Academic Writing Jobs - 10 Possible Disadvantages and Downsides

In this second part of the discussion, I will focus on the disadvantages of being an academic researcher. Of course, like any other job academic writing has its downsides. Personally I feel there are some demotivating factors that can turn you away from academic research.

1. Academic writing has an unpredictable schedule, clients might suddenly want urgent changes. Suddenly at midnight or 6 am in the morning you might get these urgent messages from a customer that they need revisions and you may not even agree with their requests for revisions. Some academic writing companies will ask their writers to oblige and complete these revisions and in many cases, writers may not even get paid for these revisions. These companies implement a 'customer first' policy and may not always support writers. I think this sort of thing could be demoralizing as writers need support and every academic writing company must completely support their writers, respect them as experts and negotiate a deal with the customers so that all parties are finally happy and writers also get paid for their time and any revisions or extra work.

2. Sometimes a client may argue you are wrong and disagree with you when you know you are right. For Academic researchers, disagreements with customers can be really annoying. You may be a very experienced academic researcher with several postgraduate degrees, scholarships and research papers in your resume but then you find yourself disagreeing with a first year undergraduate. What do you do? Sometimes it is very annoying and frustrating, but then you have to move beyond the surface level disagreements and focus on tutoring your customer. Sometimes this is not easy, as customers, even first-year undergraduates are not always too willing to learn.

3. Workload might suddenly increase or decrease, leaving you stressed and depressed. Academic writing is seasonal. Academic writing projects are available all year round but during some months there are more projects and more work and other months may be comparatively quiet. Some researchers might find it difficult to adjust to sudden changes in their workload, as less work means you have to change your schedule and income levels may fluctuate as well. So there is a certain level of unpredictability when you work as an academic researcher. So if you are looking for job security, academic writing is not for you.

4. Students may not understand what you are trying to convey, you may get scammed and it's frustrating. Misunderstanding, disagreements with the customers, arguments with your colleagues at the writing company, everything is possible. I will be very honest. There are many dodgy and unethical essay writing companies out there and many companies have fraudulent practices. They promise to pay you and then they don't and before you even realize, you are scammed. Since everything happens in a virtual environment, you might not be able to chase these fraudulent companies legally and you lose hundreds or thousands of dollars and feel cheated. It's best to be very cautious when you are working on the internet. The internet gives you freedom but it comes at a price, you can get cheated anytime. The best advice I can give you, is don't spread yourself too thin. Work only with a few companies you trust, remain loyal to them and develop a good rapport with your co-workers and customers. There is nothing like repeat customers who keep coming back for more of your precious writing genius.

5. Finally, it's a subjective job, as every piece is customized. Academic writers prepare customized papers and essays, to help students and teachers and all customised, creative products are subjective products. You may follow all instructions and yet what you write will be shaped by your writing style and your opinions. Others who read your work may judge you, may not agree with your style, approach or opinions, so prepare yourself for criticisms. Essays and academic writing are largely open to subjective analysis and this makes academic writing a tough job as there is no right or wrong, and all writing is open to interpretation.

6. Students may pass off work as their own, you feel ripped off, used like you are selling your brains and ideas. This is another very frustrating aspect of academic writing. Most students will possibly just use ideas from your paper but some may simply hand over the paper or essay written by you as their own. What do you do? You suffer from an ethical dilemma, it hurts your integrity but then every piece of writing can be misused. You might be a blogger and then someone can copy your blog and can pass it off as their original speech. Plagiarism happens even at political campaigns! That is why you must join a writing company that has clear rules that your work cannot be misused by customers. You must know the legal avenues to help protect your copyrights and your original work and most legitimate writing companies will support your rights.

7. There may be issues of job satisfaction at times, you don't get credit or awards or promotion and so on. As an academic researcher, you get paid for your work but you may not get credit. There is usually no promotion or awards, so if perks and bonuses are your motivation factors, you may not feel completely satisfied with custom academic writing.

8. Academic research is a lonely job. Academic writing is a lonely job, sometimes you write the whole day and cut off from the whole world, you might actually enjoy being a loner although it may not be a good thing. Being a writer is a schizophrenic job, you have to sit and write whole day. Sometimes you may not interact with anyone, sometimes you might become completely cut off from friends and family. You might experience a change of personality and become more isolated, especially if you are a full-time academic researcher.

