Dwelling slowly but feeling happy in academia
Disclaimer: as always, what I say below is merely my own story, not the one and only way, or the right way, to relate with the world.
Recently, a fellow human from Roskilde university, the Danish university that was my academic home after I resigned from my academic position in Finland due to harassment and until I applied for a different kind of residence permit, reached out to me. Because I received a new residence permit, the university welcomes me back, though this time my host will be someone else, a fellow human who is, like me, a sustainability researcher and practitioner. Being a visiting researcher rather than a member of staff has its advantages and disadvantages. I can use university spaces (both physical and online), work on my own projects, work closely with my colleagues in Denmark and other countries, do guest lectures and workshops wherever I want, and apply for funding together with my fellow humans. The downside is that I'm not being paid. Having said that, this downside comes with positive aspects too, as I'm not obliged to do anything in particular, take part in meetings and workshops, and be present for presence's sake. If universal basic income existed, I would have chosen to be a visiting scholar for many, many years.
How can you afford to live?, a fellow human might ask. Firstly, I still have some savings from the years I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in academia. Some fellow humans, after finishing their PhD, choose to live a normal (in this society) life, with a big house, a car, shopping, going out, and travelling. Academic wages beyond the PhD level easily afford a middle class lifestyle. Yet, many academic jobs are temporary, precarious. While some spaces are nurturing and supportive, others are incredibly exploitative. It's very difficult or even impossible to know how one's life in a department will unfold. I opened my postdoctoral researcher chapter with caution. After 6 years of studying at universities to receive my bachelor and masters degrees, and then 4 years of doing my PhD, I felt that I had a good idea of what academia could be like. I decided to live in a very small apartment, to continue my practice of extreme minimalism, and to save as much as possible, without compromising my principles (e.g., eating mostly organic food, making the most sustainable choices I could). It allowed me to relocate to another country to continue my postdoc there, and to live for some time without a wage. Secondly, my partner and I both practise minimalism. One wage could be enough for our family, though it would mean to continue living the way we do. Thankfully, this is the only way we want to live. We don't want to own or consume more. I understand that having a partner who can provide for the family could be seen as a privilege. Yet, some years ago, I prioritised love. The harassment that I mentioned above began when my manager found out about my relationship with my partner, a researcher at a different university. I could say no to the relationship and stay in that job. But I didn't. I do not believe that humans should choose between love and their job.
Not long ago, a fellow human, a professor in my field, brought fellow humans' attention to the cycle of competition, rejection and severe, negative mental health consequences. This cycle characterises what fellow humans, early career researchers, apparently go through. Academia is competitive for many. There are situations where one's so-called "success" is managed closely for someone else (e.g., a PhD supervisor). But they are rather rare. Apart from being rare, such situations are often not as enviable as they might initially seem. Gaining, say, a permanent position and a stable income might come at a cost of never finding oneself, staying at a particular university, working on a project one doesn't love, and failing to follow one's heart. Most fellow humans apply for funding and get rejections, submit articles to journals and get rejections, apply for jobs and get rejections. And this, in the end, leads to negative mental health consequences such as burn-out and depression.
And yet, I cannot relate deeply with this. I'm generally feeling happy about my path. Before I say more, I want to say that the system obviously needs to change. Like others, I would love to see a job guarantee for PhD students, a ban on temporary and precarious positions, flatter hierarchies in academia, much more transparency, more protection for early career researchers, less obsession with publishing and mobility, equal distribution of funding and so on.
Yet, as someone who strongly believes in human agency, I think there is so much that individuals can do. Feeling powerless and playing the game of academia, or waiting for the system to change, is a sure path to depression. One of the most important things I realised in my life was that, from birth, I have only one career. I wrote about it in my first solo authored book too:
"There is one lifelong career that I have, that is of spiritual growth. What I do in academia is not a career, it is a space where I can manifest the result of that growth and growing further together with my fellow humans, including my students."
My one and only career is that of being a good human being (kind, empathetic, compassionate, caring, gentle, loving, fair, honest, trustworthy, authentic, creative, capable of self-transcendence, etc.). I believe that everyone is born with a capacity to be a good human being through spiritual growth. I also believe, like Roy Bhaskar in his MetaReality, that it's the most natural path for humans. There is no competition when it comes to this career. There are over 8 billion fellow humans, and everyone can be a good human being. There are various roles that we play in society. I'm a scholar (above is a screenshot of my citations as of mid-February 2025). I am a mother of my yet unborn baby, a friend, a sister, a wife, a neighbour and so on. Being a scholar is not more important than any of those other roles. Why should I worry more about this role than any other one? Why should I allow myself to get depressed in this role? Why would I sacrifice any other role for this one? Seeing clearly what my career truly is and what it is not empowered me so much on my journey. I could change jobs, commit to nurturing spaces, be creative, collaborate in a loving and caring way, say no to the things that didn't feel right, take time off work, talk explicitly about my pregnancy rather than trying to hide it from my academic cv. I could be present for my students and avoid those spaces where I didn't want to be. I could share my knowledge far beyond academia. And I still can, and I do. There were two times when I was burnt-out and depressed. They were the times when I was in a stable (though temporary) position. One was when my PhD supervisor plagiarised my work. I complained about him. The university removed him from my supervision, but that happened after many months of going through a formal complaint procedure. The other time was the situation I described above. I complained about the manager's behaviour. I didn't win (in conventional terms - she retained her position), and neither did her manager who tried to remove the individual from my management. I resigned, which was a very good decision.
I have certainly experienced rejections in academia. Most recently, my fellow human and I applied for funding and we got a rejection. With the same fellow human we wrote an article and we asked the journal to reject it due to rude and offensive comments. The editor refused to reject the article, so we will let some month pass before resubmitting. Just like I have never felt extreme joy when my articles got accepted, I never felt extreme disappointment when I received a rejection. As for funding, my partner (who is a researcher) and I have a, what I consider to be, healthy approach to getting funding: we are pleased to get it, but not disappointed when we don't. We'll simply try again. In my academic so-called career, I have published all the works I wanted to publish. At times those works' journeys were very interesting. For example, one of them was rejected by a book editor a while ago, but got published in a more desirable place later with almost no changes. I write my works, all of which are about sustainability, to contribute to eco-social transformations. I also write them because they are my creative outlet. Writing them is an end in itself. Most of them I try to publish, but I do it after I have felt satisfaction and joy from having written them. Of course it feels good when one's work is published in a journal, and hence reaches many fellow humans. But there are other ways to reach fellow humans too. For example, these days this autoethnography reaches more fellow humans than my academic works.
Trying to succeed in academia in conventional terms often entails strategic networking, something I refuse to engage in. I want to share, learn with and from fellow humans. At times, I want to attend some event. But I avoid most workshops and conferences. I apply minimalist principles that I apply to my life in general, to my engagement with academia too. This allows me to direct my energy where I want to direct it, to free up time for creative work. Since becoming pregnant, this has become more important than ever before. Overcommitment and being overly present, in my experience, only contributes to negative mental health outcomes. I wish more fellow humans would say no to more events, meetings and favours to those "above" them. We often say, as I said above, that the system needs to change. It doesn't change by itself. Humans transform and reproduce it. Tired, overworked, overcommitted, over-networked, disempowered humans barely have any energy to transform the system and transform themselves.
From my own book:
"My career, citations, the number of publications, the length of my curriculum vitae – all of those paled in comparison to the sea and the cosmos. All of those indicators of so‑called success paled even in comparison to the smallest flower or a piece of granite."