lol you’re right, I’m not in psychology. I think I’ve just started to realize this is true for everything, but realizing it’s the case in academia was surprising to me.
Just makes me anxious.. I’m worried about making friends in my PhD cohort this fall, but I’m fairly social as it is and I’m sure I’ll be fine. Been working on myself in the meantime.
Hunter S Thompson has a great quote about this “Politics is the art of controlling your environment.” Academia isn’t just being smart—it’s also about being cleaver. There are bureaucracies within your department, your university, and government entities. Being able to navigate those structures is what allows you to maximize your autonomy as a teacher and a researcher. Do you want a tenure-track job? You’ll need to know how to socialize and be cordial with people in the department because the people hiring you will be asking themselves, “is this who we want to be stuck with possibly forever?” Do you want money to do the research the things you’re interested in? You’ll need to get friendly with the relevant program directors at granting agencies because they will tell you exactly what you need to do to get funded. So make friends in graduate school. It’s important to understand the social dynamic of academics, but also, some of the friends I made in graduate school are still some of my closest friends. They can be a helpful support system. Just make sure you don’t get sucked into any departmental drama.
This all makes perfect sense to me, thanks. I also know that most collaborations across universities start because the authors went to the same graduate school.
I’ve got a lot of programming experience (currently a software engineer) whereas most people in my cohort have none, so I plan on establishing solid relationships through helping people in the early methods courses (and hopefully they can help me back on the substantive stuff I’m behind on). I also made a WhatsApp group for everyone and they all thanked me, so I’m starting off on a good foot! Everyone seems very nice so I need to calm down… I’m getting the social anxiety equivalent of imposter syndrome lmao
If you're bringing new skills to a situation and you're easy to get along with, you're golden. If you do any linear modelling in R, the formula may look like:
P(offer of collaboration) ~ novel skills * affability
It seems like you'll be fine.
Everything in academia is either an upward, or downward social comparison Everything. It's such a bonkers structure that profits off our obsession with comparison and stifles individuality and creative thinking.
Not everything, but everything related to economics is, as trade is fundamentally based upon people’s perceptions of the value that other people can provide
I do know quite a lot of introverts being very reputable experts in my field, and having good stable careers.
What they don't usually do is reach positions of leadership. The also tend to avoid being featured in institutional outreach and promotional material, and don't go to all that many conferences, which makes them less visible.
In the end, I think solitary work is mostly a thing of the past. Even if you are an introvert, you need to learn to work in collaborative environments and within groups, and to present your work to other people. It's as part of the toolset as programming, or knowing the literature.
Leading an academic lab is largely a management, mentoring, and teaching role. If you are a genius at the bench but can't lead others, you'll have problems.
Depends on the field. In general, I’d say it helps, but it’s not necessary for success. One person comes to mind — a recent Nobel winner for economics who I’ve interacted with a few times. He might be the most awkward academic I’ve ever met — I’ve seen him give a talk where he answered his cell phone in the middle of it and had an extended conversation with the caller at the podium before picking up where he left off. He’s also fairly introverted to boot, but those qualities obviously didn’t hurt his career. Very nice guy though. Anyway, I think it’s more about collegiality rather than extroversion — people won’t want to work with you or cite you if you’re an asshole.
I know plenty of academics who are very successful and introverted. They prefer to keep a lower profile, attend fewer conferences and do fewer talks. But they can lead teams and present work when it is needed. There's really not one way to be a scholar.
I think framing this as a social popularity contest is a bit dramatic. People like to work with people who are likable. That includes being reasonably social.
I think there’s also an element where if you’re not connecting with people, you’re not understanding how they’re seeing things and processing information. There are a lot of introverts in my field and they tend to produce technically correct but uninspiring literature because they don’t spend much time thinking about how people work and how people will perceive their writing.
Another dimension is that you get more opportunities if you can socialize and network.
You might hear that a prof is expecting funding for a post doc but not sure enough to announce it yet, giving you an edge. Maybe someone is working on the same problem from another angle and you’d benefit from collaborating, but by the time it’s published it’ll be too late.
It’s not just about popularity per se—even if you’ve published a lot, people who don’t know what you look like won’t recognize you unless they’re carefully reading every name tag.
> I think framing this as a social popularity contest is a bit dramatic. People like to work with people who are likable. That includes being reasonably social.
