Among Professors: Academic Life, Power & Survival

“You always apply for those small projects — they’re much easier.” The euphoria of my research grant had lasted exactly one walk to the coffee corner. I’d rushed out to share the news, and before the first congratulations faded, a colleague offered his verdict. The message was clear:  your achievement is not really an achievement. In those moments, the joy of achievement is quickly replaced by self-doubt. You start to wonder: Did I really deserve this? Should I have worked harder? Was it just luck? Later, when the practical consequence was discussed — a modest teaching reduction, as is customary — the apparent cheerfulness turned to open irritation. Two colleagues were annoyed. Why didn’t   they   get teaching relief to make time to write a proposal? Wasn’t that unfair? The implication was unmistakable: I must have had   so few   other responsibilities that I had ample time to work on a proposal. The months of sacrificed weekends were irrelevant. My investment w...

The moment you say yes once, you will be asked again. You have landed that new, highly coveted permanent position. You naturally want to show your best side: to be available, collegial, reliable. My warning is simple: don’t. Or if you must, only in moderation.  In academic environments, helpfulness is rarely rewarded explicitly, but it is quietly exploited. Women, in particular, tend to say yes more readily to tasks that “just need to be done”. Men, in my experience, often do so far less.  What I have noticed over the years is this: if a male academic does end up with an undesirable task, he often ensures that he is never asked again. By doing it badly, by delaying endlessly, or by “forgetting” it altogether. The outcome is predictable. The task disappears, and so does the request. The system, in other words, rewards exactly the behaviour it officially discourages. My advice, then, is straightforward but not easy: learn to say no. That is harder than it sounds, especially if y...

One of the routine challenges of a PhD is presenting your work. As a poster. Or as a talk. That alone is nerve-racking, but the questions are the worst. What if you don’t know the answer? What if a single question exposes that your entire project is fundamentally flawed? Sleepless nights before a conference come with the territory. So does the fear of failure. My supervisor gave the classic, well-meant advice: listen carefully to questions. They can help you refine your experiment. It sounded logical. So I tried to do that. At a major international conference, I got a question from someone I immediately recognised as  the  expert in my field. She started by asking whether I knew one of her papers. I did. What followed was a long, dull monologue that grew increasingly technical and drifted further and further from my research topic. Halfway through, I had already lost the thread. Then came the punchline: “ Would you like to comment on that?” On what?  I thought. What came ...

Some time after that first, painful conference — where I had been interrupted in public and yet was still offered a position — I received the description of the research project I would be working on. It lay in front of me, full of jargon and technical terms: the kind of text meant to impress funders and peer reviewers. I felt uncertain, seeking reassurance and hoping my doubts would be dispelled. I walked into the office of one of my own professors. I showed him the document and said, “It all sounds very technical.” He took it, read a few paragraphs, looked up, and asked, without a flicker of emotion, the question that floored me: “Don’t you think this might be a little beyond you?” No genuine concern. No inquiry into my motivation. No, “Let’s see how we can prepare you for this.” It was a verdict. An academic way of saying:   Stick to your lane. Was he protecting his own status? Or that of the field? Or was I really as incapable as I feared? Years passed. I became a professor my...

The idea of pursuing a PhD — let alone becoming a professor — was once beyond the realm of my imagination. In my environment, university served a single purpose: training for a solid, practical profession. It was the only path I knew. I followed it faithfully, earning a degree in a health-related field. Yet a sense of unease persisted. What followed was a ten-year odyssey through various specialisations — working with children, stroke patients, adults with intellectual disabilities — each move an attempt to find a niche that suited me. None ever did. The outcome was predictable: a severe burnout. A decade in the wrong career is a recipe for collapse.  I never imagined starting a PhD later in life, after a decade in another profession. Yet, within that breaking point lay an unexpected gift.  The catalyst that forced me to abandon the original path entirely and begin constructing another — one that led, improbably, to where I am now . I decided to study languages, purely out of ...