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1. Happy holidays (+ a great gift for the doctors in your life)
2. “I think it’s time to give up the old image of myself as a scholar.”
3. Midnight inspiration: The part you control is preparation

But, as so many post-academics I’ve spoken to since have testified to, I just wasn’t happy. And this sincerely seemed to me to be a sufficient reason to quit the profession and try something else. So I never went on the academic job market. To me, by the final year (though it had been building up in the years prior to that), I was pretty certain that academia was not the right fit for me.

The thing that scared me most about leaving was the possibility that things would get better if I landed a tenure-track position. This was the thought that vexed me most. What if it was the conditions of grad school itself, or my grad program, that caused so much anxiety, stress and uncertainty? Maybe everything would be better once I got to that hallowed faculty post.

What I know now, though, is that the fantastical academic dream is no longer an option for the average junior faculty member. You know that dream: the one where you get to be the kind of teacher Robin Williams was in Dead Poets Society, and where you get to contribute great scholarship to the world, and where you host incredible dinner parties for the faculty and grad students in your spacious dining room. You know: the life of the mind and all of its pleasures. Of course, Robin Williams never had to deal with piles of marking, extreme self-doubt about his research, the constant cycle of applying for external funding (and academics think they’re not trained in marketing! Ha!), or a hostile work environment.

I knew that I loved writing…but my academic writing voice had choked out my creative voice. I knew that I loved research…but I hated the idea of being boxed in to my one area of specialization, when I so often just wanted to bugger off and explore other, equal fascinating areas of scholarship. I loved teaching (when I knew I was really clicking with the students)…but I disliked the university-as-job-factory mentality that made them look at me in the same way they looked at a person delivering a pizza (which isn’t to disrespect pizza delivery persons–gawd knows how much I rely on them–but it is to say that I was a service-delivery provider to them, rather than a teacher, educator, instructor, or, in some cases, a human being).

What was very difficult for me to cope with was the constant pressure of thinking about my research 24/7. An academic’s job–no matter where you are on the totem pole, from grad student to tenured prof–is never done. I know there are a lot of other jobs where late nights are required, or doing a bit of work on the weekends is an expectation. But those expectations are understood by everyone involved, and usually lead to tangible outcomes (e.g. the LaffItOff report gets written; the big presentation to the Dinglebopper Group is ready to go for Monday). There is something I found about the hamster wheel nature of the academic lifestyle that was just, to me, totally dissatisfying.

But the thing that was the apex of what I could not tolerate was the knowledge that what I was doing was making no positive social contribution at all. It was this, most of all, that led me to ditch academia. The idea that I would be on a hamster wheel of research that was totally irrelevant, that would never be read by the public (let alone have any meaningful impact on the public), was intolerable. That was the opposite of why I had gone into graduate school in the first place.

When you’re thinking of leaving academia, there are a mountain of fears to face: what if I can’t get a job doing something else? I don’t even know what my other options are! What else could I possibly do with my life? What if leaving is a terrible decision that I regret for the rest of my life? Can I come back if I leave? What will my supervisor think? What will my friends think? My parents will be so disappointed! I can’t leave–I’m useless!

But against those fears were, for me, some basic truths: I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t living up to my creative potential. I wasn’t being an agent of change.

So leaving had to happen. And it did. And I am so thankful for it. And the fears? Pish-posh! Suddenly, I was too busy being happy, creative and a change agent to even give them any more mind.

Related posts:

1. The benefits of leaving: Respect and free photocopying!
2. Podcast #7: “See what it feels like to wake up on Sunday morning and not have to grade papers.”
3. On Being Postacademic

Life right now is simpler, sweeter, more satisfying… and despite the initial trauma and some of the very dramatic unforeseen consequences… leaving remains the right choice for me. Sadly, the choice is often confirmed as I interact with my peers who stayed and struggle on.

That’s not to say I don’t ever think of finishing my PhD. I do, often; but these days I do things on my terms or not at all. My terms for re-engaging the diss have partially revealed themselves to me… if it is meant to be and when the time is right the rest of my terms for completion will become clear as well.

In the meantime, opportunities abound: to do work I find politically meaningful; to experiment with ways of being political and an agent of change in mainstream work-life environments — now there’s a challenge!; and, oddly enough, to connect back to university communities in more creative ways than the mainstream university worker. Since leaving, the latter options have always danced at the periphery of my world. I can pick and choose from these now; although, mostly, I continue to stay at arm’s length until I’m sure of my terms!

It’s only in leaving and exploring other workspaces that I realised that being a researcher is a mindset that bolsters creativity and yields practice. That mindset is precious and needs to be nurtured, not disciplined. It needs engagement, appreciation and discernment, not constant judgement and correction. In the end, I think I’d actually make a better academic — certainly a kinder, gentler and wiser one — having left academe than I ever did in academe. Ironic!

Related posts:

1. Post-academic careers for scientists
2. Two interesting links
3. Social media: Tools for the post-academic job hunter

But way back in the day–I’m talking 2006, here–my decision to leave was cooked up in a very different economic context. The idea of having a Ph.D. but not being a university teacher probably looked to a lot of people like something bordering on insanity. And sometimes I did feel a little nutty to be considering the idea at all.

I was reminded of some of those crazy feelings this weekend when my crack I.T. team and I sat down to watch Gran Torino.

