My dream died, and now I'm here

Transcript

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When I signed up for studying at the university, I thought being a physicist was my dream job.

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But here I am, on YouTube.

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How did that happen?

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I think I owe you an explanation.

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When I started studying at the university my expectations were based on biographies

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of scientists.

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They wrote a lot of letters to each other; they went to conferences.

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They were thinkers and tinkerers and had sometimes heated but usually respectful arguments.

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This is what I expected.

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Yes, that was hopelessly naïve, I know I know.

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But.

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In my defense.

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I don’t come from an academic background.

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I come from a family of teachers and accountants and post office workers.

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They’re normal people.

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I did an internship in the chemical industry and another one at a bank, gleefully stamping

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transfer slips.

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I just didn’t know anyone with a PhD.

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And those were the early 1990s.

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You couldn’t just ask the internet and within a day you have 2000 people giving you advice,

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and some marriage proposals along with that.

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The first years at university were glorious.

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Because for the first time in my life I was in the company of other people who were like

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me.

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At school I had always been the weird one for actually being interested in science and

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maths.

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But at the university everyone was like that.

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We talked about everything from maths to philosophy, physics and politics.

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And yes, alcohol was involved.

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It was a really good time.

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And that was all very nice, except I was getting older and still didn’t have a decent job.

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I made a little money by selling oil paintings, those were the days people, but I didn’t

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seriously think I was a particularly good artist.

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I really had to get a normally job and stop asking my grandma to help out with paying

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rent.

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I thought that the institute of physics would give me a job when I’d finished my masters

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degree with good grades.

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Though technically at the time that was called a diploma.

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I thought they’d give me a job that because that had worked for all the other students

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previously.

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If your grades were good, they’d offer you a job as a graduate student.

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It wasn’t particularly great pay, but it was a real job.

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And that’s where things started to go wrong.

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Because I finished my exams with excellent grades.

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I don’t mean to brag, but I think you need this context.

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But I wasn’t offered a job because I’m a woman.

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I’m not guessing that that’s what happened, I know, because they told me.

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You see, the guy who was head of the institute told me that, since I’m female I should

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apply for a scholarship that was exclusively for women in the natural sciences.

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Because then the institute wouldn’t have to pay for me.

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Makes sense, doesn’t it.

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So, well, I applied for the scholarship and got it, alright.

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But these scholarships don’t come with any benefits like pension savings and health insurance.

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I know this sounds very German, but these things matter to us.

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Also, I was now reminded on various occasions that I wasn’t actually employed at the institute.

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I was just there because I had this scholarship for women.

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And that was totally true.

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This by the way is why I am against programs or positions that are exclusively for women.

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I think that treating women differently just reinforces the prejudice that women are less

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capable than men.

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But I digress.

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Alright, you might say, stop whining, at least I did have an income now.

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Yes, so far so good.

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At this time I was the only woman at the institute, except for the administration.

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But the next problem was that the head of the institute made a lot of money with selling

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textbooks.

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He wrote very little of these textbooks himself.

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Rather, he gave assignments for parts of the books to students and postdocs.

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Which is why, in case you’ve ever wondered, these textbooks are so discontinuous and partly

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repetitive.

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He expected me to also work for him, to which I said “no”.

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I was then ordered into his office, in which he gave me a very angry speech, according

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to which I was not “loyal” to all the other students who did their part.

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I told him that I was under no obligation to work for him and didn’t care what the

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rest of the students were thinking.

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He got angry, I laughed at him, he started shouting that I was fired and physically shoved

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me out of his office.

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True story.

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The irony is that he couldn’t fire me because, if you remember, he had refused to hire me

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in the first place.

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I was paid by that scholarship for women and that wasn’t managed by the institute but

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by the office of the university president.

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I’m not just telling you this because it’s entertaining, it was also a rather rude awakening.

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It made me realize that this institute wasn’t about knowledge discovery.

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It was about money making.

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And the more I saw of academia, the more I realized it wasn’t just this particular

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institute and this particular professor.

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It was generally the case.

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The moment you put people into big institutions the goal shifts from knowledge discovery to

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money making.

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Here’s how this works.

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If a researcher gets a scholarship or research grant, then the institution gets part of that

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money.

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It’s called the “overhead”.

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Technically that’s meant to pay for offices and equipment and admin etc.

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But academic institutions then part of their staff from this overhead, so they need to

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keep that overhead coming.

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Small scholarships don’t make much money, but research grants can be tens of millions

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of dollars.

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And the overhead can be anything between 15 and 50 percent.

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This is why research institutions exert loads of pressure on researchers to bring in grant

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money.

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And partly they do this by keeping the researchers on temporary contracts so that they need grants

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to get paid themselves.

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While the administrators who are paid on the overhead usually have permanent positions.

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But you get used to this kind of crap.

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And the overhead isn’t even the real problem.

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The real problem is that the easiest way to grow in academia is to pay other people to

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produce papers on which you, as the grant holder, can put your name.

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That’s how academia works.

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Grants pay students and postdocs to produce research papers for the grand holder.

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And those papers are what the supervisor then uses to apply for more grants.

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The result is a paper production machine, in which students and postdocs are burnt through

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to bring in money for the institution.

