SIO337: Major Announcement! Academia Has Lost a Science Person...

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:12 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 337. I'm Thomas, and that's my co-host, Lindsey Osterman. How you doing, I am fantastic as well. Dr. Lindsay Osterman, major announcement, well, for the normies anyway, I guess the patrons kind of already know.

0:00:21 Lindsey: That's me. I'm fantastic. How are you? Further than normal. Yeah. Patrons I've known for years.

0:00:34 Thomas: Wow, they have a time machine. There's a Patreon time machine that you want to check out, patreon.com/serious bot. Um, is super exciting, uh, we'll just out with it, uh, quit her job.

0:00:40 Lindsey: Huh. Yeah. Did do that.

0:00:47 Thomas: Only, did you quit your job? And we're going to talk about that and the reasons therefore, and also I wanted to announce that is also now officially full-on co-50-50 Serious Inquiries Only partner co-host everything, and I, I, Lindsay didn't quit her job to be a professional podcaster like I did, but she did quit her job, and then I was like, maybe you could be a professional podcaster.

0:01:01 Lindsey: I'm so excited.

0:01:11 Lindsey: No.

0:01:11 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:01:12 Lindsey: Uh, no, actually, no. I quit my job hoping to do this full-time, I just didn't do it quite as responsibly as you did. Like...

0:01:19 Thomas: Okay, that's the answer. Yeah, and I think we can make this happen, but we, we do need help from you listeners, and so this is a bit of an NPR fundraising show, because we would really love it if you go to patreon.com/seriouspod and pledge to the show, because, uh, I want to make this work for Lindsey. Um, we're figuring out, out, we're crunching numbers, we're hiring Lindsay to do editing, we're making this happen one way or the other, but we need your support, and as a little, or I think kind of as a big thank you if I'm being honest, as a big thank you, we just watched, a we, horrible, were subjected to a form of visual torture that is Matt Walsh's documentary and his dumb ass fucking and beard, Matt Walsh's documentary, What is a Woman, that we both had been pelted with ads for. I wonder if anybody listening saw those ads, or if it was just that we have weird search histories from doing the show, I don't know, one way or the other, and

0:01:55 Lindsey: Yes. Matt stupid fucking face.

0:02:15 Lindsey: That's, that's why my search history is weird, definitely, it's from doing this show.

0:02:19 Thomas: That's why it's weird, in this way, and have to tell us about the other ads you get, it's okay, it's fine, but in this particular way, I get served these right-wing ads all the time, as I talked about in the special, we recorded a special debunking, like a patron -only bonus debunkding and review of Matt Walsh's terrible piece of shit documentary, What is a Woman? And that is available as a giant thank you for those who do decide to pledge and those who have already pledged to make this happen. I'm really excited. I think the show has been so much better since Lindsay came on board. And I just, I wanted to make it official. I wanted to, I wanted to propose podcast marriage to Lindsay.

0:02:57 Thomas: So, I love the areas we're going. I love the feeling of like, I think a lot of this, it's not just me. I think of a lot of our listeners have this too, which is, oh, there's a science thingy in the news. Well, let's send that to Lindsay and let's see what the actual truth of this is, or and it's just been such a fun, fascinating journey. And so I'm so glad to to make it official.

0:02:57 Lindsey: So, Really excited too. I, I, spreadsheet with all the show topics and stuff is getting, it's getting quite hefty at this point. I'm very excited about that too, so I, yeah, I feel like I have a lot more space now to kind of devote to thinking about shows, and yeah, this is the way I want to be spending my time, so it's pretty cool.

0:03:33 Thomas: Yeah. And making it happen. And, and, and with that comes like a more regular recording schedule because I I'll be honest, I'm a little maxed out. I think that should be no surprise to anyone who knows me from listening at all. I'm, pretty I'M fucking max these days. And this is another reason why this, I this think is going to work out so well because, um, you know, Lindsay's recently had, some uh, time freed up in her schedule.

0:03:34 Lindsey: Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

0:03:57 Thomas: Quite a lot of time, actually, which we'll talk about a lot of time freed up in your schedule, uh, so it's perfect. It's a, it's a marriage made in heaven. It'll help us, uh. More regular on the schedule. If we already had Lindsay putting out such good episodes with, you now, half her brain tied behind her back because of this job, imagine what we'll be able to accomplish going forward. So I'm really excited.

0:03:57 Lindsey: Possibilities are endless, yeah.

0:04:19 Thomas: We really, I hate to be so blunt about it, but we really could use your support. Always been a bit of a small show, but a very dedicated and I think incredibly helpful show to a lot I've learned so much from science that you presented us, and it's made my arguments so much better, I think, being able to actually refer back to these episodes that you've done. See that in our breakdown of What is a Woman, like there's so much groundwork you already laid for that in some of the past episodes. So please support the work. Please support this endeavor of making Lindsay not have to go, you know, work at a Starbucks, please. Nothing wrong with working at a Starbucks, but I think we're all better served, served if Lindsey is serving us, dishing out and serving us science instead of coffees, although maybe, maybe both, sometimes I wouldn't mind a coffee if you have one on you.

0:05:14 Lindsey: Oh man, yeah, I don't know, I might, I might still work in like a hipster cocktail bar at some point eventually, just because I think that'd be really fun, but um I don't know, yeah, right, wouldn't that be cool.

0:05:22 Thomas: Me too. Did You ever fit, oh, this will tie us into the discussion, possibly, um, yes, that's the plea. I've made the just naked plea for FUDs. Please, Patreon pod. The special is there. It's up. It's for patrons only as a big thank you. So, thank you so much for considering. And even if you can't support us, we love you. And thank you for listening because that is also a form of support, listening and sharing. And that's great.

