Fabio Ynoe de Moraes: The very things we dreamed of become the rarest part of the job
Fabio Ynoe de Moraes, Associate Professor at Queen’s University, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Academics will be like, ‘I can’t believe they pay me to read and write’—and then not read and write.”
This tongue-in-cheek observation carries more truth than we’d like to admit. Many of us entered academia driven by a passion for knowledge — the joy of reading deeply, writing thoughtfully, and contributing meaningfully to our fields. And yet, the reality often looks very different.
Instead of immersing ourselves in ideas, we find ourselves drowning in:
- Grant deadlines
- Review requests
- Committee meetings
- Administrative forms
- Emails about emails
The very things we dreamed of — quiet time to read, space to think, freedom to write — become the rarest part of the job. It’s not that academics don’t care. It’s that the system is structured to reward output over insight, speed over substance, and visibility over depth. We romanticize the academic life, but many of us are intellectually starved in environments built more for production than reflection.
Maybe it’s time to reclaim the core of why we’re here. What would academia look like if we actually protected time to read and write — not just said we loved it?”
More posts featuring Fabio Ynoe de Moraes.
-
Challenging the Status Quo in Colorectal Cancer 2024
December 6-8, 2024
-
ESMO 2024 Congress
September 13-17, 2024
-
ASCO Annual Meeting
May 30 - June 4, 2024
-
Yvonne Award 2024
May 31, 2024
-
OncoThon 2024, Online
Feb. 15, 2024
-
Global Summit on War & Cancer 2023, Online
Dec. 14-16, 2023