But yes, I’m in a good position. :-) Looking forward to continuing to figure out life.

First, spending time on trivialities will make you better at trivialities, which biases yourself towards trivialities in future choices. When you have a fixed amount of time and the choice whether to produce text for some grant proposal or whether to work on an exciting question, you better have more practice in tackling complex, possibly confused questions than in writing grant proposals.

Second, spending time on trivialities signals that you are willing to do trivial things, which biases your social environment towards making you the person to get trivialities done. If you just don’t do the things that are not the kind of thing you want to do, this may look worse on your cv — but it will mainly look worse to those who would like to get you to do things you don’t like anyway!

If ‘as little as you can get away with’ turns out to be a substantial amount of your time, look for a different place. If you can’t find one, maybe working part of your time (e.g. consulting, freelance programming) and spending the rest of your time on whatever research you want is a better solution?

Personally, I’m lucky to be in a place where I don’t feel a strong push towards trivialities and where I work with people who care about making actual progress.

If you’re done in two months, it sounds like you are in a pretty good position.

I think a lot of this comes from a false setup, as you point out: we enter academia with the misconceptions of youth. I strongly identified with the values projected by people like Carl Sagan and my science teachers. Discovering that value-set submerged by the enforced trivialities of endless grant proposals, smallest publishable units, and short-cutting in research has been hard to handle. This is probably psychologically similar to how religious people feel when they start to lose their faith.

Where have your thoughts wondered in the time since this post?

Started doing my PhD in nuclear physics thinking high and optimistic, although have seen how things have been! My PhD studies were taking place in Geneva – next to CERN – so kind of had high hopes.

Well the result..not really! Became a kind of a cynic with cutting edge and enormous negative bias.

Daniel: I agree. “There’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” — anonymous*. But there are other things besides getting you recognition for which academia is useful, e.g. getting you together with like-minded people, therefore it may make sense to go the traditional route even if you don’t care about recognition.

Michael: If I have the choice between a) becoming passionate about an activity I currently do (and don’t like) and b) replacing the activity by something I’m passionate about, I choose the latter. If there was a drug that made me feel like working on an assembly line was the most significant thing in the world, this would not make it into the most significant thing. Therefore I wouldn’t take the drug. For me, dissatisfaction is mostly an indicator to move on, not to change myself.

Thorben: I agree. In academia, you first learn a set of methods and then get to solve those problems where your particular set of methods fits best. I’d rather pick those problems that matter most to me and then learn about any methods I need to solve them.

What were the two things you initially thought about?

This is not about money or high recognition. This is about doing what you really like without getting stuck to one particular chair because people throw problems at you which fit your abilities but are not what you really wanted.

Yes, I could need money, but I also have turned down job offers as programmer for our university’s catastrophic course management system. Should have been within my area of expertise but I did not want it to become even more so.

True scientists must have a motivation beyond money and reputation. All in all I am glad, that they do NOT earn a lot of money.

@Andreas
Well written, I could not have made it more explicit and I am glad to see that I am not the only one who is worried about this.
I really entered university with the goal of staying there for the rest of my life. However, comparing my idealistic picture of science to the reality of some academics, it is hard to look forward without any doubts. On the other hand, there ARE professors I still admire for loving their job and doing the things that matter. It is not, that it was not possible.

I think it is not only common for scientists to do a job which is actually boring them. Think of your teachers, politicians, your hairdresser, whoever. Next time you go to the supermarket look in the face of your shop assistants. If you do it more often, you will soon notice who enjoys her job and who does not. You will see it in their eyes, most of them do not, but – fascinatingly – there are some who do, really!

What distinguishes them? Is it because they do the job of their childhood dreams? Probably not. Is it because they do not know about other jobs most likely being more exciting? Probably not. I think, the secret of most of those people is that they are just pleased with the things they do. When they are with their family, they put all their love into their family. When they meet their friends, all the energy is reserved for them. When they are at work, they work hard, they put all the effort into their job. Whatever they do, they do it with passion. That is why they love their job and are successful.

And indeed, what they do IS significant, they know they are a part of society and they contribute to it – although it is clear that they are not the only one contributing and probably also not the one who is contributing most. But a satisfied shop assistant might contribute more than a dissatisfied scientist. Doing all the things with love and care, I believe, will ensure that we contribute as much as we can.

I will continue to work on caring about the things I do. And therefore I am confident of finding my way.

After years and years of experience, I think it comes down to two main issues:

1) A Ph.D. is not enough. There is a book out with this title. Read it.

2) Academia is very good at getting you recognition. It looks good to say that you are a university professor or to say that you have a Ph.D.

3) Companies are very good at giving you money. More than you can spend, at some point.

4) Looking good or being rich is nice. Alas, it is a trap. Money, recognition, power… all these things are traps. Avoid them. I am serious. If you can learn to avoid power and recognition… if you can learn to lay low and yet be smart and ambitious, you’ll have incredible freedom.