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Grappling with academic jealousy?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader ('failure') asks:

How do you get over academic jealousy?

I applied to a wide range of Ph.D. programs this cycle. I only have offers from a few very low-ranked or unranked Ph.D. programs. The rest are rejections, so no hope of getting out of a waitlist to a better program. If I accept one of these offers, I believe, based on the comments here and elsewhere, the students' comments on APDA and elsewhere, and my experiences so far, that (1) I will have much worse job prospects both in kind and number in an already bad market, (2) I will get taken seriously much less both in the philosophy academia generally and my specialty specifically, (3) I will get read less, and (4) I will not be as respected among my peers and faculty everywhere. Equally importantly, I am hesitant to accept one of the offers I have because I strongly believe that (i) I will probably never stop feeling jealous and resentful, and that (ii) I will probably never stop believing that my feelings are apt because I have been done an injustice. Here is why.

I believe a significant number of people had better applications than me and they reasonably received better offers (By 'better' I mean the academic achievements on their CV, their fit to the program as stated on their SoP, and the strength of their writing sample). This is great. However, the problem is, I also believe that I had a better -or at least as good- application than a significant number of people who received much better offers. Of course, this problem belief may be false, and I would very much like it to be false, in order to trust how things work. But, given how things work, I will probably never know if the problem belief is false and, if so, why. Neither will do my professors, friends, and other applicants with whom I have been discussing this. I can no longer deal with the negativity this situation generates for me. Either I need to accept my failure as evidence that (a) I am a worse philosopher than I think I am, and so I should not mind being treated as such, or (b) I have been done an injustice; I am not a worse philosopher than I think I am, even though I did get much worse offers than people whose applications are not much better than me.

If (a), then I think I should quit. If I don't have enough self-knowledge or ability to understand why I fail even at the entrance to the discipline, then this is good evidence that I am simply not cut out for the highest level of academic philosophy. If (b), then I think my feelings of resentment (i-ii) are apt, and I will never be able to deal with the inferior treatment (1-4, and more) I would receive had I accepted one of the offers I currently have. Still, in this case, I think I should quit.

Applying again is an option, of course. But, if we should trust how things work, there's no point in doing that if I believe I did everything I could do this time, which I do. And, if we don't trust how things work, then, again, there's no point in "improving" my application and hope for the best.

Is there any way out of this?

I'm curious to hear what readers think. From talking to people over many years, my sense is that academic jealousy is common, and that unfairness (unfortunately) is a fact of life that we all must find a way to grapple with the best that we can–which some do by adopting a kind of stoicism, or detaching from competitive aspects of the profession, focusing instead on other parts of life (friends, family, etc.) and intrinsic rewards (e.g., enjoying research and teaching for their own sake); whereas others may respond in different ways. Is academic jealously worse than jealousy in other areas of life, or other occupations? Maybe, I'm not sure–though I guess I wouldn't be surprised. In any case, I'm not sure what to recommend to the OP. We're all different of course, but if they already find the situation intolerable, then perhaps they've arrived at the best practical conclusion. I don't know.

What do you all think?

Posted in

27 responses to “Grappling with academic jealousy?”

  1. @failure

    @failure I think that you are correct that if this is how you feel at the point of getting in to the PhD, and you cannot foresee a way to stop feeling this, you will have a bad time in this discipline. If you are sensitive to feeling mistreated when people as good as you get better things, this is a bad career for that disposition. Publications, esteem, prizes, promotions, jobs, there simply aren’t enough of these for everyone who is good enough to get them. My own view is that it isn’t an injustice to get unlucky. There is simply a finite amount of success to go around, and more people who deserve it than can get it. (However, I’m also curious about the basis for your judgement that many other more successful candidates writing samples are not significantly better than yours. Do you have a big pool of applicants to compare to?)

