Comments on: About

By: markdangerchen

markdangerchen — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 20:26:08 +0000

Hey Darren,

I’d be more than happy to talk about your plans. Actually, do you know Brian Halbert? He, Scott Ewing (at OMSI), and I were all in the same guild together in WoW. Brian is an econ PhD student here at UW, and one of his main interests is the same as yours: use MMOs and other virtual worlds to model economics.

The biggest academic name who’s doing this type of work is Edward Castronova at Indiana. He’s sort of taken on the mantle of running the Terra Nova blog.

I’ll email you now in case you never read these comments. :)

mark

By: Darren McCormick

Darren McCormick — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 20:13:04 +0000

Hey Mark Chan,
What a great intro to your blog. It is so honest and helps me associate with you. Anyway, my boss here at OMSI mentioned you and said we should get in touch. I am in the process of applying to grad schools and hope to do something socially relevant with gaming. I wanted to talk to you about my ideas if you have the time. Basically, my big idea, and what will probably end up being my thesis is to use the internal economies of mmog’s as a test place for alternative economic systems. Let me know if you have time to chat and maybe point me towards some good content.

thanks!

Darren McCormick

By: Bart

Bart — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:23:15 +0000

Hey Mark,
Reading over some State of Play 09 emails and stumbled onto your blog and this page. I feel ya as well about academia. The publishing stuff…hrm. The PhD is daunting, but worth sticking out regardless of where you want to go. I had 2 failed PhD attempts (adding about 2yrs to my program) but finally completed the degree on the third try this spring. I’m in a strange space because I absolutely love teaching at the collegiate level, but certainly do not want to go into the tenure grind at an R1 institution!

By: S.

S. — Tue, 01 May 2007 19:10:10 +0000

I'm a gamer (in the pencil and paper sense) and I like what you said about academia. I've had awards and more money for research than I could ask for but at the end of the day I just hate it.

I hate the constant pressure to publish and the hypocrisy we use to bridge the gap between the actual work of learning, thinking, talking, writing, and teaching and the largely arteficial business of publishing on the right stuff in the right places.

Bleh. I'm glad to be done with it.

By: esotericus

esotericus — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:21:23 +0000

I came across your About page after entering "hate academia" in Google. I'm pretty much at the same point; I'm a gamer as well, and, aside from that, I just miss the things about my life that I was able to enjoy before I started working on my PhD. During the last year, I've just started drifting away from my studies for whatever reason. I'm sick of it. Gaming for me was not so much something that I necessarily preferred over academics, but an escape into which I lost myself.

I am, by the way, a member of what I was considered one of the top few guilds in the world during the race for Kel'Thuzad. Somehow I managed to balance that with my studies at the University of Chicago, but now I'm seriously starting to question my reasons for being here. I may give up my WoW account, though. I'm also engaged, and this and many other things have made me even more sick of academia.

Anyway, it was good to see that I'm not the only person feeling these sort of things. Reading your About page, I almost felt as though I was reading my own.

By: markdangerchen

markdangerchen — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:10:36 +0000

I don't write to the blog as much as I probably should. But what the hell does that mean? Should for what? I mean, partly it's a feeling that I should be updating it at least once a day so that I get more hits... but why do I want hits? I dunno.

Paradoxically, there are too many academics that one has to be competitive to get their voice out, and yet there are too few academics who just want to sit down and talk about shit. But the weird thing is that when you sit down and talk about stuff with almost any academic, the conversation is lively and full of ideas. But we've constrained ourselves in the career track sense to be counter to those types of conversations... wtf?

Anyway, to answer your question... yes! Start a blog or a personal journal or something. The blog is a way for me to force myself to chronicle my life. Like I said, I don't use it as much as I probably should, but ideally it would be a place to reflect on the events that are happening. Look at them with a different lens and realize how crazy they are...

By: Joan D.

Joan D. — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 14:58:35 +0000

Hi, Mark!
I was doing a web search on writing literature reviews, somehow ended up at the GaSWorks site, and navigated to your blog. I'm glad that I took a momentary detour from lit reviews. I feel ya, man...about academia..particularly on two points: 1) "I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I FEEL very strongly that I have a duty to help society and the Earth, yet I have no ambition" and 2) "I hate academia's constant pressure to publish. I love academia's constant pressure to do research."

So...is the blog working for you? Perhaps I should fire up one to help me through my series of existential questions. :-)

Oh, and I love reading your blog!

Joan (aka Null Generation slacker)

By: Ryan Graham

Ryan Graham — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 04:15:51 +0000

The ID thing is basically about the need for parallel paper release. I like to think that if the public had more access to the papers written documenting trait mutation and selection, they wouldn't fall prey to the "but you're saying we're all really chimps" idea. In the current educational system, people are being taught the theory straight from the 150 year old theory (not that it's wrong, just "primitive"), without many of the refinements that hone the argument, mostly found in papers stored inside the dusty libraries of the academic system.

Without widespread public access to academic journals the non-academic world is forced into a knowledge gap years behind the actual research.

I wholeheartedly applaud your intentions, I just wish I had the heart to beat the system from within like you. I intend instead to perhaps do research in the private sector, or with an international program. Good luck in academia.

By: markdangerchen

markdangerchen — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 05:53:38 +0000

Thanks for commenting!

I'm not sure I follow the ID thing... it is a problem for evolution because ID is taught through a 150 year old theory? Or that evolution is taught through a 150 year old theory which has let it be challenged by ID? I assume the latter since that sounds about right in terms of Darwin...

Anyway, yeah... one of the hugest problems with academia, as far as I can tell, is the tenure system where profs gain prestige through publishing in elite journals inaccessible to the general public. This is why I want to write parallel papers on my research... one for the journals and one for this blog. Also, I think it is a shame that not enough profs (well... at an R1 institution, anyway) care more than superficially about their students.

By: Ryan Graham

Ryan Graham — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 05:32:31 +0000

I can't believe there aren't any comments yet. This is EXACTLY what's been bothering me since I started college and thought about furthering my education through the academic system.

OK, so academia's great because it creates a circle for intellect to output into. But why isn't academia output-ing into a place where it matters, like into UN-educated circles. Why is Intelligent Design a problem for Evolution? Because it's not taught through papers, but through a 150 year old theory. I'm apathetic about joining PHD research teams in Bio because I know it will only be important to people that are fighting against me for grants...

my intellectual output is suddenly about money for research. Why? When did man stop wanting to learn for the sake of learning?

This system is ridiculous...