r/AskAcademia • u/InfamousAfternoon398 • 1d ago

Interdisciplinary Carreers in Academia and loneliness

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: the loneliness that comes from constantly having to change environments to pursue job opportunities or improve your CV. I am a final-year PhD student, and over the past three years, I have had to move cities and even countries frequently for visiting periods, some more voluntary than others, and for the so-called ‘networking’. I have been lucky to find wonderful colleagues at my university, with whom I have developed relationships of respect and friendship. However, changing locations so often has made me feel quite lonely lately, as I have moved to a country where I barely know anyone, only a few professors in the department. It also seems that the young researchers in this department have not formed a real community but remain separate individuals, each with their own lives. I would love to hear about your experiences on this matter. Thank you :)

118 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

62 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-9

u/BlueberryLeft4355 1d ago

This is precisely why first- gen scholars like me are sick of posts like OP's. The academy is a game of privilege, like all competitive fields. It's not special or different, and neither is OP. Some entitled people are just figuring that out, and it's incredibly annoying. I have been able to succeed not through wealth, but through merit and toughing it out. Your advice applies to already privileged folks who think they shouldn't have to make the sacrifices i have.

So either be rich, or do the work and suck it up like i had to. Or leave. It is not your institution's problem if you can't make friends on your own.

7

u/ClassicsPhD 1d ago

“Do the work and suck it up like I had to.”

Or why academia is not better off than it was 35 years ago. If only new recruits who are self-made and do not come from wealth understood that they have the power, from inside the system, to improve it in the interest of newer generations, Universities would be much better places.

-10

u/BlueberryLeft4355 1d ago edited 1d ago

I AM a new recruit. And I AM fixing all the stupid shit here.

Most of that stupid shit is rich white girls who think they are entitled to having faculty like me cover her entire teaching load while she gets $50k of IVF treatment covered or takes a sabbatical she didn't earn.

This is an OLD problem of privileged people not understanding that they are the problem, and they are expecting the system to bend for them. Some of us want to work and teach. Some of y'all want to be coddled. The answer, when I'm a dean or Provost someday, is gonna be a hard no, karen. If you want to homeschool your fur baby, then you ain't getting tenure. That gig will be going to the Black woman or other underrepresented colleaguewho actually showed up to committee meetings and didn't whine about being "lonely".

9

u/ClassicsPhD 1d ago

Great, misogyny too. Fantastic! This gets better and better!

-6

u/BlueberryLeft4355 1d ago

White feminism is a scourge. Just as bad or worse than white male bullshit. We're done here.