Five myths of leaving academia: the emotional work I wish I had done as job season began
It’s my one year anniversary for the job I have now as an evaluator in the local public health department! What started out as “I’m just going to see how far this non-academic job process will go” has turned out to be one of the best life choices I’ve made. In this post, I want to talk to those of you who feel pure dread faced with the reality of fall… and are maybe on the fence about staying, leaving, or wanting to stay on the fence (by leaving and still participating in academic life).
This is the time to begin planning out a dual strategy even if at this point you want to stay. It takes a ridiculous amount of time to deal with the emotions that come with the prospect of leaving, to think through all of the pieces of “converting” your materials, and then actually applying. I left applying for non-academic jobs to extremely late in the game (like May of last year) when it was clear I wasn’t getting a tenure track (TT) job as a way to assuage my fears as I held out hope. Please learn from my mistakes and begin early!
Even if you don’t go the non-academic route, it’s good to have gone through the exercise in case you need it again and as an exploration and contingency plan/way to assuage your anxieties about putting all of your eggs in the academic basket.
At this time of year, though, the ephemeral feelings of freedom and lightness from the end of the school year have completely disappeared, the imposed three months of no pay until October for many is weighing on us, and the dread of fall start to take over as the academic job season enters full swing in the All but dissertation (ABD), postdoc, contingent faculty psyches.
In this piece, let’s start with the inner critic and the voices in your head about potentially leaving academia because I suspect they are causing a whole lot of feelings to bubble up, and those are what are preventing you from dipping your toes in the pool or diving right in. When I was at this stage in September 2020, I was thinking the following myths and wish my present self could have told myself the following…
1. Academia is my dream job. If I leave, I’m quitting on my dreams.
Abolish the notion of a dream job. It doesn’t exist. It’s just a job.
I, like many of you I suspect, built my vision of an academic career on the idea of the dream job: one of research, teaching, writing, contributing to a body of knowledge, influencing the next generation, creating knowledge, talking ideas, and overall nerding out. Sounds amazing. Tell me how I get there because I never found it.
Once I got into academia, though, I realized that dream job didn’t exist. There was always something severely lacking. If I could take classes, nerd out, and teach a ton, like I did in grad school, I only made $16K. If I had ample time to do research, write, and talking ideas, as I did in my postdoc, I had no job security and the pay was still pretty bad (a whopping $56K). I also realized that this dream job didn’t even exist for those on the TT. Everyone in academia is always stressed and begrudging the fact that they can never get to the activities that brought them to academia in the first place. As I’ve said before, once I figured out that my dream job and academic aspirations didn’t exist, it was a lot easier to let go of the academic job market hamster wheel.
But the idea of jobs as just jobs goes for academic and non-academic jobs. I just had to spend sometime merging my research with how I was thinking about jobs. My research deals with workers, discourses of work (“workers are too lazy, uneducated”, etc.), and what counts as work (ie: care work isn’t “real” work). I have lots to say about “quiet quitting” but my hot take is that it’s kind of not a real thing. And by kind of, I mean it’s not a thing. It’s workers doing what they’re contractually obligated to do and not going above and beyond that is ingrained in us if we want to get ahead. It’s working and then closing your computer at the end of the day so you can get on with your life. It works against hustle culture and letting work bleed into every aspect of your life if you want to get ahead. No. Work, get your pay check, and move on.
I could go off on all of these myths about capitalism and my critiques of them but in the spirit of merging my research interests with self-reflection, I had to come to terms with the fact that there is no such thing as a dream job in any sector. The idea of a dream job is a capitalist myth to keep you working above and beyond and to keep you constantly looking for the next hot thing. There is literally always a part of a job that you hate, and that’s fine. When I reframed a job as just a job, I felt relief that I wasn’t responsible for finding the perfect job for myself. I wanted to enjoy my work but I didn’t need to love it. That reframe was all I needed to take the pressure off finding the perfect non-academic job.
