system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why is there this perception that academics are lazy and don't really "work?"

For example, I have had two family members flat out tell me that academics do not know what true work is. Additionally, they say that academics just teach and sit in their office. Where does this come from, and for someone preparing to apply to PhD programs this fall, how do you deal with this?
gpt
You ignore it. Anti-intellectualism persists for a lot of reasons. Lots of people are going to sling stupid words at you and tell you your profession is worthless if you choose academia so best to learn to live with it..

Lots of people think that college professors are a pretentious version of a high-school teacher. If all you know about academia is that they teach two or three classes a semester and have a job with a high-paying salary for life, you'd probably think the same thing. It doesn't look like a very hard job if you don't know many academics, and society generally has a feeling that academics want to correct other people and think they're better than everyone else (unfortunately, probably more true than we'd like to admit).