Yes. It's exhausting. I'm several years past post-grad, have had a succession of one-year contracts, doing work I love and believe in and I genuinely believe has a lasting value, but the lack of any kind of security sucks. I'm rapidly approaching a wall where by I have to either go for tenure track/something more managerial/teaching or leave for something hopefully more lucrative in the private sector.
Sadly continuing with my present (rewarding, interesting) work is not an option even though after I leave, the work will still exist and will still have to be done by someone. But the academic system, such that it is, is a conveyor belt, and you gotta move on or get off.
And I got lucky too. My postgrad experience was short, went relatively well, and I'm well paid by academic standards now. I'm constantly surprised I made it out ok given the amount of stress it generated. I know many people who had much more miserable experiences in postgrad.
Academia is so dysfunctional right now. It's parasitic off the drive of young people who just want to make the world a little better. It's very unfortunate it's ended up this way.
This is one of the reasons why I often ask myself why the suicide rate is so low in society.
Had I stayed there, being on alert your whole life and dropping dead at 55 would've been very normal indeed.
This is why people who get someplace and then lose it, are the ones who tend to kill themselves, or folks who have a hard time fitting in from the get-go. For most people, they don't know things could be different, so they're fine with what is.
You misheard that phrase or learned it from someone who did. The correct version would be, "It was a dog-eat-dog world." The idiom makes a lot more sense in its correct form as it describes an environment of brutal competition.
I'm glad you find Canada to be a kinder place. I like it here too.
It goes another way: having some awareness of the situation is actively harmful for the same reason, because it makes it less acceptable mentally.
Life is a mixture of good and bad, and it's easy to fixate on the bad, but don't forget about the good. It matters too.
If you can get all the food you want but you choose to go down a path where you are likely to starve... what does that say about your mental health?
To me it says that the respective person is an idealist deep in his/her heart.
I personally don't think it is the case.
I think the rate of people dropping out of academia is a good indicator that something is not quite right. Especially as these postgrads are dropping out well short of "making a difference".
That so many people continue to go into the system despite this shows a clear lack of judgement.
"Let me use this moment to feel better than those other people."
What is "lack of judgment", exactly?
Or how about let's make sure at risk people are fully informed?
> What is "lack of judgment", exactly?
Feeling like you have wasted 5-10 years of your life - some of your best years.
The HN community thinks that intelligent people make highly informed decisions - and for many it's simply not true.
As one HN member to another, please don't do this. HN members are not some monolithic block; they hold diverse opinions. You yourself are a member of this community. Just as you disagree with the opinions of some members, they may disagree with yours. And on other opinions you may even agree!
Just present your reasons without assuming or generalizing the opinions of others. Your statement works equally well as "Some think that intelligent people make highly informed decisions...."
There is nothing wrong with generalizing - in fact it is normal and healthy behavior.
> Your statement works equally well as "Some think that intelligent people make highly informed decisions...."
No it doesn't. That's not at all what I was trying to say - I was summarizing the general sentiment, in my experience, of the current HN community.
Look I could be wrong - but in that case please debate the point.
You're the one making an argument that your generalization is warranted: it's on you to back it up. I'm not sure how you'd be able to do so. It's not 100%, unless you yourself hold this opinion. Everyone except you? I have a hard time believing that. I've seen plenty of comments (perhaps not in this thread) about irrationality and bias in human behavior regardless of intelligence (some I've made myself). Most? How do you quantify this? What percentage? How are you going to support it? If you do have some kind of quantitative data, I'd very much like to see it. It would certainly be interesting and a good starting point for a substantive discussion.
Such generalizations do no one any good, other that reducing people to some caricature that weakens your own point. What you describe as "normal and healthy behavior" is what supports the tribalistic behavior that leads to polarization. That's certainly not healthy.
I'm giving an experience report - if you do disagree with my point let me know and I can happily expand - but it feels like you disagree with me making a generalization rather than the particulars.
> It's not 100%, unless you yourself hold this opinion. Everyone except you? I have a hard time believing that.
I'm not sure you understand what a generalization is.
> Such generalizations do no one any good
That's a generalization and it's not a very accurate one.
We rely upon generalizations all the time - it's a healthy and necessary behaviour.
> other that reducing people to some caricature that weakens your own point
Another unsubstantiated generalization.
Reducing to a caricature helps focus the conversation on the caricature.
> is what supports the tribalistic behavior that leads to polarization.
How? It doesn't even make sense most of the time - for example I'm not defining or helping create an in-group vs out-group with my comments.
Secondly, what makes polarization or even tribalistic behavior inherently bad/unhealthy?
The vast majority of group behaviour is not easily quantified and is based on thousands of generalizations. It's not the problem you make it out to be.
You didn't say they were poorly informed, you said they lack judgment. That's something usually said about a group of people to blame them for what happened and write the situation off as "not a problem, those people just suck".
So I'm not sure how you intended for that to go over as "those people are poorly informed". Of course they aren't, but that's not "poor judgment", it's a completely different statement to make, effectively an opposite one.
> Feeling like you have wasted 5-10 years of your life - some of your best years.
Why does a feeling indicate "poor judgment"? Do people who develop depression have poor judgment? Do people with midlife crisis? Do people with PTSD? Do failed athletes?
Correct. And?
One way to fix a lack of judgement is to inform.
> That's something usually said about a group of people to blame them for what happened and write the situation off as "not a problem, those people just suck"
Perhaps in your neck of the woods - where I come from it doesn't mean any such thing. In fact you would never use it like that.
> Why does a feeling indicate "poor judgment"?
Is the feeling reasonable and does it reflect reality?