Are all postdocs depressive somehow?
While chatting with postdoc colleagues during this summer’s seminars and lab barbecues, some observations repeated: Many seemed to be off balance and worn down, or at least they felt that their peers were.
Is this a recent thing with LLMs turning academic publishing and programming into even more of a hellscape? Or with the financing problems of Western research systems?
Or is it a structural paradox inherent in hiring people for one-year projects and expecting them to generate output immediately? Of course, that expectation is wildly incompatible with diligent research, let alone academic publication timelines. (It might work if one does not really change labs/subfields, while at the same time, exactly that is expected of postdocs?!)
And then, for half of the year, people spend a big chunk of their mental energy on applying for positions … or on refreshing their email inbox to hear back from grant and hiring committees.
What’s your theory of what’s going on with this “academic career stage”?
(And mad respect to all those who’re putting up with it!)
