Every time I see people maligning academics for not writing in ways that are immediately accessible to them, my blood just instantly boils. Posts like this:
I feel like people don’t know that academic papers are not targeted at students?? They’re actually meant for other experts, academics, and industry professionals; of course students aren’t going to understand it!
See, academics actually have two jobs: teaching and learning. When they’re writing papers, they’re not teaching; they’re just sharing what they’ve learned so far. They’re basically going, “hey, any smart people out there know what to do with this data?” they seriously don’t care about students at this point at all.
The teaching part comes when all that knowledge has been verified/spread/gotten feedback and is then incorporated into textbooks and curriculums, and explained in a way for students to understand. So if you want to learn, go read a textbook! Or a literature review! Those are really good for academics that are dipping their toes in a new field; they’ve got the basics but need an overview of what’s been happening recently and where to start.
1) Wasting time rehashing what somebody has already said instead of citing their work
2) Wasting time explaining the definitions of basic words to industry professionals
3) Good, yes, this is what academic papers should be like.
4) This is what happens when you aren’t familiar with a field. I know this because I had to do this for both my undergrad biochemistry thesis and for the dark ecology (philosophy) kritik I made for the debate team. It’s hell. Get over it. You’re not a genius and you don’t know everything. My advice though: don’t try to learn from papers. As I said above, they’re not intended to be teaching materials and you’ll stop being frustrated when you realize that. Stop trying to drink soup with a fork.
*students just don’t have the necessary framework to understand it yet* AND THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT because good teachers will build that for you!! That constant state of confusion? That’s academia babey!! Literally was reading philosophy last night. I was confused as fuck! The teacher explained it! Cool, huh?
The teacher (usually) isn’t out to get you. The teacher seriously does not expect you to have understood the readings. The teacher actually expects you to be really really confused. The purpose is to get you to think like an academic; you’ve been given some new information, now think about it. How does it connect to what you already know? What further questions do you have? (You probably have a lot!) But what about…? And if…? That’s literally all academics do all day.
Also, when you’re in undergrad, the papers you’re assigned to read in class are likely 30+ years old, if not hundreds of years old (*cough* philosophy). That material has been in circulation for ages, so of course you’re going to find better explanations elsewhere. But at the time of publication, that paper was literally the only information on that subject. Those were the brand spanking new ideas of the time!
That’s literally how research works lmao. If you are a world expert on the Bleeding Edge of knowledge, you should be the only one that really understands your work. If it were obvious and easy to understand, it would have been done ages ago.
And the thing is: at the time of publication, yeah you’re probably the only one that understands it. And in the ten years following, people will write more papers citing yours and if notable enough, it’ll make its way into textbooks, where people will explain it even further. By then you will probably have also given serval talks to clarify and explain your ideas, maybe even written a book or contributed a chapter to a textbook.
Sometimes STUDENTS that NEED TO READ ACADEMIC PAPERS MULTIPLE TIMES TO UNDERSTAND THEM are NORMAL. Even academics do it. Don’t stress. You’re not dumber for it. Take it slow.
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