You know Gran Torino–the Clint Eastwood movie. The one where he growls and becomes a transformed person. The one that is ostensibly about anti-racism but is really about an old white guy. The one that people said was “masterful,” and “a cinematic tour de force” and rubbish like that. The one that left me scratching my head and turning to my crack I.T. team to say, “Huh?”

Now, Gran Torino, like grad school, has a lot of things going for it. It has a shiny, exciting car, an empathetic underdog character who you love cheering on, and most of all, it has Clint Eastwood. I understand that in many corners of the cinema-going world, Clint Eastwood can do no wrong. And really, he does turn in a great performance in this movie. Every time he turns around hefting a pistol or rifle in his hand, you get a little thrill, a little “Oh, shit! Clint Eastwood‘s got a gun!” kind of a thrill.

Similarly, grad school has little thrilling moments. There are those times in the classroom when you feel like you’re really connecting with your students. There are those moments in a seminar when your prof is setting your mind on fire. There are those amazing hours you spend getting lost in the stacks, devouring books and journals.

But then you start to realize that the whole isn’t the sum of its parts. You get to the point where you can’t deny that your relationship to this thing is breaking down. You start thinking, as I did over the weekend, “Um…WTF is going on here? Where is this plot going? Did Gran Torino get destroyed in the editing room?”

The difficult part about this, though, is feeling like you’re the only one who ever thinks this way. “I thought Gran Torino/grad school was going to be fantastic,” you think. “Everyone said it was a good idea.” “Am I the only one seriously not enjoying this?” “Am I crazy to just want to just press ’stop’ and try something different?”

Folks, I’m telling you, I watched Gran Torino to the end and I kind of wish I hadn’t. The first 1/4 of the movie was satisfyingly quirky in its own, poorly-edited way. The rest was craptastic. Whether you make the choice to leave grad school mid-stream, after the Ph.D., or once you’ve already got tenure, you’re making the choice to open yourself to possibility. You are sparing yourself–even if you don’t get to see the ending of that particular story.

Related posts:

1. The grad school buffet: Are you full yet?
2. The benefits of leaving #2: Guilt-free leisure time!
3. Should you quit grad school during the recession?

When we’re in academia, we’re sorta like 7-Eleven. We’re not always doing business, but we’re always open.

(And he then offered a cookie to the first person who could name the movie reference. He’s still waiting, people! Free cookie to be had!)

The near-unwavering practice I have of restricting the number of hours I work each week is probably a rebound reaction from my days in grad school. Back then, I felt like I was always on the clock, always under pressure to be producing, no matter the time of day or year.

Well, it turns out that I was actually producing quite a lot, as evidenced by a weird discovery I made a few weeks ago. While dissertating, I used a free, web-based time-tracking tool over at myHours.com. I found it was a really helpful way of having an accurate sense of how much work I was getting done. It helped me to stay on top of my work, but more importantly, it helped combat the feeling that I wasn’t doing enough or getting enough done. You know how it is: when you’ve got all that open, unstructured time, if you take five minutes to make a sandwich, you think, “I’m wasting time!”

Well, I was poking around my myHours.com account, thinking about using it again, and I made a shocking discovery: when I was in grad school, I worked like a dog. This is what the 10 days before I got married looked like, when I was madly finishing the final draft of my dissertation:

Date                Activity          Task                    Start     End        Total

12/12/2005    Dissertation    Writing/editing    10:00    16:00        6:00
13/12/2005    Dissertation    Writing/editing    10:00    16:00        6:00
14/12/2005    Dissertation    Writing/editing    09:30    16:23        6:53
15/12/2005    Dissertation    Writing/editing    08:40    16:00        7:20
16/12/2005    Dissertation    Writing/editing    10:30    19:30        9:00
17/12/2005    Dissertation    Writing/editing    05:54    09:26        3:32
18/12/2005    Dissertation    Writing/editing    07:44    11:50        4:06
19/12/2005    Dissertation    Writing/editing    08:00    17:00        9:00
20/12/2005    Dissertation    Writing/editing    10:00    16:00        6:00
21/12/2005    Dissertation    Writing/editing    06:30    16:30        10:00
22/12/2005    Dissertation    Writing/editing    05:35    08:11        2:36

Now, for those of you who haven’t left academia, you might not be particularly surprised by this. Working for 6- 7 hours a day on your dissertation, with a few 9 or 10 hour days, sprinkled with a few 2 or 3 hour days, might actually be pretty representative of grad student hours. But for me, I saw this and thought:

a) why did I have the constant feeling that I was frittering away my time when I wasn’t?

b) what the hell was I doing working on the weekends?

Moreover, this was clearly one of those periods in my life where I actually made my lunch the night before so that I could sit and eat it at my desk (yes, in my home office), uninterrupted. I know this because when I kept tabs on my writing time like this, I was writing. I wasn’t futzing, I wasn’t emailing, I wasn’t noodling around on Facebook (well, there was no Facebook back then). So those were solid hours of cranking out the diss. And because there was nothing I hated more than being on a hot writing streak and having to cave and give in to the demands of my stomach by taking the time to prepare lunch, I’d prepare it the night before.

The constant feeling that I should be working was something that I disliked most about grad school. Fast-forward to 2009: I really treasure having my time contained and clearly labelled with the words, “Work,” “Family” and “Personal.” When I made the decision to go into business for myself, I also made the decision that I would only do it if those boundaries around my time remained.

