Oct 24, 2024 07:27 PM
(This post was last modified: Oct 24, 2024 07:34 PM by C C.)
https://www.the-scientist.com/why-are-su...reer-72266
EXCERPTS: An increasing number of successful mid-career scientists grapple with the difficult decision to leave academia for greener pastures, with almost 50 percent leaving within ten years of publishing their first paper. Universities are losing their top talent as scientists confront waning motivation, misaligned ideals, workplace toxicity, inequalities, poor work-life balance, clinical burnout, and mental health deterioration.
[,,,] Pelling described academia as lacking work-life balance. The intense focus on a specific topic is a basic requirement for driving discovery, but it is easy to get carried away. The increasingly arduous demands on professors to take on additional roles creates a slippery slope towards burnout.
“It’s your identity, all the time, 24/7. It caught up with me [after] a lot of bad decisions. It's normalized, this type of life,” Pelling said. “We're trying to do research at the bench. We're not ever trained to manage people, money, and bureaucracy, or to teach. We’re thrown into these things. Some of us are good at it, some of us are not, and it just all piles on every day. For me it just got to be way too much.” (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: An increasing number of successful mid-career scientists grapple with the difficult decision to leave academia for greener pastures, with almost 50 percent leaving within ten years of publishing their first paper. Universities are losing their top talent as scientists confront waning motivation, misaligned ideals, workplace toxicity, inequalities, poor work-life balance, clinical burnout, and mental health deterioration.
[,,,] Pelling described academia as lacking work-life balance. The intense focus on a specific topic is a basic requirement for driving discovery, but it is easy to get carried away. The increasingly arduous demands on professors to take on additional roles creates a slippery slope towards burnout.
“It’s your identity, all the time, 24/7. It caught up with me [after] a lot of bad decisions. It's normalized, this type of life,” Pelling said. “We're trying to do research at the bench. We're not ever trained to manage people, money, and bureaucracy, or to teach. We’re thrown into these things. Some of us are good at it, some of us are not, and it just all piles on every day. For me it just got to be way too much.” (MORE - details)