If I thought of my job as a way to stabilize my life, get healthcare, put a roof over my head, and eat, the idea of a non-academic job became a lot more feasible. There was no pretense about finding the perfect job out of academia to prove that there was a non-academia alternative to a dream job. No, my job was just a job. I could log off at the end of the day, be done, and live my life. Of course, I wanted to enjoy my work, feel fulfilled by it, feel like I was contributing to the world, and get along with my coworkers, but I was looking to chill, reclaim my life, and just be. I wanted to spend time healing from the hustle and grind of academia because I had told myself that I didn’t have time for it when I was on the hamster wheel.
2. You can’t find the flexibility and freedom of academia in any other profession.
Disabuse yourself of the idea that academia is the most free of professions.
I had been led to believe that academia was the most “free” of professions. You could research pretty much what you wanted, which is pretty different to when you’re assigned projects. Your time was your own to do what you want with it. You can take time off when you feel like it without asking for permission. You technically got summers off (with no pay). You got all of the school holidays. You don’t have a timesheet. You could read, think, and write about whatever you pleased. You didn’t have a boss in the way you do in a non-academic job to whom you reported.
When I was considering jumping ship, I had a really hard time thinking I had to give up all of these freedoms to then be shoved into an office situation working 8–5. It really was one of the biggest sticking points for me. The idea of being the keeper of my own time and schedule was the ultimate professional freedom. But after working for a year, I realize that the idea of academia as the “freest” of professions is a myth to keep us on the hamster wheel. I’ve come to appreciate the so-called 8 hour work day (I reserve critique of the 8 hour work day for some other time!). First of all, I don’t need to work at the same frantic pace as academia for 8+ hours straight. I spend a lot of time in meetings but they all count as a part of my work as opposed to something I add on top of my research and teaching.
There’s also a negative side to all of this so-called freedom in academia. What we gain in freedom to choose how we spend our time and what we research, we lose in having extremely porous boundaries around our time and energy. I don’t know about you, but I was getting better at boundaries with academic work but still not great. Even if we set strict boundaries around work hours, we are constantly thinking about that paper we’re working on, grading, pushing off projects we love for projects that get foisted upon us. In the summers when most academics are unpaid, we are supposed to catch up on fieldwork, get ridiculous amounts of writing done, launch collaborative projects, plan out the next year, and basically complete everything we can’t get done while we teach during the school year.
All of the things we complain about, the constant moving, changing standards, tenure, publish or perish, precarity seems to point to academia not being that free. Yes, I work 8–5 but my evenings and weekends are my own. I literally don’t think about work when I close my computer and often times I forget what I have to do that week when I sit down at my computer on Monday. My colleagues and I all have an understanding that we don’t respond to emails or work all day everyday. Yes, I only get 12 days of paid vacation a year, but they are paid and my own. You aren’t giving up freedom when you leave academia; you’re getting freedom in a different way. I had to reframe what “freedom” meant to me and had to redefine it to get what I needed at the time. Non-academic jobs are flexible in their own way and one has to weigh the costs of managing your time differently.
3. If I leave academia and I hate my job, I’m stuck there.
People change jobs outside of academia ALL THE TIME.
In the one year I’ve been in my non-academic job, a number of my colleagues who started around the same time as me have come and gone. Employers understand that employees come and go for numerous reasons. And at least in my workplace, there’s also some self-reflection from managers on how to retain good workers (perhaps also because it takes so much time and energy to hire new folks as well!), and they feel a responsibility to foster a workplace where people want to stay. I know that’s not all workplaces, but they do exist!
