Oh man. My heart goes out to the lecturer who came to see you. Academia can be a terribly brutal process. People go into it with such high hopes and lots of them get absolutely torn up and mangled. We compound that with our vicious American belief in self-reliance and work ethic and concept that we’re in a meritocracy that rewards work. There’s the sneaky underlying concept that if you don’t succeed, the failure is a personal failing. But I watch my friends get caught up in systems that are just plain out impossible, and blame themselves.
I thought that Freakonomics was fun, maybe a little facile. But I’ll always be grateful that it introduced me to the difference between careers and tournaments. A career has gradations that everyone has access to, training and paths for most to advance. A tournament is a winnowing process, in which many compete, largely on their own, for a very few highly-rewarded slots at the top. In Freakonomics, drug dealing is shown to be a tournament. In my world, my friends compete in the academic tournament. Most people will fail in the tournament for professorships. That’s the set-up and the only reasonable expected outcome. Maybe it isn’t inherently wrong that academia is set up that way, although it wastes the talents of some of the most brilliant among us and takes a painful toll on their lives. But it really is cruel that people don’t understand that they are entering a tournament and not a career. If people want to gamble that they are especially brilliant and lucky outliers, that’s fine. But they should know that they’re gambling against high odds, not beginning a process that is designed for their progress and success.
The other system I see eating my friends alive is the nuclear family, couple parents, couple young kids. Couple jobs and a house. The thing I always want them to remember is that the conventional picture of that, two parents working, house clean, everyone fed and time left over for cuddling the baby and having a romantic relationship, IS NOT POSSIBLE. This is impossible for middle class America or lower. My friends drive themselves so incredibly hard and blame themselves for failing. It is so cruel to feel that you are failing at something that was never possible, and to think that there is something wrong with you if your house isn’t clean and your partnership whole and your fridge stocked and baby nurtured constantly. But that isn’t a possible thing for two adults alone. Or it is, but the cost is a strangling burden of work.
When I see people doing that and looking sane, I don’t believe it. They have help I don’t see. They pay for housecleaning. There is a gift of money in the background. Grandparents step in reliably. Or, something has yielded. The adult relationship is neglected. They aren’t cooking for themselves. They’re falling behind on money. I see this in different ways in different couples, but the thing I hate to see the most is when they feel like failures and blame themselves. It is a terrible thing we’ve done, letting people believe those early parenting years in the middle or lower class nuclear lifestyle is possible for only two adults. There are solutions, going back to living in extended families or having extended parental leave or keeping small houses. I think we should do those as soon as we can, but if that takes a while, I’d at least like people to take those impossible expectations off themselves. At the least they should know when the whole system, including the American beliefs of self-reliance and work, is rigged against them.
Sugar, I always sound like someone with the crazy eyes when I talk about this, but if you are going to be advising people in an academic setting, it is pretty important that you read The Disciplined Mind. I’ll send you a copy of the book; I think it is that important. It might be a more negative take than you agree with, but so far it is the best explanation I’ve come across for what happened to me in grad school.