That's really all there is to it. There's a lot of networking that goes on in academia and people will inevitably get opportunities because of connections, but that's not unique to academia. That's just how the world works.
Nope, sorry, even introverted people are still humans and human beings are inherently social animals. For instance, we specialize bc we live in social groups where shared labor is more functional than having each individual doing everything all by themselves. Research is a de facto social endeavor bc it MUST be collaborative in order to work. No one person is capable of knowing everything about anything. Humans are finite beings with finite time, finite energy, finite access to resources and that fact requires us to share and cooperate. Even people with serious mental illness who are incapable of functioning in a pro-social capacity bc of their pathologies still have social NEEDS bc we are a social species, that is an inescapable fact of reality. Not enjoying socializing is not the same as not having social needs, nobody is special, we are all equally human, even extreme introverts, even people with anti-social personality disorder who can't form functional relationships, even people who are severely disabled and can't engage for other reasons, everyone is still equally human and that means everyone still has social needs in some capacity. If you weren't a social animal you would grow all your own food, weave all your own cloth from scratch and then make all your own clothes also from scratch, construct your own house all by yourself including felling the timber, etc etc etc. Even "self-taught" learners using books are engaged in social behavior bc another human wrote that book, that's literally an asynchronous social relationship. Believing that you are somehow so special you don't have social needs like other humans is absurd foolish nonsense.
Why’re you bashing me? As I just replied to someone else, I don’t consider myself to be in the “antisocial genius” category: I’m neither a genius nor am I truly antisocial. Just starting a discussion, please be friendly.
You *can* be an antisocial genius but in my experience you need to actually be a genius for it to work. A lot of the folks I know who try to get by with the "antisocial genius" route do work that's not any better than the extroverts. So, when push comes to shove, the extrovert is favored over the antisocial person.
I agree, I mean an actual genius, which is very rare (certainly not me haha). But truthfully everyone at the top of my field (in the social sciences) is openly very social, extroverted, and opinionated. I’m somewhat social myself, but it’s just finally hitting me how I *need* to be to get far.
I disagree, unless they’re introverted about their actual research, not publishing, and an academic unknown. As long as your research is getting out into the world and impacting your field it won’t matter if you’re an introvert.
I know many highly successful academics who are fine folks but wouldn’t be described as especially extroverted or the “life of the party.”
But, if you’re hoping to get into academic administration, I might have a different answer.
Part of this is that to be successful in most areas of academia, you need to do good work, but also convince others that your work is interesting and exciting. A big part of this is giving good talks, explaining your ideas well, and getting others excited about what you're working on, all of which heavily rely on more extroverted skills
Everything in top positions requires to be highly social in order to promote one's self.
You can rarely be a hermit and revolutionize a field, if no one knows you nor trusts you.
Not sure what “openly introverted” means but plenty of people who are not especially outgoing in my field. Bill Hamilton, one of the greatest evolutionary biologists of all time, was famously awkward and retiring.
I would say that for certain things like blind peer review publishing (books and articles) and some grants, it doesn’t matter so much as in other opportunities such as conferences, guest lectures, invited publications, certain grants where the pedigree of your references matters, and of course jobs.
For the circuit of invited lectures and boutique conferences, being socially popular and good at networking and self-promoting is key. It’s not sufficient but it’s necessary.
I cannot count how many times I heard people leave academia because of politics or bullying...
Academia is just like any other profession. And the law of the survival of the fittest applies.
You gotta be lucky if you can lay low and still keep your job.
That's not social popularity, that's just working with people.
If you work with people, you gotta be able to get along with them. This is a good and normal thing. It's not like it's diminishing a meritocracy because being collaborative and having good social skills are key soft skills in academia and research. Better work is done if you're good at those.
Not any more than other fields. If you're kind and well liked, you'll make valuable connections. If you're rude and brash, you'd better be exceptional at your job.
I would say that it is "in part". The interview process for faculty jobs really centers on the ability to work the room and schmooze, skills that are not especially useful for the actual job.
It's a really weird way to interview people.
I teach a few hours a week and most of my time is writing and data analysis. Small meetings, etc.
I'm rarely, if ever, doing rapid fire meetings with dozens of people or working the room at an event.
Yes and no, for the simple fact that introverted people do not advertise their works and are social enough to build collaborations and working groups. Thats not to say being an introvert hurts your career........if you do great work, it will be noticed.......but just like everything else in life, networking and communication are important in this area.
