Check lists & Mushrooms

I owe this piece to Felicia my brilliant former PhD’s student. She sometimes asks my thoughts on various topics and what I wrote was triggered by one of our conversations.

In academia I have a soft spot for the postdocs [1] in their early thirties. Fresh out of their PhD, they have often acquired the maturity to become excellent problem solvers AND they still have the technical abilities to allow them to convert fairly quickly their thoughts into actions. This age group is also the one which goes through the academic hiring grinding machine. The applications and requirements for tenure track positions may vary from one country to another, however there is a common denominator to all of them that takes the shape of a substantial checklist which ressembles:

• Number of published papers.

• Number of international conferences and seminars.

• Responsibilities and convenerships.

• Outreach and engagement with society.

• Participation in peer review

• Organising committees.

• …

  
  

The list goes on. The necessity of a list can be rationalised for the sake of hiring committees and commissions that need some criteria to differentiate between almost equally excellent candidates.

The underlying trap of the CV checklist is that is that some “CV points” are like mushrooms in a Mario Kart video game [2]. It becomes very tempting to chase the easy ones, have a dopamine hit and the satisfaction that comes from the moral equivalent of the green tick mark.

The issue though is that in said check list not all entries have the same value or weight, in terms of time and energy investment but more importantly in terms of scientific impact.

The list in itself is not inherently problematic. However in the early years of postdocs it is not always a trivial exercice to prioritise work. There are 24h in a day, in practice this implies that we can’t be always 100% on all the fronts at once. The wave function must collapse somewhere. Yet some routes may appear shiner than others. Navigating these options in a world in constant motion when being pulled by sometimes opposite forces : what the boss wants, what the group needs, what the system asks, etc. is not a trivial exercice.

Often the most long term impactful for the postdoc but for the whole field even is the chunky piece work that will require to have the ability to “converge” and “finish” it. This is where the meat is, this is the part that requires a quiet not over stimulated mind, uninterrupted hours of work and the absence of instant gratification. There is no crowed cheering yet this is what will pay off.

The other danger with the CV point philosophy is in order to attempt to carve pockets of time, more and more the young people will rely on AI to do some of the most mundane tasks. Of course it is difficult to blame them for it when their time looks like a Swiss cheese piece from a Tom & Jerry cartoon. This being said have we evaluated what is the coast of offloading this weight? To some extent none of this help is contributing to any structural changes. Are we simply reinforcing an already suffocating system ?

I sometimes wonder if these “CV points” that I have acquired with time are not today like bricks that allow me to protect my time at all costs. I also wonder if in academia the power and the privilege to say no (ie yes to what is important to as at a given moment) only comes after we have done our deeds and collected enough of these CV points? There is probably a fine line between a brick that protects you and one that suffocates you?

I have no magical wand to illuminate the path and remove doubts, but I have another magic resource. Books! I recently read a book by Lauren Bastide (Enfin Seule). In her 248 page brilliant essay I was mesmerised by one question she asks : “Who controls her”? In a society or academic world plagued by power dynamics one thought which I would like to invite is what or who is controlling your next step? Is it curiosity? Is it fear?

[1] Postdoc : a person’s who graduated their PhD who and works in academia on a short fixed term contact.

[2] I actually never played video games in my life.