The beauty of this decision means that, when I’m hanging out with friends, my husband, my kid or myself, I do it with a clear conscience. I know the work will still be there when the time for work comes. And when Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. rolls around, I am excited and ready to start the week.

How about you? What would your dream hours be? What kind of lifestyle do you see yourself having at your postacademic dream job?

Related posts:

1. Getting a life: A good idea with hidden benefits
2. Grad school: lowered expectations as Gran Torino: sinking feeling
3. The benefits of leaving #2: Guilt-free leisure time!

This happy academic ex-pat wrote to tell me that, earlier in the spring, he had quit his six-year long academic career when he was about a year away from earning his Ph.D. Like so many others, he wrote, he was ABD but found himself stalled after exams. He and his partner discussed how miserable academia was making him, and together, they decided he should quit. But right around the same time, he had also gotten involved in getting the graduate teaching assistants at his university organized and into a union. Once he decided to quit, he writes, he informed his committee:

“They were shocked that someone ‘like me’ would leave when I had, according to them, such a promising career ahead of me. They were worried I’d never find a job given the economy. (I was tempted to joke that being in grad school isn’t a job, but more like an insult; of course that isn’t true. The insult is the treatment and pay).

I told them that for six years I had felt like a failure, like none of my projects were coming to fruition, and critically, that my work and contributions were in no way valued by the department, my colleagues, or the university. And as for the job, it wouldn’t take much to replace the puny salary they were paying me [...]

Within four days in mid June, I was offered THREE union organizing jobs, including the dream job I thought I’d never land, in a place I’ve fantasized about living for ten years. I’m starting work soon, and can’t wait. I’ll be paid nearly five times what I’ve been making for the past six years, in addition to a generous benefits package for myself and my partner. I’m going to get to do work that is important, enjoyable, and challenging. My employers value my experience and potential to contribute to their organization. Wow, that was so easy!”

I wanted to run this man’s story because I thought it was such a great example of how much one’s bravery can pay off. It also points to the ways in which our “sideline” activities–in this case, union organizing–can become a full-time gig, even if it has little direct connection to your area of study. It also shows that, no matter how much of an academic whiz you are, academia still may not be the thing that satisfies and nurtures you. It says a lot about confronting those powerful feelings of failure, disenchantment and insecurity on the road to something better.  Of course, it also shows the importance of having a supportive partner who’s willing to demonstrate a lot of flexibility in the face of a career change and a move, and not everyone is in that situation. And, this former academic adds,

“Times are indeed really tough, and that is certainly an obstacle to quitting, but it is hardly the only one. Obviously for me, the biggest obstacle was within myself rather than out there in the world. But I do feel VERY fortunate to have had such good luck with the job search.

I think that is a testament to how the skills we learn in grad school
can help afterward — I was able to think on my feet and give good
interviews, strategically and practically compose an effective resume,
and say with confidence that I have the communication skills necessary for this new gig.”

In a few months, I’m going to follow up with this academic escapee to check in and see how post-academic life is faring for him.

In the meantime, readers, I’d love to hear strategies that you are using to shift into post-academic work. Are you jumping off from your sideline projects and interests? How much do you think luck plays a role in finding work? Are you doing anything in particular to create luck or opportunity for yourself?

Related posts:

1. On the expense of the academic habit
2. Money, money, money
3. If you’re going to quit academia, when should you do it?

As it happens, I was actually just discussing this fact with a friend of mine the night before RFYL left his/her comment. I’ve been aware, ever since I started this project, that I am in contact with far more women who are thinking of and who have left academia. I’ve been wanting to post about this for a long time, but the reason why I haven’t is because I don’t have any strong theories to explain this phenomenon. For someone who spent most of her time in university studying theories of gender, this is a real stumper.

On the most systemic level, you could look at the ways in which academia is hostile for women. There are overt instances of sexual harassment and sexual assault, of course. But as the book title suggests, women academics can and do feel the weight of a ton of feathers, teeny individual moments of exclusion, oppression, rejection, objectification, hostility and so on. Moreover, in Canada, more women are enrolled in undergrad programs than men, but by the time you look at enrollments for Ph.D. programs, there are fewer women than men overall (though of course, this varies wildly by degree program in much the ways you’d expect).

There are also particular pressures on women of colour in the academy (though I’ve read more data about women of colour and their completion rates in the U.S. than in Canada). There are particular pressures on feminists in the academy. And although I never experienced being a mom while in grad school, but I think we’ve all heard the dire news about the rates at which moms get tenure. Fact is, they generally don’t.

You might wonder how much my own biases skew my choice of podcast interviewees (since I run another website addressing women’s issues and can easily say that some of my best friends are women). I can’t tell you how much my sub- or unconscious plays a role here, but I can tell you there is no deliberate intention on my part to only speak with women. My interview subjects are gleaned from a variety of sources. Sometimes I just happen to stumble upon information about someone that I find intriguing (like Rebecca Steinitz). Sometimes it’s a friend of a friend (like Krista Scott-Dixon). Sometimes it’s a former colleague (like Michelle Lowry, who left her Ph.D. program to do a Master’s of Social Work instead). Sometimes it’s someone that someone has alerted me to (like Sharon Blady).