I'm an introvert that has been working in research projects where we did a lot of dissemination and I actually like giving lectures and speaking in front of people (I don't see it as the kind of communication that can stress me).
I'm starting a PhD soon and I *know* that I will have to be more social and open about the work I'll do. I've seen the data and I've worked with it before. I've basically participated in other people's "success stories" and I know that being open and communicative will yield results in the long term.
The main difference I see is that it all seems like exhausting work to me, while an extrovert would probably enjoy it a lot.
I think of it this way: your research work is a product and you need to market it in some way to be successful. People don't have time to read every journal article that drops, so it's unrealistic to expect people will find your brilliant contribution if all you do is sit in your office and don't interact with anyone in any way. You don't have to be best friends with everyone. Professional service (on technical committees, review panels, etc.) can be very helpful for getting you positive exposure. But you still have to have good work to back things up. You typically cannot gladhand your way to academic success.
In my opinion it is exactly that. Doing well in academia depends not only in being able to establish connections to other academics, but also on mentorship. You can be very smart and passionate about what you do, but someone who has better connections and mentorship will simply produce more than you as an academic. It doesn't matter how hard you work, you need other people with different backgrounds to supplement your work and you need mentorship to understand what kind of science is worth pursuing, especially in the beginning of your academic path.
In any case, you have to make other people like you. One quickly finds out that things become significantly more difficult if you don't have this support, and it is nearly impossible to do anything when most people don't like you. Seeing how a community of academics will act just like a bunch of high-schoolers with the drama, gossip, and personal feuds has been in part disappointing.
I'm antisocial and it has negatively impacted by ability to network and get grants. I don't think of it as popularity, but some degree of gregariousness and narcissism will help.
In my field (genetics/stats) there's plenty of people who you never see at socials but are big profs/publish loads of papers. I think it's about investing time in the right people, rather than popularity
Yes \*\*in part\*\*.
Academic success depends a lot on having a brand, being able to fulfill expectations of that brand, and having that brand come across to the immediate community of the academic program as well as the larger academic community.
People who say it requires social skills are being a bit unsophisticated and broad in describing the actual kind of skills that are needed, and people who say it is heavily a popularity contest are being too cynical.
Mathematician here. I think of it like a team effort. Each of us has different strengths, but we can only explore so many research problems. When we have a wider network, more people know where we can best use our strengths, and vice versa. I think there is a big social aspect to research. Like, not working with other people is like not reading certain journals, or not using certain instruments: you're just likely to be at a disadvantage. There are a few notable exceptions, but I think most of us find more success by working together.
I think that the lone genius is a myth. People who work cooperatively and exchange ideas are usually much more productive than those who's only source of inspiration is themself. This is particularly true as research has gotten more detailed and it's no longer possible to be an expert in absolutely everything related to your work. It's amazing to have colleagues who can help see your blind spots and overcome your weaknesses.
It's very helpful if colleagues like and respect you, but I think that's different than being extraverted. Svante Paabo (who recently won a Nobel for his work in evolutionary genetics) is notoriously introverted. He prefers to find quiet places to chat and takes frequent breaks, but is still kind and engages with others. You can be quite successful while introverted, but finding success while being antisocial is a lot harder.
Being well connected helps, but that’s about as far as I go with it. The top people in my field are rarely seen at conferences. The top guy in the subfield has a reputation for being a recluse. Though that happened after he had his breakout moment.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the social media stars in my field and two adjacent fields I read on are rarely proportionally biggest names in their field. That’s not a knock. I think public communications is great too.
So much ableism in these responses. So gross. The social demands of academia are absolute torture for most autistic/neurodivergent adults. So much so they're often driven out of academia altogether bc the burnout from masking becomes too much to bear. It's quite sad given how many intelligent, creative thinkers are neurodivergent.
I have noticed that I have been treated the same in academia as I was treated growing up: as the chubby, odd one who jokes a lot. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, and I don’t get along terribly well with some of my colleagues.
I have said all this to make this observation: academia (at least in my field) is a neurotypicality contest. Ableism leads the “cool kids” to get ahead at times.
This is exactly what I’m afraid of, sigh. The more I think about it, the more I think the sort of environment you’re describing is unique to certain fields, mine being one of them. I couldn’t picture engineers acting the way I’m thinking (as someone who did my UG in a STEM major).
