bad love lives. Einstein had a kid somewhere. Who knows what happened to the kid.
We have to question our values… is science, is academia, worth more than family?
Chrissysays:
Post-pandemic, this experience of isolation, loneliness, and sacrifice is so very pronounced. I am an administrator of a CS PhD program, and we are really trying to manage this. We’re looking for effective speakers on this matter, to address students and faculty. Something/someone to promote mental wellness, the importance of taking care of one’s whole self. Have you ever come across a speaker on this topic? Do you have any advice?
Interesting comments, particularly since I live in Sackville, home to Mount Allison University. The town has a pop of ~5,000 and there are about 2,200 students here. I’m not sure sure how the single professors can live in a such a small town. Maybe there’s a potential niche business here – connecting rural profs via some kind of social networking service. hmmm?
Hope you’re feeling better soon.
It is not easy to meet the right person at the right time and at the right place. When you hold a ph.d., the constraints are exponentially increased. I like Daniel’s idea to actively hunt a partner. Taking it as a full time job. The problem in a small village is that you probably approach someone too close to you at work. It is embarrassing if the relation does not work.
But on the other side, I just wonder if it can change in big cities, because I met many single professors from big cities like Paris, Munich. Some are married once. As a woman, I probably understand why these professors can’t keep a family. Since they love their career so much that it appears to be they love themselves too much. And they are trained to be so “picky†in any work. They need some really intelligent and prefect women to understand them, better someone who work as equally hard as them. Womon professors have all the same problems and in addition they have problems from their gender. Many books said it is nearly impossible to get a tenure position while raising a child. Then what is your choice? Olympic separates men and women in the game, but not in academic.
Maybe professors are just a lonely group. It is the side effect of the career, or the career disease. We need to ask compensation for this if the statistics prove that we are really suffered comparing to other professionals. But many other professionals also have their career diseases. I just saw the movie “million dollar babyâ€. I do not understand why a woman chooses to be a fighter so as to be punched. I feel the same for a man fighter too. But she seems to understand the game and enjoy the game, from training to competition. Then nothing to complain. Anyway, you enjoy the game.
Interesting entry. I’m glad you wrote it. I was just at the Northern Voices blogging conference and I’ve been thinking a bunch about topic-related entries vs off-topic entries vs personal entries. I think this is a great kind of post because a lot of your readers have similar characteristics (intellectual, very involved in their work, can easily spend too much time in front of computers). Thanks for not sticking too closely to your “topic” and for sharing some advice.
Great topic! My blog, “Confessions of a Community College Dean,” may
be of interest to you. It, too, deals with the intersections of academia
and family.
I am basically ‘giving up’ an academic career for the sake of my personal life. Not that I think there would have been a career for me anyway. When I look ahead at academia all I can see is instability, insecurity, a lot of relocation and an exceptionally poor chance of ultimate success.
Satsuma: I think it is almost always possible to pursue an academic career if your standards (salary, relocation,…) are low enough.
There are people, after sacrificing everything for 12 to 15 years who become big shot academics. There was one such case in my morning paper… 12 years as a post-doc very far away… on top of his Ph.D. which took several years… after all of this, he came back to his home town with a great job offer. Of course, this could have never happened… maybe he would have been stuck another 10 years in some underpaid job. Maybe also he sacrificed a lot for his career… how much did he sacrifice to it? Was it worth it?
From the outside, such stories look great. The guy is a brilliant scientist with a decent job (he doesn’t make a ton of money, despite what people think). He looks like a winner, and he is… but people have no idea what he had to sacrifice.
We easily forget that guys like Einstein had terribly bad love lives. Einstein had a kid somewhere. Who knows what happened to the kid.
We have to question our values… is science, is academia, worth more than family?
Post-pandemic, this experience of isolation, loneliness, and sacrifice is so very pronounced. I am an administrator of a CS PhD program, and we are really trying to manage this. We’re looking for effective speakers on this matter, to address students and faculty. Something/someone to promote mental wellness, the importance of taking care of one’s whole self. Have you ever come across a speaker on this topic? Do you have any advice?
Indeed. It is an important problem. I think we need to quickly get students involved in team activities.