Emotion in academia (especially if you’re young, and a women)

Dear Secret SESS scholar, please help.

An older-male-herr-professor recently told me that a critique I wrote in response to his article was ’emotional’ (he cringed at the word).

It (my critique) was emotional.

It was an emotional response to a framework published in a powerful journal that I am afraid will shut-down important future research trajectories.

Why academia needs emotional, passionate women:

http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2015/jul/23/why-academia-needs-emotional-passionate-women

By the way, my co-author on that response was an established-male-academic. I wonder if he would have been accused of being emotional as well.

Thank you,

LJH (initials create so much gender mystique, non?)

 

The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life

Awesome and personal blog by Radhika Nagpal. Her reflections about being a young academic and the pressure that we/is put on us . She says this about having a tenure track:

• I decided that this is a 7-year postdoc.
• I stopped taking advice.
• I created a “feelgood” email folder.
• I work fixed hours and in fixed amounts.
• I try to be the best “whole” person I can.
• I found real friends.
• I have fun “now”.

Happy reading and relieving the pressure you might sense…

There’s an awful cost to a PhD that no one talks about

Some of us found this article very helpful: http://qz.com/547641/theres-an-awful-cost-to-getting-a-phd-that-no-one-talks-about/ 

The purpose of posting this isn’t doom and gloom, but rather:

I might not have felt so alone had I known how many people struggle with mental health issues in academia. A 2015 study at the University of California Berkeley found that 47% of graduate students suffer from depression, following a previous 2005 study that showed 10% had contemplated suicide. A 2003 Australian study found that that the rate of mental illness in academic staff was three to four times higher than in the general population, according to a New Scientist article. The same article notes that the percentage of academics with mental illness in the United Kingdom has been estimated at 53%.

And we like how the author concluded:

These days, I seldom use my physics knowledge. But I still rely on the inner strength that I developed during my time in graduate school, which gave me the courage to mold my own life.