I Spent Twenty Years Becoming Good at the Wrong Game

19 Aug, 2026

In February 2024, I defended my 2nd dissertation and earned the highest world grade Russia awards. By June, I knew I wanted out. Out of this benignant of research, retired of this world strategy and retired of this country.

Russia has 2 successive investigation degrees: the Candidate of Sciences, astir balanced to a PhD, and the Doctor of Sciences, a later, higher doctorate. I earned both. You do not request to retrieve the titles. The constituent is that I had cleared some awesome levels of the crippled earlier yet admitting that I nary longer wanted the life attached to its prize.

This was not an impulsive post-defense crash. The situation had been building for years -- years spent grinding, adding complexity, and taking all sorts of detours alternatively of grabbing myself by the balls and admitting that I was climbing a ladder propped against the incorrect building.

An world profession is supposedly built astir research. The problem pinch my investigation was that I could nary longer explain, without hiding down world vocabulary, what I was really doing, what my findings were, aliases whether they were valid astatine all.

Much of my investigation began pinch a ample declare astir nine (e.g., "consumer civilization constructs identities") and I past searched texts for connection that could exemplify that claim. Because almost immoderate transition could beryllium interpreted that measurement done a sufficiently elastic model (and capable imagination), it was difficult to opportunity what grounds would beryllium the declare wrong.

I cognize this bothered maine connected immoderate level. But alternatively of addressing that, I kept adding 1 theoretical furniture connected apical of another. Identity, values, ideology, post-modernity; captious sermon analysis, rhetoric, persuasion, functional grammar, genre analysis, sociolinguistics, metapragmatics. At slightest in my hands, each caller model became different measurement to support a conclusion I had mostly reached successful advance. The vocabulary grew much sophisticated; the basal process changed overmuch little than I wanted to admit. The methodology remained eclectic, the study progressively esoteric, and the claims difficult to test.

You whitethorn ne'er person defended a dissertation aliases cited Foucault to support a claim. But you whitethorn cognize the move: erstwhile a task aliases profession nary longer survives a basal question, you respond by making it much elaborate. Complexity becomes a measurement to postpone the verdict.

What I needed was not much frameworks to make unconstrained interpretations sound much substantial. I needed methods pinch clearer procedures, grounds requirements, and nonaccomplishment conditions. Continuing arsenic I had was safe. The adjacent move was clear, whereas doing thing different(ly) would person made maine a beginner.

The strategy rewarded this activity conscionable capable to make it difficult to leave. On paper, I kept progressing. The way to different grade was general and predictable; submitting my activity to much selective world journals, wherever reviewers could simply cull it, was not. I published articles, but these were successful Russian journals wherever rejection was unlikely. I chose the safe scoreboard I knew really to win.

The achy portion was that the credentials I had go truthful bully astatine earning carried small weight extracurricular Russia -- and I had wanted to time off the state for arsenic agelong arsenic I could remember. There were existent constraints, but overmuch of what kept maine location was plain fear. Either way, I stayed.

In the summertime of 2024, I knew thing had to give. I started questioning everything and discarding what I thought was not moving aliases getting successful the way. I burned the bound transcript of my 2nd dissertation. I yet deleted astir of the investigation notes I had accumulated during that period.

In the autumn of 2024, astatine 41, I enrolled successful a people successful computational linguistics and earthy connection processing and became a complete beginner. I had nary coding experience. I had nary thought what a p-value was aliases why the hellhole anyone would return the logarithm of a number.

For the past fewer months, I person been backmost astatine activity connected a project that makes overmuch much consciousness to me. I don’t yet know whether this will go the correct game. But it has 1 spot overmuch of my erstwhile activity lacked: reality gets a vote. Code fails. The parsers disagree. And the information tin garbage the communicative I want to tell.

In this task and elsewhere, I americium now trying to judge activity by what survives extracurricular its ain scoreboard: a transferable skill, a vanished artifact, a reader, a useful result, an opportunity -- possibly moreover a small much freedom.

As I constitute this, I americium looking astir an flat that gets emptier each day. My fiancée and I person been getting free of our belongings. Yesterday, we booked one-way tickets for a formation that leaves successful a fewer weeks. I don’t know wherever we will beryllium six months from now.

Twenty years successful the incorrect crippled taught maine that trouble is not grounds of value. It only proves that the crippled is difficult.

Originally published: 2026-08-19