The Times, They Have A-Changed
Academia is no longer as fun or rewarding as it once was - at least for me. Now, I am very well aware that my view of academia might be more, as the kids say, a me-thing than an it-thing. I suppose you could argue that after a certain number of decades, everyone has nostalgia for the way things were and is convinced the system is going to the dogs. I’m fully open to the possibility that some of my feelings are just sentimentality for what was, and a certain kind of arrogance that amounts to thinking that what existed when you were young is better than what exists now. To take an example from a different domain, I suspect all of us know people who assert that there’s no more good music, and who claim that the last good decade for music was — surprise! — the decade when they were in their teens and early twenties. This idea strikes me as completely implausible, even at some basic biological level - like why would humans suddenly lose their ability to make good art? Instead, ...