I have interviewed men–most recently, I interviewed a former colleague, Fred Ho, who is a union organizer here in Toronto. My interview before that was with Kenny Mostern, who penned the On Being Postacademic article I’ve got posted here. A while back, I interviewed Michael Anderson, another entrepreneur who helps entrepreneurs. I’ve also done off-the-record interviews with men who didn’t want their accounts to be public (one because he didn’t think much of his accomplishments; the other because he was still dealing with a lot of negative feelings from the whole Ph.D. experience).

Still, that’s comparatively few. Yet I don’t purposely seek out women–but it seems that women readers (commenters, clients, Facebook folks) do seek me out.

On a micro-level, there could be something about me being a woman that draws women to my work. Conversely, there could be something about me being a women that makes men uninterested (which is not to render you male readers invisible! I know you’re out there, ye who lurk and email me confidentially!).

And then there could be something in between, something about gender formation more generally that informs how men and women make decisions about their education and their careers. I mean, we do know that women systematically make choices about their careers that often leave them in pink-collar ghettos, or reliant on their (often male) spouse’s income.

There is also data to indicate that women are voracious users of online communities, though I think that data skews towards moms. But perhaps women more generally turn to the internet for community and for help than men do. Perhaps men who are making the decision to leave academia would be more likely to turn to their traditional (i.e. real-world) networks. I have no idea.

I honestly have no good theories (and for a former theorist, it kinda hurts to say that!) and very little evidence to explain why this is the case. But you KNOW that I would love to hear your ideas about why my work draws more women (which proves absolutely nothing about how frequently men and women leave academe).

Related posts:

1. New original research on women in academia is truly jaw-dropping
2. How to leave academia: Call a cab
3. Podcast #1: “There are places that would walk over their own mother to hire you.”

I can also thank grad school for my current perspective on the world, for a stronger sense of self, for a greater degree of confidence in my abilities, and of course, greater maturity. Grad school was my trial by fire, and I think I came out on the other end a better person because of it. It didn’t make me more employable. It didn’t ensure I got a better salary when I did join the workforce. But…I did something I truly loved, and from that perspective, grad school had (and still has) immense value to me.

In my tooling around, I also found this person over here asking people why they had quit grad school. Some of the answers aren’t especially illuminating, but some of them are really interesting. Hands down, the one I thought was the best (i.e. greatest combo of funny and smart) was written by someone called Mason Dixon (whose website can be traced to Boston Sutras) who wrote:

I am completely serious: Do you feel full? You know deep down if you are full or not.

When people ask me why I quit I I tell them: “I was full so I got up from the table and quit eating,” and that is what it felt like to me.

The prospect of cigars in the parlor with those who finished dinner was not a strong enough lure to keep me sitting there stuffing my gob –even though the food was fine. I said, “Thank you, Good Night and Goodbye.”

I decided that if I want to learn more about “X”, I’ll do my own snacking later. I have yet to have any regrets about it.

So chew on that, Leaving Academia readers. Do you feel full?

Related posts:

1. Grad school: lowered expectations as Gran Torino: sinking feeling
2. Should you quit grad school during the recession?
3. Former academic rock star becomes union organizer–during the recession!

It’s not just leaving a career or changing jobs; it’s leaving behind an old identity, a false, ill-fitting one, so that there can be room for my authentic self to emerge.

This was, hands down, absolutely how I felt when I left academia. And of course, it’s precisely because I am more myself now than I ever was in all the years I spent in grad school that making the choice to quit was absolutely the right one. But even though I knew the life of academia was too narrow for me, and even though I had a strong feeling I would be of much greater use to the world in a different professional capacity, making the decision to leave was fraught with intense emotions. Alexis speaks about those emotions so honestly. Check it out and see if you identify.

Update on another great blog: I’ve just found YoungFemaleScientist, written by Ms. Ph.D. This is the first time I’ve stumbled across this blog (and it sounds, from this post here, like she’s planning on leaving academia, actually). It’s quite enjoyable reading, even for a former social scientist like me (especially because she’s got quite a solid gender perspective). But this post, Feeling Not Good Enough, might also resonate with readers of this blog.

Related posts:

1. 11 things you need to know about leaving academia
2. If you’re going to quit academia, when should you do it?
3. Should universities give grad students career training?

To me, the answer is, “Whenever it’s best for you.” How’s that for precision? But seriously, the answer is going to be completely up to you. The major considerations are many: financial (what will you do for an income if you leave at this stage?), career (what field will you switch to?), family (do you need to support family members? Are you all living together?), geographic (will you need/want to move when you quit?), and so forth.

But deciding on the timing of your departure also has to do with the delicate matter of cutting your losses. Calculating losses, though, is an imprecise science because there are so many unknown factors. For example, if you quit after, say, completing your comprehensive exams, are you cutting your losses by sparing yourself years of the gruelling dissertation-writing process (which can be totalled up in dollars, tears, therapists’ bills, damaged relationships, etc.)? Or are you incurring a new loss by not finishing a project you’ve started (an emotional toll) and having to work to explain what you did during those years on a résumé (a potential financial toll)?

Well, the answer is both, isn’t it? When you leave academia–regardless of when you do–you carry around a balance sheet of losses and gains. Gains: a deep relief, a feeling of freedom, a sense that you’ve narrowly escaped something that temporarily had control of your soul. Losses: debt, regret, the struggle to find a new career and life path.