    Reply
  2. Derek Bowman

    In response to “failure”: I’m sorry for the pain that you’re feeling, and I’m especially sorry for the jealousy; as you yourself have already had the wisdom to see, that is a feeling that can be corrosive not simply to your happiness, but to the whole character of your life. I can only encourage you to develop a larger sense of yourself, of the problem you face, and of philosophy. You have indeed failed (so far) to secure a position in the grad programs you desire, but that does not make you a failure. There are many good and worthwhile pursuits in life, and you are capable of finding ways of flourishing outside an academic career path. You also hedge your dilemma in a way that shows the beginnings of a recognition that this is not simply – indeed not primarily – a problem for you. You believe your application to be “better -or at least as good” as that of others who got the offers you wanted. Suppose you got one of those offers instead of one of the people whose application was as good as yours. Would they now be suffering a grave injustice? If not, then you have not been done such an injustice. If so, then such an injustice was a guaranteed outcome, given the scarcity of the resource you both seek, and the large number of meritorious applicants. That is a call not for resentment, but for solidarity – you all deserve better. Finally, you should use your frustration as a tool to see that philosophy – the activity and inquiry you’ve poured so much of yourself into – is something more than fighting for position within the academic hierarchy. At any rate, that’s what I did with my frustration at the arbitrariness of the job market.

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  3. Heather

    If it is true that your application is at least as good as many who were accepted (and it might be), why not simply try again? The first time I applied to PhD programs, I was rejected from all of the programs I was sure I could get into. I applied in a different year, and was accepted almost everywhere, even as top candidate in some places. A year or two off can also give you the time to shore up your CV, perfect your research statement, pick up new skills, and earn a little cash and experience of the non-academic world.

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  4. Michel

    It’s just one round of applications. Try again, and now that you know you can’t be happy at lower-ranked programs, don’t apply to them.
    More generally, however, you’re going to have to rework your sources of validation and self-worth, if you want to thrive in the profession. To work in this business is to be constantly failing, often undeservedly so (hi, R2!). It’s to never have the recognition you deserve, much less want. And on and on, year in and year out. Worse, there will always be others who get these things, even though you worked harder, etc.
    The trick is just not to play this game in the first place. Identify things you want to accomplish, and accomplish them. When you do, treat yourself (nobody else will).
    If you really want a PhD, then figure out the subject you want to specialize in, and attend a program where you can best develop that specialty, regardless of prestige. Wherever you are, figure out what you want to learn there, and learn it. Attending a program purely or largely because of the prestige it can confer is a recipe for being unhappy with what you’re doing there; you also need the intrinsic motivator to get you through the gruelling process of getting the PhD. The same stuff will hold true of publishing, later; work on stuff you enjoy working on, not just stuff you think PhilReview will be interested in. And so on.
    As for being read… My experience is that that’s mostly a matter of being known in your subfield community rather than prestige (and also of working on stuff people want to read!). I doubt anyone decides what to read based on the writer’s affiliation or, worse, PhD-granting program. Attend all the conferences in your subfield every year, volunteer in the organization, etc., and people will notice when your work shows up in their PhilPapers feed.

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  5. Sympathizer

    I sympathize with OP — when I applied to PhD programs, I was better qualified, on paper, than almost anyone. I had perfect grades, perfect test scores, and multiple publications in respected journals. But I received only one offer from a PGR-ranked program, and it wasn’t a terribly prestigious one. I wound up studying at an unranked program for largely financial reasons.
    Here’s one way I’ve tried to resist jealousy: I’ve tried to focus, not on the robustness of my opportunities relative to those at the tippy-top of the academic hierarchy, but relative to all those in human history who would have liked to live lives dedicated to philosophical reflection. Most of those people didn’t have the opportunity to study philosophy at all, let alone study it at Princeton. All things considered, the freedom to spend all day every day studying philosophy anywhere is an enormous privilege. So, worst case scenario, you get to spend five years doing something almost no humans have gotten to do, even the ones who wanted it as badly as you.
    To be clear, I don’t intend to moralize or to scold OP for their jealousy. I think their emotions are normal — at least, they were very natural for me when I was in a similar situation. I’m just trying to relay what I’ve found to be the most effective strategy for combatting those feelings when they become a hindrance.

    Reply
  6. You can do it!

    I’d be inclined to encourage you to try again. If it really is luck, then it’s reasonable to think that second time could be the charm. If it’s not really luck, then, if you put enough work in to improve your writing sample, it’s reasonable to think that second time could be the charm. Plenty of people don’t get in the first time, improve their sample until it really stands out, and succeed on second go. But, even if it really is luck, it still can’t hurt to improve your sample. So, I’d be inclined to think that you don’t need to know how much luck was a factor to know that it makes sense to work to improve your writing sample and try again next year.

