I can sympathise with it being exam week. Don't worry about it. I think that the problem that you have with academics is that to be good at research you must c

I can sympathise with it being exam week. Don't worry about it. I think that the problem that you have with academics is that to be good at research you must concentrate on that, and that alone. Teaching gets you nothing, so the good researchers tend to put as little effort into it as possible and the people who spend their time worrying about teaching are left behind on the research front. Not always, but often. So, if someone's interested in talking to you as a student, then they're more than likely poor at research or really not interested in you. If you can find the research-oriented staff on your campus and talk to them on their own terms, I guarantee that your opinion of 'academics' will change. You'll find a lot of interesting, dedicated people who do wonders on shoe-string budgets, working long hours on things that they find fascinating. Of course, these people tend not to get permanent jobs because of the amount of hideous politics that abounds in the upper echelons of academia...