[ci5er]

> in absence of workplace realities like deadlines, office politics and backstabbery

Really? I did not find that to be the case. I don't mind deadlines, but watching the day-to-day life of academics doing academia with their peers is what caused me to drop out of a PhD program and go finish my research project on my own. After seeing it in action, I wanted no part of being one of them for the rest of my career. I expect that I could have been at a rarely political university system, but after some medium-ish number of conferences (i.e. more than two dozen), I doubt that it was much worse than average. I found the whole thing quite "icky". In fact, I found it worse than any commercial environment I've been in (although I've been told I've been lucky in my experiences for failing to find it to such a degree in commercial environments).