So that said, maybe this is a transition to what, what we want to talk about today, Lindsay, because when I was overworked, well, I am now too, but when I worked at an office job, feeling stressed all the time about and, you feeling like it was occupying too much of my mind, I used to fantasize all the time of just like, maybe I'll just go work at a Starbucks, you know, maybe I'll just go like I'll just go fucking I'll make coffee for people and then when the day is done, I don't have to be stressed and thinking about about the coffees I've made for people. It'll be done. I could leave the work there. I used to fantasize about that all the time. And I just wonder if in your burnout, did you ever have that same kind of impulse?

0:05:56 Lindsey: Oh, My god, all the time, yeah, that sounds, that sounds very, very familiar. Um, yeah, having an academic job, it does follow you home. I was regularly sort of taking things home and having to work through evenings, having to work through three and stuff like that. Although the, desire you to work in a hipster cocktail bar is a little more specific than that. Like I'm, I'm I'm extremely good at making cocktails. So, um, absolutely.

0:06:46 Thomas: Yeah, that's a different thing. And a lot of jobs, obviously, and especially in the wake of COVID, everybody's... A Lot of people are taking their work home, or having to, the, the homework blend has, has, uh, become really weird and unhealthy in different ways, but don't you talk about why you left your job and why specifically, you know, what's going on there, is it more than just you had to work, uh, you know, nights and and stuff that, you know, I think is pretty common in different jobs.

0:07:15 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:07:15 Thomas: What was going on there that said, it that made it just not bearable, yeah?

0:07:18 Lindsey: Yeah, I have a short answer to this, and then I'll give you the long answer. But yeah, I was attracted to academia in the first place, because I am a very curious person by nature, and I have set of skills and interests that I thought I could put to meaningful use in academia by like fostering curiosity in students and making the better being curious observers of their world.

Ultimately, what I found was that being an academic didn't actually leave a lot of space for that part of it. And in some ways, and this is, I can only speak to my own experience, I know that a lot of people have different experiences. But in my experience, academia was in some way kind of antagonistic to that project in certain ways, and that over time sapped a lot of the meaning and purpose out of the work for me.

Um, you, when people talk about burnout, I think that they connect that with overwork, just working long hours, but it's, there's actually more to it than that, it's not just that you're working a lot, it's that you get this friction over time from doing work that conflicts with like your values

0:08:18 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:19 Lindsey: Use in some way, and that becomes like so emotionally burdensome, um

0:08:19 Thomas: Yeah. That's a great point, because like it isn't just about, and that's kind, kind of why I was trying to set that up. It's not just about like, oh, I got to work nights because frankly, I'm overworked right now. But I get, am so lucky to be able to do the work I do. And it's work that's often satisfying, and it's, you, fun and interesting, actually. And even happened at my office job to some extent. Like when I was working on a new project, it's a whole different thing when you get to be working really hard and overtime and at nights on something where you get a good result of it, you believe in what you're doing, and you feel like you're getting paid reasonably fairly for it. You know, like it's I love that you said it's not just about like, oh, I'm having to work too much. It's really about like what kind of all these other conditions, you I'm sad about. But because I've always been a huge fan of school and part of me always wanted to like actually do what you did.

I didn't end up going that route, but I've always loved school so much that part of me thought maybe someday I would end up like, depending you on what I went into, maybe I could, you know, become a college professor because I do have that vision of like, yeah, get to teach, you get to work on interesting problems, you get to think about interesting things. So why is that not what it really is? Sure.

0:08:31 Lindsey: Yes. Yes.

0:09:36 Lindsey: Well, yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad that you asked it that way. I mean, in is that component to it, right? So it probably is important to say that, you know, it wasn't all bad and that there was something I was drawn to in academia. There were good things about it, um, you mean, for one thing, like I just worked at the best department ever. Like I actually would have quit a really long time ago except that the people that work at my college, I really, really like, and my department in particular is amazing and I miss all those folks, um, you so that, that part was great. But in terms of the job itself, um, was a lot that I really liked about it, um, was at a teaching focus school and one of the benefits of that in terms, terms of research, is that the publishing expectations are not crazy, like they are research institutions. And that provides you the kind of flexibility to track down just sort of whatever ideas interest you in research, which is kind of nice.

So yeah, I liked the flexibility of being able to just like, if I was curious about a certain thing, we could do a study on it. And I didn't have to be super worried about whether I was gonna, you know, publish 70 million papers that year or whatever, um, of course the downside of that is that I also had trouble like getting past data analysis and we, we talked about some of the ADHD thing in the, in the Patron bonus, but, um,

0:09:46 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Oh.

0:10:48 Thomas: Yeah, that's still there, another benefit of signing on to Patreon, I

0:10:48 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, um, that part of it was cool and I also really love teaching, and I was good at it. I, it was not just me saying that, like, I I got an award and shit. Like, I, I was good at teaching.

0:10:59 Thomas: Believe you You got invited on several podcast episodes.

0:11:05 Lindsey: I did. Yeah, so I mean, there were things about it that were rewarding, but they are kind of small parts of the job in some ways. Know, I think that when people think about teaching, they really think about what's happening in the classroom. And that is, that is such a small part of what you're doing in terms of the actual work. It is really fun to be in the bathroom, room, like that's sort of like the performance aspect, and even prepping for class is kind of fun to figure out like what activity can I do to demonstrate this, or, you know, working on how to make a point super clearly or whatever, that part is really fun, um, I found like especially in the beginning that I kept trying, I was always in this process of trying to make that part of it more efficient so that I had time for all the other things that you have to do so that I wasn't so overwhelmed. And the problem with that is that like essentially what that does is end up minimizing the part

0:11:21 Thomas: The

0:11:56 Lindsey: Of your job that you actually like.

