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overwork, bad salaries, competition, bad relationship with supervisors are often mentioned but I think this is not the whole picture. I would focus more on res

overwork, bad salaries, competition, bad relationship with supervisors are often mentioned but I think this is not the whole picture. I would focus more on research itself. Research can be really shitty. It's extremely open ended, so you may be a brilliant student with exams, but feel clueless about what to do when there is no clear problem and no clear solution. Science is now extremely incremental compared to 50 years ago, meaning that you work on a tiny problem and you only try to take it forward by epsilon. This is different from the idea we often have of science as "eureka!" and revolutionary changes of paradigm. Most of our time we only aim to publish some paper on something, and move on, even without fully believing in what we're trying hard to convince reviewers of. Which is a horrible feeling. All this causes one clear phenomenon: lack of motivation. Motivation is essential for any hard job. But it's very very hard to keep motivation high, let's be honest, on working like crazy on some project that ends up in a paper that probably almost nobody will ever read. I don't ever want to do that again. And it's not about the salary, or my boss, or working long hours (I don't).

Schroedingers2c 4y ago
As a final year PhD student I wholeheartedly agree with this. That alone makes it very rough to keep up the high level of motivation. And then add the other quirks of academia on top of that.
- Balgair 4y ago
  Could you elucidate the other quirks for us? I'd be interested to know your experiences. Sorry if this comes off as gruff, I honestly do want to hear.
  - Schroedingers2c 4y ago
    - Nepotism - A high proportion of people from privileged backgrounds - The academic publishing process (although this has gotten better over the years with more open access). But in traditional, and usually more "esteemed" journals, you pay to submit your work (want it open access? Please pay 9500€! That is no joke, this is Nature's open access fee.), you peer-review others' papers for free ("service to the academic community"), and then you pay to read articles (or your university does). The journals profit. With insane margins. - It happens that you discuss the same problem, in the same way, saying almost the same sentences many times over the span of months/years. The feeling of running in circles is very common and I find it exhausting. - Senior people can hold an extreme level of power over the careers of more junior people. You're so specialised that it can happen that there are just like 5 other places on the world where your kind of research happens. You don't want to move away, but still want tenure? You're at the complete mercy of your group leader. - Being almost expected to move around every 1-3 years as a postdoc when you're in your late 20s / early 30s. This can be very enriching and you see the world and meet many diverse people, but can also be very isolating and depressing depending on your personality and how well your location fits you. And is very rough on relationships.
lambdaloop 4y ago
That's a great point! Honestly this was a quick post I wrote to practice writing and wrote it from my own personal experiences. I agree with you about research being really open ended, which makes it hard. Several of us have dealt with depression after an experiment we worked on for 2 years abruptly failed. I disagree about science being more incremental than 50 years ago. I think we tend to read only read the highlights from the past and it makes it feel like everything was revolutionary. There were incremental changes in the past and we have revolutions in the present. In my field, Drosophila neuroscience, our methods have completely changed between when I started 5 years ago and now. We can now track all joints of a moving fly in 3D. The tools to image neural activity are literally 10x better (in terms of SNR and speed). We have the connectome for (half of) an adult fly brain and complete larval brain connectome, which is changing how we look at these circuits. We have identified all the motor neurons in the ventral nerve cord of the fly.
- asciii 4y ago
  > We can now track all joints of a moving fly in 3D. The tools to image neural activity are literally 10x better This sounds like another blog post I’d dive into…
  - lambdaloop 4y ago
    Ohh good idea. Will write it sometime. If you're interested in the progress in animal tracking, I wrote a post summarizing some up and coming research here: https://writing.lambdaloop.com/posts/cv4animals-2021/ https://writing.lambdaloop.com/posts/cv4animals-2021/
    - asciii 4y ago
      I am, thanks for sharing!

Schroedingers2c 4y ago

As a final year PhD student I wholeheartedly agree with this. That alone makes it very rough to keep up the high level of motivation. And then add the other quirks of academia on top of that.

Balgair 4y ago
Could you elucidate the other quirks for us? I'd be interested to know your experiences. Sorry if this comes off as gruff, I honestly do want to hear.
- Schroedingers2c 4y ago
  - Nepotism - A high proportion of people from privileged backgrounds - The academic publishing process (although this has gotten better over the years with more open access). But in traditional, and usually more "esteemed" journals, you pay to submit your work (want it open access? Please pay 9500€! That is no joke, this is Nature's open access fee.), you peer-review others' papers for free ("service to the academic community"), and then you pay to read articles (or your university does). The journals profit. With insane margins. - It happens that you discuss the same problem, in the same way, saying almost the same sentences many times over the span of months/years. The feeling of running in circles is very common and I find it exhausting. - Senior people can hold an extreme level of power over the careers of more junior people. You're so specialised that it can happen that there are just like 5 other places on the world where your kind of research happens. You don't want to move away, but still want tenure? You're at the complete mercy of your group leader. - Being almost expected to move around every 1-3 years as a postdoc when you're in your late 20s / early 30s. This can be very enriching and you see the world and meet many diverse people, but can also be very isolating and depressing depending on your personality and how well your location fits you. And is very rough on relationships.

lambdaloop 4y ago

That's a great point! Honestly this was a quick post I wrote to practice writing and wrote it from my own personal experiences. I agree with you about research being really open ended, which makes it hard. Several of us have dealt with depression after an experiment we worked on for 2 years abruptly failed. I disagree about science being more incremental than 50 years ago. I think we tend to read only read the highlights from the past and it makes it feel like everything was revolutionary. There were incremental changes in the past and we have revolutions in the present. In my field, Drosophila neuroscience, our methods have completely changed between when I started 5 years ago and now. We can now track all joints of a moving fly in 3D. The tools to image neural activity are literally 10x better (in terms of SNR and speed). We have the connectome for (half of) an adult fly brain and complete larval brain connectome, which is changing how we look at these circuits. We have identified all the motor neurons in the ventral nerve cord of the fly.

asciii 4y ago
> We can now track all joints of a moving fly in 3D. The tools to image neural activity are literally 10x better This sounds like another blog post I’d dive into…
- lambdaloop 4y ago
  Ohh good idea. Will write it sometime. If you're interested in the progress in animal tracking, I wrote a post summarizing some up and coming research here: https://writing.lambdaloop.com/posts/cv4animals-2021/ https://writing.lambdaloop.com/posts/cv4animals-2021/
  - asciii 4y ago
    I am, thanks for sharing!