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Most of that money comes from your taxes.

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After my PhD, I applied for another scholarship and got that and then I got a postdoc job

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and a grant and another job and another job and another grant, and so on.

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And I began to understand what you need to do to get a grant or get hired.

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You have to work on topics that are mainstream enough but not too mainstream.

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You want them to be a little bit edgy.

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But not too edgy, noo.

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it needs to be something that fits into the existing machinery.

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And since most grants are 3 years or 5 years at most, it also needs to be something that

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can be wrapped up quickly.

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The more I saw of this, the more I realized this wasn’t how I wanted to spend my life.

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The other thing that happened was that the more I saw of the foundations of physics,

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the more I became convinced that most of the research there wasn’t based on sound scientific

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principles.

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I know this sounds wild, like I’m the crank next door on YouTube.

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And maybe that’s what I am.

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But I like to think that my argument was and still is very academic.

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I never intended it to be offensive.

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I just explained why thinking up new particles isn’t a good strategy for progress in physics,

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and why that had gotten an entire disciple stuck.

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And naïve as I was, I expected physicists to think about it.

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I expected rational debate.

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But that never came.

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No one was interested.

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No one is interested.

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They were interested in writing more papers.

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And that’s what they need all these particles and other wild ideas for.

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To write papers.

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To get grants.

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To get postdocs.

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To write more papers.

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And round and round it goes.

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Meanwhile, I had moved half around the world because that’s standard for postdocs.

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It’s just expected of you.

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And at some point you just accept the constant moving as normal because the only people you

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know also do it.

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It’s incredibly hostile to personal life, detrimental to mental health, and women suffer

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from it because our reproductive reality is that we need to start families earlier than

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men.

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By my mid-thirties, I had somehow miraculously managed to get married and have two children.

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But I couldn’t find a job anywhere near my husband.

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So for several years I commuted from Frankfurt to Stockholm.

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And yes, those cities are actually in different countries.

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After 5 years of my murder commute, I just couldn’t do it anymore.

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I constantly felt guilty for not working more and not spending more time with my kids.

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My mental health was worse than ever, I was permanently stressed out, I had several nervous

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breakdowns, I was constantly ill.

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I decided I’d go back to Germany and not move out of country again, until the kids

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were out of school.

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Instead, I applied for research grants on projects that lasted one two or three years

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and that could be located in Germany.

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A lot of water has flown under the bridge since, so let me be honest.

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At this point I’d figured out what you need to put into a grant proposal to get the money.

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And that’s what I did.

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I applied for grants on research projects because it was a way to make money, not because

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I thought it would leave an impact in the history of science.

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It’s not that was I did was somehow wrong.

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It was, and still is, totally state of the art.

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I did what I said I’d do in the proposal, I did the calculation, I wrote the paper,

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I wrote my reports, and the reports were approved.

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Normal academic procedure.

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But I knew it was bullshit just as most of the work in that area is currently bullshit

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and just as most of academic research that your taxes pay for is almost certainly bullshit.

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The real problem I had, I think, is that I was bad at lying to myself.

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Of course, I’d try to tell myself and anyone who was willing to listen that at least unofficially

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on the side I would do the research that I thought was worth my time but that I couldn’t

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get money for because it was too far off the mainstream.

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But that research never got done because I had to do the other stuff that I actually

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got paid for.

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Then COVID came and it reminded me how short life really is.

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I pivoted, applied for funding on the research that I wanted to do, that I was rather afraid

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wouldn’t get funded.

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It didn’t get funded.

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And so here we are, on YouTube.

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Where I talk about why I love science and hate it at the same time.

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This sounds like a sad story and in some sense it is.

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Because it’s the story of a young scientist whose dream died.

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And it’s the story of an old scientist who thinks they could have made a difference,

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if it hadn’t been necessary to get past 5 reviewers who didn’t share my interests

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because that’s what it comes down to eventually.

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It’s not that they say there’s something wrong with your proposal.

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It just doesn’t excite them because it’s not the main current interest.

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My problem has always been that I just didn’t fit in.

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But there’s a happy ending in that I’ve found you.

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A community of people who share my interests.

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Well, more or less, or why the heck have you not been watching my video on indefinite causal

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structures.

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It’s been quite a change to switch from academia to being self-employed.

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I had to learn how to write invoices.

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I had to register a business.

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I have a tax consultant, two agents, and a twelve-person team that’s distributed over

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half the world.

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Very steep learning curve.

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Mistakes were made.

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But eventually, today, I feel good about it because unlike academic research, this is

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an honest trade.

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You get some of my knowledge.

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I get some of your attention.

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I like the simplicity of that.

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And I am also heartened that there are so many people who care about obscure problems

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in the foundations of physics.

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Though I think you underestimate the relevance of indefinite causal structures.

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So, that’s my story, no more and no less.

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Please do not think that my experience with academia is universal or that I have claimed

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it is.

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I know many people who love academia the way it is and who think it’s working just fine.

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I’m just not one of them.

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Have never been, and I don’t think I’ll ever be.

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I’m not sure if I’m going to post this video.

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It’s a bit too much isn’t it.

English (United Kingdom)