It is said that everyone is competing but I think they are competing down, not up. They are competing for towel space on a crowded beach, as it were. But if you go out past the bathers and through the waves, there are only a few swimmers in the clear water. There is space for everyone and they wave at you as you go by.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Reblogged this on Clarissa's Blog and commented:
The most insightful thing I have read in a while from blogger Z. I think this is brilliant, folks:
Brilliant. Competition down is parallel to your insight that doing things badly drains energy.
Oh yes, this is exactly true. People compete down and do things poorly.
More broadly, this is also part of the “writing is fun, publishing is easy” series ;-), in which we say the opposite of every commonplace pronounced by those who are competing down.
Wonderful insight.
I can’t comment at Sisyphus’s anymore (refuse to use Google account), but I would have liked to refer to this in the comments there, where she asked whether people would still publish if they left academia.
At least one commenter (who has left) said she didn’t like reading academic articles, so she didn’t much like writing them.
!
Seems like a sign you’re in the wrong field. Or on the beach. Doing things to jump through hoops rather than because they matter.
@DEH, agree. I did comment at Sisyphus’ in spite of having to use Google account instead of this identity (though I think I just got this identity to work). If you aren’t interested in scholarship, it does seem to me like you’re in the wrong place? I’ve never quite known what to make of scholars who don’t like scholarly writing, but I also get the feeling that saying you don’t is sort of fashionable — like saying you don’t have a TV.
(Writing IS fun!)
Hi sophylou! There is something really disturbing about that post, something about its presuppositions, as you suggest. I am not sure whether or not to engage with it — would that be revealing, or just draining?
Would I write academic things in field if I were not in an academic job? It depends on the nonacademic job and my means. Probably not, though, not because I am not interested but because I would be in a different life and would have other work things to write. I also would not be in the thick of things and I do not know whether I would be able to keep up with field and so on, so it really would all depend. I am not one of those who says the only thing giving meaning to their life is one particular academic project, which is why if I had a completely different life I might dedicate myself to that, although I would still have the academic interests I have.
But, as you say, the problem seems to be that they are only writing because they have to. What to make of scholars who don’t like scholarly writing, I really do not know, either. It is very odd, unclear to me why they went as far as they did without liking scholarly writing.
It may be a sign of the wrong area, not the profession more broadly. I do not greatly care for reading literary criticism (this is a broad generalization) but usually love reading about manuscripts, so this shows that my re-training myself as a manuscript scholar is the right course.
Yes, but having to read a lot of bad scholarly articles can be really draining. You have to read them to see what they say, but they are not the kind of reading one likes. And those are the majority. I’ve always wanted to write the kind of articles people would actually like to read, but am in the minority. (In even having that as my goal; whether I achieve it or not is another question.)
And I have had colleagues say they don’t like reading literary criticism. They are literary critics, at least presumptively.
Hi Z! Was glad to re-find this blog, which I’ve enjoyed in the past.
The writing I am supposed to do for my current job doesn’t have the same interest for me (ultimately I think I am going to want to move into a different part of the field where the writing/research would interest me more). There is also a lot of resistance to writing within my field; it’s seen as a necessary evil and there are discussions about reducing or eliminating publishing requirements for librarians.
Overall, though, for those who have left academia, it does become a personal choice, depending on a range of factor, as you note. My concern has been more that people commonly make the assumption that if you’ve left academia it’s because you dislike that kind of writing, you wanted to focus on teaching, you wanted to write for a more popular audience, etc. It’s less OK to admit that you left because the heavy teaching load wore you down and left you with no energy/time to do your own work/writing, which, to me, was a serious loss (being in a setting where research was discouraged wasn’t a good thing, either — at least not for me, but that position might have been the right thing for someone less interested in scholarship). A typical script for leaving academia is “I can’t stand to read/write this kind of writing anymore!” and I’ve never felt that.
There are other things about the academy that I don’t miss, but those have more to do with arrogance and entitlement and old/new-boy networks. For me personally, I always wanted to be a scholar. I had the good fortune of writing my dissertation under the scholar whose work I fell in love with as an undergrad… and that scholar encouraged hir students to be sure they loved what they were working on. The scholarly writing — it’s something I do for myself, out of that kind of love, and hopefully within a community as well.
Aha, so THAT is why it is assumed people leave academia !!!
So strange: I would have said that of COURSE the reason to leave is being worn down by non research environments. And *that* would explain why they say you are supposed to rise above non research environments — they assume the real problem is that you do not like research.
It is still amazing to me that so many seem not to like it and are nonetheless in field.
I am glad you kept writing and I hope they keep having librarians publish.
