A weekly collection of great stuff I find as I read around the web. If you’ve read something fabulous, leave it in the comments!
Leaving a Job Gracefully, by Heather M. Whitney. Step by step instructions for leaving one academic job for another gracefully and with as few missteps as possible. Via the Prof Hacker blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Stephen C. Stearn’s “Some Modest Advice for Graduate Students.” Be warned, it’s a little … blunt, and it’s geared mostly to science students. Still, he dishes out some good big-picture advice.
CHE reports on the struggle adjuncts face to get unemployment benefits when they aren’t rehired.
Eliza Woolf’s tale of botching a non-academic interview for an editorial assistant position, from Insider Higher Ed. They only seem less challenging than academic ones.
Three national groups of historians have agreed to guidelines that would open the tenure process beyond the monograph for public historians.
One scholars studies faculty burnout and suggests there are multiple factors, one of which is high expectations scholars set for themselves.
Another article on the same research reveals that non-tenured tenure-track faculty are more burned out than their tenured or non-tenure-track peers.
Carolyn Foster Segal was invited to write an inspirational book about being at the top of the academic heap, but she refused. This article explains why — she wasn’t comfortable encouraging people to follow a calling when the likelihood of it turning into a tenure-track job was so slim.
The title says it all: “The Fantasy of the Faculty Vacation.”
The reality of being a female science professor: less respect, less money, more surreal conversations with peers who think you couldn’t possibly be the researcher in question.
Rob Jenkins offers some sage advice about succeeding in the community college job search.
Michael Bérubé, second Vice President of the MLA, responds to a letter asking whether the writer should go to graduate school. While he doesn’t say yes or no, his articulate response leans towards no.
I told you a while back that my wife is starting graduate school in the fall. Theological school to be exact, and last week we went to the first orientation meeting.
In some ways it was entirely standard: These are the classes you need to take in your first thirty hours, here’s how you register, here’s how the money part of it works, please don’t mess up your student aid, really we’re all here to help you so please ask for help before you drown.
What wasn’t standard (for me in my experience of academia, not for them) was the praying, the references to the Holy Spirit, and the singing. (I’m pretty grateful my entering class did not sing at orientation. I heard them sing later, under different influences. It was all for the best.)
Two things stood out for me, though, in this orientation, two things that I think academia as a whole could do better to emulate.
Thing the first
First, the entering students were told to think about what they would have to give up in their lives for graduate school. This wasn’t particularly original, but the tone of it was. When I’ve heard this advice before, it was in the spirit of lovers throwing themselves at the feet of the beloved — you should want nothing more than this, and anything less than total dedication is a sign that you don’t love it enough.
Here, though, the advice had a different cadence. This is likely the only time, they said, when you have the opportunity to do nothing other than study. Most people who get the PhD in this field do so while working as ministers, so they’re part-time students while juggling full congregations. This three-year period really may be the only time to immerse themselves so wholly in the intellectual and spiritual engagement with the subject.
In some ways, this is also true of non-theological-graduate school — despite all of our myths to the contrary, professoring is anything but sitting around and thinking Great Thoughts. Publishing, teaching, and service are all necessary and even rewarding, but they aren’t the same as immersing oneself in the field and swimming around gladly. The early years of graduate school may be the only time that’s possible, with all of the stress and pleasure that come with it.
What this amounted to, in her orientation, was a focus on the experience and goals of the students themselves. Discipline, I’ve heard said, is remembering what you really want, and they talked about focusing on what you really want and prioritizing that during this period.
That raises the question, though, of what you really want. It’s a question too few graduate students ask themselves as they get caught up in the flow of graduate school and the expectations and ambitions of advisers and professors and administrators.
I’d argue, though, that it’s a crucial question — no matter where you are in the process. What do YOU want from this experience, this process, this degree? Why is that important to you? And how can you arrange things to meet your own goals and expectations.
Thing the second
In contrast to programs that ask you to declare your subspeciality as you walk in (more and more common these days), this program admitted from the outset that as students experienced the program, their goals, their ambitions, and their career paths would change. Because they would be learning and growing.