I don’t know about you, but I also have a period when I’m a few months into a job, the honeymoon period has worn off, and things get bleak in my head. There’s always a point when I start new positions where I want to quit and run away. The discomfort of learning new systems and cultures gets to be too much. For example, the first semester of grad school, I wanted to quit everyday and go become a yoga teacher. In this job, I wanted to quit but I didn’t know where I wanted to go. My inner critic crept back in and told me that I didn’t know anything and that I was messing up left and right. Long story short, I was telling my brother and sister-in-law about how I wanted to run away but didn’t know if I could because I had only been at my job for a year. They sat there shaking their heads as I told them because again, everyone changes jobs all the time whether within the organization or outside of it. Side note: I worked through my discomfort and I’m happy and still here!
Whether explicitly or not, academia seems like a for-life kind of profession. I mean the concept of tenure kind of takes you down that path automatically. I got the impression that once you got a tenure track job, barring that little hurdle called tenure, you were at an institution for life. Of course, there are exceptions but the overall impression I got, particularly in a small field like geography, was that it was hard to move once you got on the TT because jobs are so few and far between. And for me, the idea of living in one place and setting down roots was extremely appealing after bouncing around my whole life.
Because of tenure and the sheer lack of jobs, academia has you thinking that you need to tough it out, regardless of the abuse, crappy working conditions, uncollegial colleagues, hating where you live, and so on. But literally if you don’t like your first job outside of academia, you can always find something else and quit. You’re not tied to the academic job market calendar so you can be on the lookout all the time. Similarly to academic jobs, when you see a good job posted that maybe a once in a blue moon kind of thing, you have to go for it. You don’t know when it will next come around.
At this point, you’re probably wondering: leaving is great but what happens if you’ve tried a couple of jobs and you want back in to academia? From a practical standpoint, I’ve been told by multiple sources that having non-academic experiences will only make my CV stronger since that’s the direction — albeit unwillingly — that most students will end up going. I mean I have no more publications to my name, so who knows if academia will ever take me back, but in my head, if they don’t think I have enough theoretical and practical cred, then I will go take my skills somewhere else where I’ll get paid and appreciated. From an emotional standpoint, well, as my therapist would say, how do you know that’s going to happen? And that’s not a good enough reason to stay. You have no idea what will happen, and honestly, is it any worse than the stress and anxiety of being an academic?
4. I might burn bridges if I leave academia.
What your advisor or committee might think is not a good enough reason to stay.
This is where I get frustrated at the egotistical nature of academia. I hate the mentality that “I struggled through this quagmire of fiery s**t so you should, too/this is just the way that it is”. First of all, no, you have not gone through the same s**t. Second of all, this isn’t about you, dude. Advisors used to call their buddies and get jobs for their students. Yeah, that doesn’t exist anymore. You used to be able to graduate with just a dissertation and get a job. You used to be able get a TT with no postdoc. And then if you dare to say you’re leaving, some faculty make it about themselves. They have explicitly or implicitly told you that a non-academic job is a cop out, that they’ve invested so much time and energy on you, that you’re special and you’re going to get that dream TT job, and blah blah blah. (Just to clarify, this was not my experience but these are all narratives I’ve heard first hand and I hear about more than I care to remember).
Look, I get it. It’s scary to tell your mentors you’re leaving academia. But you know what? They don’t live your life. They don’t know what you want. After years of doing their bidding, it’s time to make a decision for yourself and for the life you want to live. Hopefully this comes out throughout what I write: narratives like burning bridges are obstacles we put in our way so we don’t have to confront the fear of actually pursuing the life we want. This is about your decision making and what kind of a life you have worked so hard to achieve. I don’t think you set out to hustle and grind yourself into the ground to hop around postdocs and temporary gigs. No, you hustled to live the good life. You get to a point where something has to give and when you realize the academia you aspire towards doesn’t exist, it’s time to change course.
And can I let you into a little secret? Outside of academia no one gives a s**t about who your advisor was or what you know about Foucault or Marx. They don’t need a reference from your advisor or committee members because they’re not trying to figure out your so-called potential and/or your contributions to the field. In a reference check, they’re trying to get a handle on if what you said you could do matches up to what others think you did, how you work in a team, how you connect with people from diverse backgrounds, how you adapt to challenges, and so on and so forth.
