How to survive academia, Part 2
Some actual advice, for what it's worth
Previously: a host of reasons why it is difficult to become a scientist. Now: some general advice to those brave enough to make the attempt.
1. Beware of advice. Very few people understand how the system works, but everyone thinks they do. Especially those who are just about to quit. They will gladly tell you what exam marks you must get, and which supervisor you should work with, and how many papers you should publish, and what level of arrogant jerkiness you must display to win the award that you absolutely need to get hired. Ignore all that noise. A successful person’s advice isn’t necessarily any better. They will just tell you to do what they did1. What they did may well be the worst strategy ever, and they just got lucky; they are the last person who would ever realise. Most importantly: run as fast as you can from anyone who tells you why you will not succeed. You don't need that shit.
2. Collect lots of advice. This does not contradict the previous point. You should be sceptical of everything you are told, but the best way to evaluate advice is to have as many pieces of it as possible, from as many disparate sources as you can find. No matter how many people you've spoken to, it could be the next person who tells you about the perfect funding scheme to apply for, or the perfect paper to read, or the ideal technique to try in your research problem — or the best person to talk to next.
3. Find mentors. Does that sound like something from an airport self-help book? Let me explain. A mentor is not someone who is assigned to you by the university's latest Early Career Researcher Mentor Scheme. It is not a job. It is a character trait. Most people have an extremely narrow field of vision, and confidently declaim sage advice from their self-absorbed interpretation of their minuscule world. These are the people you will hear from most often. But there is another kind of character. This person steps back and observes a wider world. They are alert to who has succeeded and who has failed, and to what has worked and what has not. They have spotted and collected all the little nuggets of wisdom as they passed by. Such people are absolute gold. Keep a lookout, and if you ever spot one, soak up everything you can from them. (Beware, as always, the counterfeit.)
4. You have no idea how good you are. It is very easy to find evidence that you are not good enough. You can instantly think of a host of things you screwed up. You can immediately point to people who are smarter than you, are more talented than you, have done more than you; people who are a living demonstration that you should not have even started this science nonsense in the first place. Ignore them. Science requires a huge range of skills and personalities. Some people can complete long, detailed calculations. Some people can make simple insights and convenient approximations. Some people can work alone on a problem for months, or years. Some people can coordinate a team of conflicting personalities to work together. Some people can keep track of a seemingly endless number of details. Some people are teeming with fanciful ideas. Some people are driven and frenetic, others are laid back. We need all of them. Among this menagerie of thinkers and tinkerers there is no clear metric of talent or promise. Between that, and the wildly biassed nature of the human brain, you have no way to assess how good you are, or how good you are going to become. So don't bother: just keep going. This leads to the next item.
5. Stay alive! Whenever you ask yourself, “Is it time to give up?”, i.e., every waking minute, you should instead ask a different question: “Have I been kicked out?” If you have a PhD position, or a postdoc, or any kind of research contract anywhere, someone still thinks you are worth having around. If there are places to apply to for your next position, or for a permanent job, then apply to them. When no-one extends your contract, and no-one offers you a position, and there are no fellowships or scholarships or prizes left to apply for, only then is it time to leave. (You may decide that you want to leave, but that is a different matter.) To build up experience, and a reputation, and to win at the faculty-position lottery, can take a long time. Be ready to play the long game.
5a. Be flexible. If you absolutely have to live in your old home town because you need to weep daily at the grave of your childhood dog, or you absolutely could not bear to live in the US because of the prevalence of high-fructose corn syrup, or you just absolutely have to be affiliated with an Ivy League institution... well, that's your business, but every restriction eats into your already tiny chances of success. Similarly, you can whinge about postdoc job insecurity and the stress and cost of having to move every two years, or you can accept that this might be your reality for the next decade, and make a plan to make it possible.
6. Get stuff done. Research is hard: it's hard to clearly define a problem to solve, it's hard to make progress on the problem, it's hard to stay focussed on the problem (hey look! an easier problem!), and, for many people the real killer, it's hard to finish a problem. There is always more to do. There are always loose ends to tie up. Are they irrelevant, or are they the hint that the whole thing is wrong? The only way to be sure is to keep going just a little bit longer. But eventually you have to stop: declare the project finished and the paper written. It is shocking how many people — really good people! — simply cannot do this. If you're not good at formulating clear, finite projects, or at deciding when they're complete, work with and learn from people who are.
7. There are no golden rules. You can be extremely talented, and hard working, and focussed, and study at top institutions with top people on cutting-edge problems, and avoid silly “I must have a job in two years or I'll quit” ultimatums, and resist the urge to go off and make a fortune in software development... and still not get a faculty job. Maybe your field is just too competitive, or the focus has shifted from your expertise; an infinite number of things can go wrong. On the other hand, I know people who I was worried worked on problems too outside the mainstream, and did not publish much, and never bothered to promote themselves... and now they are faculty. You may find this frustrating, but this is also your best hope. If it was easy to identify the best people and the most important problems, then science would not be an enterprise at the very edge of human knowledge.
8. Finally. Some people will be aghast at this advice. They will say that it is irresponsible to encourage people to stick around until the bitter end, when they will realise that they have wasted their chance for a rewarding career elsewhere and stunted their lifetime earning potential, and are now too bitter and broken and wasted to make anything of their lives. I refer people back to my series of articles on consciousness and free will. There I discovered, after decades of extreme scepticism, that people are in fact responsible for their own decisions. So: I give you this short list of tips to survive academia. I also duly refer you to the hyperbolic warnings of its detractors. After that it’s up to you.
I wish you the best of luck!
Pompous advice pieces usually contain at least one glaring hole, due to a series of blind spots created by the author’s over-confidence and general arrogance. I welcome comments pointing these out. Addendums, clarifications, amplifications, personal examples, etc., are even more welcome.
Erik Hoel's article on academic survival provides very good insights and advice. The article is for paid subscribers, so I will not undercut his business by telling you what he said. One bit bears mentioning, though, as a perfect example of “this is what I did” advice. He suggests trying original research ideas as an undergraduate. That's great if you can do it, but I expect there are very few fields where this is possible. It is not what I did, nor any other successful scientist I know. If some piece of advice clicks for you, wonderful; if not, forget it and move on.
Great advice.
Nice post. I particularly like and resonate with point 4.