Dear academia,
it’s been nearly two years since we parted. When we just met, I was so in love. I wanted to be with you, gather data and write papers for you. I wanted to science with you and spent many of my waking (and supposed-to-be-sleeping) hours thinking about you. I wanted to stay with you and worked so hard to try and make that happen.
But then, when I was all disgruntled and unsure whether us being together was really what was best for me, I decided to leave you. I decided to join industry. In industry, the building is shiny, the people have had training on how to communicate and I was even offered a permanent contract.
But when I look out of the window of that shiny building, I can still see you. I hear about you at home from my husband and from friends. And now that the honeymoon phase with industry is over, and I see the cracks in the shiny building and the fact that even with communication training, people are sometimes still jerks – but in a politer way – I miss you. I miss doing research without the boundaries of what is commercially useful and what is important to convince the people who need to prescribe or buy things. I miss being able to think of a project entirely by myself and write it down in the hopes of being able to execute it some day. And mostly, I miss the dream of being important someday; having my own lab that does breakthrough science and wins prizes for it.
And I don’t know if this means I should try to get back together with you, academia. Or that I just forgot the disgruntled bits and only remember the good times we had together. Or that – perhaps – I can figure out some way to have a threesome.
Re: politeness-
yes, “nice” is different than “good”.
People aren’t better in industry. If anything, they are more selfish. But they are far less likely to subject people to a particular type of blunt criticism.
“People aren’t better in industry. If anything, they are more selfish.”
I don’t know about better, but in my experience (PhD and then 10+ years in industry, now back in Academia), I have never seen selfishness in industry on the level that I have seen — and continue to see — in Academia. Many more bloated egos here, too.
As to the OP: give it time. You didn’t just leave Academia in a huff, did you? There were years of disappointment and frustration that convinced you to go, no? You’ve got to make choices between things *as they are*, not as you’d wish them to be. Watch out for that! I sometimes fall into this trap myself….
Agree.
I went from academia to industry to academia to industry. I loved my work in all places but only in academia did I feel abused by higher-ups (as opposed to annoyed) and disgusted by unethical and obstructive behavior.
Assholes can be found everywhere; my experience was industry had better protocols for dealing with them.
It may be that I just worked in exceptionally good companies & extraordinarily bad academic environments. But part of my professional life was to analyze academia’s challenges for women. And I began to feel uncomfortable about urging women to consider academic careers. Industry’s no shining city on a hill for women but I think it’s easier to make a normal life (not least in choosing where to live rather than the job choosing for you, and being able to actually live w/one’s partner),get good pay, and leave work at the office when it’s time to go home.
Thanks for your insight, Zuska. I think the big difference is indeed that people here are not afraid to share that they have a life outside work, which is quite the culture-change from academia where many people still think that the best way to be a scientist is to do science 24/7.
” You’ve got to make choices between things *as they are*, not as you’d wish them to be. ”
Yes, very true. I’ve actually made this mistake before as well in an actual relationship…
Despite what your loveheart implies, you are still sciencing. You are sciencing every single day at your job. You have not lost science, you have lost academia.
Academia ≠ science.
I feel to imply that if you are not in academia you aren’t in science does a massive dis-service to everyone, including yourself.
Yes you’re entirely right and I’ve actually argued that to several people myself, but it wouldn’t fit in that sentence if I had said “academia’ed” instead of scienced 😉