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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

On delusional academics


The other day, I was talking to transitioning out of academia with a couple people in my lab. One of the grad students had just had a conversation with a senior PI (but not our PI) about that. The senior PI had said that ze didn’t understand that people would leave academia. Ze understood that times were rough now, with the economy being bad and funding being low, but if everyone would just wait it out, things would turn for the better and we could all stay in academia. Yeah right. Sadly, the grad student didn’t ask what we were all supposed to do while waiting for the economy to get better, so I don’t know the answer to that. And I wonder if said senior PI would know the answer.

2 comments:

  1. Doonesbury today has the answer:
    http://assets.amuniversal.com/ab37a9202e310131402c001dd8b71c47?width=900

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  2. Right, so we all should wait until it gets better... than you are too old to apply for transition grants and people start to wonder why you spent so much time as a postdoc! My advice during SFN was "gotta go where the money is", so my take home message is that if you want to stay in academia, gotta do top fundable research. Or just move on outside academia. Sad...

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