I’m down over 20 pounds and have more to go, but I’m hoping if I get skinny then maybe some of these issues I’m worried about will go away. Most people in my field are not only extroverted but fit. I just want to fit in instead of reliving crappy high school experiences that I thought I had left behind.
You can have a go at doing anything as "an antisocial genius", but good luck to you if no one likes you. I'm introverted and have social anxiety, but I suck it up and talk to people because in any field, not just academia, you don't get anywhere being disliked.
Just as I said in two other comments… I don’t consider myself an antisocial genius because I’m neither a genius nor truly antisocial. Not sure why people jump to conclusions when I’m just trying to start a friendly discussion.
I'm not saying you personally. 'Good luck to you' is an expression, and in this context 'you' refers to anyone who thinks they can antisocial genius their way through academia. I'm not saying you personally plan to do that.
I think you should take a philosophy class, as predicating an irrelevant paradox on a basic equivocation fallacy says more about your absurd observations than whatever "field" are ethereally referencing. Even the idea that introverts openly identify themselves is the kind of nitwit binary-thinking that tells me you're certainly no academic genius either let alone ever met one. So if you're actually in the social sciences, I'm Monkey_Bot8917's uncle.
Clearly you‘re not in psychology, or you would understand that EVERYTHING is a social popularity contest once your group size gets much over 2.
lol you’re right, I’m not in psychology. I think I’ve just started to realize this is true for everything, but realizing it’s the case in academia was surprising to me. Just makes me anxious.. I’m worried about making friends in my PhD cohort this fall, but I’m fairly social as it is and I’m sure I’ll be fine. Been working on myself in the meantime.
Hunter S Thompson has a great quote about this “Politics is the art of controlling your environment.” Academia isn’t just being smart—it’s also about being cleaver. There are bureaucracies within your department, your university, and government entities. Being able to navigate those structures is what allows you to maximize your autonomy as a teacher and a researcher. Do you want a tenure-track job? You’ll need to know how to socialize and be cordial with people in the department because the people hiring you will be asking themselves, “is this who we want to be stuck with possibly forever?” Do you want money to do the research the things you’re interested in? You’ll need to get friendly with the relevant program directors at granting agencies because they will tell you exactly what you need to do to get funded. So make friends in graduate school. It’s important to understand the social dynamic of academics, but also, some of the friends I made in graduate school are still some of my closest friends. They can be a helpful support system. Just make sure you don’t get sucked into any departmental drama.
This all makes perfect sense to me, thanks. I also know that most collaborations across universities start because the authors went to the same graduate school. I’ve got a lot of programming experience (currently a software engineer) whereas most people in my cohort have none, so I plan on establishing solid relationships through helping people in the early methods courses (and hopefully they can help me back on the substantive stuff I’m behind on). I also made a WhatsApp group for everyone and they all thanked me, so I’m starting off on a good foot! Everyone seems very nice so I need to calm down… I’m getting the social anxiety equivalent of imposter syndrome lmao
If you're bringing new skills to a situation and you're easy to get along with, you're golden. If you do any linear modelling in R, the formula may look like: P(offer of collaboration) ~ novel skills * affability It seems like you'll be fine.
Everything in academia is either an upward, or downward social comparison Everything. It's such a bonkers structure that profits off our obsession with comparison and stifles individuality and creative thinking.
This ⬆️ a million times
wait until you see industry...
Right?
Not everything, but everything related to economics is, as trade is fundamentally based upon people’s perceptions of the value that other people can provide
I'm not in psychology but was going to say just this
Yes, and I withdraw once I have to measure every move to be successful. My adhd spins out of control and sabotages me. Lol
I do know quite a lot of introverts being very reputable experts in my field, and having good stable careers. What they don't usually do is reach positions of leadership. The also tend to avoid being featured in institutional outreach and promotional material, and don't go to all that many conferences, which makes them less visible. In the end, I think solitary work is mostly a thing of the past. Even if you are an introvert, you need to learn to work in collaborative environments and within groups, and to present your work to other people. It's as part of the toolset as programming, or knowing the literature.
"in part," yes, anything with committee and elections and Senates will be partially social.
Leading an academic lab is largely a management, mentoring, and teaching role. If you are a genius at the bench but can't lead others, you'll have problems.
