I feel the need to point out that it's not difficult for people whose identity is not centered …

I agree for most jobs, but academia is different. It's so wildly different to other careers, that it does feel more like a calling, and is far easier to identify with. Especially if you are a first generation academic, you are doing something considered wildly more prestigious than anything anyone before you has done. That is, I think it's relatively easy to dismiss your career as not that important if you have a normal job. But I think it's inherently much harder if you are an academic for many reasons.

I think academia is one of those special places where a lot of people who enter it are altruistic and idealistic, and consider it a part of their identity to make a change in the world in a larger sense. You are literally taking a pay-cut, willingly, in order to make the world a better place. At least in theory. So, in that sense, academia is (or at least used to be) more akin to monasteries than corporations. Not that other jobs aren't making a change in the world, but you know what I mean. It's one thing to be a knowingly replaceable cog in a team that tries to offer more effective ads, and it's quite another to singularly, completely in isolation, try to devote your life trying to invent the MRI, where if you fail the MRI may never come to exist. So yes, a lot of people in academia traditionally do ascribe a big part of their identity to their jobs, but I think this goes beyond the su…

You can't really be an academic whose identity is not centered around their job. This is because it virtually never makes sense to pursue an academic career as a means to other ends (given that pay and conditions tend to be quite bad).

In the 19th century you had the same job for life. If you were a blacksmith you stayed a blacksmith and died a blacksmith in the village where you were born. Your surname was synonymous with your skill. Wheeler. Smith. Potter. Even in the mid 20th century people worked for the same company for life. The "corporate" (body) world meant something very different than today. The corporation took care of you. It paid for your health and holidays. If you were unhappy in work, it helped sort that out so you would stay. As late as the 1960s, and still for some people who work in government, and still a culture in Japan, you can get a "job for life". "Career" means to move haphazardly. It replaced the more stable notions of "vocation" and "calling". Today you might spend a year in hospitality, a few years in sales, then do a diploma in programming, move to California, get into media design, and th…