Some Additional Woes of Academia from My Point of View

I am following up on the previous post from two experts about STEM academia from my perspective since I think they miss some issues.

This will be a bit long, and therefore, really only potentially of interest to someone who is actually really thinking about going the academic route.

Two additional caveats:

• I am separating getting a doctorate from joining the professoriate.
• I am only talking about STEM academia, since perhaps things are different in other fields.

Getting the PhD

A lot of people who want a PhD just want to prove to themselves and other people that they are smart. This includes yours truly. Some people want to show they are smarter than everybody else, but that wasn't me. I met super smart people when I was younger and knew I wasn't smarter than everybody else. In fact, as far as I could tell, my little brother was smarter than me.

That is not enough of a reason to commit to a PhD program in my opinion. I only think a PhD is worth it if you are just sort of crazy interested in your subject. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother. Obviously, I am not talking about a PhD in a subject where it is easier to obtain it, or fake PhD's that are just for career advancement so you can call yourself "doctor".  Stapleton discusses fake doctorates in one of his videos and at one school I taught at, they had everyone resubmit all of their credentials since the problem was so rampant.

The single most important choice you can make if you decide to pursue a doctorate is your choice of advisor.  If you make a wrong choice and choose a sociopath, you can be doomed before you even start. Therefore, my advice is the following:

• Cultivate several interests (not hundreds).
• Apply to good graduate programs with faculty in these several interests and gain admission.
• Among the candidate faculty with active research programs who publish reasonably often (if they publish 100 papers a year, run like hell) choose the individual that appears to be a decent person, is personable, and is willing to talk to you.
• If they are always telling you that they are busy, or if your "spidey sense" is telling you that they don't like or respect you, my advice would be to run like hell.  

If you do end up with an awful advisor, you have my sympathies.  Even if they don't break you, and you manage to finish, you will probably be traumatized and end up writing blogs or posting videos about why you quit your PhD or why you got it, but hated it. 

In other words, don't choose a dissertation advisor based only on the topic. Among the topics that interest you, the choice of individual is more important than the exact choice of topic. If you do a real PhD, with real integrity, you will be able to do research in other areas later if you want. 

The first time I studied for a doctorate, I was quite naive and made this mistake, and quit.  The second time I did not make this mistake, was successful, and had a great time learning and doing research.

Becoming a Professor

Getting a PhD does not mean you have to become a professor. I grew up believing that the best life was a life of the mind, and becoming a professor was the highest possible achievement of that path.  This was due to the the influence of my mom. This was her dream for herself and I simply absorbed her values I assume.  Sometimes I joke that "my mom brainwashed me" but no malice was intended and this was no different than the parent that takes their kid to practice to achieve in a sport that they themselves liked but did not get to pursue professionally I imagine.

Unfortunately, after my first go around with thesis work I had already figured out that academia could be toxic, and I also had figured out that much more good be done at high school and below level, so I decided to become a math teacher. Sadly, this broke my mom's heart. Also she warned me that I would face issues because, as she said, "There are too many stupid people in teaching."  Then she told me that "I was her unfinished symphony" LOL! #HaitianMotherGuiltMuch so I promised her I would finish my PhD and become a professor someday and "complete her symphony". Jesus.

The truth is that, while I have always believed more educational good can be achieved at the high school level than college, high schools have their own toxicity issues in my opinion, and because of those issues, I decided that it might better to teach at a university, but also do outreach at the pre-college levels. After all, this is what worked with me and my first mentor Victor and I had seen it work in my own high school.

Ultimately, I did not end up doing much of this unfortunately.  In fact, there actually wasn't much interest in this, unless of course you could turn it into a GRANT!

The absolute craziest thing I found about teaching at the junior college/college/university level is that everybody talks about the importance of teaching, or how they have a "passion for teaching", and then does everything in their power to do as little of it as possible?

You can understand why many research professors at Research I schools are trying to avoid teaching large classes of undergraduates as much as possible: they are on the research treadmill, the carrot is always just out of reach, and if they don't keep pace, they could fall off and wind up teaching 3 sections of calculus to undergraduates!  Books have been written about this. Perhaps most notably, "Why the Professor Can't Teach" by Morris Kline.

The really crazy thing is that this happens at so-called teaching universities too and even junior colleges?  I was completely baffled as to why so many of my colleagues at these nominally teaching oriented institutions were always talking about their insignificant or even non-existent research or about the grants they had applied for. I often thought to myself that they and their students would be better off if they spent that time and energy to learn to program in some computer language, like Mathematica for example, so they could prepare more engaging lectures.

Sometimes it got a little nasty. Faculty telling me that I was not doing enough research all the time for example. Of course, I did a little "research" on exactly what research it was that my colleagues were allegedly doing and discovered that NOBODY was doing any significant research. I'm not a pushover, but I was nice about it and never pointed this out, since that seemed sort of mean.  If someone wants to pretend that they are a great scholar, who am I to disabuse them of this was my thinking. I did however point out that I was teaching 3-4 classes a semester, running the math and computer science club quite actively, and running the occasional Mathematica seminar so I was actually quite busy.

The funny thing is that I have always had a decent mathematical imagination and I was quite certain I could have been doing more research if I taught 2 classes and had no additional responsibilities. My mistake was thinking that high quality teaching was actually important...at a teaching university.

The upshot of this trip down memory lane is that if quality teaching is really important to you, a university might not be a good environment for you, and if you really want to do research, for gods sake don't go to a teaching university! They are going to tell you to do research on top of your 3-4 classes and whatever other grunt work they want you to do, and you won't have the time or energy.

Finally, while I obviously think that the Hossenfelder and Stapleton videos are excellent viewing for a perspective STEM doctoral student, they both fail to mention one aspect: all of the problems they mention are magnified for members of racial and ethnic group underrepresented in STEM subjects. Hossenfelder justifiably mentions the sexism she faced, but my research shows that, as bad as sexism is, the situation for black, Latinx, and native American STEM doctoral students and faculty is actually significantly worse.