I recently read David Eagleman's Sum, which is a collection of imagined after-lives. It is a work of "philoso-fiction", written in the hope that thinking about what happens after we die might help us think about all the things that happen before we die. You can find the full text for free here. This post is about the first chapter, which is less than 400 words long.
In chapter one, your after-life is a replay of your first life, with one change. Your life's events are shuffled into a new order, with all the moments that share a quality grouped together. You drive and drive, only reaching your destination after 18 months. You spend a full thirty years asleep. Seven hours endlessly vomiting, two days tying your shoelaces. You shower for 200 days, do laundry for three months, and drink for 45 days, laugh for a week, fall over for 25 minutes.
And then, for three minutes, you read a little book chapter about an alternative life. A life where activities are split into tiny enjoyable pieces. You do something until you're tired of it, and then do something else. You eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. You can blissfully switch between events and do whatever takes your fancy, whatever excites you. You hop between activities so frequently you never tire of doing anything. For three minutes you ponder this infinite luxury.
At its best, an academic research job in evolutionary biology is similar to this joyous patchwork. We think about ideas, read others' work, write code for analysis, plan experiments, peer-review submissions, produce presentations, buy equipment, collect data, write manuscripts, give seminars, meet colleagues, attend conferences, write press releases etc. Sometimes we do all of these, in as little as a week or two!
Doing any of these things non-stop for more than a few weeks would quickly become unbearable. But switching between them is endlessly stimulating. I frequently feel jaded and depressed about the state of academic science, and my place in it. But it's worth remembering how good it is when it works. We're privileged to enjoy, as Eagleman puts it, "the joy of jumping from one activity to the next like a child hopping from spot to spot on the burning sand."
In chapter one, your after-life is a replay of your first life, with one change. Your life's events are shuffled into a new order, with all the moments that share a quality grouped together. You drive and drive, only reaching your destination after 18 months. You spend a full thirty years asleep. Seven hours endlessly vomiting, two days tying your shoelaces. You shower for 200 days, do laundry for three months, and drink for 45 days, laugh for a week, fall over for 25 minutes.
And then, for three minutes, you read a little book chapter about an alternative life. A life where activities are split into tiny enjoyable pieces. You do something until you're tired of it, and then do something else. You eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. You can blissfully switch between events and do whatever takes your fancy, whatever excites you. You hop between activities so frequently you never tire of doing anything. For three minutes you ponder this infinite luxury.
At its best, an academic research job in evolutionary biology is similar to this joyous patchwork. We think about ideas, read others' work, write code for analysis, plan experiments, peer-review submissions, produce presentations, buy equipment, collect data, write manuscripts, give seminars, meet colleagues, attend conferences, write press releases etc. Sometimes we do all of these, in as little as a week or two!
Doing any of these things non-stop for more than a few weeks would quickly become unbearable. But switching between them is endlessly stimulating. I frequently feel jaded and depressed about the state of academic science, and my place in it. But it's worth remembering how good it is when it works. We're privileged to enjoy, as Eagleman puts it, "the joy of jumping from one activity to the next like a child hopping from spot to spot on the burning sand."