Sometimes, the dividends blur and the gains start to look like losses; the feeling of freedom, for example, can quickly turn into a terrifying landscape of possibility with no clear direction of where to turn. Sometimes the losses look like gains: struggling to find a new life and career path reminds you of how many wonderful interests you have and all of the fun ways you can pursue them.

This is where the matter of the timing of your departure comes in. The dividends of leaving are going to be felt more and less sharply depending on when you jump ship. The longer you stay in your Ph.D. program, your debt load goes up, but so do your credentials. But do those credentials even mean anything to you if you’re depressed, disillusioned and miserable?

For those of you who are thinking of leaving mid-degree, and are tortured by the thought that you’ve wasted your time and money: here’s a timely link to a post Seth Godin wrote earlier this week. I think it’s brilliant, and although he’s not even thinking about grad students when he’s writing this post, it applies perfectly. The post is called “Ignore Sunk Costs.” Among other golden advice, Seth says:

When making a choice between two options, only consider what’s going to happen in the future, not which investments you’ve made in the past. The past investments are over, lost, gone forever. They are irrelevant to the future.

Here’s a breakdown of the balance sheet referring to different stages of leaving. I’d love to hear more thoughts on your analysis of the gains and losses in the comments section. If you…

1. Leave after the M.A. You’ve got yourself a valuable degree with great income-earning potential. But maybe you feel skeptical about your academic prospects, you don’t think you’d enjoy teaching and although you enjoy your research, you don’t feel crazy about doing 5-10 more years of it. So you quit.

Gains: High. You may have some student loans, but this recent report from StatsCan shows there is a 33% wage gap between someone with a B.A. and someone with a Master’s, but someone with a doctorate only earns 8% more than someone with a Master’s.

Costs: Low. Unlike a Ph.D., a master’s makes you feel good about your capabilities.

2. Leave after the first year of your Ph.D. You’ve had a taste of the program, the university, your colleagues and your potential supervisors. Maybe it’s not a good fit, and when you look at the faculty, you’re turned off by the constant search for external funding, the “publish or perish” mentality, and the lack of value placed on family time (like, uh, making one at all). So you quit.

Gains: Medium-high. You’re sparing yourself the time and emotional aggravation and expense of staying in grad school. You can be honest on a resume about what you did with your year.

Costs: Low. Some debt, maybe, and maybe a little bit of “What if…?”

3. Leave around the comps process (before, during or after). When I speak with former academics, this time of intense stress (comprehensive exams are now also called qualifying exams at some schools) can really bring one’s feelings about academia to the forefront. Maybe it’s taking you years to finish your comps, you’re riddled with insecurity, you feel like a total fraud, and you’re on the precipice of clinical depression. So you quit.

Gains: medium-high. Getting out before you lose any more of your precious time, precious money, precious brain cells and spend any more on prescription drugs is really smart. Living in a world where you don’t have to prove yourself through comps fuckin’ rulz.

Costs: medium. Suffering through the comps and STILL leaving without parchment in hand is gonna sting. You will have to explain to employers what it means to be ABD with respect to your transferable skills, which is kinda annoying.

4. Leave during the dissertation stage. Whether you’re struggling to get your proposal done, churn out that first chapter, or finally kick the final chapter to the curb, the dissertation process is a long, emotionally intense, wearing process that can tear down the mental health of the most balanced grad student. Maybe you loathe your topic. Maybe you’re burnt out. Maybe you’re making yourself miserable trying to keep up with the demands to teach, publish, present papers and produce a brilliant 300 page document all at the same time. Maybe you just don’t have it in you anymore. So you quit.

Gains: high. Though departments notoriously do not keep track of their attrition rates, I’ve read research (which I will cite for you in a follow-up post) indicating 50% of social science and humanities doctorates drop out of their programs before finishing. That means you’re in pretty good company among people who decided that life was too short to wait for a satisfying career, to move out of poverty, to save their mental health, or to just figure out that the academic life was not meant for them.

Costs: high. The niggly feelings of “what if?…” or “if only…” might linger for a long, long time. Feeling like a failure–or being worried that other people will see you as a failure–may be very intense. Your possible debt load may amplify feelings of anger, resentment, shame and bitterness. Feeling lost and unsure of how to orient your life is a strong possibility. Struggling with the concept of waste–a waste of your time, money, energy and potential–may stay with you.

5. You leave once you’ve finished the Ph.D. You’re done! Yahoo! But you got what you came for and you are outta there.

Gains: high. Freedom, sweet freedom. Sweet, quaking-at-the-knees, dripping-with-relief freedom.

Costs: medium-high. Severely compromised mental health, a significant debt, relationships that needed some nurturing after long periods of neglect. There is some belief (which I believe is a myth) that having a Ph.D. makes you unemployable.

(NB: Perhaps I’m biased here (since this was the path I chose and I’ve had three years to gain distance from the experience) by seeing the costs as “medium-high” and not “high.” To me, though, the gains far outstripped the costs, in terms of the feeling of freedom, the wild array of life choices I knew I could make, the ability to do the teaching and research and writing that I wanted that wasn’t limited by the classroom, and yes, the satisfaction of having the degree in hand.)