It’s that whole “teachers must loooooooove teaching” notion. How can anyone be worn down by a heavy teaching load when teaching is soooooo rewarding? In addition to the Puritan hangover we have the Catholic-vocation hangover from when universities were religious institutions and their staff were in holy orders, dedicated to teaching as a way of getting closer to God. We’re not supposed to think of teaching as a job, or even as a career, but as a vocation; and research is, oddly, imagined as both self-indulgent and onerous. Maybe not by the same people, but both discourses are in play, and they do not harmonize well.
One reason I can imagine leaving academia and still continuing my present line of research is that my alternate life would involve numbers, not writing, so I would still have some writing energy left, I think, after a day’s work. Not that I really want to put this into practice, but I like knowing what the Plan B is/would be. The day my program changes to the point where I am asked to teach comp is the day Plan B gets started.
On teaching, this is soooo true. I of course thought research was supposed to be the vocation and part of my whole trauma is getting spit out into these professor worlds where the opposite paradigm reigns and has real power.
The alternate life would involve numbers?
Oh, absolutely it was the “you’re supposed to loooooooove teaching!” thing… while I was teaching 4 60-person classes a semester! There’s also a mindset that liking research or seeing it as a vocation means that you’re elitist, too, as well as self-indulgent, and yes, the “onerous” thing is so prevalent, too.
I’d like to be an accountant or something like that. Such a job would have many of the same satisfactions as research (organizing disparate bits of information, seeing patterns, solving puzzles), although it would not participate in the sense of vocation that I have about research. Also it would allow me to spend more time with paper and calculators, less with people. I’m not good with people. The other thing I would like to do is work as a restorer in a rare book library, but that would be harder/slower to retrain in, and also much harder to get a decently paying position. If I “won the lottery” I might try for that, or do a second PhD in Classics. But if I just needed an adequately interesting job, with pay comparable to what I make now, and with the hope of brain space remaining for researach, then accountancy would work. On the whole, I’m happy with my current position, but as I say, if comp ever enters the picture, I’m gone.
I could never manage law school, though.
Accounting, what an intriguing idea, I should have thought of this, I would like it as well. Sophylou is also convincing me being a librarian is a good idea — you would be guaranteed not to have your official work time go above 40 hours, so you could have another 10 hours to write, and do some research while at work.
I have always wanted a second PhD in Near Eastern Studies. That was what my first thought was, the first semester of being a Spanish professor when I realized that in most situations I would not like this because it would mostly involve teaching grammar to the recalcitrant. I should have done it, but got swept up in the Paradigm.
Law school, I am sure I would hate many of the people in it. But I would be living in funky Austin, and would have an alternate life … and would stick close to the liberal and lefty contingent within the law school. But, I have extrovert skills.
I should have gone into accounting and then used that to pay for law school. Dayum.
Well, there are down sides to being a librarian, especially in this climate, which I probably shouldn’t go into here. Much like academia, the job market is terrible, and there can definitely be an anti-PhD school of thought, which is why I’ve been participating in the online writing groups (hi Dame Eleanor!), in order to have some space where it’s OK for me to have a PhD/want to continue to work on scholarly projects.
My brother is a librarian so yes, I am aware of the market issues.
In his case, he would have had a better career with a Ph.D, at least when he was working in academic libraries.
That is interesting about the anti-Ph.D school of thought — maybe he is in it and that is why he did not do one?
I think it’s a mixed bag re academic libraries — my sense is the bigger the library (R1, that kind of thing) the more value the PhD is/has? At my library (second-tier state univ) it’s been… weird, and things are very uncertain where I am. And when I was in library school I had a librarian (at the R1 I was going to at the time) tell me my PhD was going to cause problems for me in getting hired. I honestly didn’t/don’t know if she was just bitter (I’ve been surprised at how much anti-faculty feeling I’ve encountered) or if that was a real thing.
This blog post just came out today, which gave me something to think about: http://chrisbourg.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/dr-librarian-value-of-advanced-subject-degree-for-academic-librarians/
I’m going to continue to think about “competing down.” It’s an interesting concept. Want to think about what “up” would look like for me.
Drainingness of bad scholarly articles, if that is what they mean then all right. I can look past this problem now and did also when I was much younger, but in that awful middle period, when the whole atmosphere was bad, the fact of the articles also being bad (and this was pre-Internet, harder to get another) was one of my reasons to quit the profession, I remember now. I just never would have said, “I don’t like to read criticism / theory.”
That is interesting about anti-faculty feeling. Do faculty treat librarians like AAs / not recognize expertise? It is possible.
Competing down means in part competing for security, I think. Competing to do something standard. To compete up you have to be able to see the non standard and then trust your intuitions on it and follow through. You have to have real confidence. I have up-competing potential and skills and I have also had real opportunities but have squandered much of this due to lacking that last 2% of confidence, and having negative moral support.