0:11:56 Thomas: One fun part of your job, yeah.

0:11:58 Lindsey: Yeah, which kind of sucks, right? So those parts were rewarding. That there were a few critical things about it that I think ultimately made academia not a sustainable fit for me and led to the burnout issues. Thing, grading sucks. It sucks in a way that I know, you might not expect it because it's not that it's labor intensive. You point out, it's not punishing actually to engage in hard work, even tedious work I can get into. Like I actually enjoy audio editing, for instance, and that that is it's

0:11:58 Thomas: Well, that's fortunate, so I have a lot of that for you.

0:12:29 Lindsey: Yeah. But, you know, that kind of thing, like I really can get into and it's fun. It can be gratifying and stuff. And so it wasn't that it was labor intensive that bothered me about grading. Reason it it sucks is that if you're a person who takes grading seriously as an exercise in giving feedback, you are spending an enormous amount of time trying to figure out how to be actually useful in your feedback to students. And it does take a long time. And you have to do that over and over and over, right? And in my mind, you know, as a new professor, as I'm trying to figure out my strategies for giving feedback in a way that's the kind of feedback that I would would have wanted to receive as a student, you know.

0:12:33 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah,

0:13:08 Lindsey: My mind, I'm imagining that all the students are sort of like waiting eagerly to receive that feedback and like learn stuff from it. And, you Know, because that's who I was. But the reality is that most students who are taking your class aren't taking it out of pure passion or curiosity, or some are, but not, most people are taking it for a requirement or because their parents are making them go to college or whatever it is. And even among the students who really are interested in your class, it turns out they have lives and other priorities. And so the universes don't revolve around your APA corrections or whatever. And all of that's fine. And I got over it and managed not to take that stuff personally. But what over time is that you're spending all of this time doing this really laborious thing of providing all this feedback, maybe 10% of the class, if you're lucky, actually wants it or even bothers to like look at it, and yeah, yeah, that makes the experience like extremely punishing because it just feels like wasted effort, it's not a meaningful activity.

0:13:13 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah. It's

0:14:06 Lindsey: Yeah it is, it, I found myself, you know, trying to play this game of like, all right, is this a student that actually wants me to write these comments or not, but you can't oh it feels so bad, and also it kind of doesn't matter because you can't apply feedback, feedback unevenly. That's, that gives students unequal tool. I don't want to do that. Right. So it's just it's wasted effort. You have to do it. It's incredibly punishing. And so to make that part of your job more sustainable, like you've got a couple of options. You could just suck at your job. You just give less feedback.

0:14:07 Thomas: Just Sisyphus. Then that feels bad, too. Yeah yeah.

0:14:36 Thomas: That's always an option. Yeah it's

0:14:37 Lindsey: Yeah. Right? That's not a great option for me, unfortunately, because like experience of giving high quality feedback.

0:14:43 Thomas: Not fun to suck dick at something. Thing.

0:14:45 Lindsey: Exactly. It'S really not. It's really not, so if I just, like, there were semesters where I tried to pull back and not invest as much, and those semesters really sucked because it just then there's nothing meaningful that I'm doing right. That wasn't a great option. You can try to build in policies into your class that kind of require students to do something with that feedback back. But I actually hated that too, because it feels...

0:14:46 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Really? Oh. That I was gonna ask that because I, like, when I think of the times in college where the happened, because it wasn't that much, because, you know, business school and all that, but it, was it, I think fondly on the kind of like honors program stuff I did, where I was forced to, you do things I wouldn't have really done any, I've never been a like, like an English class type person.

0:15:26 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:15:27 Thomas: I've, the times where I like had to write stuff, I've always been very interested in thinking and philosophy. And the times I got to like, you know, write some papers based on certain things or books or readings or whatever, even though I didn't like doing that, I didn'T choose to do that. Cause I think it was mainly, honestly, the ADD. I have such a hard time getting into that mode of writing. It's so So, mentally stressful for me to try to focus enough to do that. Point Different is, those times I received feedback, you you Know, no one likes getting negative feedback, of course. It's not fun. But I found it really useful and, you part of that was like, I think we had little meetings possibly about these papers and talked about it. And I don't know what the structure of your class is, but I was going to ask, like, is it the kind of thing where do they need to do any sort of revisions?

0:16:16 Lindsey: Yes.

0:16:16 Thomas: And so that would make them like use the feedback.

0:16:18 Lindsey: Yeah. Well, I mean, so all of that was always implicit in my classes. The kinds of things that I'm talking about, one example would be we had written labs in the stats course that I taught. And so there would be these sort of cumulative labs over the course of the semester where they would get a set of corrections on an an earlier draft, and then they had to incorporate those into later drafts, right? So those kinds of things are already there. But what would end up happening with the vast majority of the class is that you just get the same mistakes over and over.

And it's the kind of stuff that if you had glanced at the feedback at all, they wouldn't show up again and again and Again, right. So yeah, I mean, that kind of enforcement was always there .But you're not the kind of student that is frustrating me, right, or I shouldn't put it that way. It's not about a kind of student. It's just that like the that you had to the feedback is the reaction that I was hoping all students would have to it, that, you know, there would be some inherent desire to kind of use that and get better. But you just don't see that in the majority of

0:16:22 Thomas: Oh, okay.

