Interesting observation in a higher ed article that I read the other day.

In a higher ed article that I was reading the other day, this guy who transitioned to another professional sector not only said that he met with envy from many professors who had gotten some of the few remaining "good" jobs, but he also said that he was just as productive as many of them, since he continued to write, and what with all the administrative duties and overwork of tenured professor positions nowadays, he could squeeze in as many reading and writing and research hours after work and on weekends as they could probably get out of their workweeks, too.

Years ago when I decided to not pursue any academic jobs, that was my feeling, too, and it's interesting to see it finally getting acknowledged in the higher ed press.

And, it's like my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair) said a while ago when he was getting disenchanted with academia, that the position at the end of everything isn't all that good to reward all the years of hard work and abuse that might lead up to it.

He also had observed that most of the people are pretty awful too, and that at one point recently he realized that he really didn't want to be like any of his advisers and that they were all just awful people with miserable lives, and that that's when he realized that he was just done with academia.

He also said recently that he came across some of the people who had moved on and had gotten some of the "good" jobs, and they're spitting out versions of papers still saying the same thing that they said three years ago, and it's just pathetic, whereas people he knows who left and aren't in academia at all anymore have continued to learn lots of new things and just engage and change and grow.

"I really feel like I left a cult," he was like.

He added that if you ever try to explain to people on the outside the politics of a disciplinary subfield that so-and-so's students don't like so-and-so's because of this one thing that happened years ago, that it all just sounds crazy.

"I really feel like I left a cult," he was like, again.