9. Writing addiction or workaholism. There is a real danger that academic researchers become so addicted to the bidding or writing process that they become workaholics, they cannot live without the constant virtual reassurance of their abilities and they become addicted to the actual writing process and feel stressed and depressed without a constant flow of projects. As a researcher, you become a bit addicted, it's like playing video games or gambling, remaining immersed in a virtual world. You embrace a schizoid lifestyle as you can get sucked into a whole 24-hour round the clock work schedule.

10. You know too much. You are gaining other people's knowledge. Finally the challenge is to use this knowledge for the benefit of humanity - maybe write your own book, start your blog or advise others. This last point is not about why I hate academic writing but rather what researchers should do about it. Academic writers gain immense knowledge, they develop great writing skills, they learn too much about everything and the challenge is to use all this knowledge in a beneficial manner, so academic researchers can use their repository of knowledge to write books, blogs and articles and help other people with their knowledge. This is more of a challenge rather than a disadvantage of academic writing as finally our purpose in life must be to use our skills not just for our own development, but also for the benefit of humanity.

That's quite insightful.

I do not agree that academic writers become addicted to writing or become workaholics. I would instead argue, that the reason they look for a constant flow of work is because of this simple work ruling: No Work, No Pay. Therefore, what seems like a work addiction is really nothing more than the writer trying to keep up with his projected income since if he doesn't write or have any projects lined up, he won't get paid. Don't get the two reasons mixed up.

In addition to that, a freelance writer has a set income in mind for every pay schedule depending upon what his financial commitments look like at the time. It is understood that he needs to burn the midnight candle in order to afford all of the expenses he has incurred and must pay for. Therefore, there is no work addiction involved in these instances, only a need and will to survive.

Exactly. While I still love writing, I don't love the business of it. When writing became a full-time job versus something I did because I like to do it, it changed. Note, I always give my all to every project and will continue to do so. Still, there's no addiction or workaholic mentality here. Writing is my chosen career and I do it to pay my bills. Period. There are times when projects are big enough that I can take a break for a couple of days but there's other times when the projects coming in are smaller and that means I need more to reach my income goals. But an addiction. No. Not at all.

Unfortunately, that is a disadvantage of being an academic writer. However, as professional writers, all we can do it fulfill the clients' requests to the best of our ability and trust (albeit blind trust) they will use it as intended/ordered. While writing is not the same as retail sales, there is a similar presumption. For instance, when a customer buys a roll of duct tape or a tarp from Walmart, Walmart has the reasonable presumption the customer is not buying the products to use as tools in a murder kit. (Yeah, yeah, a bit dramatic, but you get the idea.)

I also disagree with the idea that is writing addiction or workaholism. Of course, there are people who are very dependent on work. But this is a completely different story. Most of these writers simply love to write and this is either their hobby or just a favorite job. There are other daily things in them. For example, I work 7-8 hours a day, but I do another job, go to dance and engage in other affairs. And I have no feeling that I need to write something all the time.

Academic Writing business has become a very low profile business :(

That's because more than 99.9% of duct tape sold isn't intended for that purpose. A much better analogy for academic projects would be rolling papers and bongs, because 99% of them aren't being used to smoke "tobacco" and their manufacturers know that. Likewise, 99% of customers in this industry aren't paying this kind of money just for essays that they plan on using only as "models" for their own writing. Let's not pretend we believe otherwise because it's just ridiculous.

The only possible disadvantage that I can see about being an academic writer is that there are slow and peak seasons. When I was starting out in this job, I was cramming as much work as I could into the peak seasons. I knew that when the slow season came, I would have to tighten my belt money-wise if I were to make it to the next hot season. That meant careful budgeting on my part and ensuring that the work I was delivering was of constantly high quality so I would receive repeat business. Now, my biggest problem is that Covid - 19 changed the academic writing game.

Some students have found themselves without an allowance since they study from home and their parents provide everything, from shelter to meals, thus negating the need for a weekly allowance. That also resulted in far lesser academic orders being brought to academic writers. My projected income for the year has been gravely affected by this unexpected change in the academic field and i have yet to fully adjust and spin-off my company to another writing field to effectively bringing my income up to a decent amount for the rest of the year.