6. Once you’ve done contract/adjunt teaching, done your post-doc or gotten a tenure-track position. It might seem weird to lump these three types of academics into one category, but I’ll explain why below. Even if it’s news to some grad students, people do actually leave secure, tenured positions (Rebecca Stienitz is one of them–here’s her story–and so is Kenny Mostern of “On Being Postacademic” fame–which you can read here. NB: I’ll be interviewing Dr. Mostern and Dr. Stienitz for the podcast series in the next few weeks).

Gains: high. Once you’ve got your Ph.D., you can go anywhere and do anything with confidence. Contract faculty have a lot to gain by landing in a job that actually pays a living wage, and they, along with tenure-track faculty, gain by being able to move to the city of their choice, actually have free time, start a family, make more money, etc.

Costs: low-to-medium. I haven’t been there, and so far I haven’t done any interviews (yet) with people who’ve made this jump. So I am only speculating here. But making a career change at this point just makes a lot of sense to me in the same way that any other career change makes sense. I know someone who used to be an award-winning, professional Irish dancer and is now an IT guy at an art college. I know someone who used to be a professional chef and is now a naturopath. I know someone who used to make giga-bucks at Goldman Sachs and is now a freelance writer living in the English countryside with her young children. I admire people who make crazy career leaps because although there are potential costs (like failing), the gains (like actually being happy and/or satisfied) seem to be so much greater.

What do you think? If you’re going to quit academia, when is the best time to do it? What other factors are there that contribute to your decision? (You can also read a post-doc’s far more brief take on the matter here at Damn Dinosaurs).

Related posts:

1. 11 things you need to know about leaving academia
2. Former academic rock star becomes union organizer–during the recession!
3. “I think it’s time to give up the old image of myself as a scholar.”

Well, Penelope Trunk (she of the Brazen Careerist startup) advises not to dodge the recession with grad school. While this post is aimed at people who are thinking of going in to grad school (rather than those who are already in or recently out, as most Leaving Academia readers are), it does provide some interesting food for thought. For example, Penelope says,

clipped from blog.penelopetrunk.com

2. PhD programs are pyramid schemes
It’s very hard to get a job teaching at a university. And if you are not going to teach, why are you getting a degree? You don’t need a piece of paper to show that you are learning. Go read books after work. Because look: In the arts, you would have a better chance of surviving the Titanic than getting a tenure-track position; and once you adjust for IQ, education, and working hours, post-PhD science jobs are among the most low-paying jobs you could get.

Now, I have to come clean here: I used to be someone who very firmly was against the idea that grad school was a job-training ground. In the old days, I would have sputtered and jabbered about how absurd it was to ask why you’d get a degree if you weren’t planning on teaching. The way that I felt about grad school was kind of how I felt about a liberal arts education: the learning was the important thing. Worry about your career? Well, that’s just gauche.

Now that I understand how grad school actually works, I don’t have quite the same attitude. I kind of appreciate Penelope’s perspective that learning can take place in any job, and not just in school.

Of course, no one wants to jump from the frying pan and into the fire. So I would not suggest quitting grad school without a plan (though I know that’s worked out for a number of people I’ve talked to). But I would say that the recession is not a reason to not research other jobs, to talk to people who do interesting work about how they got into that field, to haunt the forums at Chronicle and WRK4US, join in the discussion here, etc. I don’t know about the situation in the States, but in Canada, people are hiring–just look at any given job search site. And many of the jobs are well suited for people who can think, write, read, research and play well with others.

I also think that, as much as grad school gives you a sense of security by virtue of the fact that it gives you something to do (even when you avoid doing it), it’s a very, very insecure state to be in, year after year. Financially, it could not be more insecure. The prospects for academic work are insecure. It can be draining on your mental health, your social life, your relationship with your significant other. To go from the insecure state of grad school to the insecure state of the general job market actually doesn’t seem so bad when you consider that job-hunting doesn’t cost you money, doesn’t have built-in ritual humiliation (though that can certainly be a by-product of it, for sure) and only requires you to draft a 2-page document, rather than a 300-500 page one.

As an aside, I really liked Penelope Trunk’s interview with Guy Kawasaki on the nine biggest workplace myths (especially the bit about talking to someone instead of worrying about choosing precise verbs for your résumé) and I thought it might be useful for those of you thinking of jumping to the corporate sector.

Related posts:

1. The grad school buffet: Are you full yet?
2. Grad school: lowered expectations as Gran Torino: sinking feeling
3. Former academic rock star becomes union organizer–during the recession!

Since our interview, Gaby has gone back to working in academia. Scholars who are thinking of leaping from the ivory tower often wonder about their chances of crawling their way back in, so I caught up with Gaby for an email interview to ask her about her return.

Q: Gaby, where are you living right now?

A: I am living in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and I am teaching at Abu Dhabi University. The courses I teach include Business and Technical Communications, Ethics, and there is a possibility that I will be teaching Environmental Science in the fall.

This is a very teaching-heavy assignment (I teach 6 classes per term), so I have had little time to do my own research, though I have had an opportunity to participate in some conferences on environmental policy, including one recently hosted by the World Health Organization in conjunction with the Abu Dhabi Environment Agency.

Q: When we spoke back in 2007, you had said you hadn’t closed the door on returning to academia. What prompted you to leave your job in Banff and take up a position in the UAE?

A: I wanted to get back to academic work because I missed teaching and the interaction with students. Why the UAE? Because they were the only ones who offered me a job, and I figured it was a good opportunity to travel, learn Arabic, get to know a new culture, and see some of the world before I got too settled into a permanent career.

