Life in Academe: “Conspiracy, Complaining, and Cooking”

In this article published in Inside Higher Ed, Nassim Parvin shares three concepts that serve to illustrate her post-PhD life in academia.

I was recently asked to participate in a panel on Life After the Ph.D., with the aim of helping students enrolled in doctoral programs in design get a glimpse of what different career paths hold. More specifically, the panelists were asked to share up to three images that captured a typical day or week at work.

In academe, the familiar trio that stands in for our work is research, teaching and service. These categories, however, have been emptied of meaning, partly because of their overuse and partly because of the bureaucratic apparatus built around them. What’s more, the images that may represent these activities are not exactly distinct, especially after COVID: a cluttered desk of books and papers punctuated by an occasional coffee ring, a screen filled with small tiles of faces with so many browser tabs in the back competing for attention. That’s all there is to see, really.

But can we replace these generic representations with strong and memorable imagery that does justice to the work and help students grasp its emotional and intellectual intensity — imagery evocative enough to replace that of “an intellectual”? What does an intellectual conjure, anyway? Lone white man with thoughts? He who’s preoccupied with his scholarly ruminations, who occasionally ventures out to share his wisdom and serve his community? What can I say, authentically, from where I stand, that meaningfully captures both the urgency and mundanity of work in academe in all its joys and pains?

The trio of conspiring, complaining and cooking is what I’d offer in response.