Uncertainty of Life: An Academic’s Perspective

I was watching a talk of Yalın Alpay, who is a Turkish writer, on YouTube about his feelings related to the age of 40. At some point, I paused the video when I heard his wise words refined through 40 years of life with philosophical inquiries about the uncertainty of life. Here is his statement:

"My understanding of life since the twenties has been about making peace with the uncertainty of life. Life becomes livable when you accept that it is truly uncertain. So, living is a bit of the art of managing uncertainty. If you can manage uncertainty, I think you can move forward. If you can't manage, in order to avoid uncertainty, to find a reliable port, you have to reject most things and settle for much less, and this leads to unhappiness. Therefore, it is necessary to accept the uncertainty, that is, that oscillation first."

 

As I looked at the screen, dazzled, and listened to this statement over and over again, since I was struggling to manage the uncertainty at this stage of my life - I still struggle though. Maybe I felt a little bit relieved knowing there were other people suffering from this uncertainty. As the quote also implies, there is always a trade-off in life between choices from the perspective of uncertainty. I think that nobody can say either of the choices is the correct one. These are just preferences. And we can choose a path based on the circumstances at that stage of our life and these choices are highly influenced by the randomness of life. Neither path is definitively true. But all of them have consequences which we need to understand and sometimes put up with. 

I made a career change around the age of 31, choosing to be a researcher in academia. First, I felt like that I was late to start a PhD. Later, I realized that this gave me a mental advantage: I was resilient not to give up at hard times and had a different perspective to find creative solutions for the problems I deal with. At the end of my PhD, I was thinking that I am ready for new adventures in new countries and different research groups. However, nobody told me that the postdoctoral stage can be a black hole in my life and drag me to anxiety in a sea of uncertainty. I need to work on temporary contracts and I need to chase new positions and fellowships/scholarships constantly. After more than two years, this feeling of uncertainty can be exhausting, although I think that I am resilient.

While the uncertainty is very high until you become a tenured professor in academia, it is not more different in private sector. You can be laid off while you have a good position in a big company because something beyond your control happens in the financial world. In fact, there exists a social class that defines individuals working on temporary contracts as the “Precariat,” which combines “precarious” and “proletariat”. I heard this term from a sociologist friend of mine. I was happy to know that some intellectuals already defined it on the basis of the cruelty of capitalism. As a member of this social class, I feel constantly insecure due to the unpredictability of the job market.

As people trying to survive in this capitalist world, we need to find ways to manage this uncertainty. Psychotherapy can help if you can afford it. My naïve way of dealing with it is writing with a stream of consciousness in the mornings. Meditation (backed by a growing body of scientific evidence) and other philosophical concepts like stoicism can also provide assistance. Consequently, there is no way of running away from the cost for doing the job you love. On the other hand, you can unhappily do another job but enjoy a more stable life. In the end, I understand that I cannot avoid the uncertainty of life and the cost of my choices. I will do my best to embrace the uncertainty of life.

Bonus: Yalın Alpay's talk that I mentioned (in Turkish)

Image source: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/black-hole-spiral-space-nebula-7742925/

Shallowness in Academia: Quality or Quantity?

Since the foundation of Plato’s Academy among olive trees in Greece, academia evolved into different directions while trying to keep its essence. Academics, who are the people in the center of academia, are pushed to fulfill some performance metrics to survive in our century. While performance metrics are definitely necessary, quality must be considered over quantity. I will try to address and discuss some problems in academia on this “quality-quantity” issue from the perspective of a postdoctoral researcher.

My observations in academia show that an academic has two main responsibilities: Research and teaching. In addition, there is a third one which is to enlighten the public with the scientific knowledge, but I do not want to go into the detail of this. After finishing the PhD, there are generally two career paths: Working in the industry or staying in academia which include universities and research institutes. In some research institutes, it is possible to work as a researcher with fair salaries until the end of your career. However, there are not so many research institutes when it is compared with the number of PhD holders. Hence, people being eager to conduct academic research have generally one option which is pursuing the academic path via first working as a postdoctoral researcher and then being a professor in a university, although there are a few companies to conduct profit-oriented research.

