/lit/ - Literature

>>10920084
I'm not not intelligent enough, but I don't have the necessary work ethic.

>>10920087
I'd like to claim that it's same for me, really, but I presume that in reality the two are connected.

>>10920084
>tfw never even tried
i'm beginning to think it was a mistake to just soullessly go into stemfaggotry like i did

Are you fucking joking? People in academia are retards. The most offensive kind of retard is the well-polished retard who is capable of churning out essays and eventually books that are utterly timely, without any sense of the vastness of his field or its metaphysical program, or the thousands of paradigms that came before him, simply by sitting through classes taught by faded bricoleur relics of the cultural and linguistic turns and assimilating the bare minimum of shibboleths necessary to write a redundant monograph, after 15 drafts and 150 chapter drafts have been shaped and molded into pallid academic plausibility by an oversight committee of a dozen other professors whose pedagogical function involves saying "job market" 50,000 times per day.

Making it in academia involves just about anything other than intelligence. It's something more like the ability to suck a bushel of dicks at once without neglecting any one dick more than any other dick, so that at the end no one is really satisfied but no one is unsatisfied, and you have traded your dignity for a 1/10 shot at later being on the other side of the unsatisfying dick sucking.

>>10920087
>le smart but lazy
gtfo

>>10920121
Ascended post

>>10920121
embarrassing post

>>10920095
I'd actually prefer thinking that I was too stupid for it, in that way I would not be the one to blame and I would be more at peace with my life.

>>10920087
>has one good idea
>doesn't pursue
lol that that coulda been me!

>>10920121
True to an extent.

I realised academic philosophy was the most boring and pedantic shit ever when I got into contemporary articles. History of philosophy is the only exciting part, I can't imagine spending my life arguing about some ultra-specific question in analytic epistemology.

>>10920097
Yeah. Ended up studying accounting after a year of bad depression. I had a history professor encourage me to go to grad school. He thoughts I could make it.

I often fantasize about attending a prestigious school, but I'm not capable of getting in. I wouldn't want to go anywhere less.

What's a degree in Philosophy/Literature/History worth if you're not going into academia?

>>10920121
/thread

>>10920087
>not not
>intelligent

sure

>>10920121
this

all real writers of the past hated academics

>>10920121
anyone who disagrees is literally an academic

>>10920121
This. An alarming amount of academics are narrow minded brown nosers.

>>10920157
Philosophy gives you the skills to be a good lawyer. That's about it though.

>>10920084
I'm only 3 years into my applied math/cs degree but I'm already working as machine learning specialist in a company and read all the new papers that come out daily. I'm pretty sure I'm going to make it in my field.

>>10920204
That goes for the US where you can get into Law School with a degree in philosophy. Not for most other countries.

>>10920121
We would all love this post...someone in academia prove this wrong, so I can stop resenting the Powers that B and all the normies who cuck to them

Academia is the golden trashbin of thought and art. Intelligence you may need, maybe, but not spirit.

>>10920184
But we aren't real writers

>>10920087
Kind of this..... I’ve published a couple articles and had a couple teaching contracts, have been awarded grants and have built up something of a network at conferences and the like. I’m about to finish my PhD, but I’m not going to keep at it. I’m not willing to make the sacrifices needed for a spin of the tenure-track roulette wheel. There’s more to life than this.

My supervisor insists that I _could_ make it, but I’ve seen more intelligent and higher achieving people not get jobs. And as a white male Christian doing research in a non-trendy field, the odds are against me in hiring committees. C’est la vie. It’s been a fun enough ride.

>>10920084
This never stopped scholars before

>>10920222
I don't have my copy of Stoner near me at the moment, but you should really read that book if you haven't already. There's a part early on where a character describes what the University is and it is far better than anything I could conjure up myself. It is also far better than the silly, myopic description given by our friend earlier in the thread.

