Is the academic life really as bad as people say it is?

The downside is that you have to interact with other academics

>doing this stuff 24/7.
but that's the stress part. You don't go home at 5pm and shag your wife without thinking about your work anymore, you are occupied with it 24/7 because you want to get one of the two tenured positions that are opened in your field every year that has 2-300 applicants

yah academic life is great man

>stressful
lol no
I had both professors who had been (or were at the time) in business and others who had been all their careers at Uni.
So that's what I gathered:
>teachers from the industry:
>always smug
>badasses in general, also dressed very well
>they told you about the many times they had been in massive debt or had to go to the court for some kind of shit since they were in a high position a.k.a. the company scapegoat
>some of them went to teach in Uni to get rid of that stressful life, even if they got paid much less.

>"professional" teachers
>poor taste in clothing
>always pretentious
>always crying about how hard life is for the researcher when in fact they have plenty of funds and when something goes wrong they literally have 0 responsibility
>autistic screeching more often than not

academics are just wimps.

its actually more like from the millions of scientists out there it is very likely that you belong to the >90% that never research anything of significance or get any form of recognition for your work.

How does one get into being a teacher for a private school?
I wouldn't mind doing any level of education really, but I would never teach the public school shits.

There's no point in poeple talking about their profs life with regard to that question.
What's the ratio of people starting their undergrad and people bring appointed full proffessorship (a 40yo's appointment) per year? Probably 1000 students vs. one new Prof. The profs are there from 40yo to 65yo and you only ever need so many.

If yoy're a matematics student and like what you do, go on a conference twice a year and work whereever you are and like it - it's good.
If your in a bio, chem or med lab and your prof wabts his name on 2 to 3 papers you produce each year, it's exhausting

>talk about shit to a room full of uncaring adolescents
>grade papers
>fuck coeds
It's a good life.

also this

So how many of you saying the acad life is "chill" are actually professors?

>inb4 none

>professors
>on Veeky Forums
You answered your own question, user

Assistant prof here, up for tenure in 2 more years. I feel like even without tenure I have a lot of job security. Honestly I don't believe anyone should have as much job security as a tenured prof. Anyway yeah I'd say it's chill. The other profs complain but I don't think they would if they had ever worked a real job

It's competitive as fuck to get into that's all. Once you're on tenure track there is very little stress.

High-school isn't academia you stupid fuck.

Also this stupid fuck.

>merriam-webster.com/dictionary/academia

read a book you stupid fuck

>This entire thread
Either everybody here is Terrence Tao or nobody is doing any research. Spending 6 month on a problem that might be meaningless without finding the solution is harder than what you guys think.

My commute to the campus is pretty stressful.

I bus that shit.

> not knowing the stress of being deployed marine infantry

my best friend ate mres and didn't shower for 45 days

> they don't have tendies in the cafeteria
college students everyone

>I know someone who did something more stressful than academia, therefore academia isn't stressful.

How is private research different from academia teaching/research and shit?
honestly planning in going that way for the money

>There's not profit motive and nobody cares about the bottom line.

Kek. Don't delude yourselves. Universities and colleges have massive profits to boost salaries of administrations and "elite" scientists, and to throw more money into worthless facilities to promote student enrollment, furthering the cycle of more profits.

If we call it work, it's irksome. Working for retards is difficult; and there's so many retards out there.

> Work is stressful across industries
> Still worse for a professor though lmayo

Well when you're silver spoon fed in a 1st world country and think your pathetic problems are "Problems" then yeah. Stressful but barely

>muh relative privation

There's a wide range of levels of research activity. A lot of professors write one paper in a good year, and then slow down to basically nothing as they get older. There's a lot of grey area between that and Terrence Tao

>relative privation
But being marine infantry eating mres everyday not showering, watching best friends bleed out in front of you, not knowing when you're going to get ambushed. Not knowing when your life could end at the age 22. Fuck logic motherfucker only a retard will argue that this isn't some of the worst conditions man can experience. "But muh test scores!"

We're dealing with human subjective stress here there's really nothing logical about it

There are a few. Assuming some oldfags started out in the 18-17 range, on this shithole, there has been more than enough time for a few Veeky Forums professors to have been minted.

he didnt say that

Then they're just teaching at that time and not doing research. My point was if you spend 6 month on a conjecture without any result then it's stressful. Ofc if you don't do any research you're fine.

If you can't afford to kill 6 months then don't embark on a 6 month project that might not work out. The people who do that are either self-destructive or else they're huge badasses who can afford to kill 6 months because they're so accomplished. For a lesser mathematician it's best to spend a while doing easier more reliable research

This is unironically true. My physics prof was a really relaxing guy who always dressed formally. One time I went to his office hours and he had stacks of nabob coffee all around his office and windows.

>have to work hard to be good at your job

wow, tell me more?

>Honestly I don't believe anyone should have as much job security as a tenured prof.
Yeah, who the fuck came up with tenure anyways?

>The other profs complain but I don't think they would if they had ever worked a real job
This is my gut feeling but I didn't want to say it because I don't have any experience.

If I prove a big result while not in academia (like Yitang Zhang), can I get someone to give me a grant directly instead of taking a position somewhere?

It's theoretically possible I guess. If the result is big enough then maybe the same rules won't apply to you.

But every grant I've applied for made me fill out my institution, and not only that but people at my university had to sign off on my proposal before submitting it. They wouldn't accept my application otherwise.

Then when you get the grant, everything is overseen by the university. I have to ask permission from the university to spend my grant money. The people offering the grant might be reluctant to just hand a pile of money over to some independent individual who might then do anything with it.

>I have to ask permission from the university to spend my grant money.

What do you spend it on, if you don't mind me asking? My impression is that math grant money is just used to hire postdocs / for salary basically.

I understand that academic freedom might be really important for a professor in history or economics or some area where they genuinely risk making "offensive" statements in the normal course of academic life.

But I don't see the point for math profs. We just want to be able to rant about politics or whatever during class instead of doing our jobs.

Also, they really tend to let themselves go once they get tenure.

Because they realize they're not doing anything with their lives

Travel. Going to conferences, visiting people, paying for people to visit me.

I'm just starting and have only a small grant. Nothing remotely big enough to pay postdocs or anything like that.

>pointless strawman post

Just click the "hide" button, guys.

As said, it's 24/7. It isn't 24/7 of you doing stuff you like, though. You have to constantly read papers, teach classes, mark coursework/exams, write grant applications, supervise undergrad, postgrad and PhD students, and undertake additional roles within your department before you can even start thinking about doing research. You then need to try and publish a lot in high impact journals to keep your job, and if you're lucky you might end up in a stable position sometime in your 40s or 50s earning a little more than what a typical tech graduate job pays.

And then you're thinking you're research is meaningless. The thing is I don't understand why people would pursue this kind of carrer if research and science is not very important to them. So yes, you could do it in a very relaxed way, and I've seen people do it like that, but most of the people that I've met are very stressed.

So then what's the point if it seems like a giant risk and luck. I get that people would love to do it, as would i, but it seems like your constantly fighting for your job and if you can't produce some results frequently just because you hit dead ends or something else unlucky happens your out if a job