Friendship and being an academic

I was on the phone with a friend of mine--not a close friend, but a good friend still. We call just a few times a year. He does not do social media; he does not like Skype. So the old fashioned phone it is. He even has a landline. He is an academic, and well-known in his field. He was also extremely fortunate to live in the same area since he was a young child. As a result, he has several close friends, friendships that span decades. They go out to the theatre or the movies. They host dinners at each others' houses. As I was talking to him about this, I noticed how I envied him. Such friendships are clearly still an ideal of human sociality. Friends, the Big Bang Theory, and other shows portray people who are well-embedded in a network of close friendships.

Moving around multiple times, it is hard to maintain close friendships. 

 Raphael, self-portrait with a friend

When discussing this topic on social media (which, for all its ills, is one of the things that allows me to keep in touch with friends) many of my academic friends mentioned similar experiences, such as "My spouse is my only close friend". 

This article was originally published in 2012, but recently republished, because "the topic is timeless." Accordingly, it becomes harder to make friends as one gets older, in ones thirties, forties, and beyond. The reasons for why are complex--being more picky, more busy. But it is sad all the same, and perhaps an under-appreciated negative aspect of the precarity of the job market. 

Given how awful the precarity of the academic job market is (see here for a recent piece that describes this in gut-wrenching detail), friendship would not seem to be high on the priority list. Yet, friends mean a support network for practical as well as emotional matters. It is a source of self-worth and dignity, as eloquently described by philosophers such as Aristotle, Confucius and Augustine. Augustine wrote about his personal friends at length, evidently a source of delight, and sometimes frustration to him. Being denied friends is thus being denied a vital, perhaps even philosophical, part of the human experience.

We can go into tips and suggestions on how to mitigate this problem. Perhaps those of us without close friends aren't trying hard enough. But given that many close friendships are forged, without much effort on our part, in our childhood and twenties, it is a result of how the academic labor market is structured. Seeing close friendships unravel is yet another price many of us have to pay.

Comments

[Amanda]

I don't have any tips. But I would like to share my thoughts. I almost didn't move because of this. I loved where I lived during grad school (and before grad school) and had a community. But I choose my job. And as hard as it might be having only your spouse as your friend, let me tell you it is multiple times worse not having a spouse. Dating is a big problem because of moving. I started dating during a post doc and often when I told someone I had to move for work they were out. There is a gender aspect to this, as generally it is still much more common, even in academia if not especially in academia, for a woman to move for her husband rather than the other way around. I don't know if I made the right choice, and I will probably never know, for I can't know the counterfactual.

[Marcus Arvan]

Thank you for this, Helen. It is so true to my experience. For me, the academic job market meant leaving the only truly great friends I had ever known. It is only now, nearly a decade later—after devoting everything I have to reading, writing, teaching, and job-searching—that I am finally beginning to make true friends again. It has been one of the hardest parts of being an academic. So many times over the intervening years, my wife (who is also an academic) has said to me, “You’re my best friend”. In all too many cases, the very first thought that popped into my head was, “You’re my only friend.” Not entirely true perhaps...but for many years, not too far from it.

[Moosbrugger]

Great post on an important topic, and one that has been on my mind a lot lately. I finished my PhD aged 29, spent a couple of years in a non-academic job (which I hated), quit and spent a couple of years doing short term hourly gigs and trying to publish. All that time I lived reasonably near many of my close friends, some of whom I've been friends with since childhood. Then I - very fortunately - landed a post-doc quite far from my old friends, and instantly became friendly with lots of the people I worked with. I was there 18 months, and while that isn't really enough time to forge close friendships, I'm still in touch with a number of those people and, if we'd worked together longer, I suspect we would have ended up as close friends. I left for a permanent position much further away from my old friends, and after a year I don't really have any friends in my current town. I have colleagues I get along well with, and one or two people I've socialised with once or twice, but nothing like my old friends or even my post-doc friendly colleagues. Luckily I live with my partner, so it's not an unbearably lonely existence by any means, but I'd certainly prefer to have some closer friends living nearby.

However, I'm not sure there are any tips that will help. I suspect it's just a question of luck and time (though I do think people are sometimes too shy about saying "hey, let's hang out", myself included).

During the post-doc a number of people were in a similar position, and so were actively looking for people to socialise with. In my current post, most people are settled, have an established friendship circle, and so the arrival of someone new was hardly a reason to arrange all sorts of social events with the aim of forging friendships. If I stay where I am long term, I'm sure I'll make friends, but it really is something the academic life can jeopardise (and so is something people thinking about an academic career should be aware of - in addition to the long apprenticeship, and the low chances of ever getting a permanent job).

[Pendaran]

Something to keep in mind is that some people make friends easily and other people really struggle with it. You should note which you are. If you are someone who struggles with it, and you're having to move every few years, then probably you're not going to be making any friends for a long time.

[Pendaran]

Also, I'm not sure if anyone brought this up. Glanced through and didn't see. But academics are highly competitive. The job market is highly competitive. It's difficult to make friends with people who you are in competition with. In a sense, these people are your enemies. So, that's another problem with making friends in academia. Perhaps though you can aim to find non-academic friends.