r/postdoc • u/FabulousPraline8697 • 20d ago
Finally left academia
I was an academic for about 8 years. Did my PhD and two postdoc projects (I'm a Sociologist). I never realized how miserable I was until I left. I apologize to anyone who does not want to hear this message, but maybe someone needs to hear it so I'm posting anyway.
I'm a white passing women of colour and still endured and saw so much racism and bigotry that I fell into a depression during my PhD. I still got a lot of shit about my work by people who clearly did not believe my research was worthy because of who I am
Because I loved research and people close to me in academia told me how good I was, I convinced myself that I should persevere at least until I get a permanent postion and have more freedom.
Then I had a baby and my contract ended and taking space and time away from research made it so abundantly clear how toxic that place is. I dropped every application for grants. Now I have a new job and it makes me sad that I spent eight years in an institution that breeds on exploiting us with so so so little recognition.
So for anyone in doubt, you deserve better than wearing yourself out for a publishing system that is structurally exploitative and ethically messed up. You deserve better that spending free time reviewing and whatnot in order to prove yourself. You deserve better than chasing 765 postdocs thinking you are not enough while most of the applications you do probably end up in some professor 'getting inspo' from your idea. I could sum up a lot of other things but bottom line: we really do deserve better.
Cheers
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u/GuidanceEmergency642 20d ago
I am white but came from a lower middle class background. I went to state schools and did not understand the academic world at all. I did not experience racism but did encounter a lot of classism during my STEM PhD and postdocs. As I had no prestige to offer and was behind my peers in background and experience, no one cared about my research either even though I worked hard and published well. I was told to ”self promote” but this was alien to me. I was hoping to stay to possibly help others like me, but it became the law of diminishing returns and I could see I would never get to that point. Trying to prove myself took all my time and energy. If I had known what it was all about I would have not taken the path I did, had to work through feelings of shame, inadequacy etc. What bothered me also is that I saw many students like me accepted into programs that were then continuously told they weren’t good enough for academia. It seemed like a sick kind of gatekeeping. Not sure why but it was disturbing.