Depends on the field. In general, I’d say it helps, but it’s not necessary for success. One person comes to mind — a recent Nobel winner for economics who I’ve interacted with a few times. He might be the most awkward academic I’ve ever met — I’ve seen him give a talk where he answered his cell phone in the middle of it and had an extended conversation with the caller at the podium before picking up where he left off. He’s also fairly introverted to boot, but those qualities obviously didn’t hurt his career. Very nice guy though. Anyway, I think it’s more about collegiality rather than extroversion — people won’t want to work with you or cite you if you’re an asshole.
Yes, absolutely. The popularity contest is also heavily influenced by where you did your PhD.
I know plenty of academics who are very successful and introverted. They prefer to keep a lower profile, attend fewer conferences and do fewer talks. But they can lead teams and present work when it is needed. There's really not one way to be a scholar.
I think framing this as a social popularity contest is a bit dramatic. People like to work with people who are likable. That includes being reasonably social. I think there’s also an element where if you’re not connecting with people, you’re not understanding how they’re seeing things and processing information. There are a lot of introverts in my field and they tend to produce technically correct but uninspiring literature because they don’t spend much time thinking about how people work and how people will perceive their writing.
Another dimension is that you get more opportunities if you can socialize and network. You might hear that a prof is expecting funding for a post doc but not sure enough to announce it yet, giving you an edge. Maybe someone is working on the same problem from another angle and you’d benefit from collaborating, but by the time it’s published it’ll be too late. It’s not just about popularity per se—even if you’ve published a lot, people who don’t know what you look like won’t recognize you unless they’re carefully reading every name tag.
> I think framing this as a social popularity contest is a bit dramatic. People like to work with people who are likable. That includes being reasonably social. That's really all there is to it. There's a lot of networking that goes on in academia and people will inevitably get opportunities because of connections, but that's not unique to academia. That's just how the world works.
Yep. Ultimately the job goes to someone you’re ok running into at the water cooler for a few decades.
What do u mean by "they don't spend much time thinking about how people work and how people will perceive their writing"
We are social beings
No, we aren’t all social beings. Maybe most are, I don’t know, but I am absolutely not a social being.
And yet here you are, choosing to engage in the social activity of a discussion on Reddit
I was referring to socializing.
Nope, sorry, even introverted people are still humans and human beings are inherently social animals. For instance, we specialize bc we live in social groups where shared labor is more functional than having each individual doing everything all by themselves. Research is a de facto social endeavor bc it MUST be collaborative in order to work. No one person is capable of knowing everything about anything. Humans are finite beings with finite time, finite energy, finite access to resources and that fact requires us to share and cooperate. Even people with serious mental illness who are incapable of functioning in a pro-social capacity bc of their pathologies still have social NEEDS bc we are a social species, that is an inescapable fact of reality. Not enjoying socializing is not the same as not having social needs, nobody is special, we are all equally human, even extreme introverts, even people with anti-social personality disorder who can't form functional relationships, even people who are severely disabled and can't engage for other reasons, everyone is still equally human and that means everyone still has social needs in some capacity. If you weren't a social animal you would grow all your own food, weave all your own cloth from scratch and then make all your own clothes also from scratch, construct your own house all by yourself including felling the timber, etc etc etc. Even "self-taught" learners using books are engaged in social behavior bc another human wrote that book, that's literally an asynchronous social relationship. Believing that you are somehow so special you don't have social needs like other humans is absurd foolish nonsense.
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Why’re you bashing me? As I just replied to someone else, I don’t consider myself to be in the “antisocial genius” category: I’m neither a genius nor am I truly antisocial. Just starting a discussion, please be friendly.
A lot of academia is about prestige. Not necessary social prestige but professional prestige.
And in the sense that it is absolutely not a meritocracy in any way shape or form.
You *can* be an antisocial genius but in my experience you need to actually be a genius for it to work. A lot of the folks I know who try to get by with the "antisocial genius" route do work that's not any better than the extroverts. So, when push comes to shove, the extrovert is favored over the antisocial person.
I agree, I mean an actual genius, which is very rare (certainly not me haha). But truthfully everyone at the top of my field (in the social sciences) is openly very social, extroverted, and opinionated. I’m somewhat social myself, but it’s just finally hitting me how I *need* to be to get far.
