noillusions

I've been an assistant professor for 2 years now (finished PhD on Jan 2012), my salary is US$110K a year.

This year I decided to secretly do some consulting/contracting work on the side (for various reasons). It was a really difficult year as I worked like a dog but I was able to make an additional US$175K in income.

It's strange, I've felt more 'fulfilled' this year than simply spending that time on writing research publications. I feel like I've actually helped people and worked on stuff that matters...

Academia is broken IMHO: Too much focus on volume instead of quality, MOOCs and online courses are breaking teaching, most students don't care about the content, 50% of university staff are administrators.

I plan to make the most of it though (while it lasts).

This year I hacked my academic job.

The previous two years, like a lot of junior academics, I become extremely disillusioned with academia: long hours, low pay, and no job security.

I was about to quit my fixed-term assistant professor position (Maths) until I became curious: what would happen if I didn't care about being fired?

So Dec 2012, I made the decision to only focus on high-quality research that I care about (quality over volume), to do a decent (but not amazing) job teaching, and to secretly do consulting/contract work on the side.

It's been really interesting. Suddenly, when I didn't care anymore, they gave me tenure and bumped my salary. Over the year, I've also spent roughly 2 days a week sneaking around and doing contract work which has been amazing financially...

Would anyone be interested in my story?