STEM fields don’t need to be ultra competitive monocultures that work people to the bone and systematically drive out anyone who is seen as not being able to hack it.
Just because the system is set up in a way that fosters a super high stress lifestyle doesn’t mean that it needs to be that way. There’s nothing inherently competitive about science (except evolution).
Grad school, and STEM in general, should be intellectually difficult but not nearly as emotionally difficult as it is, and yet way too many people just accept it because that’s they way it’s always been.
I’m not saying it should be easy, but we shouldn’t have to sacrifice out mental and emotional well beings, anything resembling a personal life, or just a somewhat normal work/life balance at the altar of Science.
The pressure cooker environment of grad school and science in general is both unnecessary and bad for science. It self selects for a certain type of scientist and drives out anyone who varies from the norm.
But the people in charge aren’t incentivized to change it because they’re products of the system. They are the very type of people who the system was built to serve. When people fail they shrug and say it was unfortunate but not everyone was cut out for this life.
That is bullshit. You do not have to be broken down and built back up to be a good scientist. Science is not war. We are not soldiers. We are curious, creative people who want to understand the universe.
We need to stop trying to patch the leaky pipeline and rather build a new pipeline. One that isn’t coated with acid and pressurized beyond the point of failure.
Okay, high-pressure and requiring a lot of work/stress I’ll give you, but monolithic? Competitive? Maybe competitive in fields where everyone’s trying to get their cutting-edge paper our first (bio…) or applying for the same few grants, but over all, I don’t think of STEM as being that competitive? Like, you can’t really succeed in STEM without working with an interdisciplinary team anymore.
I guess, I want to agree with this, but I’m not sure OP started from the right place, and they didn’t offer any ideas as to what change would look like other than just ‘not this’ so, I’m kinda like…. *shrug*
I’m glad you don’t think that the culture of STEM is competitive, but my experience of it is that we’re pitted against each other pretty much right from the get go at the graduate level. We compete for spots in labs, and funding, and for the best projects, and for papers (in every field because publishing is hugely important) and then we compete for the jobs that are few and far between. Maybe it’s different outside of academia but that’s not what I’m talking about.
And I’m curious what starting from the right place looks like? Because I’m starting from a place of someone who is directly affected by these issues, and while I can’t solve them myself, or even offer a solution outside of more people realizing that the system is fucked up, that doesn’t negate my criticisms. In my opinion at least.
