Expert comment Last updated 09 March 2018
Being a young academic can be difficult. It's not just the pressures of the job either - your relationship with other new academics can be very up and down too.
Here, three young academics in the School of Social Sciences - Laura Riley, Cristiana Cardoso and Shona Robinson-Edwards - tell us their take on this unexplored niche of University life.
Academics are an egotistical lot, we ‘show off’ for a living! In front of students or in print, discussing our ground breaking research and our ‘unique contributions to knowledge’. Wanting to be an academic is wanting to be in the limelight. Lectures, conferences, seminars and even TV interviews all provide a platform to be asked about what you are researching, what you have realised that no one else has – usually this is because you want to inform and help people, but it does require an awful lot of confidence, and to ‘push’ for your research to be taken seriously can take rather sharp elbows! Once you’re established (whatever that means) you can safely be a whole lot more magnanimous and help nurture junior academics.
We become ‘frenemies’, feel competitive, make a few smug remarks, it is natural I think, liking to hang out with someone whilst sort of hoping they fail at everything they do (or at least don’t do as well as me). ‘Grown ups’ left all that behind during adolescence, didn’t we? Mmm… The problems are the need to “shows off” and “be unique”. Sometimes I feel these are incompatible with cooperation and team work. How many times have I heard an academic diminishing someone else? Sometimes mixing personal and professional aspects, because not everyone does a bad job, some people just need to grab the personal bits to be able to criticise.
I am not established. I am still trying to claw my way up this greasy pole. I’m a PhD student (which my friends gently remind me is not a ‘real job’). I want to be taken seriously. I am constantly attempting to gage my chances of success post-graduation. Will I be one of the lucky ones who walks into a permanent job or will I be in the same position but with more letters after my name? This mind set isn’t conducive to developing a ‘generous spirit’.
When the team succeeds, the Department does well, the University gets more credit, on a macro level the discipline is enhanced, and that’s good for all, including me… If I am actually a part of the department. Am I? As a PhD student or a zero-hours contract, I can be ditched in a blink of an eye if I am not the best or good enough? Sort of an imposter syndrome or the reality? I do feel sometimes I work harder but someone else who has less experience nor seems to work as hard as me, just lands the dream job. But then again, I do not know everything.
The thing is I like all my colleagues, there isn’t one of them that I believe doesn’t deserve absolute success, but I feel as though it’s a zero-sum game. Every paper they publish means that their reputation grows as compared to mine. Why has he done 5 lectures when I’ve only done 4? Is it because I am not good enough? How did they do so well on their PGCert? There may be not an ‘I’ in ‘team’ but there’s certainly one in ‘academia’. And if you go for the same job – magnify it by a thousand.
The funny thing is that one of the best things about working in academia is the collaboration. I’ve learned more from chats with colleagues than I have from books – most of the best books I’ve read have been after recommendations from people I like and admire. The more I admire the qualities of my colleagues the fiercer the competition.
Perhaps that’s what makes the collaboration so effective? Knowing that someone I want to show off to will be reading it, judging and critiquing me, then literally showing that they can write it better, or taking over the topic from me. So, I up my game and try to make my work better. So maybe this cooperation and competition game can be healthy? It benefits our students, our module leaders and our own research, everyone wants to be the most industrious, the most committed, the brightest and the best, this makes for a fantastic combined result (or a nuclear disaster for others).
At times I might see every success from a friend-colleague as an opportunity I’ll not have but the ‘real’ academic, the one I am trying to be, realises that every knock back, every criticism, and every suggested improvement has made me far better at what I do than I would have been if I’d always got my own way. And some of the most useful feedback I’ve ever had had been from fellow students and colleagues in the same position as me. I think so anyway.
What I know for certain is that I’m writing this article with two very smart colleagues who are already ahead of me, leaving me to catch up, I’m doing the very first draft. And they better say it’s amazing!
The content above is the opinion of the author(s), and does not represent the views or opinions of Birmingham City University.