Has anyone else been following the Insecure Scholar blog on the Times Higher Education supplement? It is really well written and accurately portrays life as an early researcher. Its my fave post-doc blog since "Invisible Adjunct" stopped being published.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=409678

What do people think? Looking back from the outside what I now realise is the petty, niggling things that eventually add up. Fine, its crap to have to always think 6 months ahead for your next contract, or not have a proper title at a conference, but when you add it all together it paints a fairly crappy picture.

I am curious to see how it will end, will IS stay or go do you think?

I've only just read it and...how depressing!
I've just spent the last 5 hours searching the net, wondering how I'm going to make a lot of money in academia (inside and outside the profession).
One of my dreamy aims is to purchase one of those £2million grand manor houses on some property search websites, and I'm trying to figure out how I can get there! :p

Well, well...
hmmmm, don't you think this is true?
I have just had my viva, and I have difficulty in finding a job. I heard some associate professors complaining about academia and postdocs complaining about boredom ...etc but, i guess it is the same every where else? or is it just academia? there has to be some positives and negatives.

No one seem happy to me, sorry to be so pessimistic but, this is what i witnessed and starting to realise :$

Well, I suppose I better sit my post-Chrimbo fat arse on the other side of the optimism-pessimism see-saw before it tips over because, however hypocritical of me it may sound, I'm really fed up with all the triple espresso negativity which seems to have infused the arse-end of 2009. Read the papers, watch the news, watch the TV and do a bit of impromptu atheoretical thematic analysis and there's a general pattern to everything: shit creek, paddle, global waming, cuts, more cuts, Dave Cameron, austerity medicine, hard times.
I think, at the risk of sounding weird, we really need to protect ourselves from all this negativity; it's like a vicious cycle - that I can do without with only 9 months of my PhD to go. Of course be realistic but, seriously, life's too short for all this cortisol-inducing stress.
The way things seem to me at the moment, it begs the question of 'why bother?' if things are really, truly, impossibly so bad?

Anyway, not to digress from the thread, I think he'll probably stay in the end. I also think that, ultimately, everything will turn out ok-ish for UK universities and ourselves.

I refuse to read this blog after the last blogging saga (the academic who got fired) declined into paranoid hysteria by both the writer and those commenting at the bottom of the page.

I don't know about 'pressure to keep up to date with new developments' most of the departments I've worked for have been pretty Neanderthal in those terms, and success seems to have much more to do with personality, just as it does in most professions, along with general ability and talent. In fact, I have found myself dumbing down on several occasions in order to fit in. But maybe that's just the area and places in which I teach... Thank God this forum is anonymous!