>>10920121
2.5 gpa future career as a bricolayer btw

>>10920246
Me too, only without the publications or teaching (but then, it sounds like you're in the USA where that stuff is a more normal part of the process). I could blame my supervisor for not giving a crap, but ultimately I don't think I was committed enough either.

>>10920246
My experience exactly, although I stopped earlier. Worked on the lower rungs of the ladder for a while, two research projects and a handful of articles and conferences later I realized that living this life would require an absurd amount of what I can only call tunnel vision and quit

>>10920272
nice try

>>10920265
Sadly, it's not really like that, is it? For Stoner it certainly is a refuge, but do you really aspire to be like him?

I did my masters at Oxford and had a realisation one day when I was still in the library at 10pm trying to cram the 101 opinions of other academics into my head just to make a minor point on a paper only 3 people will ever read that actually this wasnt what I had signed up for and my love of learning had somehow died, and I was in danger of devoting my entire life to to being a worthless pedantic bore.

>>10920295
Should have studied math or physics, m8

>>10920298
you guys truly are the bronies of academia

>>10920272
Same.
>>10920147
Same.
>>10920144
Same.
>>10920121
This is encouraging. I just prefer to smoke weed and read non-required books and write poetry and wander in nature and have exhibitionist sex with my gf than actually researching and writing academic papers
>tfw soon to be unemployed following graduation :(
>tfw gf is gonna leave me cause I'm not a "provider" :((

>>10917861

>>10920311
>tfw soon to be unemployed following graduation :(
>tfw gf is gonna leave me cause I'm not a "provider" :((

Are you implying these aren't real concerns?

>>10920265
You have to remember that that's a very different university culture than the one we have today.

>>10920298
You're a degenerate.

>>10920147
This is more of an issue with analytic philosophy. I hate it too, but that's why I'm doing everything I can to move myself into the continental field of study.
>>10920219

>>10920095

Absolutely. Aptitude is whatever, but putting your nose to the grindstone is where it's at. I can comfortably read in four languages (speaking or writing them is a whole other thing), so I'm sure I'm "smart" enough for academia, but I'm not cut out for it emotionally.

I love reading and writing and theories, but I have no desire to be part of the publication mill of academia. There's nothing wrong with it, but that kind of stress isn't for me. I like doing my own thing at a slow and leisurely pace.

Sure someone with a PhD is gonna know more than me about a given topic, but I've been much happier since I stopped measuring myself by trophy accomplishments like degrees and publications, and started just doing what I wanted when I wanted.

>>10920364
How do you earn a living anon?

>>10920121
Good use of metaphor.

>>10920121
It's not just that. Certainly academia is to a large degree mutual masturbation and pointless, trite posturing. But academics certainly aren't generally as dumb as, for example, marketing people or HR people. They're just short-sighted and willing (pathetically so) to be leeches off much greater things, while adding nothing to them and just crawling into their little mundane niches

>>10920326
No, you are a degenerate.

>>10920121
>t. never been in academia

>>10920472
What a counter-argument, you truly BTFO'd that post

>>10920464
t. STEM autist

>>10920477
That post doesn't say anything besides what the sort of people who browse /lit/ in 2018 want to hear. It is in no need of a counter-argument because it does not exist. It is a floating dream flashed on the screen in a blink of an eye before disappearing into the dust from whence it came.

>>10920084
When I realized I must be retarded because I'm not a leftist.

>>10920543
>It is a floating dream flashed on the screen in a blink of an eye before disappearing into the dust from whence it came.
It's called hyperreality you fag

>tfw definitely have the ability to get into academia
>Just not for maths
I'm pretty much just as good as literature and history as I always but goddamn I just hit a massive wall when it came to maths. It's not that I can't learn it it's just that my retention rate is too shit for higher levels.

>>10920084
NO but i can pinpoint the exact moment i stoped giving a shit about it.
It was when i found out i had to be a TA for like 10 years before anything else and in the first 5 get a doctorate in chemistry + all the garbage TA work. Basically no life for 5 years.

