The challenge in staying afloat

On April 18th, 1947, 6 people set sail from Peru. It covers about 6900km in 101 days and finally stops in French Polynesia. The craft was made from crude materials and christened the Kon Tiki. The voyage aimed to test whether humans could not reach the isolated Pacific islands in South America without modern technology. And yeah, it was proven that it could be done. Now imagine undertaking the same voyage, solo. But with a few differences. You have radio directions but no visible shoreline. You get suggestions, but they are proverbial messages in bottles written by people who have little knowledge of your circumstances besides the messages in bottles you send out.

This is the knowledge discovery experience and the PhD journey. Sure, some get more support, and?some get a set path. Ultimately, your mind is exploring to expand a gigantic,?ever-expanding universe of knowledge by a few pinpricks. People enter any PhD or research program thinking about time when in reality, it's more about mental adaptation and evolution. Yesterday on World Mental Health Day 2024, IIT Kanpur recorded its (to the best of my knowledge) 3rd suicide death. All of these three deaths have been post-graduates and/or PhD candidates. This a sharp departure from the trend prior to the 2010s, wherein this was more a bachelor's program phenomenon (when I was doing my bachelor's program not at IIT Kanpur but at MUT Gorakhpur, 2009-2013, we had one suicide death).

The decision to take one’s own life is a highly personal one. A permanent solution to a temporary problem, as is often quoted. But what could explain this shift? Honestly, at best, I can only pose some maybes. So here are my maybes. A big part of one’s decision-making system is their environment. If supportive, your chances of drastic self-harm reduce significantly. If not the worst can happen. Academic research which in the past used to be a much slower paced phenomenon. Something which Peter Higgs (yes of the Higgs Boson fame) said in 2013 that he would not be productive enough for today’s scientific world.

What the average man, does not realize is that scientific publishing is not just an exercise in science but increasingly so a work in finance. Let me give you a figure, USD 5.6 billion and in fact two more 1.88 billion USD and 33 per cent. Take a guess what these are. If you guessed these are revenues, operating profits and operating margins of Elsevier, Taylor and Francis and Wiley, the three major scientific publishing companies. Congratulations! There has started in academia a cycle. I will not call it vicious or anything. Just a cycle. This is what it looks like. Increasingly academic funding has been linked to “impact”. One standard measurement of “impact” in academia is the output of a researcher. This is measured in terms of papers and the citations they get. So the PhD program which essentially is about teaching post graduates about how to do research and become an independent researcher. It has become a race to publish more and more.

?But here is the thing about publishing: more want to be published (so that they can get grants, jobs, etc.), but someone has to look at the quality of what is being published. This is where peer review comes in. Peer review is not that old, dating to the mid-1900s to 1970s. On the surface, it makes sense and is the bedrock of modern scientific research. Someone who is knowledgeable in a given area takes time out to review your work and give good suggestions on it. You improve your work and try again. Except, this is supposed to be a good Samaritan non-paid job. What happens when the supposed reviewers are themselves under time and authority pressure to keep on publishing? You have fewer people available to review than there are to publish. ??

Now, let's go back to the raft. You may get why I started with it. A PhD is akin to a Thor Heyerdahl-esque Kon Tiki expedition. You are a small team?lead in a general direction with one objective. I have to reach somewhere new and communicate with the world. The number of explored scientific territories must increase, or?you won’t get on a bigger boat. But apart from your advisor, the only messages you get are the peer reviews; these messages in a bottle. And here is the hard truth about peer reviews and acceptance of work in journals. It's not just what you have done, but when and increasingly with whom. Ninety papers you send out of a hundred to the good journals will be rejected—most of them at the desk level. I have no shame in saying that as I am writing this, I have not succeeded with academic publishing.

Handling rejections in anything is hard. But in an area as lonely and increasingly competitive as?academia, you face much of it. Any research work?takes considerable time and effort. Yes, even when you are using secondary data. It’s a lot of time, and you hear, nah, this ain't good. It is tough not to internalise criticism. In such situations you need a shoulder tap telling you, “its ok”. What if you don’t get that? It stacks up and could result in bad outcomes. You start to think you are only your objective, your job, the papers you have not published. Now I can’t suggest how we change the whole culture. That takes a global socioeconomic movement. I can tell you somethings I have done.

My craft has reached the maelstrom and made me want to jump multiple times—have it all end. Ironically, my area of research is resilience. No matter where you are, during a day, you have to say no—no to work, no to deadlines. It’s a tough art, but you have to. It will be perceived as unprofessional, selfish, narcissist and other adjectives from Webster’s thesaurus. But ask yourself, fine, you need money for basics, a job as well. But is the reviewer living your life, your advisor, or?even your parents? No, you are. You just meet people along the way. Most PhDs join as full adults, and?many (including yours truly, even have work experience) still struggle with this (also including myself). So, say no, because it's your life. Learn to accept failure?not as a mark of your quality but as something saving you from survivorship bias. People will say vicious things, and it will definitely hurt because our hardware and firmware as humans are still hunter-gatherers. Anything challenging your beliefs is perceived as a challenge to your existence. You will have to learn to become mentally resilient, anything helping you with it, do that. Never let go of your hobbies and find some physical activity to engage with. Exercise is absolutely oversold but under practiced as a mental well being aid. ??

Hoping we all find our shores, in this voyage. Stay afloat everyone.

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