Are true friendships possible in academia?

What a very mixed set of reflections on friendship amongst academics! Gossip, backstabbing, rudeness, convenience realtionships..... There a great track by the rock group, The Who, with the line - "how many frinds have I really got? You can count them on one hand". I think that covers life, not just the academy. In my experience, you fairly quickly establish who you can trust, who doesn't do you down behind your back; who you can have normal conversations with - about music, TV, politics etc....and not just office gossip, or wall-to-wall modular speak. Cherish the few that you get on really well with; and with all colleagues be kind, positive and supportive to the fullest extent you can. It will give you contentment, and may perhaps lift others

That was a good read. Lincoln Allison's experience is very similar to my own. I'm retiring in two months after forty years as a lecturer - the last thirtyeight spent in one place. During the early part of my career, promotions were few and far between, which wasn't a problem as being at the top of the lecturer scale, and never being bored or under much stress, equated to a fairly good quality of life. I don't recall much talk of promotions being undeserved or deserving people being overlooked. That changed when promotion to senior lecturer became more important financially and promotions were more frequent. I should say, I was never deserving of a promotion. We now have ten people, given temporary teaching jobs at the beginning of the covid lockdown, competing for two permanent teaching jobs, with the inevitable accusations of favouritism and nepotism. The past certainly is a foreign country - one where I managed to secure an academic job. These days I'd fall at the first hurdle - filling in the application form, which I'm guessing is very long and includes topics in which I'd be unable to feign an interest. Hats off to you youngsters I've just seen downstairs in the coffee room. I just wish you'd keep your feet off the seats.

This was a really enjoyable read. There are certainly pre and post pandemic versions of "friends in academic workplaces". For me, when I started at my institution a little over a decade ago I was quickly embraced by a small circle of long term colleagues who went to lunch together every day at one of the campus cafes. I learnt so much from them all and really felt like I was part of the place already. This continued as we got a department staff room, and the circle grew to other lunch regulars where we would all talk about everything and anything and complained about things together. But that core group kept on going with coffee together every morning as well, even into the pandemic where we would have morning Teams calls with our coffee. And it endures today, though now less regularly as massively declining campus presence across the board means we are not always in together to hang out together. Then there are my immediate office mates who I'm incredibly close to. But they never came up to lunch in the old days to mix much with the wider circle, and again with the three of us rarely all being in and one living a 45min drive away, those treasured super-long conversations in the office are now more sporadic or WhatsApp based. But beyond that I would say that academic friendships at work do ineed fall more into the category of either you have people that regularly attend a lunch and all chat about their lives as well as work, or you have those people that you pass in the corridor and exchange pleasantries with but otherwise they are just hunkered down in their offices or permanently in meetings and not really part of the culture. These are normally active researchers (like a high school clique) who frankly only seem to verbalise and socialise with other active researchers (but thankfully a few do occasionally cross over into "regular people" territory). But I have to be honest, unless working habits become less isolated and campus culture changes, those long-time staff who have given so much to the place and have benefited it so greatly are going to disappear into the ether come retirement, feeling like their workplaces have become a pale shade of the collaborative and enjoyable environments of even only five years ago, and that their work friends have long since been lost to them.