Q: How did it feel being back in the classroom? Was the transition back difficult?

A: I loved getting back to the classroom, though the transition was not entirely seamless. Working in an educational culture that is totally unfamiliar has given me a whole new appreciation for teaching and its challenges. I didn’t think cultural differences would affect the way I teach, but I have found that I have had to adjust my delivery, my focus, and my general attitude. The educational culture here is very new—by this I mean that most universities and colleges are less than 10-20 years old, so administrators and students are all trying to figure out the systems simultaneously.

Q: Did your experience in the non-profit sector in Banff help or hinder your return to academe? Or neither?

A: My experience in the non-profit sector neither hindered nor helped me in my return to academia, though my time away from teaching did definitely solidify my desire to teach. Also, my work in Banff solidified my interest in environmental issues, and as I am not currently teaching in that area, I have found this work less intellectually rewarding than my previous work, which has made the transition a bit difficult. There are certainly days when I regret moving away from the discipline that I am most passionate about, but I am making constant strides to get back into environmental work within academia, so, hopefully, my regrets will soon dissipate.

Q: Is it a myth, then, that if you leave academia you can’t go back?

A: I’m not sure if it is a myth. I had no luck at all in getting interviews in Canada for positions in my field. I felt that my time outside of academia quite likely counted against me. In such a tight job market (which seems to be getting tighter daily) hiring committees probably take any reason they find to dismiss potential candidates from the ever-growing roster of applicants. Having said that, my employers in Abu Dhabi seem neither interested nor disinterested in my non-academic work, and simply focused on whether or not I was serious about moving to the other side of the planet, whether I had accreditation from a Western university, and whether I was a competent teacher, fluent in English.

There you are, dear readers. The academic door doesn’t necessarily swing shut all the way if you make a career shift, even if the context for your return is different. Would you consider moving to another country to land an academic position? Or would you rather find and keep a non-academic position in your home country?

Related posts:

1. Podcast #1: From English Ph.D. to environmental researcher
2. Podcast #5: “There’s definitely a place for Ph.D.s in politics.”
3. 11 things you need to know about leaving academia

“How do I handle the question ‘Why are you leaving and can we contact your present supervisor?’”

So, readers, how would you handle this question? Here’s the answer I sent back:

First, I think these are two different questions that you’d be met with in your next job interview. The interviewer may not actually ask “Why are you leaving academia?” but rather, “Why do you want to work at organization X?” Either way, though, I think the smartest way to answer this is to say exactly what you’ve said to me–the fit between you and academia (or your department) is just not a good one.

There’s no need to then elaborate by saying, you know, “My colleagues were assholes and the pay sucked.” You can follow up the “it’s not a good fit” line by emphasizing what kind of work you DO want to do–”I found the fit between me and Hell University didn’t work as well as I wanted because I’m really interested in doing more hands-on work,” or “I want to cultivate my X skills, and my old job just didn’t afford that,” or “I’ve always been interested in working with X, which was my favourite part of my old job, even though the other parts of the job just didn’t mesh well with me.”

The question of contacting your present supervisor falls under that whole tricky matter of references that worries a lot of people. References aren’t an insurmountable problem, but it does require a bit of finessing. There are a few different approaches. One would be to ask a colleague with whom you have a good relationship to serve as a reference. It doesn’t actually need to be a department chair or grad program director or dean or any kind of a senior position (though, obviously, if you can think of someone suitable, that would be great). But if you’ve worked closely with any of your colleagues on a project or journal or research or anything, that person can serve as a reference for you because they can testify to the things that matter when it comes to references (is the person professional? Prompt? Meet the minimum standards or give a little bit extra?).

And for the record, here’s what Brazen Careerist Penelope Trunk says about references. But what do you think, readers? What’s the best way of addressing these questions?

(As an aside, I’m forming a list of questions from scholars that actually would be best posed to employers, and this question is on that list. I’d love to know what fields and sectors you’re interested in hearing from, i.e. what types of employers would you like me to interview? And what other questions might you have for what industry?)

Related posts:

1. The résumé: To hide your academic credentials or not?
2. Looking for a flexible work schedule? You can find it–or create it.
3. WRK4US PSA

