Money is power. Never forget that.
Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 6:07 pm
I was thinking of posting this on my journal, but I think it deserves broader discussion.
I'll start with the moral of the story: money is power, having money is good, and you can indeed buy happiness, and peace of mind, and security, and freedom, and comfort.
Now for the wall of text. Please forgive me; I have a lot to say.
I was in academia for years and, as a result, suffered extreme poverty in my 20s without an ability to save. Being in the humanities, postgrad stipends offered very little (I got about $15k-$20k annually), and while I was able to save a little, I've never been able to bring my personal spending below $1k/mo., so I didn't save much. It was a hand-to-mouth existence, but I was okay with that, because I wanted to be a Professor. An Academic. You know, someone important and impressive who people admire for being Brilliant and Well-Read.
In other words, I was a pretentious ass.
Now, I did come to realize this but it took a long time. A lot of time of seeing the other pretentious asses and gradually acquiring the courage to admit that, yes, I was as bad as them, if not worse. At the same time, the crash in 2008 helped me to realize that what I was devoting my days to was really quite pointless in the broad scheme of things, and that less specialization and more generalization would both make me happier, more interesting, and more engaged with the world. This is fully counter to the academic world.
At the same time, I also began to get closer and closer to the pathetic power games at universities. Some are quite scandalous, like the friend of mine who was turned down for a professorship because the department hired the wife of a professor on the hiring committee for the job, or the professor who hired his daughter to a research position and paid her twice other researchers in the same job.
Others were more pathetic, like the fight between two professors for an office with a nice view. Many of the power games were very much counter to the benefit of both human knowledge and students. A scholar in my field whom I admired very much wanted to digitize a data set that had been published only in a very hard-to-use book; her colleagues on the project didn't want to, and eventually strong-armed her off the project. The data is still only available in a very expensive book, as far as I'm aware.
As I climbed higher and higher in academia, I saw more of this, and was increasingly disappointed with the nonsense. Finally, in 2009, I tried to leave, but didn't have the money to go, so I had to take a position and I was quite miserable. Then in 2011 I found Jacob's book and site, and my life changed. I saved quickly, looked for alternative ways to make money, and finally got out in 2012. It's been a little over a year, and it's been the happiest year of my life.
So it might be a bit surprising to hear that I took on an adjunct position at a local community college this semester. I'm doing this for two reasons: 1. My wife is going to school and this way I have an excuse to hang out on campus with her; 2. Income diversification. It's a small amount of money, but it diversifies me from my freelancing, making my income streams anti-anti-anti-fragile. I see it as a kind of insurance, and thus an unnecessary but low-effort income stream. It's only 2 hours a day for 3 days a week, so why not?
So I had my first day of teaching today, and what surprised me was that I had no strong emotional response to being back in a classroom; on the contrary, I felt very comfortable to finally talk honestly and openly with my students. Instead of worrying about my career, finding research, doing what the department thinks is best, or subconsciously affirming the value of my own ego vis-a-vis my students, I could just focus on doing what I thought was best for my students. None of the other stuff mattered--if I did something the department dislikes, then they fire me. So what? I have other income streams and could feasibly ERE if I can endure a slightly high SWR.
In all of my years pursuing the next tin trophy in the academic treadmill, I never felt so empowered as my savings has made me. I spent my twenties eschewing and rejecting money-making career paths as I repeatedly told myself I was "better than them". So did all of my colleagues, explicitly or implicitly. We were Scholars. That made us Better.
Horseshit.
I never felt so insecure, never acted so petty, and never had so little dignity as I did in academia, and now I know it and I can see it in the tenure-track faculty here.
This brings me to why I'm posting this very long rant: So today I needed to get some copies from the copy machine. But it was lunchtime. No problem. I see a tenure-track professor standing outside her office about 50 feet down the hallway, and she calls out, "can I help you?"
I replied: "Yeah, I just made some copies and need to get in."
"Are you adjunct?"
"Yes, I'm new," I said.
"Oh, hi," she said from fifty feet away, extending her hand. She stood there, fifty feet away, just outside her office, with her hand extended, waiting for me to walk to her and shake her hand.
The conversation afterwards was to academics what anus sniffing is to dogs: she asked where I taught before, where I went to school, etc. At that moment I had an intense euphoric rush as I realized--she's playing the hierarchy game that I gave up years ago. The game I don't have to play anymore, because of ERE.
I've been thinking about this for hours now. I made some tremendous mistakes in my professional life, but by far the biggest was worshiping at the altar of academic prestige instead of worshiping the self-reliance that capital accumulation provides. I'd just never thought of money that way, because I hadn't been trained to.
And now I grow paranoid. I think those axioms like "money can't buy happiness" and "find your passion and do what you love, don't care about the money" are propaganda to keep the lower middle class poor and enslaved to their soul-sucking menial jobs, whether in cubicles, on construction sites, or elsewhere.
I can't go back in time and tell my twenty-something self that money is power. But my life can be a warning to those who come afterwards, and if any twenty-something has had the patience to read this entire thing, I hope they read and remember this: money is power. Never forget that.