This is another one of those things that varies (um, like everything, really), but the impetus in most graduate programs is the Creation of Professional Academics. Everything is geared towards that end, despite the long history of degree overproduction and despite the obvious evidence that not everyone wants that outcome for themselves.
There is no way to go to graduate school and remain unchanged. It’s too long, it’s too immersive, it’s too mind-bending. But it was refreshing to see a program acknowledge and plan for the fact that people will change in ways they didn’t expect. They will become people they didn’t foresee.
All of which is to say, if you’re starting out, expect your own unexpected growth. And if you’re already in or through, it’s okay that you changed in ways that didn’t fit the linear model.
Everything in its season
Both of these themes suggest something else as well: That there will be a point at which you add things back in, because your goals are met, your changes experienced, your life in a new place.
I’ve seen too many academics come up for air and realize that they’re unhappy, not because they hate their jobs, but because they have lost contact with all of those other parts of themselves — their creativity, their joy, their playfulness, their sense of fun, their ability to relax.
It’s easy to defer them. You’ll relax once the dissertation is defended. You’ll return to your hobbies once you have a job.You’ll embark on that new thing that looks fascinating when you have tenure. There’s always something else pressing, something else important.
But if you’re unhappy, it’s worth looking at what you’ve given up, and what it might be time to add back into your daily experience of life. Because no matter where you are in the process, this IS your real life. This is the only one you have. And if you’re unhappy, it’s time to make change.
It’s the middle of June. Do you know where your energy is?
Seriously, though, if you’re still in academia, it’s probably been about a month since you finished teaching, turned in your grades, walked out of your last committee meeting, and hung up your robes from working commencement. Even if you’re teaching this summer, it’s been about a month since the packed schedules, the endless students needing your attention, the rushing around, the inbox full of items that need to be attended to now now now.
How do you feel?
This is a good time to check in with yourself, because being outside of the time pressures of the typical semester can give you a much better sense of how you feel about things.
Take your research, for instance. Are you excited by it? Bored by it? Avoiding it? Are you getting things done, noodling around without making much progress, or putting it off because hey, the World Cup only happens once every four years?
When you think about academia right now, how do you feel? Affection? Anger? Indifference? Excitement? Energy?
If you take the time to check in with yourself now, when you’ve had some time to decompress, you’ll get some really important clues — clues about what actually motivates and energizes you, clues about what drains you, clues about what you enjoy and what you merely tolerate. Figuring those things out will get you one step closer to figuring out how to adjust your life to maximize your own happiness.
So tell me: How are you feeling about it all right now? Is it different than it was during the semester? How?
It’s one thing to decide that your job is a problem and you need another one. Difficult, sure, but you know the process: search job ads, write job applications, twiddle thumbs, lather, rinse, repeat until you get an offer you like. It’s tedious, it always takes too long, and it’s stressful as all get out, but you know what you have to do.
But what if you decide that it’s the career that’s a problem, and you want another one? Where the hell do you start?
With yourself
Your skills change. Your interests shift. Your passions morph. What doesn’t change is your basic temperament. Starting with understanding how you tend to engage the world can help you better narrow down the field of possibilities from “gee, I don’t know, what could I do?” to “hey, this set of things would really suit me — what’s appealing to me?”
Enter Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron, authors of Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type.
They argue that knowing your basic temperament can help you focus your attention on careers and jobs that are likely to match you well — making it much more likely that you’ll be satisfied in your work. They walk you through a pretty comprehensive process for finding your Myers-Briggs Type, and then they use those type categories to illustrate career possibilities you might not have considered.
What’s great about this book
There are a number of things I love about this book.
First, I’m an unrepentant personality test dork. I love them all. And this is the best practical walk-through of the Myers-Briggs I’ve come across. It’s detailed without being overwhelming and deep without being wonkish. After reading this book, I think I might actually know my damn type, which has been eluding me for years. (INTJ, if you’re interested.)
Second, they make the point over and over that any type can love and be successful in any career — it’s how that particular job is set up that makes the difference. We think about sales as an extravert-friendly, high-pressure sort of thing, for example, but they profile a seller of fine wines who is introverted and quiet.
Third, they outline a solid ten-step process for finding a next career. For those of us who like direction, it’s incredibly helpful.
