Loneliness in academic life?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, 'One Hundred Semesters of Solitude' writes:

I'd like to initiate a conversation about the unexpected and honestly often quite difficult loneliness of having chosen an academic career. Note that I'm NOT looking for some Cocoon-style "what are *your* thoughts" on how to DEAL with this loneliness. That's partially what therapy is for, and the solutions to loneliness and solitude are pretty well-known regardless of what profession you choose (find hobbies, volunteer, put yourself out there, etc.).

What I'd like to ask is just how many people, like me, have kind of been surprised by how much less of a social network we have than other friends and non-academics at similar career stages. Here's the factors that affect my life, and I'm wondering how common these are. Again, I'm NOT looking for advice.

1) Lack of social connections from past stages of life -- Some people are able to build social circles out of their college or childhood friends and their mutual connections. However, because I chose to pursue a PhD in my 20s and partially because my program was far away from where friends from my BA ended up, I fell out of contact with many if not most of my college connections. None of my friends from college are nearby geographically. So that makes this source of social interaction slim pickins'. How many others have this experience?

2) Lack of social connections from work -- I'm in my mid-30s and I have a TT position in a major city! So I pretty much hit the lottery. However, I've learned that folks in other industries (tech, law, finance, etc.) often find a majority of their friends from their workplace. This is because these other workplaces are largely populated by people in a (1) similar age bracket who (2) are also looking for new social connections.

However, in academia, it's possible that neither of these factors applies. I am the youngest member of my department by a good 10 years and (nearly) everyone else lives in the suburbs with a family. Nobody is really looking for a buddy to go check out bars with on weekends.

Also, my institution (somewhat anecdotally) seems to do a really bad job of connecting its junior faculty with each other. Previously, when I worked at a much smaller institution, there were TT faculty orientations, meet-and-greets, and so on. At my current institution, there's been none of that.

Anyway, these factors have also made this source of social interactions very hard. How many others have experienced this?

3) The inherent social isolation of academic work -- The other obvious factor that makes it hard to develop meaningful social connections at work is that, unlike say tech or law or finance, academic work in the humanities is almost entirely solo. Most of us aren't running labs, with grad students and postdocs filing in and out and so on. And barring the odd committee assignment where people aren't rushing to leave the Zoom room, literally all of my work is conducted by myself.

I write by myself. I lesson prep by myself. Teaching isn't technically "by yourself," but you all know that it practically is, since undergrads are basically automata a little less able than ChatGPT (only barely joking). It's possible to work an entire semester quite productively without an actual interaction with another person, and I think I actually have had more than one such semester.

--
I think these are the biggest couple of factors, but other additional factors might include whether someone is romantically paired or single, the fact that academics work a unique kind of schedule, and so on.

Again, I'm NOT looking for advice on how to make friends, etc. I'm just curious as to how many other Cocooners have noticed and perhaps been surprised by the loneliness that comes with academic life.

I suspect this query resonates with a lot of people, particularly those who work in small departments with high teaching loads. It definitely resonates with me. My university does a good job of building connections between junior faculty, but otherwise, all three of the OP's major points apply to me. 

What about you all? Have you found your career in academia unexpectedly lonely? If so, for what reasons--the same as the OP's?

Comments

[alienated and surprised]

Thanks to OP, as this is a significant and completely unexpected aspect of being an academic and I’m glad we’re talking about it.

All of OP’s points resonate with me. I’d add a few more:

(i) Old friends are now harder to talk to and relate to, as they as people living normal lives are just habituated differently than me and my academic peers. I come from a working-class background, and the people I came up with and bonded with so closely in my earlier life now feel very foreign to me. Ditto for family.

(ii) Making department friends is complicated by academic seniority. I was elated to score a job (non-TT) at a well-ranked department in a desirable location straight out of grad school, but was basically ignored by the tenure-line faculty who didn’t really know who I was, and trying to make friends in a new city in my 30s was all but impossible. So the joy of living in this great place was clouded by having few institutional or extra-institutional friends.

(iii) This period of early career alienation covers a strange time in one’s life in terms of aging. In my last year of grad school, I still could have (maybe) passed for an undergrad on campus. Five years later, I’ve aged quite a bit (no one IDs me when I buy beer even in the tiny college town in which I now live, for example). It has been strange to go from young to old under these alienating social conditions.

Anyhow, I have no regrets, but it is therapeutic to get to talk about this sort of thing.

[Hermias]

Seems right. Most who make it to a job will have made three geographic moves (home>undergrad>postgrad>job), possibly continent or world-spanning. In my experience, a lot of philosophers have difficulty with normal human social interactions. At parties of philosophers, I have witnessed, and been party to, some incredibly strange verbal encounters.

