It is interesting to me (and not in a good way) that I recently had a semi-viral thread that spelled out How Academia Works that got very positive responses for the most part, and yet my colleague & friend @andpru is getting negative responses for his.
I’ve known Dr. Pruszynski for several years. We’re in different fields but collaborate actively on science policy & advocacy @ACECHR_ACCSDC. We chat about careers sometimes. We are both ambitious & got prestigious grants in the same cycle.
(I will forever appreciate he DM’d me that results were out. I was traveling to a family wedding & had just enough time to get online and check my results. I got the news on my phone in one hand while I held a barf bag for my 10yo in the other. All glamour, all the time, folks.)
We both have families to support. I won’t speak for Andrew but I am the primary breadwinner in my family (me, partner, kids) & also support extended family.
I grew up in uneven financial circumstances (sometimes fine, sometimes not—thanks, abusive stepparent with a gambling problem) and it is very, very, VERY important to me to support my kids in a stable way.
I am the first PhD in my family. My grandparents came here as indentured servants with four of their six kids, including my dad. My grandfather never learned to read.
I didn’t even consider grad school until I worked in industry & was mentored by a senior engineer with a PhD. I truly had had no idea why some of my undergrad classmates wanted to stay in school longer when we could go get good jobs with our engineering undergraduate degrees.
I would not have the career I have if people hadn’t explained the system to me very clearly. I could learn so much research on my own. I read & read. University libraries are *amazing*. But all the tacit knowledge about how academia works? I never found any books about that.
I felt terrible for not knowing. It’s implied that everyone knows these things, duh. And once you know them, it’s true. They’re obvious when you know what you’re looking for.
I’ve served on 4 hiring committees, 3 postdoc review committees/panels, 1 career award panel, etc. And I do my level best to help make those selection processes as truly fair as possible. But there are some widely-held expectations that are not going to change anytime soon.
What Andrew wrote in his tweet is just true. It is maybe not how the system should always be, but that’s how it is right now, at least in Canada and the US. Want an academic job? Prioritize first author publications.
And if I were my former student self reading Andrew’s tweet and I hadn’t already been told those things, I’d really appreciate having someone who is successful spell it out so bluntly. That kind of thing really helps those of us who don’t already know the tacit rules of academia.
tl;dr There’s how things are, and how they ought to be. These aren’t always the same. You have to survive the system first to be able to meaningfully change it. Survival manuals are useful.
P.S. my favourite response:
Also an advance apology to anyone who stumbles on this thread in 3 months. @andpru runs a script that auto deletes his tweets so you will unfortunately not have any idea what this is all about!
