>professor briefly mentions that he is hosting a symposium

>>8600938
>He genuinely thought that David Foster Wallace was an inferior writer to Virginia 'the roastwhore' Woolf
He is.

and his NAME IS THOMAS PYNCHON
dun dunna dun
dun dunna dun

>>8600938
Does anyone here work in or around academia? Any stories, anecdotes, insight into the current state of affairs? I'm slightly intrigued.

>>8601611
>Does anyone here work in or around academia?
I do, but in science.

Many of my compatriots read YA genre fiction, I don't think any of them actually has beyond a 4th grade reading level (the PhD students anyway, they're all surprisingly stupid, evidence that all it takes is dedication not intelligence).

>>8601636

> I don't think any of them actually has beyond a 4th grade reading level (the PhD students anyway, they're all surprisingly stupid, evidence that all it takes is dedication not intelligence).

Can second this, also a stemfag. A rock could get a Biology PhD if it knew how to pipette

>>8601611
I'm in doctoral studies at a prestigious university and I pretty much agree with >>8601636 and >>8601658

These are Ivy League kids and they aren't really exceptional. Dedicated, maybe, but even that might be going too far. I think some of them just have accidental knacks for pulling off the three or four things you need to be an A+ student. From there it's a crapshoot to get into a really good program, and then it's surprisingly hard to fail. You have to keep playing the game, but the difficulty doesn't go up. Kinda goes down, actually, because no one wants to flunk or eject a grad student, but they'll fail 500 faceless undergrads just for not "wowing" them.

Most students are outright dull. And all a PhD does is add minute specialization to their unexceptional dullness, so they are dull mediocrities who can tell you everything about their tiny section of their tiny over-specialty. Even THEN, they're usually mediocre as specialists, relatively speaking, but because specialists are so rare to begin with, mediocrity looks exceptional absolutely. Anyone who spends 8 years ponderously studying one subject is going to be reasonably equipped to teach 101 courses on it, even if they have no passion and no insight, and they were actually pretty lousy at studying, objectively speaking.

A lot of professors are the latter. Passionless mediocrities who are fastidious about their little sub-sub-subfield, but not really passionate about it. They put on the airs of being a scholar, but it really does begin to look like office work for most of them. Again, just people who have a knack for doings the 2-3 things you need to be a bare minimum academic. It's not unreasonable to argue that publish-or-perish has just turned the whole thing into a derivative paper mill. Millions of mediocrities churning out frankly unnecessary scholarship, just filling out gaps and exploring redundant, unimaginative "possibilities of what can be said" within the paradigms/discourses they were taught.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortega_hypothesis

It's made even worse by the fact that being a professor IS mostly demanding office work, even if you aren't that type to begin with. They joke that grad school is the last time you'll learn new information, because after that, it's all publish-or-perish, dealing with editors and colloquia and shit, plus ten thousand pounds of university paperwork, grading, courses to design, letters of recommendation to write every day.

If you're a genius or passionate, it has a lot of opportunities. But for the most part, it's a sinecure for rich people's children who got B or A averages while leisurely completing undergrad, and gradually/eventually convinced themselves it was a "calling" because they didn't want to go work at their dad's company or go into medicine/law. Be prepared to be surrounded by 99% jobbers, a lot of nepotism, and a tedious byzantine way of life.

>>8601726
what is this

>>8601718

Sick dude. sounds fun. What are you passionate about?

>>8601726

The post above this one redeems the thread. Carry on.

>>8601718
Depressing but true.

>>8601718
Wow. I knew it could be passionless, but not dispiriting as well.

I was on track to becoming an academic, but I pulled out at the last second. What could have been.

>>8601718
>I read Stoner and think it depicts real life

hokay Anon.

>>8602754
>states common and widespread internal dissatisfaction with academia
>thinks it is based on Stoner
Undereducated pleb detected.