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Honestly, this sounds like a "reverse any advice you hear" sort of situation. Welsh did too much. However, from many people's perspective, Too Much is exactly

Honestly, this sounds like a "reverse any advice you hear" sort of situation. Welsh did too much. However, from many people's perspective, Too Much is exactly what you have to do to succeed in academia. You would really need a retrospective survey from those granted tenure to actually calibrate how much Too Much is a healthy margin to move up in your job, versus how much is actually way too much and harms your prospects. (I'm assuming that to some degree it will harm your health. This is unfortunate but true in most competitive fields.)

aseoijef 9y ago
As an N of 1, a professor with tenure, I think he's exactly right about being wrong in what he did, from the perspective of what is rational in the overall scheme of things. However, what he did is exactly what a professor is expected to do, from the perspective of promotion. I've read his essay before, and it touches a nerve, only because it's so revealing of how broken academics is. Everything Welsh says was wrong is wrong for all the reasons he says it is. The irony is that he seems to blame himself, when he should be blaming the standards of academics. Everything he says about grant writing, conferences, etc. being irrational is true.
bachmeier 9y ago
> Too Much is exactly what you have to do to succeed in academia I won't dispute that statement with respect to his situation. Academia is very broad, and the expectations at Harvard are rather different from most of academia. At many academic institutions you can have a life and get tenure.
- jimhefferon 9y ago
  I think that statement is getting less true every year. Increasingly, for instance, we seem to only hire people who would be tenurable today. So people are thinking they need to have a number of papers, etc., before they get a PhD. It is an accelleration and a person wonders if it doesn't result in people churning out stuff because it it publishable, rather than because it is worthwhile. And when you reward that, that's what you get.

aseoijef 9y ago

As an N of 1, a professor with tenure, I think he's exactly right about being wrong in what he did, from the perspective of what is rational in the overall scheme of things. However, what he did is exactly what a professor is expected to do, from the perspective of promotion. I've read his essay before, and it touches a nerve, only because it's so revealing of how broken academics is. Everything Welsh says was wrong is wrong for all the reasons he says it is. The irony is that he seems to blame himself, when he should be blaming the standards of academics. Everything he says about grant writing, conferences, etc. being irrational is true.

bachmeier 9y ago

> Too Much is exactly what you have to do to succeed in academia I won't dispute that statement with respect to his situation. Academia is very broad, and the expectations at Harvard are rather different from most of academia. At many academic institutions you can have a life and get tenure.

jimhefferon 9y ago
I think that statement is getting less true every year. Increasingly, for instance, we seem to only hire people who would be tenurable today. So people are thinking they need to have a number of papers, etc., before they get a PhD. It is an accelleration and a person wonders if it doesn't result in people churning out stuff because it it publishable, rather than because it is worthwhile. And when you reward that, that's what you get.