0:16:48 Thomas: Well, why is that? What do you think's going on there?

0:17:17 Lindsey: It's I think it's just priorities. Right. Well, and I think that students are overloaded and burned out as well. And that's you know we can talk more about that under my bullet point too. But like I I've come to recognize is that, um, academic environment for students and for professors, I think has gotten worse over the last couple of decades in fairly significant ways. And a lot of what is being reflected is just that like, they have space for it, or they're just not interested in your particular class, right? They might be attending to the feedback in one that they actually care about, but for whatever reason, this assignment is not the one that's important to them and that's fine. I just don't want to be doing this punishing thing of giving all this feedback that you don't care about. Like,

0:17:59 Thomas: Yeah. Almost wish there was like a tick box at the beginning of classes. Like, do you give a shit or not? Like, well, two different class experiences.

0:18:01 Lindsey: It's Well, It's funny that you say that, because that actually is something that I tried once.

0:18:09 Thomas: Oh, really? The do you gave a shit are not box. Wow. I love it.

0:18:09 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah, so with a specific thing, so strategy of trying to build in policies that kind of like require students to engage or something, like, tried some things where it's like, you know, you will be be penalized if you don't use the feedback you got previously on a draft and things like that. So I've tried strategies like that. They don't work that well, they set up a very adversarial tone, it seems to me, and they're kind of infantilizing. It's like, if you Don't care about the feedback, I shouldn't be forcing you to try to care about, you know what I mean? Like, you're an adult, you can do what you want in this class. I like that kind of attitude that I have to force you to care About the specific thing that I care about. I just don't. But another strategy that sounds very much like what you just said, that I just tried this past year, right before I quit.

0:18:31 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:51 Thomas: Yeah, so it probably didn't go well.

0:18:53 Lindsey: Well, I mean, you know, it was interesting in some ways. It just, you now, it doesn't actually get rid of all the friction. All of these policies, one fallout of them is that it just becomes yet another policy that you have to enforce.

0:19:05 Thomas: Parent, I know this, it actually is harder than it seems to enforce anything. You got to be on it all the time, yeah.

0:19:05 Lindsey: Yes, yeah. And it really, it really is. It's like, it's a lot to keep up with. And it's just like, just tons of fights with, I mean, not fights, but like, you just, It creates more emotional labor. Every time I write a policy, I'm thinking, all right, like, how many hours is this adding to my work week every week that I already don't have? So I don't, I don't love that. And I also don't love the adversarial thing. But I was kind of excited about this idea I had last year, which was to be explicit about this problem and make feedback opt in.

I had like a major paper project in one of my classes, and I had a long conversation with the students before the due date for the first draft in class, and I was like, I'm trying out this new thing this semester. I sort of gave him a CliffsNotes that was trying not to be too self-pitying about how punishing it is to give feedback if students aren't reading it. And I was, like, and I understand why you're not reading it, like, for whatever, you're busy, you have a family emergency, you just don't give a shit about this class. That's fine. I don't take it personally. It's fine if any of that shit is true. I just don't want to write a bunch of comments that you're going to read.

0:19:15 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:20:09 Thomas: But Did you do the pull the chair and put it backwards and sit into it?

0:20:14 Lindsey: So, and, I had a baseball cap. And it was, yeah, I did. And they all said, wow, you're so rad, Dr. Osterman. Anyway. But yeah, so when they turned in their first draft, which I did require, you know, I required that They turn in a first draft. But I was like, it can be in any stage of disrepair. It could be incomplete. It can be an outline, whatever. Turn in something so that you have something written in advance of this final deadline. And then I was, like, okay, and before and when you turn it in, you're going to check one of two boxes on the submission thing. You're gonna either tell me that this is the best reflection of your efforts as a writer and that you checked the assignment guidelines and everything to the best of your abilities and you would like feedback, and you can say that for whatever reason, you know, this isn't the best reflexion of your abilities, and that may be for a variety of reasons, and you are waiving your right to feedback right know, and also if if something does come up and you want it eventually, this

0:20:16 Thomas: Listen, kids, I'm going to level with you. Yeah,

0:21:07 Lindsey: Isn't your last stop, right? You could work your draft so that it is a good draft for me to look at, and then you can come meet with me and we'll talk about it. So I didn't close that door ever, I thought this was pretty brilliant.

0:21:17 Thomas: I like that.

0:21:18 Lindsey: Yeah. And again, it gives them agency. It doesn't infantilize them.

0:21:20 Thomas: And I don't think you told us, but what kind of, is this like a one -on -one type class?

0:21:26 Lindsey: Was a general education course.

0:21:28 Thomas: Okay. I got to assume, I don't know, but I got assume you have other like more advanced classes that are more more like people that you're not going to take this approach with or, okay. Do you have like, I don't know, people who are more like majoring in what you're doing or you're helping them get an advanced degree in what what you're doing, or like, you know, where it's, where you wouldn't have given them this option of like, yeah, you can not really give a shit about this particular thing.

0:21:52 Lindsey: Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, no, there there are certain classes I wouldn't be able to do it quite this way. Yeah.

0:21:56 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was. So this is a, but this is like a general, you got people in here are just like ticking the box of the, you now they've covered your subject on their gen ed kind of thing.