On the other hand, we are bathed in the friendship of Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, and all the other illuminated ones who call to us through their writings. One day, if I really lose it, I’ll become a tulpamancer, and then I’ll never be lonely.

[Lonely Island]

Absolutely. I am a sociable, friendly person. I don't have a problem meeting people, having a normal conversation, and making friends. However, my career path has contributed to me spending a great deal of time by myself. I wouldn't say that I am miserable, but I am lonely.

(I will note that loneliness is an "epidemic" right now in the US, according to the Surgeon General. So this might not be an academic specific phenomenon.)

[Tenured now]

I know you didn't want advice, and I really, really feel for everyone feeling this way. But I guess I wanted to chime in that none of these three points hits home for me, and that I think there are actually a lot of academic-specific ways to handle these, if anyone is up for a different, more brain-storming focused discussion.

[Welcoming advice]

Tenured now, please do share!

[Michel]

I'm a loner. I enjoy being on my own (or mostly so, since I have a partner and child). Even in the before time, I only wanted to see my good friends once in a while (say, every couple of weeks or so at most).

But yeah. I moved for my undergrad, for my master's, for the in-between year, for my PhD (though this was close to home), and then for my postdoc (I got a job nearby, after). These were all big moves, with the last one taking me all the way across the country. Those five moves played havoc with my ability to cultivate close friendships, especially the last one, since my PhD took a while and the friends I made all also moved far away.

I have many friendly acquaintances here, but most of them are not acquaintances I wish to cultivate much further. And for the ones I might like to, I dunno, I think I'm too rusty to do it properly. I'll get around to it eventually, but for now, things like caring for a small child make it a lot harder.

I don't feel particularly desperate about it or anything--as I said, I'm quite happy by my lonesome, and since I have a partner and child I'm not even fully alone. But I do have a sense that a time will come in the medium-term when I might again like to have friends nearby who are more than just friendly acquaintances. And I'm not very good at making that sort of thing happen.

[Marcus Arvan]

@welcoming advice: how about we research this thread for the OP’s query and I can start a new thread in a few days on advice?

[Tired. Lonely. Want permanent job.]

Yes. Intellectually I knew moving to a new school post-PhD would be hard, but holy cow I did not know it would be so hard. I'm in an NTT position in a sizable department, and while folks are nice there's no institutional support or outgoing faculty to make me feel like I'm part of the department. I'm in a sizable city, in my 30s as well, and it is tough to make friends (though I realize part of this is that I'm covid-cautious, which doesn't play well with various indoor opportunities). Knowing that I'm (hopefully) moving to a more permanent job soon makes it harder to build friendships and romantic partners given my local impermanence. I don't think this post has anything to add to yours beyond solidarity; solidarity, friend.

Actually, on that last note, becoming involved in organizing my campus is one of the few ways that I've met people who, in some cases, are become friends.

[academic migrant]

I just want to say that I totally agree, as the more advanced my career stage gets (not really advanced but just started my first permanent job), the more I feel disconnected from past friends. Sometimes I feel that my closest friends are my co-authors, but my interaction with them are always online.

It hasn't gotten better when I started to have kids. This further disconnects me from post seminar dinners and travels for conferences.

[Bill Vanderburgh]

OP's points resonate with me. I was especially lonely in my first TT job, before I was married, having just moved to a state that I was not at all politically or religiously aligned with. Some members of my department tried to include me in social activities for awhile, but they were decades older than me and we didn't really vibe (though they were lovely people). Like OP I had lost many connections to friends and family due to distance during grad school, and it was even worse when I moved even farther away. And when I started there, that university did a pretty poor job of connecting new/junior faculty, too. All of which led to a kind of social desperation that caused me to make a couple of bad decisions about relationships (that under better circumstances wouldn't have started or would have ended much sooner). I did eventually make a good group of friends, but it was awful for many years. (Two ways I built that group: By writing and grading in a local cafe several days a week thus getting to know the other regulars, and by deciding to be the one who would organize weekly Friday drinks and inviting just about anyone I met on campus who I thought was nice.)

In my current position, I am married, and that helps. But friends are still hard to find and maintain, now in part because the faculty at my university live in a wide scattering over hundreds of square miles, and traffic is ridiculous--after work drinks are not a thing just for that reason, except about once a semester.

[Former Prof]

I was in a very similar situation. My colleagues in my department were barely even collegial let alone friendly. I was at a public undergrad only institution where I mostly taught GE courses. I was living in a small town thousands of miles away from my family. I'm gay, so living in a rural area was especially isolating.