I'll start with the moral of the story: money is power, having money is good, and you can indeed buy happiness, and peace of mind, and security, and freedom, and comfort.
Now for the wall of text. Please forgive me; I have a lot to say.
I was in academia for years and, as a result, suffered extreme poverty in my 20s without an ability to save. Being in the humanities, postgrad stipends offered very little (I got about $15k-$20k annually), and while I was able to save a little, I've never been able to bring my personal spending below $1k/mo., so I didn't save much. It was a hand-to-mouth existence, but I was okay with that, because I wanted to be a Professor. An Academic. You know, someone important and impressive who people admire for being Brilliant and Well-Read.
In other words, I was a pretentious ass.
Now, I did come to realize this but it took a long time. A lot of time of seeing the other pretentious asses and gradually acquiring the courage to admit that, yes, I was as bad as them, if not worse. At the same time, the crash in 2008 helped me to realize that what I was devoting my days to was really quite pointless in the broad scheme of things, and that less specialization and more generalization would both make me happier, more interesting, and more engaged with the world. This is fully counter to the academic world.
At the same time, I also began to get closer and closer to the pathetic power games at universities. Some are quite scandalous, like the friend of mine who was turned down for a professorship because the department hired the wife of a professor on the hiring committee for the job, or the professor who hired his daughter to a research position and paid her twice other researchers in the same job.
Others were more pathetic, like the fight between two professors for an office with a nice view. Many of the power games were very much counter to the benefit of both human knowledge and students. A scholar in my field whom I admired very much wanted to digitize a data set that had been published only in a very hard-to-use book; her colleagues on the project didn't want to, and eventually strong-armed her off the project. The data is still only available in a very expensive book, as far as I'm aware.
As I climbed higher and higher in academia, I saw more of this, and was increasingly disappointed with the nonsense. Finally, in 2009, I tried to leave, but didn't have the money to go, so I had to take a position and I was quite miserable. Then in 2011 I found Jacob's book and site, and my life changed. I saved quickly, looked for alternative ways to make money, and finally got out in 2012. It's been a little over a year, and it's been the happiest year of my life.
So it might be a bit surprising to hear that I took on an adjunct position at a local community college this semester. I'm doing this for two reasons: 1. My wife is going to school and this way I have an excuse to hang out on campus with her; 2. Income diversification. It's a small amount of money, but it diversifies me from my freelancing, making my income streams anti-anti-anti-fragile. I see it as a kind of insurance, and thus an unnecessary but low-effort income stream. It's only 2 hours a day for 3 days a week, so why not?
So I had my first day of teaching today, and what surprised me was that I had no strong emotional response to being back in a classroom; on the contrary, I felt very comfortable to finally talk honestly and openly with my students. Instead of worrying about my career, finding research, doing what the department thinks is best, or subconsciously affirming the value of my own ego vis-a-vis my students, I could just focus on doing what I thought was best for my students. None of the other stuff mattered--if I did something the department dislikes, then they fire me. So what? I have other income streams and could feasibly ERE if I can endure a slightly high SWR.
In all of my years pursuing the next tin trophy in the academic treadmill, I never felt so empowered as my savings has made me. I spent my twenties eschewing and rejecting money-making career paths as I repeatedly told myself I was "better than them". So did all of my colleagues, explicitly or implicitly. We were Scholars. That made us Better.
Horseshit.
I never felt so insecure, never acted so petty, and never had so little dignity as I did in academia, and now I know it and I can see it in the tenure-track faculty here.
This brings me to why I'm posting this very long rant: So today I needed to get some copies from the copy machine. But it was lunchtime. No problem. I see a tenure-track professor standing outside her office about 50 feet down the hallway, and she calls out, "can I help you?"
I replied: "Yeah, I just made some copies and need to get in."
"Are you adjunct?"
"Yes, I'm new," I said.
"Oh, hi," she said from fifty feet away, extending her hand. She stood there, fifty feet away, just outside her office, with her hand extended, waiting for me to walk to her and shake her hand.
The conversation afterwards was to academics what anus sniffing is to dogs: she asked where I taught before, where I went to school, etc. At that moment I had an intense euphoric rush as I realized--she's playing the hierarchy game that I gave up years ago. The game I don't have to play anymore, because of ERE.
I've been thinking about this for hours now. I made some tremendous mistakes in my professional life, but by far the biggest was worshiping at the altar of academic prestige instead of worshiping the self-reliance that capital accumulation provides. I'd just never thought of money that way, because I hadn't been trained to.
And now I grow paranoid. I think those axioms like "money can't buy happiness" and "find your passion and do what you love, don't care about the money" are propaganda to keep the lower middle class poor and enslaved to their soul-sucking menial jobs, whether in cubicles, on construction sites, or elsewhere.
I can't go back in time and tell my twenty-something self that money is power. But my life can be a warning to those who come afterwards, and if any twenty-something has had the patience to read this entire thing, I hope they read and remember this: money is power. Never forget that.