0:22:07 Lindsey: But no, that's, that was a good point. If I was doing like the senior capstone or something, like it would be, it would introduce, I think, unique problems to say, like, you can opt out of feedback on like the final paper for the class or something like that's part of the part of the learning has to happen in that place. But anyway, yeah, so like, I mean, it kind of worked, it gave me less grading to do, um, it was still like a whole other set of points for friction that I didn't anticipate and I ended, don't know, it just, it didn't, it didn't work. I never found a solution to this problem that you me to engage with the student feedback piece at the level that I really needed to in order to feel like I was doing my job with meaning and purpose and also didn't create this problem of of feeling like there was an imbalance between how much I was putting into it and what was actually being done with

0:22:21 Thomas: Right. Gotcha.

0:22:54 Thomas: Yeah, that's interesting. Guess I'm trying to think like, uh, wondering for people listening who you teach at your college or but might have some similar experience or or curious about the state of like academia, because I definitely am, I'm curious about a lot for my for my kids, and because I, you know, I love college so much and all that, how you think this is like a generalizable, like a broader thing going on today, um, or is it just more specific to the type of school you were at, just this challenge of like students not being able to for whatever reason not taking the feedback or like the grading issue, I, because I know like Aaron talks about grading too, Aaron hates grading, um, he wants to abolish grades, like I'm just wondering if we can broaden this out a bit for people. So it's, you know, not, not in, it might be more like applicable to more people than just specifically to your school.

0:23:26 Lindsey: Part of it? Yeah. I it is. Think Yeah I don t actually think that um, of the problems that I encountered were specific to being at my school. Um, you know, I don't, I know that this isn't absolutely every academic's experience. Some people don't seem to find these aspects of things as punishing as I do or as, or whatever. I do hear a lot of academics expressing frustration with the experience of feeling like their students are are not engaged. And this is just like, the grading thing is like one way of instantiating that. You know, there's all these conversations that happen at faculty, and all this stuff of trying to get students to engage and trying to get them enthusiastic. And I think it's like, man, there really is an underlying problem here. Like, I don't know.

0:23:57 Thomas: Okay.

0:24:30 Thomas: And what do you think it is? Or do you want to save that for later?

0:24:33 Lindsey: Well, no, I mean, actually, that's kind of where I wanted to go next. It's, I think that this is a conversation we should have with Aaron on this show actually, as well, um, doing this work on toxic meritocracy that's connected to his thoughts about about grading and stuff. I think it's really compelling, and you, his a section of his paper on this topic, and found that it was like putting into words a lot of frustrations that I had.

0:24:36 Thomas: Oh, cool.

0:24:55 Thomas: And you gave him feedback and he didn't give a shit about it and he didn't even use it. No, I'm just kidding.

0:24:58 Lindsey: Oh, my god, actually, he loved. I

0:25:01 Thomas: The opposite of that.

0:25:01 Lindsey: Did write write margin notes yeah. I wrote margin notes and he was so excited about it, and I was like, oh, this is the thing I've been searching for in my job.

0:25:02 Thomas: Yeah. Maybe you could just be his teacher full time. No, I'm just kidding. You got to find just a few good students. No, that's interesting. We, we absolutely should do that. I want, I would love to do that." I was going to ask if you think it's just related to like too many people being driven to go to college. Like we talked about this on a recent Dear Old Dads. And I'm really interested in this about, you know, thinking about what I want for my own kids or what what I might want to encourage or not encourage or, you know, like, do I, you think any component of it is the fact that we're like, all you know, wages are so low. The only way to get a good job is to get this degree. And too many people are like trying to do that for the wrong reasons and don't actually care about what they're learning.

0:25:08 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, that way, um, know what I think about this, so I, I thought that episode was really interesting, and I thought the the that you all did on that was was very interesting. I'm I'm not 100% sure what I think about it. I see value in a educated population. And when I see it, this too optimistic of me? I think most people, if have their needs met in certain ways, there is space for interest in learning things.

0:25:51 Thomas: Hmm. Oh, for sure.

0:26:15 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:26:15 Thomas: Think so. Yeah.

0:26:16 Lindsey: So when I say that problem this broad with students not engaging in things, it makes broader happening in the environment that's producing that.

0:26:25 Thomas: Yeah, interesting.

0:26:25 Lindsey: So part of it maybe is that, least in my experience, again, there are things about the structures of academia that I think do promote a somewhat adversarial relationship between professors and students, like when it comes to evaluation, but other things as well, right? And that was part of the dynamic that I really couldn't tolerate. But it seemed like there was this sense among students that they had to self-present to me in a certain way, um, That really produced the worst conflict for me because it was the lying constantly, right? Like they couldn't It Yeah.

0:26:49 Thomas: Interesting, oh. I Hate that. I Can't

0:26:56 Lindsey: But It was because it was because they didn't think they could tell me the truth. They thought, they thought if They said, "You, I know you know I just didn't do it, right? I just didn't care about," you know, like if they said whatever it was that was going on, it Wouldn't be valid enough, so they have to make something up, have to tell me about, um, I don't know, I think that that, that does come from, from some of the things that Aaron is, is closely and trying to Critique, right? It does create an awful lot of, of friction, and it means that that a lot my energy is getting sucked into things like, you, how do I hold students accountable, how do, do I suss out who a valid excuse and who doesn't?

0:26:56 Thomas: Handle that at all. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Oh.

0:27:31 Thomas: God, I couldn't spend a minute on that. I

0:27:33 Lindsey: It's awful. I don't like being in that role at all.

0:27:33 Thomas: Geez. Yeah. Yeah. Nah.

0:27:37 Lindsey: There is some expectation that we're going to do that.

0:27:39 Thomas: Yeah, that, I see what you mean, that's, that's Really tough. Hmm.

