This blog post by Scott Aaronson on crying babies at conferences, and the comments to the post, are both hilarious and thoughtful (not necessarily at the same time.) Scott and his readers discuss topics ranging from suggestions about funding childcare during conferences, the difficulty involved in getting tenure during the childbearing years, to the fact that 'academia has the “trifecta” of low pay, long hours, and tenure pressure."
The semester’s over. If you’re anything like the academics I coach, you feel like death warmed over. Those last stacks of grading got done on sheer will, determination and fumes. And this is before considering your writing deadlines, committee responsibilities, and other demands. You are suffering from Academic Exhaustion Syndrome. Academic Exhaustion Syndrome (an advanced, more scholarly state of burn out) is a state of emotional, and physical exhaustion caused by prolonged stress, ending with grading, over the course of the semester and academic year. As the stress continues, you begin to lose interest and motivation to work, you have fantasies of standing up and screaming in the middle of a meeting, and you wonder what temporary loss of reality testing made you decide to become an academic. This dreaded Syndrome can: Reduce your productivity and saps your energy Make you irritable and have thoughts of strangling an undergraduate Make you feel like you have nothing more to g
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