Rentering dracula's castle

I am going to be a bit dramatic in this post, but I feel I can afford to. It´s my birthday today.

So, why the parallel between academia and dracula's world? Everyone in academia dreams of a permanent position. The dream does not make sense, and yet we dream it and convince all students and postdocs to dream it, too, and create a form of dracula's castle from our buildings and research groups. They all look the same and feel the same with some differences in beaurocracy. In every place you see the students who seem to never graduate. They lost the funding from their first position or did not get along with their advisor or they do but the advisor does not have the knack of picking projects that can be finished. It's difficult to envison my kind advisors as dracula. In fact, I can't, it's the system that forces the blood suckling. The students and postdocs split in two categories. Those who are strong enough to give blood, walk around, and later hope to become permanent in the system, and those who are't. The permanent positions are few and far between. So, the system relies on those who are strong enough to give a lot of blood, and walk around without being able to find a permanent post.

The castle has plenty of myths and because of them we are afraid of light. We simply can't let light in. What if it kills us all? Some myths are true and some are clearly not. One obvious example is the garlic. It does not keep academics away especially when one wears masks.

Of course, the blood needs to flow. Otherwise, there is no system, and the community does help you to accomplish many things. Humans would all be dead if they did not help each other. So, I get that. I just don't see why we can't let light in, and why each castle has to be so isolated from all others and even from its own branches while preaching interdisciplinarity. Of course, if we let light in, the myths would disappear, but it would also make it safer to see where you walked.

We prefer to stay in the dark and dream of permanency. Every one wants to be dracula, to get lots of blood, and do so forever and ever. It's a fake celling because the only thing that's certain and might be permanent is death - or at least permanent for our current incarnation if one believes in that. Yet the dream sustains enough of us to keep the system going. I have a certain reluctancy to start the blood letting every time I go back. It´s normal. I sometimes wonder why I go back. I think it's because the castle gives me a certain sense of security. It's also fun to explore things in the dark. I always hope that I'll be able to open a window, and convince people that it's ok to have a bit of light. There enough corners to explore where the light can´t penetrate. Or I have Stokholm's syndrome. I probably do.