My coworkers are so much more normal now, than in academia.

My coworkers are so much more normal now, than in academia.

I had taken a few extra days off from my resthome job so I could stay at home and work on projects more (i.e., my campaign, though I didn't tell the RN that specifically), and she arranged my days off so I had them all in a row, so I wasn't around the resthome for like almost a week.

On the day I got back, then, I was walking in on the street outside, and coming towards me were two of my (Tibetan) (female) coworkers who had just clocked out, and so I waved to them and said hi as we were approaching one another, and one of them was like, "Where were you?, we haven't seen you for a while!", and so I said that I had taken a few extra days off and that I hadn't been in for like a week, and that today was my first day back.

"Good, I hope you had a good rest," my one (female) (Tibetan) coworker was like.

Honestly, it is so nice to be in a normal workplace!  That interaction was so normal!  Did I ever have an interaction like that in academia?

It's interesting, I've been in touch recently with like two to three grad students I know who are finishing up, and all of them are like, "F*ck academia," not because of how few tenure-track jobs there are, but how miserable the working environment is, both the short-term jobs you get while you try to finish up your degree and maybe get a tenure-track job and then, too, the tenured people you have to be around while you do all that.

"Self-centered clowns," is how one (Italian) grad student described (most of) the tenured, in a social media posting.