I lived like that for 10 years, earning tenure along the way. However, I didn't have any sense of community in my department or outside of it. I had always been an outgoing and well-liked person, which made the isolation even harder to stand.

After covid, I hit my breaking point. I quit my job and moved back to my home state. I got a new job working in student services at a major university in a large city. The pay and benefits are about what I made as an associate professor, I still work with students on a daily basis, and I've spent more time with my nieces and nephews than I probably had in their entire lives before I moved back.

It was a very hard decision to make and the transition was mentally difficult. However, one and a half years later I consider it to be the best decision I've ever made for myself.

[all loners]

@michel I suspect that the vast majority in academic philosophy are loners. (The exceptions I know are all transferred from science.) But this precisely contributes to the problem, because *even loners* benefit from the social initiation of non-loners but now we are surrounded by loners.

Turning to my own experience: I come from another country, another culture, and I do feel American academia is a very lonely place. I do not know whether it is because of academia (philosophy in particular!), of America, or my own adaptation, probably all of them. (I do make friends with people from other departments in America. And I do make friends with philosophers out of America.)

I think this is a serious important topic!

[An additional point from all loners]

Oh, I thought of a possible contributor to loneliness in academic philosophy. I feel like in philosophy, people are busier with judging and impressing others on how good one is in philosophy---but especially judging.

[Ghettoizing Geek]

One point that definitely resonates with me is the disconnect with my former friends. It isn't just the geographic distance, though it's a big factor -- I'm nearly a continent away from most. But more than that, and maybe it's just me, being an academic philosopher is so utterly different from what they're doing, what they relate to, and hanging around with other academics has made me rusty at connecting with people who haven't thrown their lives into a passion-pursuing guild. (To be honest I have trouble relating even to academics who don't view themselves this way.) I used to be quite versatile socially, even able to make small talk with dentists and accountants. And I'm no snob; this is my deficit, not theirs. And it's lonely.

[Rob]

Another factor of loneliness at the early career stage: the precariousness of resources helps stoke competition and cruelty. It's hard to make friends when it feels like everyone you meet - especially other early career scholars looking for work - only want to devour you and take your place out of desperation for their own survival. It's much better to be alone than to endure constant probing for any morsels that can be snatched and stolen. The friendly guises that cover this kind of hunger are no substitute for real community.

[Lonely TT]

Same experience here. I moved for my masters, PhD, post-doc, VAP, and now TT. I'm also single with a young child 100% of the time. This makes pretty much all socialization difficult at worst, and expensive at best (babysitters for every event I might want to go to). I'm also in a mid-sized regional centre where people tend to grow up, go to university, and then settle down so they keep their same group of friends their whole lives. Makes it hard to break in.

[Extrovert in an introverts world]

I feel this, very deeply.

I'm an extrovert. A really big extrovert, if a shy one. I have a sense that is SUPER rare in our profession. I think that is the biggest thing I wish somebody had told me before I started all of this. I knew about the job risks and the pay. But what I didn't know was that even if WON the lottery (and I very much take myself to have done so) I would find myself without a stable set of friends.

It is very hard. And I've done some pretty extreme things (extreme commuting, big geographic moves) to try to hold onto the networks that I have, and be in places where I think it is more likely to meet people. But the small size of many departments, the small number of people at the same stage, the fact that teaching is done alone, and that people don't often have the same schedules or run into each other makes it hard to make friends where you are, even if people are very nice.

The hierarchical nature of the field doesn't help. For a variety of reasons I'm several years behind the peers with whom I entered grad school. I feel like my normal impulse is to reach out and try to see people. But because they are now successful I feel like it makes it unclear whether I am reaching out just to say hi and catch up (which I am) or to "network" (which I'm not). And that makes it awkward in a way it isn't awkward to catch up with similarly distanced friends not in the field. That makes the loneliness worse.

For awhile I was able to maintain more friends in other academic fields, but that has gotten harder which increases the issue.

[Joshua]

Late-stage grad student, but related to this: the first and central piece of advice I give to new graduate students is to find friends outside of the department. I suspect academics across disciplines who struggle to do this will pretty much always face the issue OP is getting at. I definitely struggled with moving ~600 miles to start grad school and only found good friends outside of my department well into my time here.

[G]

I am in a situation that may be of interest.

For about 6 years after my PhD I moved around for a few great postdocs in other countries with a "cold" culture. I had a 100% research position on my own project, supportive and nice colleagues and co-authors, but I was totally lonely and miserable. I did not manage to get involved in society at large, or to get to know locals at any level of depth.