0:27:42 Lindsey: Yeah. So this I do think is closely connected to the other broad thing that disillusioned me about academia. And it's that I became increasingly uncomfortable with the enormous amount of competitive pressure that academia creates. I used to enthusiastically recommend to students who are already leaning this way that they go to graduate school and pursue academic careers. But over time, it just has become a lot harder for me to do that in good conscience, even with students.

0:28:09 Thomas: Are You talking about the competition for students, or for you, or for both? Mm.

0:28:14 Lindsey: I guess there's two points to make here. One of them is how competitive it is if you are working toward being in an academic career. I think that it pervades academia more generally, right? Pressures put on students, in I think have gotten worse over time. Yeah, I think that it a lot of pressure to of work students in a way that I is actually unethical, and I don't know, I, so I used to, I used to recommend this course, but like, it's, it's become harder for me to do that, um, first of all, in most disciplines there are way more PhDs who want academic positions than there are full -time jobs.

0:28:49 Thomas: Yeah.

0:28:49 Lindsey: Um. That means that even super strong talented students have a really tough road in front of them if they want to get a tenure track position. And even if they do everything right, there's still a tremendous amount of luck involved in it, right? Plenty of people try to do this for years, and either it takes a long time or they never do. Some of them adjunct in the meantime, which is maybe a topic for a whole other discussion, but the whole thing around adjunfting I think is incredibly exploitative. You adjunct a class, you are not a full -time employee. You're just paid like per course to teach.

0:28:49 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:29:20 Thomas: Can Isn't this the equivalent of, it's just like exploiting the fact that you can get cheaper labor, you know? To keep wages down for other, doesn't say, yeah.

0:29:26 Lindsey: Yes. That is exactly what it is. You don't have to pay benefits. And adjunks really get paid very, very little. Order Like to cobble together a full time salary, only adjunctive classes, you would have to, it wouldn't be, I don't think it's possible. Like you'd have to Teach something on average, like 14 or 15 classes a year just to make something close to to a mediocre salary. And that's not possible. Like you know, ideally adjuncting, the way I think it should work is that somebody who already has a full-time job comes in and adjunts a course once in a while. That and provides unique perspective for students because they get the perspective of somebody who's not an academic, somebody out in the real world. But what it actually is at a lot of institutions, they are depending on access cheap labor from desperate people to staff their classes. And if they didn't have access to that, exactly.

0:29:29 Thomas: Okay, oh. Wow. Yeah.

0:30:14 Thomas: Utilizing Utilizing the fact that there's way more supply of people than demand for People, right?

0:30:21 Lindsey: Yeah. Right. And not every institution does this to the same degree, but there are a lot, there are lots of institutions that work like that, and it's gross, I, anyway, so the point being that, like, academia is very competitive, and we want our students who are interested in academic careers to be competitive for grad school and then eventually the job market. And that is created an arms race that starts in bachelor's programs and fosters increasingly intense competition as you advance through grad school in your career.

0:30:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:30:47 Lindsey: Essentially, And I think that remaining competitive on the academic market requires a level of work that, as I said before, I think is actually unethical and immoral to expect of someone to do, um, in my view academic institutions have become dependent on pushing people to those unreasonable degrees. Like if I, I think that if academics at all levels were to pull back and be like, "Nope, I'm gonna set reasonable boundaries," and actually do this amount of work, that a lot of institutions would find that they're actually severely understaffed for the services they are providing, is my sense.

0:30:47 Thomas: Where is all, I know I've asked you this several times, where's all the money going? Why does it cost so much more to go to college than it ever did? Yet understaffed, not, you know, like I thought, I thought the common sort of understanding was like, oh, it's just, there's all this bloated administrative staff kind of thing. But is that not what you think?

0:31:35 Lindsey: Not in my experience, and think we talked a little bit about this in the Patron thingy, but I don't know if I have a super satisfactory answer to that. But it is true that I think colleges and universities are expected to provide a lot more in terms of the student experience than they used to. And I think that a lot of that as a result of colleges trying to compete with each other for access to students, which is becoming a more and more valuable commodity. They're providing a lot more, and that extra labor that comes along with providing those new services and programming and stuff, they're not hiring enough people to really offset that extra work, I think. Just giving it to the existing people as like, "Well, it's just a small thing," right? But you add up a bunch of those and then suddenly you've got everybody doing 20 jobs. That's speculative on my part. I don't know if that's all of it, but

0:32:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And So I wonder what the solution, I mean, on some level there's some amount of the classic, like, you know, and this is, I hate to play into it, but the class a conservative idea of like, well, you want to get a PhD in underwater basket weaving and there's just not that many, there's no demand, that's not going to pay the bills because there's not about, so, but I think there is some of that, right? I mean, there's this, some level on which there's a lot, lot more people interested in an academic career in certain fields than there is just demand, as you've already said. And I much of that difference in supply and demand there, do you think, is just inevitable? Or is there some way to fix that? Like, is there some underlying cause, that some market inefficiency that's causing that misalignment?

0:33:10 Lindsey: I would probably have more thoughts on this if I had some time to consider that. I think it's a really good question.

0:33:14 Thomas: All right, Well, we can pause

0:33:16 Lindsey: But, you know, I mean, having people attend graduate programs I think is pretty lucrative. So I wonder if there is an incentive to wonder, I wonder.

0:33:16 Thomas: On that. That's fine.

0:33:26 Thomas: Like artificial, creating a little bit of artificial demand there. Yeah.

