Do academics have good reasons to be depressed?
When I was in graduate school, I had two friends (also grad students) who cried (literally broke down in tears) just about every single week of their graduate school careers — and it might even have been more like every day. They seemed truly miserable much of the time, and it took them both a lot of soul-searching to find a way out of that existential morass.
For me, back then, their plight always seemed like a powerful lesson, a reminder that “the life of the mind” should be challenging without being debilitating. But it isn’t necessarily easy to maintain some kind of discrete firewall between those two alternatives. And academics seem to have more and more reason to court such melancholia all the time.
For one thing, the nature of our conversations/debates are sometimes so unnecessarily cantankerous — if not downright petty. Very little is new under the sun, least of all of that rhetoric/stance of dismissive and hostile critique. But how useful is it? What’s the point? And that stuff only gets worse with the Internet. Everyone’s doing it. With ostensible impunity. Indeed, academics aren’t the only ones who seem to have gone FOX News (even National Enquirer) in terms of over-the-top and ad hominem attacks on interlocutors. But we are supposed to offer up a different model of engagement, no? (Just reading the venomous comments posted to people’s Brainstorm blogs can make one depressed.)
And are academics friendship-deprived?
That could be another reason for academic melancholia. Of course, we have colleagues. If we’re lucky, very generous and supportive ones, but are we under-friended? I have one colleague who claims that he hasn’t made a new “friend” in the academy since 1997. Not just a cordial acquaintance, but a substantive and full-fledged friend. Given the nature of our sometimes-hostile exchanges (as mentioned above), it stands to reason that we wouldn’t concomitantly cultivate the skills needed to successfully befriend folks. I just had a grad student return from an academic conference and complain about the fact that everyone she met in the lobby of the conference hotel seemed to only half-listen to her as they scanned the crowd for more prestigious scholars to talk to. Does getting disciplined into academic life mean unlearning some of the basic rules of social interaction? If so, that’s reason enough to be discouraged.
For most of us, how happy is life within the Ivory Tower? I keep telling nonacademics that academia is the best gig around. And it is. But why do so many faculty members across the country sometimes appear quite clearly unhappy and anxious about their lot? And it is a state that often lasts well after individuals have cleared the tenure hurdle.
9 Responses to Academic Melancholia?
stinkcat - October 23, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Could it be that many academics are just plain nuts?
luther_blissett - October 23, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I’d say that the main causes of graduate student melancholia are quite concrete:(a) constant insecurity regarding funding(b) constant insecurity regarding the departmental budget (which often means grants to pay for travel and expenses to academic conferences)(c) constant insecurity regarding teaching (will I get teaching this semester? What will I be teaching? Will my class have enough enrollment to run?)(d) unclear expectations of professors, especially in the humanities, where very few professors make it clear exactly what a “seminar paper” is or what is meant by “presentation” or where professors do not police requirements (five-minute presentations devolve into hour-long presentations in the attempt to impress the professor).(e) unclear expectations for oral and written exams(f) unclear expectations for what a dissertation even is, what the deadlines are, etc.(g) difficulty in securing a dissertation committee(h) difficulty in getting your dissertation committee to read your work, write letters, etc.(i) the knowledge that, no matter how well you do, you may never get a job in your field
stinkcat - October 23, 2009 at 4:23 pm
“the knowledge that, no matter how well you do, you may never get a job in your field”Sounds like a pretty good reason not to go to graduate school.
_perplexed_ - October 23, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Anyone in graduate school who hopes to pursue an academic career and isn’t enjoying (excepting the stress due to personal poverty) the process should probably quit, because it doesn’t get any better even when you have tenure in hand.
classicalprof - October 23, 2009 at 5:42 pm
When I briefly went on antidepressants in graduate school, my psychiatrist suggested it was likely that I would be able to get off them when I began dissertating because that had been the case for many of the other grads on them (which also implies there were sufficient numbers of us to make such a claim). She also chalked it up (partly) to biology and evolution: our bodies and minds are still built for gathering and hunting, and this sedentary life of the mind puts stress on us to which we haven’t yet acclimated. Don’t know if that has any validity, but it can be amusing to imagine our possible future selves…
reader15 - October 24, 2009 at 8:27 am
I am newly tenured in the humanities at an R1, and miserable. What I have realized in the last six months:(i) No one gives a d*mn about the research I have put my heart and soul into for the last six years. (ii) University administration now supports revenue-producing disciplines almost exclusively. Although my field requires nothing more than a good library for research, because we bring in no corporate or federal funding, and because we don’t have a huge pool of full-tuition-paying grad students, my department may well be eliminated.Even if the department survives, it’s not exactly a rosy picture:(ii) I’m stuck hundreds of miles from civilization in an anti-intellectual town.(iii) I’m going to be teaching remedial-level courses for the rest of my career, to students who see them as an obstacle, not as an opportunity.(iv) I am never going to attain the middle-class standard of living I grew up with. It is unlikely that I’ll be able to afford to retire. Ever. I had a more sanguine outlook as a grad student, full of hope that I’d carve out a career rich in intellectual engagement and productivity. That’s what I wanted more than financial security, but as it turns out, I have neither. No, not much happiness here.
hyacinth21 - October 24, 2009 at 9:30 am
reader15: your comments hit home. I hear colleagues echo your sentiments point by point at my institution.
stinkcat - October 24, 2009 at 11:38 am
reader15, why don’t you learn to become a plumber? Then you won’t have to worry about administrative whims and living near rednecks. Then in your free time you can write about all this stuff that none of us will ever read.
suomynona - October 25, 2009 at 8:09 am
I’m still a grad. student in an oversupplied field. I know that my chances of gaining tenure-track employment are likely to be poor (I have a couple years left on the dissertation, but who knows what things will be like when I hit the job market). And I’m not independently wealthy. These factors lead to regular bouts of anxiety over financial matters. But to be hoenst, I got over the fact that no one will read or care about my research back when I was a master’s student. I’m not in this to save the world. I enjoy teaching and I still (shockingly) enjoy my research. And when I stop enjoying my research, I’ll find new research to do. And if it never sees the light of day, maybe it will lead me to something else that could be written for a nonacademic audience that does. And if not, I still wouldn’t consider it a waste. It’s fulfilling to *me*. And just because I’m an academic doesn’t mean I have to take the impossible responsibility upon my shoulders of convincing everyone of the use-value of my discipline. Or just generally that there’s more to life than making enough money to find expensive ways to waste a life, or perhaps even of finding expensive ways of preserving an empty life. I’m too young and cynical too worry about these kinds of questions before I even have a damn job. But I would ask: why should academics concieve of themselves as the burden-bearers of all the big questions when no matter how much progress we make, most people don’t care anyway. Most people don’t want progress. Having come to understand this, and though it may not sound like it, I’m a pretty happy person.