It is agreed, then: research and writing are not hard, if you are trained for them. The much harder aspects of academic work are:
– dealing with anti intellectualism from various quarters
– dealing with gender discrimination which is much more extreme in certain kinds of schools and also families
– the backbreaking labor of teaching multiple sections of lower division English, foreign languages, and mathematics;
– hostile working conditions, negative people at work, obstacles put up at work;
– the construction of the academic world as a meritocracy and the consequent internalization of destructive attitudes renamed as “realistic advice.”
What irritates me in so many discussions, in so much advice that is given, is that administrative answer. If I say, the standard advice does not apply here or does not appear to even be good advice, people are guaranteed to say, weak mind that I am, that I must not have understood it, then.
The insistence – among people trained to be objective, no less – on the belief in false “facts,” such as that research and writing are hard and painful “requirements” one only fulfills because one is forced to and that one is only barely competent to undertake – is the bane of academia.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 