You can pick one of your colleagues who you collaborated with to complete a project. I asked a friend-colleague in grad school with whom I co-taught a class to be one of my references. You could pick another faculty member who may have nothing to do with your research but with whom you had a really great professional relationship. Did you work another job in grad school? The list goes on. All of this to say you can be creative about who can be on your reference list.
The reality could be that you’re burning bridges but does it actually matter? That says much more about who you’re burning bridges with than it does about you. What will actually happen if a bridge gets burned? You have plenty of others to work from. Plus, if all advisors kept acting the way that bridge burning implies, academia is doomed. The reality is that most of us getting PhDs will not get TT jobs. Advisors can’t keep telling their students they’re getting jobs because the reality is that we can all be excellent and successful and still not get a job because the job market is abysmal.
If your advisor and/or committee members have nothing useful to say, it’s time to find people who can support your journey and who speak from a variety of different experiences, academic, non-academic, and somewhere in between.
5. I feel bad if I quit on my department and my students if I quit now.
Uh, you gotta prioritize number 1, and that’s you.
I’ve been reading a lot of questions from academics looking to jump ship after a semester or quarter begins and they receive an offer for a job elsewhere. Of course, your contractual obligations matter, but this myth specifically deals with your internal “feeling bad” about leaving.
I ask you this: what happens if the reverse were to happen? Say, the department cancels one or all of your classes because of low enrollment and you’re an adjunct paid by the class. Does the department feel bad about it? Maybe. Who cares if the chair feels bad about it? Does it change your material reality? No. It doesn’t change the reality that no class, no pay.
I hear some of you saying that you’ll miss teaching. I’ll tell you now that everything that I’ve done in the year since I’ve left is related to teaching and learning. It might not look like me frantically throwing together slides and standing up in front of students in a lecture hall but I’m constantly talking with and presenting to my colleagues, community members, and interns about qualitative data collection and analysis, methodology, and so on. I’m constantly learning new skills and ways of doing my work since I’ve never evaluated programs before. And the best part? No constant assignments and no grading. You want to go back to the classroom? Adjunct once you get your feet back on the ground. So instead of making your livelihood from adjuncting, you can make it your side hustle.
And in terms of your students, it’s true that leaving them is the part that I struggled with the most, but you know what? The university and the entire academic structure is at fault here, and it’s not your job single handedly to support all of these students who feel untethered, unsupported, and so on. And who knows? You might keep mentoring them even after you’ve left, which is what I’m doing. You might be thinking: why are you doing this for free for the university? I’m not doing it for the university, I’m doing it for the students. I don’t owe academia anything after it decided I wasn’t worthy or good enough for a TT job within its ranks, and that includes taking care of all of the students who feel left behind. And instead of mentoring students being an obligation, I’m doing it out of my own choice. (Ooof, that little voice of, “well, you just had to hold on a bit longer and you would have gotten it” is creeping in, and to it I say, “show me on paper that I’m assured a TT and I’ll believe you… oh yes, that’s right, there is no guarantee.”)
Now I’m not saying jump ship for any old non-academic job. I’m saying that good sounding, stable, well paid non-academic jobs in the pursuit of financial stability, job security, work-life balance, and mental health is well worth it, and no platitudes are worth giving the high potential for those wins. If your gut is telling you that this is a great job offer, go for it.
We have to stop feeling bad about leaving. First of all, it’s not my job to feel bad. Feeling bad leaves me stuck in terrible situations and doesn’t pay the bills. Second of all, my staying in academia doesn’t solve academia’s ever-mounting crisis of job security and adjunctification. It just makes me a martyr and no one is going to appreciate it or applaud me for it because it seems like that’s just what one does in academia.
So here’s to jumping ship because you can, even if you can’t see what’s out there. Next time I’ll talk about five practical things I’d wish I’d known about non-academic jobs last year.
