coldhearted scientist وداد

I have had trouble been mostly unhappy in academia ever since finishing the Ph.D and there are reasons for this having to do with my background, principally having been taught that I was not worthy and also that I should not be enjoying this. Because of these lessons everything I do is fraught with guilt, fear and pain even though it should not be. When I was not unhappy: (1) before I internalized what someone else called “the enslavement process” – a term too strong for my own case, yet interesting; and (2) during a brief period in which I was not undermined either at work or outside it — which was also before I internalized the enslavement process.

There are also positive reasons why I have trouble in academia and the students say it is because I am not like the other professors — not dour enough, not conventional enough, not passive-aggressive enough, and not well enough convinced that there are no alternatives in life. There is yet another way in which I am not normal and that is, believe it or not, that I am too conservative and strait-laced.

What would you rather have: a department chair or college dean who keeps telling everyone to publish more, teach better, and do more service, but who also creates the conditions in which this is possible, or one who tells everyone everything is fine, but then creates conditions in which work is difficult to accomplish and bullies and harassers are given free rein to operate?

I choose the first, but most choose the second, and I do not understand them. Disclaimer: remember that this blog is asynchronous — if any stories in it are true, they may or may not be about me, and they are not about events at my current institution at the current time.

Axé.