>>10920543
What are you saying? Because expressing something is fleeting and because it might trigger an emotional response rather than a """"rational"""" (leaving aside your tired "/lit/ in 2018 attempt), it's invalid? I assume everyone realizes that the post is an exaggeration and not an attempt at a neutral discussion of the merits of academia, but just maybe on a board dedicated to literature (and not science) people might be able to appreciate this and extract truth from it.

If you're going to engage in polemics, at least be better than the guy you're trying to beat (you're failing).

>>10920472
>t. academic

>>10920585
When I saw this post I was laughing out loud, I'll be laughing with everyone I see later.

People in here are shitting on academia, but really, isn't preferable to most wageslave jobs?

>>10920585
kino

>>10920626
What are you talking about?

>>10920543
go whence i came

>>10920666
How strange it is to be anything at all

>>10920626
That sounds absurd

>>10920677
But that's not really what you're talking about, that's what you're (nonsensically) responding now because it's the first thing you hit your forehead against in the dark cellar of your mind.

Bump

>>10920121
Too many people in academia as a "career" rather than just to have a position in life in which they can dedicate their time to learning.

It's part of the change from universities as the patronage site of strong-minded individual aristocrats and churchmen, to just a faceless, subservient bureaucracy within the so-called "deep state".

>>10920147
>claims to like philosophy
>omg analytic philosophy is too specific and meaningful for me, i just wanna do bad history

lol please stay out of the academy, we don't need for conty cucks

if you think analytic philosophy is interesting, you probably don't understand why it's important

>>10920627
It is an incredibly good job in our current time, all these people are just too dumb for academia, and they are trying to justify their stupidity to themselves by shitting on academia

>>10920121
This, a thousand times. Being somewhat intelligent can help of course but the dick sucking skill is central. You have to get your mouth full for that sweet PhD-funding money, and then you double it down for a chance to get hired. In terms of knowledge, I think that name-dropping pseudery and wikipedia searches are more than enough

>>10920627
Only if you really love it. From my experience, the ambitious types I worked with, the ones that had a good chance of going all the way to tenured professor etc. would work tirelessly 6 1/2 days of the week.
Not just reading, but attending conferences and dinners, networking, authoring and co-authoring papers, begging for third-party funding, doing journalism work and teaching on the side (really the lowest thing in the hierarchy, sadly). Academia would be their life, which is fine if you can endure it and hell if you can't.

>>10920823
Not for anyone in middle management, as it were. It's fun when you start and comfortable when you make it. I'm not from the US, so my experiecne might be different, but everything in between is just uncertainty and navigating social and bureaucratic things that you really thought you weren't signing up for

>>10920319
Oh no. These are quite real concerns. Hence my upside down smilies.

>>10920311
Can you give her number for when she leaves you?

>>10920585
>>10920666
>>10920684
this is better than when peterson @'d the zizek chatbot

>>10921117
wtf is that

>>10920547
This. I even tried to become a leftist to see if I would stop being retarded but I was too retarded to pull it off.

>>10920087
well you certainly aren't intelligent enough to stop being a lazy fuck

>>10920281
Canada, actually. I’ve made what I could of the opportunities that came my way, but it just aint worth continuing with.

>>10920283
True. Part of my difficulty was that I couldn’t convince myself that there was any sort of greater importance to what I was doing. Scholarship isn’t without value (lots of it is, really), but another disseratation on the romantics is not making the world a better place.

The statistic that goes around, that at least 80% of published humanities scholarship is never cited rocked me for a while. Since, for most people, publishing anything scholarly takes an inordinate amount of time, energy, emotion and effort, I have a hard time shaking the feeling that it’s all a waste.

It takes a mad dedication to the idea of your own research to make it in the academy.

>>10921117
We can do this for another 50 posts dude
The difference is that you actually are replying to my posts and referencing them, even if it's behind this cowardly wall of indirect attempts at ridicule and irony