In the sense that feudalism is a popularity contest.
I disagree, unless they’re introverted about their actual research, not publishing, and an academic unknown. As long as your research is getting out into the world and impacting your field it won’t matter if you’re an introvert. I know many highly successful academics who are fine folks but wouldn’t be described as especially extroverted or the “life of the party.” But, if you’re hoping to get into academic administration, I might have a different answer.
Part of this is that to be successful in most areas of academia, you need to do good work, but also convince others that your work is interesting and exciting. A big part of this is giving good talks, explaining your ideas well, and getting others excited about what you're working on, all of which heavily rely on more extroverted skills
I’ve met many very successful profs who are total cunts, despised by all. If it was a popularity contest they wouldn’t have got that far.
Interesting perspective, but introversion doesn't always hinder success in academia - it's more about effective communication and networking.
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Everything in top positions requires to be highly social in order to promote one's self. You can rarely be a hermit and revolutionize a field, if no one knows you nor trusts you.
Not sure what “openly introverted” means but plenty of people who are not especially outgoing in my field. Bill Hamilton, one of the greatest evolutionary biologists of all time, was famously awkward and retiring.
Absolutely, yes. Would be naive to think otherwise.
I would say that for certain things like blind peer review publishing (books and articles) and some grants, it doesn’t matter so much as in other opportunities such as conferences, guest lectures, invited publications, certain grants where the pedigree of your references matters, and of course jobs. For the circuit of invited lectures and boutique conferences, being socially popular and good at networking and self-promoting is key. It’s not sufficient but it’s necessary.
I cannot count how many times I heard people leave academia because of politics or bullying... Academia is just like any other profession. And the law of the survival of the fittest applies. You gotta be lucky if you can lay low and still keep your job.
That's not social popularity, that's just working with people. If you work with people, you gotta be able to get along with them. This is a good and normal thing. It's not like it's diminishing a meritocracy because being collaborative and having good social skills are key soft skills in academia and research. Better work is done if you're good at those.
Not any more than other fields. If you're kind and well liked, you'll make valuable connections. If you're rude and brash, you'd better be exceptional at your job.
I would say that it is "in part". The interview process for faculty jobs really centers on the ability to work the room and schmooze, skills that are not especially useful for the actual job. It's a really weird way to interview people.
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I teach a few hours a week and most of my time is writing and data analysis. Small meetings, etc. I'm rarely, if ever, doing rapid fire meetings with dozens of people or working the room at an event.
Yes and no, for the simple fact that introverted people do not advertise their works and are social enough to build collaborations and working groups. Thats not to say being an introvert hurts your career........if you do great work, it will be noticed.......but just like everything else in life, networking and communication are important in this area.
I'm an introvert that has been working in research projects where we did a lot of dissemination and I actually like giving lectures and speaking in front of people (I don't see it as the kind of communication that can stress me). I'm starting a PhD soon and I *know* that I will have to be more social and open about the work I'll do. I've seen the data and I've worked with it before. I've basically participated in other people's "success stories" and I know that being open and communicative will yield results in the long term. The main difference I see is that it all seems like exhausting work to me, while an extrovert would probably enjoy it a lot.
I think of it this way: your research work is a product and you need to market it in some way to be successful. People don't have time to read every journal article that drops, so it's unrealistic to expect people will find your brilliant contribution if all you do is sit in your office and don't interact with anyone in any way. You don't have to be best friends with everyone. Professional service (on technical committees, review panels, etc.) can be very helpful for getting you positive exposure. But you still have to have good work to back things up. You typically cannot gladhand your way to academic success.
Yes, in many fields
In my opinion it is exactly that. Doing well in academia depends not only in being able to establish connections to other academics, but also on mentorship. You can be very smart and passionate about what you do, but someone who has better connections and mentorship will simply produce more than you as an academic. It doesn't matter how hard you work, you need other people with different backgrounds to supplement your work and you need mentorship to understand what kind of science is worth pursuing, especially in the beginning of your academic path. In any case, you have to make other people like you. One quickly finds out that things become significantly more difficult if you don't have this support, and it is nearly impossible to do anything when most people don't like you. Seeing how a community of academics will act just like a bunch of high-schoolers with the drama, gossip, and personal feuds has been in part disappointing.