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  7. Jacob Joseph Andrews

    This is so hard. These kinds of thoughts ate at me too, still do sometimes, so I’m sorry you’re going through it. You recognize the danger of that kind of attitude—that’s vital!
    I came to a very similar dichotomy as the (a)-(b) one you stated. Here’s what I realized that helped me, and I apologize that I’m more of a philosopher than a counselor and may be expressing these thoughts too harshly:
    1. (a) ∨ (b) is a false dichotomy. It might be that there was no injustice, just blind chance. It might be that the elite programs had a glut of good applications and the choice had to be a bit arbitrary in the end. It might be that the kind of philosophy I’m good at isn’t one that is readily recognized in the academy today. Or there could be all kinds of other things going on. Thinking through those possibilities helps me.
    2. On the other hand, (a) is probably true. Obviously I’m a worse philosopher than I think I am, because, like most humans, including most academics, I am quite arrogant.
    3. And of course (b) is likely true as well:
    3a. First, I very likely may have been treated worse than I deserve: the rest of the world is just as flawed as I am, and I need to accept that.
    3b. Second, of course I’m also better than I think I am. My self-image is deeply unreliable in both directions and it’s been liberating to accept that.
    4. I can have a unique calling within philosophy even if I’m not the best philosopher. I really think I’m not very good at philosophy; actually the reason I got into it initially is because I saw I was bad at thinking and wanted to get better. But I also think that, because of my personality and experience, I have a certain set of skills and a certain way of looking at the world that are worth contributing to the discipline. That’s actually one of the things I love about being a scholar: there are so many ways to do it right.
    5. On the other hand, institutional academia is not always good at recognizing #4. That’s fine, because the approbation of one’s contemporaries is not always a good measure of the value of one’s ideas. That means I’ll probably never know for sure whether I’m “good” at philosophy, and I have to be okay with that.
    6. Job prospects are bad no matter what. Yes, they can be more or less bad, but ultimately the wheel of Fortune is going to turn the way it turns.
    This all may not help you, and may not even be true of you. But it helped me.

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  8. academic migrant

    There’s this awesome paper called “Pitting People Against Each Other” by Waheed Hussain. The injustice involves is very very relevant to professional academics. There are not enough goods and awards. Competitions, especially of jobs and often of publications, are structured in a zero sum game. Things will only get worse after grad school entry. I think there are many different careers where this injustice is less suffocating, careers where you work more as a team and celebrate the achievements of others.
    But if philosophy is the only thing OP can imagine doing, then it would be good to try to get an even better writing sample and try next round. I just think there are better options for one’s mental health.

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  9. graduate student

    There are simply too few positions in philosophy for the people who would like them and perhaps deserve them, both in going to graduate school, and then again when entering the job market. While skill is part of it, more of it is luck: having the right specialty at the right time and being a good fit for certain departments.
    It might be a good option to quit and look at other avenues–however, this doesn’t need to be a reflection of your own abilities, but instead realizing that this quite competitive field might not be right for you. You may have better success and more fulfillment somewhere else.

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  10. whatever

    Couple things. As a recent discussion made clear, there are examples of students who start in a low-ranked program who become ‘shoe-ins’ for better programs, and so they transfer. Is that not an option you wish to consider OP? Of course, there is no guarantee of transfer success – I get that.
    As for grappling with academic jealousy, I am an anti-Stoic, chip-on-my-shoulder academic. Whatever it says about me, my main motivational resource when it comes to responding to others’ success is to tell myself that, no, those folks are not better than me, regardless of where their articles get published, where their PhD is from, and who in the philosophical elite says how ‘promising’ of a young philosopher they are. As much as it can be shaken, and as much as it can be prone to self-deception, my remedy for academic jealousy is academic self-confidence. Also, fact: those people you are feeling jealousy towards my very well have privileges, whether in terms of finances or networks or educational histories that you did not have access to. But so what? Here you are trying to make a go at this life, just like them. Don’t let them win. Keep going!