Then I took up a professorship in my home country, a "warm" culture. My life has transformed.
I guess it's a mix of fitting better with social norms and expectations, and the opportunities offered by a different kind of position (both in terms of postdocs and students to mentor, and in terms of impact on society through board memberships, etc.).

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi Joshua--as noted above, I am going to devote another thread to offering advice, so I'd like to forestall further discussion of advice for then!

But Fwiw for now, my experience is that things that work during grad school might not be as viable in a FT academic job. I had a *lot* of friends outside of my department in grad school (so much so that for a time it actually became a problem for my progress through the program). But, once in a FT job, I simply didn't have time for any of that. I could be wrong, but I suspect that this may be a big problem for a lot of people. Getting and keeping a FT academic job, given all of the things one has to juggle (a large teaching load, constantly increasing service loads, pressure to publish, etc.) can unfortunately be so all-consuming that it leaves little time or energy for finding and cultivating friends from other walks of life.

[The Loneliness of a Longdistance Mover]

Yes, this is definitely my experience. I am introvert by nature. It's been challenging to move countries almost every year for many years. The pandemic was also terrible for social life. And there's the sense that what I am doing is not "enough" to succeed professionally, so, like Boxer from Animal Farm, "I must work harder," which is a dangerous and self-deating mindset.

It's taken a huge amount of effort (thankfully successful) to maintain social relationships over the past several years. Since many of my friends are academics, I know that this loneliness is widespread.

Beyond just struggling to get enough social interaction, even for an introvert, I think that we also face the challenge that much of our time is spent on problems that are unfamiliar or uninteresting to others. I don't mean intellectually (I think it's surprisingly easy to make those problems easy to outsider friends - or are they just being polite?!) but practically. At least if you are single, moving involves a lot of things that are really important to you, but not others. People will also suspect you like moving, even if you hate it. Applying for jobs is similar, and it's also tough if your friends are applying for the same jobs...

The loneliness of academia is certainly surprising. What's less surprising, but at least reassuring to me, is that so many others go through the same lonely periods and come out the other side. That's why I am very grateful for this site and especially threads like this one.

[an international student]

I'd like to contribute a perspective of an international grad student. Ever since I left my home country (an authoritarian country from which I try to stay away), I gradually lost contact with most people I knew in that country – ironically, I don't regard this as a loss. I then made a few friends in Philosophy. With regard to making friends, for me there are psychological barriers (I'm an introvert and group socializing doesn't work well for me) and cultural and language barriers (I'm pretty ignorant about American society and culture at large, and chatting can be harder than academic discourse for me – in chat, people don't use as much academic language!).

[N]

Something that doesn't help: as academics we are perpetually surrounded by people, that is to say undergrads, who are going through one of the most intense and rewarding social periods of their lives. And we're entirely excluded from it all. Sort of like putting all the cages from the zoo in the middle of the savannah so the captive animals can watch their peers roam free.

[Mark Jago]

I was very glad to see this topic raised. We are all (justifiably!) so worried about finding an academic job that we often don't talk about issues that come up when we get the job we always wanted. Academia for many forces choices on us that comparable careers don't. Most of my professional friends chose where to live, and found a job there, whereas academics move to whichever university will have them. This leaves us geographically separated from friends, family, and sometimes partners. Within a university, departments often don't interact much, so our primary source of new friendships is often with other philosophers. This is all just to say, I feel the problem, and would be surprised if it wasn't widespread.

I would also add another contributing factor, one that might be within our control. My generation was drilled on the need to publish relentlessly (and then get grants, and ...). If I'm not working towards that, in between teaching, I feel like I'm letting myself down. But research, writing, grant-writing, are mostly solitary tasks. Other colleagues (particular more junior UK colleagues) often have different priorities, I've noticed: they focus more on diversifying the curriculum, planning innovative new modules and assessment methods, working on EDI initiatives, and so on. These are far more social activities. And, by and large, I see those colleagues socialise together much more than those (like me, I guess) who want (or otherwise feel compelled) to squeeze every spare moment for research.

This is all quite specific to my department, but I wonder whether any of it generalises? To what extent do the *kinds* of things we personally value in academia affect how much we socialise meaningfully with our colleagues?

[Another lonesome fellow]

I'd like to echo the comments saying not all socialization is equal. I'm lucky to have nice colleagues with whom to have coffee, or write over coffee, or similar. But there's a gnawing hole when it comes to anything non-academic, or even opening up about each other's personal life. It doesn't help that all my colleagues are married (and presumably straight), save for a couple of grad students. Meanwhile I'm single and queer in a smallish university town, which means that the very few queer events where I might go and make queer friends are full of students. It's tricky to navigate to say the least.