As one decides to pursue the academic path after PhD, she/he faces the fact of publishing papers and getting citations as much as possible to be hired as a professor. In my field, there are two ways of publishing papers: Conferences and journals. The current academic system rewards the researchers with more publications, i.e., a high number of papers “gets your foot in the door” with my current PI’s words. This publishing pressure pushes researchers to have collaborations with other researchers to publish as much as possible. Actually, there is nothing wrong about collaborations. However, this generally results in one researcher’s work (sometimes two or three) with some other slight contributions from others. Although it is not necessarily always true, I have this impression and observation, when I see papers with more than three names. Naturally, as you collaborate, the number of citations gets higher even if the published papers have very slight contributions to the literature. This directly affects your academic metrics. I think Google Scholar, which shows the h-index, is the most popular metric platform among researchers. Although a high h-index mostly indicates the collaboration ability, it is highly respected and is the first thing when someone first looks at your academic profile. When a researcher feels himself/herself under “h-index” pressure, the academic behavior changes to more publishing rather than highly qualified works. However, under this “h-index” pressure, there is no time to work on qualified studies. This vicious cycle of publishing pushes an academic to faster but shallower papers, i.e., mostly n+1^st versions of some other works in the literature with nearly no creativity and authenticity. Here, I want to clarify a point. There is nothing wrong on publishing different variations of a subject in a field. These studies will set the existing theories, methods etc. to a sounder ground. But, if everyone follows this trend, who is going to conduct pioneering research or make the breakthroughs?

On the other hand, there is also a fairness problem in academia. You can have a conference publication with preliminary good results. Then, these preliminary results can be converted into a journal paper in a short time. This means that a good idea can make two papers. However, not everybody has sufficient funding to go to the conferences. I started to have the opportunity to go to conferences after starting to work in a developed country with sufficient funding. Unfortunately, I didn’t have this chance during my PhD. Therefore, there is a need for better, more fair and reliable academic indexes for scholar profiles.

As for the teaching part, there are a lot of things to say about the “missing teaching education” in academia as a researcher. But this is beyond my scope now. I would like to focus and discuss the intellectual personality of an academic. A professor teaches some courses according to his/her expertise. Beyond this, a professor should be a role model with highly intellectual abilities. In science/engineering fields, a professor should have knowledge of art, social sciences, and philosophy as well as social abilities such as leadership. At least, an awareness of basic concepts should be possessed. But who assesses these abilities in a job application? Fortunately, some good universities may consider these, but mostly the preferred ability is the capability of an applicant to secure external funding, having a good degree and a high number of publications. I believe that professors should be mentors and leaders rather than teachers. However, the students are still considered as “empty vessels to be filled with knowledge”. For the so-called Generation Z, this does not mean so much. They know that they can access the necessary information in seconds. In fact, they need good motivators, good mentors, and good story tellers in the lectures. A good track record does not necessarily provide these abilities for teaching. I believe an intellectual versatility is needed in addition to the expert knowledge. Thus, the new generation can be motivated to learn. In summary, the academic system should be arranged in a way to encourage for gaining new abilities beyond the expert knowledge. Otherwise, students cannot be led to be the open minded people of the future.

To conclude, we need academic metrics and criteria that assess the quality over quantity. Otherwise, it is inevitable for the academy to be drowned in the shallow sea of mediocracy. In addition, fair assessment criteria will reduce the effect of references that are received from “godfathers” in job applications. Fortunately, there are some people thinking about these problems like Andrew Akbashev and Sergei Kalinin as they wrote in Nature about the dangers of overpublishing and possible solutions on this issue. As academics, we need to discuss more on this issue and push each other to improve the quality of the scientific community.