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  11. Bill Vanderburgh

    Doesn’t being treated unfairly require being treated differently than the relevant others? I don’t see evidence of that here; in fact, the uniformity of the outcomes suggest that there was not special negative treatment. But it is important to note that the less-desired outcome is not a judgement of the applicant’s inferiority. Being among the top 300 but not the top 180 applicants doesn’t mean one is a bad philosopher, especially at such an early stage.
    The applicant pool for graduate school is similar to the applicant pool for tenure track jobs in this way: There are way more qualified people than can be accepted. So maybe this is a good outcome for OP: They have experienced these crushing feelings now, rather than after graduation from a PhD program, when more would be at stake. The path from undergrad to the tenure track always reminds me of that famous map of Napoleon’s Russian campaign.
    That said, a ranked program is still a ranked program; if rankings mean anything (though that’s questionable), don’t put too much weight on somewhere being a “low” ranked department. (What is the difference, really, between the top and the bottom of the ranking? Compared to all universities?) OP should visit those places where they were accepted if they can, and try to feel out if those places are a good fit. If they are, and OP is really interested in doing more philosophy, go.
    R1 universities make up less than 4% of the institutions of higher education in the US. Put another way, almost no one gets a job at those places; way less than 1 in 10 of PhD grads, and that’s not even accounting for the large proportion of people who start but don’t finish a PhD. We harm ourselves (we do it to ourselves!) if we think we would only be happy or valuable in one of those almost-impossible jobs.

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  12. amazed

    Hi I am totally feeling your pain. The market is not totally fair, and resentment is a normal human emotion when mistreated. So I’d suggest that you give your self room for that feeling and hopefully grow out of it naturally.
    I am in an admission committee at a top-ish department and was a student myself not so long ago. When I was a student, I also felt I was pretty good. Now I saw hundreds of files and realized how fantastic everyone looks on paper. Maybe–and just maybe–if I looked very closely at the writing samples, I would see that some of them are not as good as mine. But just a 5-minute read of a whole dossier, really, most of them look way better than I was when I applied. When selecting the best, we do our best to be fair (many rounds on the same files by different people), but still there is a lot of subtlety/luck coming into play. The moral of all this is to say that maybe you are not aware (understandably!) how amazing so many other candidates are at least on paper, and it is not a shame to luck out this time. If you are really good and passionate about what you do, I hope you will try again.

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  13. newly tt

    Here’s another perspective: if someone has more than one admission offer, they have won the grad school application game. They are not under any obligation to accept their prize, of course.

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  14. Noah

    I want to echo some of Marcus’s suggestions about the non-academic world being no panacea for the OP. My anecdotal impression, as someone with a phil PhD who went non-academic, is that selection processes outside of academia are no more meritocratic, and probably are in fact less meritocratic, than those inside academia. Academic hiring, for example, lacks ATS keyword matching and the 15-minute “vibe check” recruiter phone screen that are omnipresent in non-academic hiring. Academic hiring processes also use actual work samples far more often than non-academic hiring processes do.
    The world, as they say, ain’t fair. The OP should consider that the experience they are having, of believing that others who don’t deserve it are getting ahead of them, is a fact of life that they will not be able to avoid no matter where they go.

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  15. The Real SLAC Prof

    OP: I have empathy for your frustrations and feelings of envy. But what you are experiencing now, at your entryway into the profession, you will experience thousands of times throughout your career. Sometimes you will be the “winner” in the unfair competitions that constitute much academic life, but (very likely) most of the time you will be the “loser.” If this is already causing you this much angst, I think you are right that it is not good for you to continue on in this career path.
    You could, as many are suggesting, work on becoming less status conscious and focus more of your attention on other aspects of your life or elements of the philosophy profession that do not depend on others’ recognition or affirmation. However, it sounds like you are already pretty far down the road of being torn up by these feelings. You are choosing to frame your grad application outcome (getting into some but not your most desired graduate programs) as either an “injustice,” or a sign that you are not a good philosopher because you can’t see why your application was not strong enough to ensure your preferred outcome. This framing is both inaccurate and unhelpful to you. The fact that you have settled on this perspective suggests to me that you are right to think that academia is not the best path for you, given that you will continue to face these issues over and over again. Academia is not a meritocracy. Status and luck are often powerful factors in who gets what, and it is imperative that you be able to make your peace with this or there is a big risk that the profession will exhaust you, hollow you out, poison your relationships with others, and make you hate philosophy itself.
    I would encourage you to consider other ways of making a living that aren’t as status conscious as academia. Of course, many other professions face similar difficulties, but you could pursue something like an in-demand trade where success at work is more under your voluntary control and less determined by luck and status hierarchies.

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  16. Nick

    I understand you have really strong feelings right now, but it might be helpful to keep things in context.
    You just finished a graduate admissions cycle, one of the most emotionally taxing things many people will do. When I did this, I was emotionally very fragile. I remember I didn’t get the GRE score I wanted and felt like I was in a perpetual anxiety attack for a week straight. It really is all terrible. In hindsight, I see that things weren’t so bad, but my extreme emotional distress clouded this from me. Maybe you are in a similar position.
    I would encourage you to take some time away from thinking about how things didn’t turn out the way you wanted before you do anything drastic (e.g., accept an offer you don’t actually want or turn down an offer too quickly when you should probably take it).

