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Comment by Escapado | Hacker News Reader

Financial uncertainties, publish or parish culture and inappropriate performance metrics seem like the perfect cocktail for depression and anxiety. Probably why the rate of mental health issues for academics surges. I just finished my masters in physics and while I like the romantic idea of dedicating the next portion of my life to research and aim for a PhD, when I think about it I also see all the sad, tired and stressed out faces of PhD students and postdocs in my institute, most of them working well beyond 60hr/week, many of them having mental health issues and somehow everyone is just accepting it. The companies I worked at part time during my studies, while also putting some pressure on the workforce, have not shown this level of dispair. I don't really know what to do and feel a little lost on the subject. I just wish things were better in academia.

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It depends on the specific professor. There are stressful and relaxed ones. It trickles down from the professors to their assistants to their PhD students. Here's my ad-hoc list of bad signs. Avoid those.

Professors

* don't have time for feedback

* have no interest in their PhD students' work

* are known to steal results (and put their names on it)

* are ideologically/religiously driven and judge you and everybody else accordingly

* don't open their network to their PhD students

* jump from one hot/trendy topic to the next and burn their PhD students on it

* blame others/circumstances for anything bad

Faculty

* members pride themselves for devoting their lives to the cause

* members do long work days, have little sleep

* has little budget it spends on its PhD students

* feels toxic (Sayre's Law: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.")

PhD students

* do overtime

* rarely/never publish

* publish in irrelevant magazines

* publish with their names on the nth position (after doing all the work)

* don't or rarely attend conferences

* don't or rarely work on what they signed up for

* take long to finish (or don't finish at all)

* blame others/circumstances for their bad situation

Talk to PhD students, ask on the net, listen to speeches and lectures the professors gave.

A lot of advice given at HN about whether to join a startup applies to academia as well. Unnecessary work, little pay, vague promises, inconsistent management, insider circles. I wonder what academia's equivalent of stock options is. Aiming for tenureship perhaps?

Why don't you pick up programming and do freelance work half the time, then physics the rest? You can work on whatever you want with no pressure.

That's the worst possible thing you can do. Citation: I did this.

Why was it such a bad experience for you?

Not OP, but I considered doing something similar.

I believe the problem is that you cannot well concentrate on either, constant switching of completely different mental tasks will be very taxing.

Also, when you're "in the flow" in one area it's difficult to suddenly switch to the other. So it's hard to manage that time split.

I try to do it in big chunks to minimize context switching; so 3 months making money full-time, 9 months doing my own research.

Do you see another way to do whatever research you want to do, while not being in academia?

Or do you mean, just don't do research on your own?

That's exactly what I am doing now. I have been enrolled as a PhD student in computer science and working at the same time for almost 3 years.

I cannot really recommend it, mainly because of the workload. However there are things to be learnt both from academia and from the private sector. Moreover, being a PhD student won't make you earn any real money any time soon, nor give you any valuable work experience, IMO.

> You can work on whatever you want with no pressure.

Nor being a PhD candidate, nor being a freelancer guarantee that you can work on whatever you want with no pressure. And doing both at the same time will only make things harder to manage your time and actually do it "with no pressure".

If physics is just going to be a hobby, treat it like a hobby (and timebox it accordingly). Definitely don't let somebody else destroy your life for it.

I hated it at the time, but my lying, psychopathic "project advisor" where I got my Bachelor's in Physics did me a big favor by helping me realize the last thing I wanted was people like him in control of my life.

Related - "Don't Do For Money What Others Do For Love" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16792942

At the moment no matter how much you protest there's a stream of chumps happy to take your spot. We need to start examining the ROI of academia the way we would for anything else demanding such a huge chunk of your life and sanity.

I'm not suggesting it be a hobby, actually I'm saying you should take it more seriously than just a job. For me it's a personal mission - I don't think academia is the best avenue to pursue so I find my own money and focus on what I find important.

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