About
About Leaving Academia
People approach the whole prospect of leaving academia from many different viewpoints. Some people are unhappy and want to find a way out, others dream of a tenure track career but are unable to secure a job, and others are forced, either by people or circumstances, to leave. This site is meant for anyone in academia (grad student, contract/adjunct faculty, tenure stream) who wants or needs to envision a life beyond the ivory tower.
About Me
My name is Sabine Hikel and I am was a recovering academic at one point I was an academic and now I’m not. In 2000, when I started out on the journey that is doing a Ph.D., I did not have a burning desire to become a professor. Rather, I was someone who enjoyed teaching, research and writing, and I was excited by the prospect of spending several years doing just that. By the time I finished my degree, six years later, I knew that the academic setting was not the best place for me, so I did not go on the academic job market.
Instead, I defended my dissertation (”Gender, Social Space and Commodification: Dimensions in the Politics of Love”) on a Friday, and started a job for a major Canadian broadcaster on the following Monday. I had left academia for good. In response to the intense feelings that I had about such a massive career change, I started blogging about it (at a Blogger site I’ve subsequently taken down). The response to the blog was significant. It was evident that there were hundreds of grad students and faculty out there who felt very ambivalent about their academic futures. The number of grad students, contract teachers and even tenure-track faculty who are considering academic career change is much greater than I had ever suspected when I started blogging. More to the point, would-be academic career changers are starved for information on what their career choices are and how exactly to make the leap.
Since leaving academia in 2006, I’ve done some freelance writing, radio and podcasting, had a baby, got laid off, launched my other baby, re-launched Leaving Academia as a business venture, shuttered that, got my column at Inside Higher Ed, and landed my dream job.
Leaving Academia is not intended to encourage anyone to leave academia. I am not anti-academic, and neither is my site. Rather, Leaving Academia is a place where career-based discussions about life in and after grad school can be held in an honest way. This site is a supportive community of academics and post-academics.
Contact
If you have a success story you’d like to share, a burning question about leaving academia or an insight from your own experience, I would love to hear from you. Please note I am no longer conducting consulting work, but I am happy to receive invitations to speak on the topic of post-academic life. You can email me at sabine [at] leavingacademia [dot] com. You can also get in touch with me on Twitter.