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  17. G

    I think it is important to remind yourself that grad admission is not entirely based on your individual ability as a philosopher. Just like job applications, there are other factors in play. Not only that different members of the admission committee usually do not have the same ideas, but some (or many) of them also consider things like “the fit”, applicants’ interests, and racial, gender, and even national diversity. So, do not take the result to be a judgment merely about how good a philosopher you are.

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  18. jaybird

    It is much easier to gain acceptance to an “elite” program as a transfer student from another PhD program. You still go to one of these “lesser” programs, get some coursework done and make some good connections, and try again next year.

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  19. Some Advice

    I’m not sure about this thought that, since you are ‘already envious’, you are likely to become more so, in a very envy-inducing field. You speak very vividly of this experience of envy; this suggests, perhaps, that it is new and striking to you. If so, then you may just need to get through it this time and see if you can learn to cope better next time. If, on the other hand, this fits a lifelong pattern (of intolerable resentment and self-doubt, after rejections), then those upthread may indeed be correct to advise you to find a less competitive path in life.

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  20. disagree with jaybird

    I transferred to an elite PhD program from a 20-30ish ranked one. I do not think there is any evidence that it is easier to transfer than to get in directly. I think it’s especially difficult in one’s first year–your faculty mentors really need to make a case that you are the real deal, and so they need to have known you for more than a semester. (And once you have been there for two years, you’re starting to eat up a lot of years of your 20s, since at most places you would transfer to, you need to do a significant chunk of your coursework over again.) I do not think this is good advice or that there is any evidence that it is even true that it is easier. (I now do PhD admissions in a non-elite program, and we still get tons of applications from students at other PhD programs. We have occasionally admitted such a student, but if anything the bar is significantly higher for them than for students with only, e.g., a BA.)
    I think it would be helpful for the OP to get some normal life/work experience. That’s something that really helped me have some perspective and avoid a lot of the kind of stuff that the OP is dealing with while in grad school. So I would suggest working in the real world instead, and reapplying next year, if the OP is deadset on an elite program.

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  21. A Philosopher Named Slickback

    I agree with “disagree with jaybird”. Where I am on the committee, we recognize that transfer students are a tricky case. We are considered “elite”; however, let me tell you that from my position, there are good people doing good work everywhere despite where they got their Ph.D. and their respective ranking. So perhaps, if you love doing philosophy, attend the school you have an offer from and stick it out because your love for philosophy, I think, should remain consistent no matter the institution you are a part of. Also, transferring, plainly put, IS HARD! I have heard and been told by professors at “elite” programs that transferring is super tricky. While reviewing applications, many red flags come up in admissions committees; for example, one that is against you from the get-go is: what is the reason you are seeking transfer? If you are leaving program X for Y because X is “not as prestigious” as Y and because of that, you want to move to the “elite” Y, then you are just trying to prestige hop; no one will like that (and many members of the committee can spot that); if anything, it is seen as shallow. However, if program X does not have a specialization in your field and you re-apply, then you have a better reason. But otherwise, many, and I mean many, members of the admissions committees at top places do not usually take transfers; I can think of a few programs that have, in the past, but it is rare, but for the most part, it is a hard process. You are also, lastly, held to a much higher standard than undergraduates, so it is best that if you do transfer, you do so after two years at a program (that is, having an MA equivalent of coursework) so that you have ample time to establish working relationships with the faculty at your Ph.D. program. This time (that is, those two years of preparation), of course, will give you the best shot to compete against MA students coming out of elite MA programs, i.e., Brandeis, Tufts, Texas Tech, Georgia State, Northern Illinois, Virginia Tech, Cal State LA, and so on… So, in short, transferring is tricky; it’s harder, and it’s better to just attend your Ph.D., that is… if you love philosophy, you will do it anywhere, especially if you are paid.

