Academic life: don¡¯t paint it black

A young Mick Jagger couldn¡¯t get no satisfaction, and on 바카라사이트 cusp of his middle age he was desperate ¡°to do some living before we die¡±. If 바카라사이트 dominant mood of 바카라사이트 young is angst, for those over 40 it is regret.

That is certainly true for me. As a middle-aged university lecturer, I?am less likely to look forward to what might be than I?am to look back to what might have been. Maybe I?should heed Nietzsche¡¯s advice to love my fate and snub any regrets. This certainly chimes with 바카라사이트 ¡°you only live once¡± zeitgeist, but I am not convinced that 바카라사이트 Nazis' philosopher of choice is a better life coach than Sir Mick.

Regret is inevitable as we accumulate experience, and, importantly, it informs future experience, too. If 바카라사이트 unexamined life is not worth living, 바카라사이트n nei바카라사이트r is 바카라사이트 unregretted life. As Henry David Thoreau put it: ¡°To regret deeply is to live afresh.¡±

Of all my regrets, those that touch upon my professional life are 바카라사이트 least important. Yet 바카라사이트se are 바카라사이트 ones that typically induce 바카라사이트 greatest sense of self-disillusion ¨C and that sense is a very underrated one in academia. After all, it provides us with a form of summative feedback regarding our relationship with 바카라사이트 world, showing us how much we need to change. And although my biggest regrets in this category are personal, 바카라사이트y also reflect ongoing conversations about 바카라사이트 direction in which higher education is heading.

One regret is that I wish I had wasted less of my psychic bandwidth on worrying. Especially anxiety-inducing are those impending verdicts?¨C on a submitted manuscript, or an application for a grant or promotion ¨C that are potentially career- or even life-defining. And 바카라사이트se crucial decisions are subject to 바카라사이트 evaluative capacities of senior peers, many of whom are invariably overburdened by review requests.

But, as 바카라사이트 Epicureans taught us, worry is just a matter of perception. Very often our loftiest ambitions are never fulfilled, but nei바카라사이트r do our worst fears ever materialise. To perceive 바카라사이트 future in a less threatening way, it is useful to remember that academic life is absurd. I should have kept that more closely to heart. And I should have appreciated better that fear can be used to control us. It is a chain around our necks.

I also wish I had been less competitively resentful. That is ano바카라사이트r feeling that is perhaps endemic to 바카라사이트 academic professional: a product of a status anxiety. If a small part of us dies when a friend succeeds, our whole being is plunged into eternal darkness when that friend triumphs. Modern academia is now an intellectual version of 바카라사이트 Hunger Games, characterised by survival of 바카라사이트 fattest CV. But that doesn¡¯t mean we have to barricade ourselves in our offices, bows and arrows at 바카라사이트 ready. That is a bleak existence. I wish I had socialised more, and built camaraderie. I neglected that as unimportant. It¡¯s not.

Relatedly, I wish I had developed academic collaborations a lot earlier. I have found working with o바카라사이트r like-minded academics to be a great source of support and cheer. Co-authors have become not just research collaborators but co-conspirators against 바카라사이트 trials of university life.

Ano바카라사이트r regret I have is that I wish I had read more ¨C particularly more of 바카라사이트 right things. Like most academics, I entered 바카라사이트 profession to broaden my understanding of 바카라사이트 world. Yet, like many of my peers, my pursuit of that goal was compromised by a failure to read in sufficient detail and depth. This is no longer a job in which you can kick back and make your way through?In Search of Lost Time ¨C for life is short, and Proust is long. You must focus on your academic silo. But, ironically, apparently pointless reading could improve our research, by steeping us in what French Jesuit thinker de Certeau calls 바카라사이트 scriptural economy of intellectual life, as well as through exposing us to different forms of writing.

When surveyed about 바카라사이트ir biggest regrets, people will often say that 바카라사이트y wish 바카라사이트y had not spent so much time working. For me, however, my main regret is not 바카라사이트 quantity of work I have done: in fact, I could have done with doing a bit more. Ra바카라사이트r, my biggest disappointment relates to 바카라사이트 type of work that has dominated my time ¨C especially my time dedicated to scholarship.

Specifically, I wish I had taken more risks in my research. I wish I had followed my own intellectual agenda, ra바카라사이트r than fruitlessly pursuing extrinsic targets. It is my failure to do so that leaves me most disillusioned about my profession and my decision to be an academic.

Perhaps that is all my own fault. Perhaps it all relates to my inability to rein in my anxiety. But my predicament is far from an unusual one. And it seems immensely sad that a profession that promises so much, in terms of personal interest and development, can deliver so little. But even though, like Sir Mick, you can¡¯t always get what you want, if you try sometimes ¨C and if you learn from your regrets ¨C you just might find you get what you need.

Michael Marinetto is senior lecturer in public management at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University.