Aspiring towards academia

Being a geek is thought to be tough. You’ve got to be knowledgeable, you’ve got to be passionate, you’ve got to enjoy what you do. And it’s got to be science-y, nerdy, or something technological in nature. If you think being a geek is enough to become an academic, well, think again.

Academia is different. Academia is complex. Academia is full of cut-throat people willing to do anything to get that bloody grant before you get it. That’s what I was told. The story of everyone in academia. The hours are shit, your bosses are shit, the work is intense, it’s complicated as hell, and it’s never getting better. If you’re up for that grind, then you can survive. Thrive, even. But if that’s beyond you, then you’d better join a bank or something, it’ll be easier.

That’s not gonna be hard, I thought. That’s what they say about everything anyway. Shit hours, horrible bosses: isn’t that what life’s like in every job out there? You slog throughout the day and get back home and collapse in bed, waiting for the weekend. Rinse, repeat. Day after day, week after week, month after month. You get used to it and you can survive in any job out there. You could be a stockbroker, a bank manager, a professor, even a civil servant as long as you can get used to the grind.

True. But academia is different. I’ve always been a voracious reader. I devour books given the chance, and I usually remember what I read. But reading academic papers in earnest is extremely different from finishing Malazan or A Song of Ice and Fire.

First up, if you’re geared to do it properly, get ready to practically drown in the stuff. More papers get published everyday than you can practically keep up with, and if you’re trying to become an interdisciplinary force of nature, God help you. Going through biology everyday is hard enough, but when you add chemistry and chemical engineering to it, you’re practically praying for a miracle. Even if you stopped doing any work except your reading, if you could read hour after hour tirelessly, and if you had no distractions apart from an odd bathroom break or two, you’d still be looking at a mountain of reading to polish off before bed that night. And tomorrow promises more of the same. Rinse, repeat.

It’s not too bad until you actually start doing it. Reading a paper is an art in itself. Reading papers across multiple disciplines is akin to knowing how to play the saxophone, the drums, the piano, and the guitar… at the same time with just four limbs and a mouth. You’ve got to know stuff not only in your own domain, but in other subjects as well. You’ve got to know how everything fits in your mental map. You’ve got to create cross-linkings and hone your memory to be able to pick up on techniques referred to in other papers, books or conferences. And you’ve got to learn to do this in a single pass, because on a day-to-day basis you do not have the time for multiple passes of the same paper.

And if you’re aiming for a cross-discipline speciality, heaven help you. While computational biology and biochemistry might have something in common, if you’re trying to follow both, say, abstract math and psychology at the same time, you’ve got your work cut out.

It sometimes makes me wonder if a PhD student has any life at all. When will I get the time to write this blog? Or read The Way of Kings? Will I still be able to play football? Or write scathing replies to right-wing ideologues? And even more than that, will it even stop after I get a doctorate?

Somehow, I’m convinced that once I get my PhD, I won’t want it to.

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