Confessions of a Failed Academic
When the hell does the PhD envy subside?
Anyone who struggles with clinical depression gets to know their red flags, those tired old mental tracks whose reappearance into consciousness signifies that your brain has once again broken down.
For me it’s repetitive to the point of being embarrassing. It’s always the same six words: I never should have left academia.
In this latest depressive episode, which I am currently clawing my way out of, my attack of academia anxiety was even more acute than before. As an employee at the University of Alberta I found myself skulking the hallways of the history department with no particular purpose, wallowing in self-pity while beating myself up over a path I didn’t choose. I even dropped in on a couple of old profs of mine to reminisce over old times and casually insert questions about possible PhD directions into the conversation, but with no real intention of following through on this. That train has sailed. I know this.
And yet the PhD envy persists to this day like a recurring migraine that flares up anytime my mental health is compromised. And I have yet to figure out how to kill it.
The irony of my PhD envy is that at no point in my younger days did I particularly want to be a university professor, let alone a history professor specifically. It…
