We’re nearly at our Easter break here at Surrey, so we’re tying off classes for a few weeks, before heading to our research activities/graduation events/annual leave. Rather than bore you with details of the Cornish village that will be enjoying presence during next week, I’m rather going to focus on something completely different.
In the past week, I’ve had several different conversations where I’ve been asked about what I do as a citizen of the academic community. For non-academics, this is the unknown side of our work, as they assume we just write books, lecture and have the same holidays as our students. for other academics, there’s a bit more variety, depending on why they’re asking you, but possibly not as much variety as you might expect.
In short, doing stuff like being active in your study association, or reaching out to non-academic audiences, or sharing your work through social media: it’s all just CV-points, right?
Well, I’m aware that I have a dog in this fight, but I’m going to say that it’s certainly not like that.
Instead, it’s one of those tragedy-of-the-commons things: it’s easy to free-ride off the work of others who are maintaining the networks and the groups that exist, but at some point if no one does it, then the whole thing comes down around our ears. Sure, it’s nice when someone else organises things for you, but that’s not a reason to avoid chipping in to help yourself: many hands make light work.
But it goes beyond this.
Getting out there, talking and connecting with people is good for you, individually as well as environmentally. Being an active member of the community is an excellent way to get to know people working on interesting and relevant projects and to share your own work.
This blog is a case in point: this group found each other largely by chance at TLC and we’ve since used it to develop our own thinking on various research matters, to build a wider contact group in the discipline and to provide a space in which to debate and discuss. I particularly like that we now have a steady stream of guest contributors, because it means I’m getting to know more people, even as they get an opportunity to get to do the same.
The short version of this is that academia is a fundamentally collaborative profession. Even if we work by ourselves, we do so on the basis of others’ work and with a view to contributing back into a continually-evolved debate. Yes, writing your high-impact outputs is an important part of that, but it’s not the only part. The more you work to participate, the more you can shape the debate, directly and indirectly.
Finally it’s worth saying that the more people you meet, the more you’ll know what’s what and who’s who. Time and again I’m surprised by how small our community can be, so never underestimate the value of contributing to our communal life. And remember that reputations travel further than you think, both good and bad.