Grifting in Academia

Rewind

• The first time I learned about the game of grift, I was near the end of my teens, and had gotten a really great opportunity to work on a pretty sizable movie, through literal cold-calling I had done at my University. My personal contact was the Production Coordinator, who was supposed to be responsible for hiring all the Production Assistants (PAs) on set. It was my first year of undergraduate study, and it was a pretty big break. The career centre, one of several places I volunteered my time, was headed by one of the kindest and most inspiring counsellors, who was rooting for us to succeed as volunteers, coaching us about perseverance, and about life. He immediately thought that I was a star, and when he heard the news, he was elated, especially as in my first semester, I came to the career centre wanting to spruce up my resume, and someone had told me that I should come back when I was a senior and spend my first year partying instead.
• Obviously, I didn’t listen, and went through hundreds of alumni contacts, while also contacting production companies in New York and LA. After having spent time in my home country working on productions, I had to make this work; I knew I wanted to be out here. Finally, someone wanted to hire me and said it was a sure thing. The career counsellor would smile, say the director’s name, and shake his head, pleased.
• A lot of things happened along the way, and suddenly I didn’t have a place to stay in NYC, but I had to find a way to grasp this important opportunity. I met the director, a staple of the city, and he chatted with me about my experience and about the way things would go down for the production. I took the train back home, having found a place to stay.
• Then nothing. I picked up another gig in-between the start date, and finally got in touch with the Production Coordinator, who told me that “all the interns were already working on set”. It was the first time I had been led down the road of being made to believe that I had an opportunity “in the bag” and it turned out to be a lie. What was worse is that a friend of mine knew the set photographer, and had offered me the opportunity of being his assistant, but I was naive enough to think I had this PA job in the bag and had passed. By the time I reached out to him, his words stung. “That ship has already sailed”.

The Second Time

• The second time I was at well-known studio in Hollywood, where the Production coordinator had called me for an interview. This time, I had an advocate. The makeup artist was enthralled by my courage. With our friendly banter, I left assured again that I had gotten the job according to the Production Coordinator, but this time I was a set technician, and to be honest there was no one who looked like me, and this job was pretty much male-dominated. But on the way out, I heard my new friend, the makeup artist, say, exasperated, “omg have you ever seen anyone like her on set before!?”. He made the case that I was special, and that I deserved even more to have a spot. Finding someone like me in that capacity was like finding a unicorn.
• Then. Nothing. But this time, my new friend told me when they were shooting, as he had been hired for a key role (i.e. makeup artist to the actors), and as it turned out, I had just slipped between the cracks. I controlled my destiny this time and showed up to set on the first day, and they put me to work. On the second day, my name was on the call sheet. And I ended up working the entire shoot, and everyone was impressed with me by the time we wrapped, and I got my credit, as well as having had great mentorship for someone who had just moved to LA, working under a gaffer who had walked off of Spielberg’s latest movie in town, who taught me so much, and was so kind.

Academia

• Because of these experiences, I have spent less time in spaces where people pretend it is for “everyone”, but the culture dictates that it is a closed club. I know I have to work around those systems. They are systems of grift. I have to work harder for doors to open in those systems. Systems that claim to be “meritocratic”, while simultaneously rewarding those who have lineage in the system (“My parents are in Academia, don’tcha know! I guess that’s why I decided to do this PhD thing?”; I guess it’s the path of least resistance). The madness of a system churning out the same type of graduate over and over while claiming “equal opportunity”. Do they even hear themselves when they speak, or do they just stay silent, obsequious, spineless, in the hope that their breadcrumb trail will mean that they too, one day, will have access to the club, to a morsel of power?
• I don’t say that lightly; like vultures, they exploit and they steal from, without giving credit. If you are none the wiser, they can also break your spirit or like vultures, feast on your heart.
• In essence, what they are saying is that you are worth less than those they have systemically set up to succeed; your ideas, your work, are to pilfered, your labour only to be extracted for the use of others. And that is why it is so much more difficult if you don’t fit neatly within the confines of that system. But their system is a lie. The grifter has spun a lie so deep he cannot tell its difference between the truth.
• I don’t take those things personally (anymore), but these days I take it as a challenge to succeed in spite of them. I also by definition don’t trust “promises” of words in Academia. To me, they might was well be that of a snake oil salesman. Everyone is trying to make themselves and their students seem big. Research labs in industry spin fool’s gold. I trust their actions; what they do when it matters most rather than their Stromboli-esque antics.
• Because prestigious or not, we are in the land of grifters and prestige is cashing (or cache-ing) in on old capital; it isn’t a guarantee of the future or as is said in finance, “Returns represent past performance, and are not a guarantee of future performance”.
• And the truth is, with each new generation, I have seen those systems collapse. If the universe is expanding, as institutions become more interdisciplinary, by definition that old guard is unsustainable. I believe that those systems deterministically eat themselves from the inside out, like a giant rot, spoiled fruit. I am waiting.

And that’s it.