The Academy has its tyrants, oppressors, and banal functionaries, yes. But it leaves plenty of operating room for independent thinkers as well. It gives you unequaled schedule flexibility, ample vacation time, stimulating contact with students, and often generous travel and grant support as well. The Academy tends to make ambitious and sensitive young people feel roughed up and abused (I certainly felt that way), and many of them run away or never recover. But I’ve found that it only gets easier with time; your twenties are an artificially difficult decade in the university system. Why pay the bill at a restaurant and then leave before eating what you paid for? That’s what it’s like if you suffer through graduate school and then quit before things start to get interesting and comfortable.