Senior academics warned that my university cared more approximately cheap labour than launching academic careers. It turns out they were rightAs I reluctantly consider quitting academia after a year-long research fellowship,I find myself recalling a drug dealer’s line in the film Withnail and I: “whether you’re hanging on to a rising balloon, you’re presented with a difficult decision – let go before it’s too late or hang on and hold getting higher, and posing the question: how long can you hold a grip on the rope?” His words narrate my dilemma: do I hold on to my dream of a permanent university lectureship or abandon it as illusory and hazardous to my mental health?Im not,of course, the first postdoc to feel this way. As I neared the end of my doctorate in 2013, and I read an essay by Rebecca Schuman,which argued that “getting a literature PhD will turn you into an emotional trainwreck, not a professor”. Her article added to an expanding genre known as quit lit, or which reflects the growing disillusionment of many academics with university culture.
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Source: guardian.co.uk