1. You can do it. You can leave academia and survive. You can leave academia and THRIVE, in fact.
2. It is incredibly scary. Figuring out what to do in your postacademic life can feel like one giant question mark pressing down on you with a weight similar to that of writing a dissertation; with enough time, though, and enough self-reflection, you will figure out what you want to do.
3. Your whole life won’t come tumbling down into shambles if you leave.
4. You have tonnes and tonnes of options for your post-academic career (even though it may not feel that way), many of which have nothing to do with your area of study, but have everything to do with your core skills (e.g. project management, policy analysis, consulting, organizing).
5. You are not crazy if you want to have a satisfying job in a city you actually like and to have your partner and family living with you and to live near your friends.
6. You might not switch immediately into your dream job right away but you will get to your dream job a hell of a lot quicker if you bail from academia now rather than never (in fact, in my case, I didn’t want to jump into a challenging dream job; first, I wanted to just take an intellectual break with a nice little job with solid pay and fab benefits). It might take a few years for you to select the organization that you really care about and climb your way into the job of your dreams. However, just because you might start out closer to the bottom than you would like isn’t reason enough to stay in a career stream that might not ever offer you any satisfaction at all.
7. If academia WAS your dream job but you’re tired of living in the adjuncting/contract teaching trenches, there are other options for you to use your passion for teaching/learning, your communications skills, your love of reading and your skills at writing and researching. Remember, people–this is the knowledge and information economy we are living in. ABDs and Ph.D.s hold enormous currency in this era.
8. One really big secret: most people don’t give a shit if you leave academia, so don’t bother feeling guilt about leaving. Sure, some people like your grad supervisor or your faculty chair might be disappointed. But are you really going to make yourself responsible for their feelings, while totally denying yours? Come on. Leave that parent-child dynamic back in your family of origin where it belongs.
9. One other really big secret: a lot of people will actually be jealous of you if you leave academia. Sure, their jealousy might come out in the guise of contempt and guilt-making (oooh, if only I could name names and point fingers, here!). But just like the boy who is cruel to the girl he has a crush on, those unhappy people who try to rain on your bold career change have their own problems to sort out. Don’t make their problem your problem.
10. I also want to challenge the idea that once you leave academia, you can never go back. I have heard of a handful of examples of people returning to academia, either decades later as they channel their postacademic professional successes into academic work or as they return simply as adjunct/contract faculty. The sands of academia are shifting and my hunch is that the re-formulation of universities into job farms and knowledge-provision centres, and with the increase of private money (oops, I mean “partnerships”) into universities, that the door does not slam shut as firmly as it used to.
11. The other really, really big secret: you deserve better than the life you may be having and the treatment you may be getting in your grad school career. Grad school and contract teaching can suck out your soul; being on the tenure track can be fraught with fear as you wonder if this is what you really want to do, and if you want to do it in the city you’ve ended up in. You don’t have to put up with it any more. You have all the skills and resources you need to plan out a realistic, do-able career change. Just look at some of the people who have done just that. And the hottest one of all that I don’t think I’ve mentioned: the incredible Miuccia Prada has a Ph.D. in political science. Miuccia Prada! If that doesn’t serve as inspiration for becoming satisfied and successful in life beyond academe, I don’t know what does.

Is there anything I’ve missed? What would you like to add to this list?

Related posts:

1. Podcast update: You CAN go back to academia after leaving
2. The moment you decide to walk away is scary and exhilarating
3. If you’re going to quit academia, when should you do it?

…The scariest thing a young faculty member experiences is not, as is conventionally supposed, the “need to produce” and therefore her/his experience is not aided by the “mentorship” of an experienced scholar. Rather, the young scholar’s fear stems from the fact that no one in the department is talking to each other about scholarship. Faculty are socializing, going out, schmoozing all the time, and the ideas that supposedly drive the work they do are not being discussed…The one conversation everyone is having incessantly is the one about the micropolitical maneuvers within the department…

Since then, Mostern has taken the site down where that article was hosted, but by generous permission, I’m able to provide it for Leaving Academia readers here. It’s a lengthy piece, but when you’ve got the time, give yourself a chance to sit down and chew on it. It’s well worth reading, both for those who choose to leave and those who stay.

A final note: after I’d first read Dr. Mostern’s piece, I sent him an email to let him know how much I appreciated it. This is what he wrote back:

Thanks for checking in.  The happiest people I know — and I’m not talking about one or two, more than one or two dozen — are people who did their Ph.D.s and then went off and did something besides academia with their lives.  Enjoy yourself.

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1. Monday, Monday: A link roundup
2. Podcast #7: “See what it feels like to wake up on Sunday morning and not have to grade papers.”
3. Why I Left

My situation was the latter. This is what I wrote on my old blog about that moment when I just decided to finally admit to myself that academia was not the path I wanted to take:

Here I am, looking at my stack of printouts of contract teaching jobs offered here in Toronto and in nearby cities. Part of me is just drawn to applying for these jobs like a caffeine addict is to Starbucks, because that’s simply what grad students do. When you finish your Ph.D., you either a) head off to your new tenure-track job that you freakishly managed to score before you even graduated, b) head off to your cushy, teaching-free post-doc that you freakishly managed to score whilst in the final throes of dissertating, or c) farm yourself out to whatever university (or, for the more desparate/less picky among us, college) will take you and hold your breath while you apply for tenure track jobs. THERE IS NO OTHER OPTION.

But contract teaching serves as a crutch, keeping you tied to academia in the most exploitive way possible. People who are talented and bright and could land themselves in satisfying careers in the non-academic world stay in the rut of contract teaching because it’s something they can rely on, without having to stand up and challenge themselves to move beyond it. Oh, wait a minute, is that ME?

Ok, ok, ok. I could very well be the aforementioned bright individual who could seek a satisfying career beyond academe. And I am! Sort of. I think. Yes! It’s just that, the idea of not applying for any more contract teaching jobs feels much more scary than I ever thought it would. It feels like it would be a major symbolic severing of me from academia.

It felt like it because it was. The moment I threw those contract teaching applications in the bin, I knew it was up to me now to find that first post-academic job (which I did, and I survived). This was simultaneously terrifying and thrilling–and you know when you have that feeling that you are doing something so right.

How do you feel about the prospect of leaving academia? Are you scared and thrilled, daunted and curious, tired and ready to go? Are you drifting away or will there be a moment of severance for you?

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1. Researching the researchers
2. Job seekers, I walk among you
3. 11 things you need to know about leaving academia