0:33:31 Lindsey: Yeah, also grad students are part of this cycle of cheap labor as well, right? If I think about the big research institutions, institutions, um, students are, are expected to work in labs and TA classes to to justify their assistantships and things, um, and tuition waivers, um,

0:33:48 Thomas: That's the, okay, that is the demand side of the labor thing there, I guess. What about the other side? Then, I was kind of thinking about that. Then, if there is that much interest in academic, you know, graduate degrees, et cetera, that kind of stuff, why doesn't that correspond to then an increase in jobs, like, as in, you know, it is, it's still a bit of like a pyramid scheme, I guess, but like, why aren't there more positions needed to teach those jobs then, or is it just that the math works out that there will never be more, more jobs available, uh, because of the ratios of like one person teaches so many people, kind of thing, yeah?

0:33:52 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:34:27 Lindsey: I'm not sure, that's another one I'd have to think about that, because it could just be literally about the math, that it's always going to be like

0:34:32 Thomas: Yeah. Or, or the only thing I could think of is, do we not have, like, if there was more, more public funding of universities, is there, is there, is there so much demand that there should be more universities or something, there should be more programs that would then create more positions, um,

0:34:54 Lindsey: I don't know if that's the issue, because I think that, I think what we're gonna see is that, in terms of, um, for schools, in terms, think we're probably gonna see a bunch of institutions close over the next couple of decades.

0:35:04 Thomas: Interesting. Interesting.

0:35:06 Lindsey: Um, that's partly about changes in population and things like that, you, you know, people having fewer kids. But yeah, problem that may be very relevant to this question. You tell me.

0:35:18 Lindsey: I have with academia is that if you get a PhD, at least, again, my experience, I do not know if this is all fields, but I have heard this from other people, that you are essentially always interacting with people who went the academic track. You know what I mean? Like, you get trained in graduate school by people who got PhDs and became academics. And generally, what you are being trained for in a PhD program is to become an academic.

And there's not a ton of focus on industry jobs. Graduate students, like, disproportionately, I think graduate students are being funneled into this one career path of being in academia, as opposed to being prepared for a variety of different things that they might go into. So that is a difference, I think, right, might create an excess of people who want to be academics, on the opposed to doing a bunch of other stuff. Like, when I left, one of the big sources of terror for me was like, I don't know if I'm prepared or skilled enough to do anything other than academia. Like, I didn't have, I didn't have a framework for thinking about that. As soon as I got on the other side of things, though, it's like, oh, right, no, I do actually know

0:36:02 Thomas: Interesting.

0:36:20 Lindsey: A lot of of things that are useful to a lot of people.

0:36:20 Thomas: You're right. Podcasts exist. No, I'm just kidding.

0:36:22 Lindsey: Well, podcast exists. But like when I was looking at other things, you know, I was toward, well, that's What I wanted to do. But yeah, are tons of industry jobs in which knowing about research methods and survey design and using software like Qualtrics, there's tons of ways in which your skills are valuable. But it's almost like the structures of academia prevent you from knowing that, but

0:36:24 Thomas: That was absolutely a joke. Yeah, that's Interesting. Because I guess, and now my experience is going to be different because in business school they, they try to brag about those placements, you know, like all these people got placed at this company, these people got place, is when you're in, you know, psychology, what the metrics of how successful a program is, we had this many people become professors somewhere. Interesting.

0:37:06 Lindsey: That's It. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And And again, I don't know if that's everywhere, but it's a very common thing that I hear, that there's a lot of stigma attached to being a PhD student who is intending not to be in academia. It's very culty. I don't, you know, like that shouldn't be that, that shouldn't be the thing.

0:37:17 Thomas: Yeah. Selling out. Yeah. Interesting. I was also wondering if the other side of it is true, like if maybe hirers, don't value this stuff enough or don't put out there that like, hey, we could really use someone with a degree and such and such. Do you think it's that side or do you think is the other site or both?

0:37:41 Lindsey: I think it's a little bit both. I do think that if you want to go into industry and not academia, the marginal gains from getting a PhD versus a master's probably are generally not worth it. It's just like the thing you're doing in a PhD program is just getting this very sort of narrow, specialized knowledge of this one thing. And academia is kind of the place that naturally fits to hire people like that. But your first few years, if you go through a PhD program where you get your master's on the way, you're building all those sort of more generalizable skills within the first bit of that program. So I don't know. It's not that employers wouldn't value the skills that PhDs have. I just don't think you probably probably need them for most industry jobs.

0:37:52 Thomas: Oh, good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:38:25 Thomas: No, That's a good, good point. Okay.

0:38:25 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, that, that, that, like, academia is sort of perpetuating these, these competitive structures, um, one of the things that sort of chipped away at my commitment to the institution and my sense that I was engaging in something of worth by participating in this, that hyper-competitiveness, that arms race kind of pushes both students and people who want to become faculty, and faculty after they become faculty, to work at a level that is really not sustainable. And that overload doesn't hit everybody equally. It tends to fall disproportionately to the most vulnerable people in the system, are pre -tenure, folks that have marginalized identities.

Women, I think that a lot of these experiences I'm talking about are rather gendered. Like a lot of the things that kind of add up over the course of a week in terms of student interactions, I don't think that's the case. I think on average, I experienced somewhat more of that than some of my male colleagues did. You know, just arguing about course policies and stuff. There were tons of things that came up that I was like, like you would never do this if I was not like a relatively

0:38:43 Thomas: Yeah. Oh.

0:39:38 Lindsey: Young woman.

0:39:37 Thomas: Like the work just wouldn't get done, or oh, sorry.

0:39:40 Lindsey: No, no. Like I would, I was challenged by students so much on certain things that I just don't think they would have challenged a male professor on.