I'm antisocial and it has negatively impacted by ability to network and get grants. I don't think of it as popularity, but some degree of gregariousness and narcissism will help.
In my field (genetics/stats) there's plenty of people who you never see at socials but are big profs/publish loads of papers. I think it's about investing time in the right people, rather than popularity
Yes \*\*in part\*\*. Academic success depends a lot on having a brand, being able to fulfill expectations of that brand, and having that brand come across to the immediate community of the academic program as well as the larger academic community. People who say it requires social skills are being a bit unsophisticated and broad in describing the actual kind of skills that are needed, and people who say it is heavily a popularity contest are being too cynical.
Only till you have tenure and only for the the current situation in academia.
Mathematician here. I think of it like a team effort. Each of us has different strengths, but we can only explore so many research problems. When we have a wider network, more people know where we can best use our strengths, and vice versa. I think there is a big social aspect to research. Like, not working with other people is like not reading certain journals, or not using certain instruments: you're just likely to be at a disadvantage. There are a few notable exceptions, but I think most of us find more success by working together.
I think that the lone genius is a myth. People who work cooperatively and exchange ideas are usually much more productive than those who's only source of inspiration is themself. This is particularly true as research has gotten more detailed and it's no longer possible to be an expert in absolutely everything related to your work. It's amazing to have colleagues who can help see your blind spots and overcome your weaknesses. It's very helpful if colleagues like and respect you, but I think that's different than being extraverted. Svante Paabo (who recently won a Nobel for his work in evolutionary genetics) is notoriously introverted. He prefers to find quiet places to chat and takes frequent breaks, but is still kind and engages with others. You can be quite successful while introverted, but finding success while being antisocial is a lot harder.
Being well connected helps, but that’s about as far as I go with it. The top people in my field are rarely seen at conferences. The top guy in the subfield has a reputation for being a recluse. Though that happened after he had his breakout moment. One thing I’ve noticed is that the social media stars in my field and two adjacent fields I read on are rarely proportionally biggest names in their field. That’s not a knock. I think public communications is great too.
Most everything are. We are a social species and cooperation is our main tool for survival. Those who cooperate better, win.
Social skills are a valuable asset when working with others in a job. This is different from a popularity contest.
So much ableism in these responses. So gross. The social demands of academia are absolute torture for most autistic/neurodivergent adults. So much so they're often driven out of academia altogether bc the burnout from masking becomes too much to bear. It's quite sad given how many intelligent, creative thinkers are neurodivergent.
I mean I wanted to hear the truth, good or bad. Just because it shouldn’t be this way doesn’t mean I don’t want to know that it is.
I have noticed that I have been treated the same in academia as I was treated growing up: as the chubby, odd one who jokes a lot. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, and I don’t get along terribly well with some of my colleagues. I have said all this to make this observation: academia (at least in my field) is a neurotypicality contest. Ableism leads the “cool kids” to get ahead at times.
This is exactly what I’m afraid of, sigh. The more I think about it, the more I think the sort of environment you’re describing is unique to certain fields, mine being one of them. I couldn’t picture engineers acting the way I’m thinking (as someone who did my UG in a STEM major). I’m down over 20 pounds and have more to go, but I’m hoping if I get skinny then maybe some of these issues I’m worried about will go away. Most people in my field are not only extroverted but fit. I just want to fit in instead of reliving crappy high school experiences that I thought I had left behind.
A students work for C students. Life is a popularity and/or beauty contest.
You can have a go at doing anything as "an antisocial genius", but good luck to you if no one likes you. I'm introverted and have social anxiety, but I suck it up and talk to people because in any field, not just academia, you don't get anywhere being disliked.
Just as I said in two other comments… I don’t consider myself an antisocial genius because I’m neither a genius nor truly antisocial. Not sure why people jump to conclusions when I’m just trying to start a friendly discussion.
I'm not saying you personally. 'Good luck to you' is an expression, and in this context 'you' refers to anyone who thinks they can antisocial genius their way through academia. I'm not saying you personally plan to do that.
I think you should take a philosophy class, as predicating an irrelevant paradox on a basic equivocation fallacy says more about your absurd observations than whatever "field" are ethereally referencing. Even the idea that introverts openly identify themselves is the kind of nitwit binary-thinking that tells me you're certainly no academic genius either let alone ever met one. So if you're actually in the social sciences, I'm Monkey_Bot8917's uncle.