About

This blog is written by someone who has spent much of her professional life among professors — and, eventually, became one.

Not in a linear or exemplary way.
Not early, not smoothly, and not without doubt.

I came to academia later than most, carried a persistent sense of being out of place, and learned the rules largely by watching others play the game — sometimes well, often badly.

The posts on this site draw on experiences from different stages of an academic career: doing a PhD, navigating early contracts, searching for permanence, and learning what changes — and what does not — once one reaches senior positions.

Along the way, I encountered many forms of academic misogyny: from the openly disconcerting to the casually humorous, from structural exclusion to remarks meant as compliments. These moments were rarely dramatic on their own. Their cumulative effect, however, was formative.

Some of these experiences are shaped not only by gender and seniority, but also by ways of thinking and working that sit uneasily with academic norms. 

The title of this blog is a deliberate nod to W.F. Hermans’ satirical novel Onder Professoren, whose portrayal of academic pettiness, rivalry, and moral smallness I once read as exaggeration — and later recognised as par for the course.

This is not a guide to success, nor a promise that effort is rewarded. Academic careers are shaped by chance, timing, health, institutional politics, and the dispositions of others.

What this blog offers instead are observations, patterns, and strategies that helped me endure, navigate, and sometimes advance within an environment that was not designed with people like me in mind.

I write anonymously by choice. Academic worlds are small, memory is long, and honesty is rarely cost-free. Anonymity allows me to be precise rather than polite, reflective rather than strategic.

This blog is written especially for early-career and late-entry academics who suspect they arrived too late, lack the right instincts, or are quietly convinced that everyone else knows what they are doing.

It is also for those who are curious about how academic power operates from the inside — not at its most spectacular, but at its most ordinary.

What follows are not lessons, but field notes: on surviving doctoral years, on learning when to speak and when not to, on imposter syndrome that does not magically disappear, and on what it actually means to “make it” — if one ever does.