3 ms·

the inclusion of professors in the list of people who generally aren't mean people is... questionable. being a professor means playing many zero sum games: lim

the inclusion of professors in the list of people who generally aren't mean people is... questionable. being a professor means playing many zero sum games: limited government grants for research, limited number of jobs in academia. perhaps they're nice to pg, but they're often mean to their grad students and postdocs, and to anyone else who doesn't control a scarce resource and who gets in their way.

redacted 12y ago
I completely agree, and that casts a lot of the rest of the piece into question. I've worked in academia for years and I laughed out loud (and bitterly, I might add) at that.
jeffreyrogers 12y ago
Yeah, I've had some professors who were quite mean to students (A small amount though, maybe 2-3, most seem to care about their students, at least at my university). I think what PG sees instead is that the people he interacts with aren't mean to him because he has power over them, so he assumes they treat everyone the same way.
- jrs99 12y ago
  if you're at harvard, that's probably why you've only seen a "small amount" of mean professors. try a college where most professors have achieved nothing and are having a midlife crisis.
selmnoo 12y ago
Some of the professors I know are basically mobsters. They threaten to have people fired if they don't walk the walk the prof. wants them to walk, they operate in rigged peer-reviewing committees, when sitting on grant review committees they fund their friends even when their grant proposals are bad; and give bad scores to proposals from folks they don't like. The more I stay in academia, the more I find out this is normal. Especially on the top, especially in elite universities. This is disheartening particularly to me because I used to work in corporate, and I used to think then "boy, my work is not being fulfilled here". Now I come here and find out it's backstabbing all the way. I find out that the only way for me to get ahead is by taking sides, being a suck-up, and doing the dirty work the professors want me to do. The professors who've gotten ahead, they know this and basically orchestrate the game.

redacted 12y ago

I completely agree, and that casts a lot of the rest of the piece into question. I've worked in academia for years and I laughed out loud (and bitterly, I might add) at that.

jeffreyrogers 12y ago

Yeah, I've had some professors who were quite mean to students (A small amount though, maybe 2-3, most seem to care about their students, at least at my university). I think what PG sees instead is that the people he interacts with aren't mean to him because he has power over them, so he assumes they treat everyone the same way.

jrs99 12y ago
if you're at harvard, that's probably why you've only seen a "small amount" of mean professors. try a college where most professors have achieved nothing and are having a midlife crisis.

selmnoo 12y ago

Some of the professors I know are basically mobsters. They threaten to have people fired if they don't walk the walk the prof. wants them to walk, they operate in rigged peer-reviewing committees, when sitting on grant review committees they fund their friends even when their grant proposals are bad; and give bad scores to proposals from folks they don't like. The more I stay in academia, the more I find out this is normal. Especially on the top, especially in elite universities. This is disheartening particularly to me because I used to work in corporate, and I used to think then "boy, my work is not being fulfilled here". Now I come here and find out it's backstabbing all the way. I find out that the only way for me to get ahead is by taking sides, being a suck-up, and doing the dirty work the professors want me to do. The professors who've gotten ahead, they know this and basically orchestrate the game.