0:39:41 Thomas: Oh. Okay. Right. Yeah, if you had the, the jacket with the patches, and you're in a pipe, and you got the gray hair Mm -hmm, no, that's too young of a beard, you need a, you need an older gray beard

0:39:50 Lindsey: Yeah. And a pipe and a beard like Matt Walsh's. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Salt and pepper. Yeah, um, Yeah, no, I mean, but those, those things are a very real and time-consuming part of my job, is, is those kinds of interactions, and that's, that's again, it's just it's falling unequally to people, um, big part of this is that if you, if you refuse to be overworked in this way, like if you say, like, "Nope, I'm gonna pull back and set healthy boundaries," that's viewed as a sign of like not being sufficiently committed to your students, or something, because, you know, being a professor is about passion, we don't do it for the money. We do it for the students because we care about the students. And just like that combination of things is just a recipe for burnout.

0:39:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. That Makes sense. Yeah.

0:40:24 Thomas: Totally. Okay.

0:40:35 Lindsey: Like zooming back out a little bit, I don't want to make it sound like I think there are sort of evil geniuses that that are, you lurking in academic administrations that are doing this. Yeah, that's how systemic shit works, right? Like, again, everybody I worked with, I found to be extremely sincere, committed people. And it happens to be happening in the structure that I think is kind of inherently exploitative. It just got, it got hard to not see that, especially after COVID hit and some of the, the changes that came along with COVID, and having a little breathing room to sit back and reflect on some of this stuff and how maybe it wasn't entirely me being a worthless piece of shit that was causing the problems, that maybe there was a broader context producing

0:40:42 Thomas: It's never evil geniuses Yeah, yeah.

0:41:12 Thomas: Yeah. It

0:41:16 Lindsey: Them, um, so I don't know, that's where I'm at. I really do want to do the follow-up conversation with Aaron because I think

0:41:19 Thomas: Is Oh. For sure I would love, I think we, yeah, the only thing is I would be more interested in a focus on what is going to be most relevant to the most people, which I think is grades at like a lower level, you know? I mean, it doesn't mean we couldn't also talk about college, but I do think I'd be curious to broaden that out a little bit. I don't know if his paper does that at all, but to talk about grades at like kind of every level of school, I think would be, would be super interesting to everybody. So we should flag that as a topic going forward. Yeah,

0:41:22 Lindsey: Yeah yeah Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes, I think

0:41:53 Thomas: Let's do it.

0:41:53 Lindsey: That I think that his, his thoughts on this are very broadly applicable to, yeah. So it'd be fun. Anyway, so, like, uh, yeah, so this is, this is really cool, because I, I think that this, is being able to do the show, that is, is, is getting me back to the things that actually drew me into academia in the first place, um, it's not happening in this context that feels unsustainable in the same ways, so I'm very excited about it, and this has been a really good change

0:41:57 Thomas: Okay.

0:42:15 Thomas: So maybe we create a Patreon tier that is Lindsay will give you feedback on your paper. What do you think?

0:42:16 Lindsey: Oh. My god. I totally would. I would. I really would, actually.

0:42:23 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Send us a message if that's a tier you might be interested in. We'll see. That's awesome. And once again, you know, I'm so excited to have Lindsay on in support the show so that this can happen. While you may happily get a job at a hipster bar sometime, that's fine. We don't want you to have to go to work for Amazon or something, you know, uh, not, and and no offense to people who have to work for Amazon, it's just, uh, exploitative, you know? Sure. Yeah.

0:42:30 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:43:04 Thomas: Capitalism, yeah.

0:43:15 Lindsey: I think right, yeah, Amazon's a good example

0:43:16 Thomas: Right. And like we said, the uh, the Patron special is up, "What Is a Woman," you're gonna find out, that's a question you're apparently not allowed to ask, you'll be shot on on site for asking that. In fact, I have the police knocking at my door for even repeating the title of the movie. So thank you so much for listening and really looking forward to, greater things ahead for SIO. Oh, I would say this too, for one, I don't think we've announced this on the show that we're going to do a live series in Queers Only at QED.

0:43:47 Thomas: I don't even think I announced that because we haven't, we've been, our schedules have been hectic. So we are, be aware, we're probably going to squeeze some episodes into the end of the month here. For Patreon purposes. Sorry about that. But, you know, they'll be there for you when you need them. It's been a minute since we released something, we haven't announced that. QED is the greatest conference that I've ever been to. I love it. I've been looking forward to it for, oh, it was three, four years.

0:43:27 Lindsey: Correct oh yeah yeah yeah

0:44:13 Thomas: It was going to be every two years. They used to do it every year. And then they said, we're going to do whatever two years, and then COVID. And so I think it's been four years, if unless I'm quite mistaken, which is shocking, and I'm so excited to get back to it. Uh, it really is a great event.

Uh, to come out, try to make plans to come out if you can, if you live in Europe in any way, uh, anywhere, this is going to be like probably the easiest, best chance to come say hi to us ever, you know, because we're going over there, so consider that. Um, QED, look it up, Google it, we'll put a link in the show notes. It's, it's great. We're going to be there doing a live series in Queers Only.

And, uh, you want to give us some, you suggestions, feedback, anything where you think it might be a good, uh, direction to go, in light of this additional, uh, and energy that we're going have available to us as a show. Uh, feel free to to write us in, or, you know, if you like what we're doing already, that's great too. Um, of that would be great. And, and we're obviously going to listen to patrons first and foremost. So go to patreon.com

0:44:13 Lindsey: Indeed yeah

0:45:15 Thomas: Slash seriouspod for feedback on your paper that Lindsay might give you. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next time.

0:45:22 Lindsey: I really will

0:45:36 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do, is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com slash groups slash SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.