I probably should not have been surprised by how much of a snake pit academia could be, nor by the extent to which it had become a performance of itself. I barely entered it before bouncing back out again. What I found was less an intellectual community than an institution remarkably well adapted to accommodating uncomfortable contradictions. If anything, the experience says far more about the human capacity to normalise dysfunctional systems than it does about my unwillingness to become part of one.
I got out before I was trapped in obligation, dependency, compliance and sycophancy. The price of integrity is social and intellectual isolation. Most of a PhD struggle is negotiating institutional inertia. Terrible. Same as it ever was…
Daedelus Kite 