failure

Yesterday, I was interviewed by a reporter from University Affairs magazine (it’s kinda Canada’s print and online equivalent of the Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed). The reporter is writing a piece on job prospects for newly minted Ph.D.s, including post-academic work. We discussed a lot of different issues related to the process of leaving academia for non-academic positions, including the intense and very difficult feelings associated with this kind of career change: fear, uncertainty, regret, self-recrimination and, in some cases, being regarded as a failure, by oneself or others.

The reporter asked me if these accusations of failure really happened, and I replied that I had indeed heard of instances when this particular “f” word was lobbed. But it’s not just the out-and-out use of the word “failure” that some people struggle with–it’s the blank look on people’s faces when you disclose your post-academic career plans. It’s the conversations that end abruptly when colleagues don’t know what to say. It’s your own paranoia when you see those blank, confused faces, and observe that conversation screech to a halt, and you wonder what people are thinking.

In my case, I had initially been very careful regarding broadcasting my own decision to leave (that has obviously since changed!). I did not share this with a lot of faculty until I had actually left (even though my own supervisor had never been anything less than completely supportive). In other words, there is a lot of emotional management that goes on when you make this decision.

But after speaking with the reporter about this issue, I began reflecting on the number of people I’d talked to who had escaped academia without having to face a single accusation of failure. In many instances, colleagues respond to the announcement of your leaving with envy. Some feel personally threatened by your departure, as though your leaving demands that they take the same course. Their response, as Krista Scott-Dixon said in our podcast interview, is, “We’re suffering, too, so it must be okay!”

Regardless of the frequency the actual accusation of failure occurs, the fear of being a failure or being seen as a failure is a real impediment to people leaving academia. Whether they’re ABD, a newly minted Ph.D. or a tenure-track prof, there is a pervasive belief that, if you choose post-academic work, it means you weren’t smart enough, you weren’t tough enough, you weren’t committed enough. This is the case even though for decades, universities have been producing Ph.D.s who do go on to post-academic work–quite voluntarily and quite happily! Somehow, though, this fact has remained invisible–up until the global economic meltdown forced it into the light.

It goes without saying–but it’s gotta be said anyway–that this pervasive belief regarding academic leavers as failures is downright twisted. It really speaks to some of the ways in which an unbalanced life is simply par for the course–or even prized–in some academic circles. Does it matter that you’re miserable? Does it matter that your job prospects suck? Does it matter that you spend 15 hours a week driving around to different universities in order to patch together an economic existence at the poverty line? Apparently it doesn’t, just as long as you’re staying on the academic career path. This kind of belief is so wrong–and yet it’s perpetuated by some of our brightest minds.

The reporter that I spoke with said that she’d talked to deans who’d said they wished that graduate students, in particular, didn’t feel that leaving meant failure.  To me, this is like your boss saying s/he wished the workers didn’t feel so bad about their crap wages. Grad students didn’t make up this belief out of whole cloth. The belief that leaving academia = failure comes in large part, IMHO, from the fact that, within academe, there is so little acknowledgement of other careers as viable options. It is simply a given that all grad students are there to get tenure-track jobs. Little room is made for other career options. Thus, if we’re all there to grab the academic brass ring, you must be off your rocker if you’re considering otherwise.

It was with all this in mind that I read the Career Advice column at Inside Higher Ed today. The piece is called, “That Shocking Time of the Year,” and the shock that writer Teresa Mangum refers to is the realization that, if you haven’t been hired for a job by now, there may not be an offer coming. She sketches out some really solid guidelines you can use to figure out whether or not to take those temporary contracts or hold out for something more permanent. But what if you’ve only been offered temporary contracts year after year? What would you do, Mangum asks, if you were ready to take some risks and make some changes?

Mangum describes how her own department decided to address that question by bringing a speaker from the university placement centre to a meeting with graduate students. Mangum writes,

After I described the academic job search, I turned the floor over to him. As he nervously passed around a handout that matched the training humanities graduate students receive with the “skills” required for non-academic positions, the students shrank into their seats. I quietly berated myself for not preparing students better for his visit. What I floated as Plan B for Bouncing Back deflated, on the students’ horizon, into Plan F for Failure.

Ugh. That’s sad to read (though it only fuels my mission for Leaving Academia to be a tiny way for that leaving=failure belief to be combatted). But prof Mangum goes on to say,

For most of us, the prospect of giving up a long sought career would be wrenching, frightening, and, worst of all, humiliating. Such are the lessons faculty teach graduate students and assistant professors, however inadvertently. But is scraping by with random courses, work that probably ends up averaging less than minimum wage if you count all the hours involved, more rewarding than retreat? More of a “success”? I don’t think so.

It’s nice to have faculty own up to their own role in perpetuating the myth of leaving = failure, and to acknowledge that living as a contract/adjunct teacher sucks and blows ass. Now the question is what faculty and administrators are going to start doing about it.

On a more positive note: if you do go over and read all of Mangum’s article, you’ll also find, among a list of resources you can consult in your post-academic career search (which can all be found on the left-hand sidebar of this blog), a little announcement: I’m going to be joining Inside Higher Ed as their regular Leaving Academia columnist. I’m really thrilled to have the opportunity to address an even larger audience of potential academic leavers (or what I like to call wanna-be academic ex-pats!). I will let you know when my first piece goes up.

In the meantime, if you’re new to this blog, I want to welcome you. I encourage you to leave comments or send me an email [sabine at leavingacademia dot com] if you have particular questions you’d like to me to research and blog about, services I offer that you want to know more about, or trying to find resources.

Tagged as: failure

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