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  22. It is all about the job market

    ‘Let me tell you that from my position, there are good people doing good work everywhere despite where they got their Ph.D. and their respective ranking. So perhaps, if you love doing philosophy, attend the school you have an offer from and stick it out because your love for philosophy, I think, should remain consistent no matter the institution you are a part of.’
    I am sorry, but this could not have been a worse advice. Everyone’s love for philosophy is a given in this context. Everyone’s goal is to take that love and turn it into a job—and there are better and worse jobs out there. Transferring is all about getting a better job. A glance at any job-market year strongly suggests that if you are coming from a non-elite departments, you have to do AMAZING things to get even noticed by the committees for the types of jobs one ultimately wants, while the bar is much lower for anyone coming from a more elite departments.
    The whole discussion is all about this, nothing more.

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  23. Anony

    Hi OP. It is not easy, but I would recommend doing everything you can to only care about (2), (3), and (4) as they relate to your future job prospects. If you are getting into philosophy with the hope of becoming famous in this niche field, or having some significant influence, or being greatly respected by philosophers whom you never met – that is all incredibly unlikely. It is even significantly less likely than finding good, consistent employment (which is a difficult task by itself). If you bring up these things because you think that you need them for your happiness or for some personal validation, do whatever you need to do to stop thinking like that.

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  24. Grad

    Agree with “It is all about the job market”. Commitee members claim that they don’t care about prestige while they behave just in the opposite direction. We can see the trend both in grad admissions and faculty hirings.

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  25. placement isn’t eliteness

    The job market does matter, but I hope people worrying about it aren’t just tracking which programs are “elite”, since that is an extremely imperfect guide to what programs have good and bad placement (some of the top ten programs and top twenty programs have borderline abysmal placement; some bottom-ranked and unranked programs have excellent placement). The APDA has a lot of data about job placement you can look at.

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  26. A Philosopher Named Slickback

    @”It is all about the job market”
    haha, “Everyone’s goal is to take that love and turn it into a job—and there are better and worse jobs out there.”
    Haha, it is not just about getting a job. It may be for you! But for many out there, doing philosophy for 6 years and then seeing what happens is enough. Sure, you can go to some “elite” school and pat yourself on the back because you think you will be better suited for a job, but you have to do AMAZING things everywhere, not always. Its nots just baout the prestige ofa school carrying you there, I thikn that what does carry you inot a good job is indeed this love for philosophy. Otherwise, I think doing philosophy as a secondary activity while first thinking about the job is a miserable way to go about this…

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  27. casino

    Many of us with older parents grew up being taught “old school” ways of approaching the world. My conservative parents taught me that the world is largely a meritocracy. I internalized this thinking, and it was this mindset that allowed me to work hard in philosophy. I was motivated by the belief that my work would be rewarded.
    I’m guessing the OP has or had a similar mindset to me. If you have this mindset, it’s very hard to accept the view that there just aren’t nearly enough spots for everyone who wants to be a philosopher, so that even very good people will fail to get into good programs, get good jobs, etc. Due to my upbringing, I believed that although some people have bad luck, largely the best succeed. So, when I witnessed people less good than me getting better offers, I was filled with anger and self-hatred. Either the world isn’t a meritocracy (and so I was lied to about the world) or I’m much dumber than I thought. I worked myself up into a clinical depression.
    The reality is that academic philosophy is not a meritocracy. Whether you succeed is largely luck. Talent makes it a bit easier. But talent cannot compete with luck! So, if you pursue philosophy professionally, you’re basically playing the lottery, except the cost is a decade or more of your life. Whether you want to play this lottery is a personal decision! It depends on many factors including your family’s wealth. But if you’re going to continue in philosophy, you have to look at it like playing a game where you don’t really care whether you win. You’ve got to treat the decade of your life like free money you can gamble with where the outcome doesn’t matter. I don’t think many people can honestly afford to approach life like this, but it’s a possibility.
    Is the world at large a casino too? No, not to such a degree. Maybe it is as far as getting rich is concerned. I think that’s what studies show too. But the difference is that in philosophy it’s luck to get a job at all. Outside philosophy if you have some talent and can stay sober and show up for work, you can make a middle class income. I guess a lot of stipulations are required here, but I stand by the common sense claim that it’s easier to get a job outside academia.
    If the fact that the world, especially academia, is not a meritocracy continues to bother you, just remember that this can benefit you too. Maybe you’re not as good as you think! But you might still end up rich. You might live to 100 even if you take up smoking! My life is the definition of luck-based success. I worked my butt off for a decade on my academic career, but I just lost money and time. Never could find a decent job. However, as I was born to a rich family, I just kept inheriting more and more money. I’m now rich! So, if you want to work hard in philosophy, work hard. But it doesn’t mean anything. That’s why I am retired.

    Reply

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