It’s not perfect
For each type, they list possible career matches, but the list is both somewhat conventional and limited largely to the for-profit sector. Sure, the lists include education, health care, and counseling, but I kept wanting a broader range of career listings to help spark more brainstorming. Where are the civil service jobs? Where are the non-profit jobs?
But really, that’s a pretty small complaint all told.
Let me sum up
I’m really excited about this book because it gives people a place to start that is more personal and personalized than “list your skills.” People coming out of academia are largely going to have similar skills (public speaking, researching, writing, etc.), but we aren’t all suited to the same types of careers.
In fact, I’m so excited about this book that I’m developing a several-week, small-group telecourse based on it for later this summer to help leaving academics begin imagining what direction they might go next. Stay tuned for that!
Have you read this book? What did you think? Do you have another favorite find-your-new-career book? Share, please!
Just a reminder that our first set of Open Office Hours is tonight, 7:30-9pm ET.
If you’ve got a question, a problem, a story you want to tell, or you just want to check in with someone who understands, give me a call. I really want to hear what you’ve got to say.
More information and the number to call is here.
Looking forward to talking with you!
I read a fascinating post the other day about the difference between a manager’s schedule and a maker’s schedule. Here’s the gist of it:
There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you’re doing every hour.
When you use time that way, it’s merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you’re done.
Most powerful people are on the manager’s schedule. It’s the schedule of command. But there’s another way of using time that’s common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.
When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.
For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.
Naturally, this made me think of academe. (What else do I think about, you ask? Good question.)
The problem of both
One of the challenges of academia is you’re never just a manager or just a maker — you’re both.
In your role as teacher, adviser, and administrator, you’re on manager time. Tasks can usually be broken down into half-hour intervals, and often we’re grateful to break them down into shorter intervals just to put some boundaries around them and avoid drowning. (See: grading.) Meetings abound, and you’re generally running hither and yon with a few stops to chat with people doing the same.
In your role as researcher, however, you’re on maker time. Sure, running a database search for relevant articles may be able to fit into manager time, but brainstorming, reading, thinking, and writing are all tasks that work best when you’ve got nice chunky slots of uninterrupted time.
Which means it’s kind of no wonder that most academics bemoan an inability to get research done. It’s not just avoidance or bad time-management. It’s a lack of the kind of time that best allows for getting that work done.
Yes, people do manage it
I know some rockin’ mama professors who manage to schedule time and work on their research and writing with focus — and they get a lot done. If you can do that, power to you.
If, however, you need longer stretches of time in order to get momentum on your project, knowing that is half the solution.
The other half is finding / making those stretches of time appear at regular intervals.
Planning, planning, planning
It’s easy to get caught up in the “as soon as I do X” sort of thinking. As soon as I’m done with this grading, I’ll make time. As soon as I’m off of this committee, I’ll make time. As soon as this personal problem resolves, I’ll make time.
The problem is that this isn’t so much “making” time as “finding” time — and believing in a mythical future when there won’t be as many demands on the time you do have.
That may work in the “as soon as the semester is over and I can hibernate for three months” situation, and in fact, frontloading all other work during the school year and keeping the summer free for research works for many people. (Beware the need to teach for summer salary, however.)
But if summer brings kids home from school or the need to teach or family obligations or whatever, then making time is your best bet.
That might mean setting aside one day a week for research and writing. It may mean sitting down on Sunday night and blocking out a morning or afternoon (whatever happens to work that week) and planning to get tasks done around it. It may mean clustering other tasks and activities so that stretches of time previously full become available.
Just how you, personally, will create maker time for your maker activities, will be unique to you and your life and priorities. But making time for your inner maker can relieve a lot of the “but I should be getting more writing done!” stress that’s endemic in the halls of the academy — and you’ll get more done, to boot.
There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you’re doing every hour.
When you use time that way, it’s merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you’re done.
Most powerful people are on the manager’s schedule. It’s the schedule of command. But there’s another way of using time that’s common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.
When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.
For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.
One of the hardest parts of deciding to leave academia from graduate school is telling your adviser.
After all, they’ve devoted (hopefully) countless hours to supporting your transition from baby-student to proto-scholar. Your academic success depends on their approval and satisfaction. For better or worse, the adviser often becomes something of a parent figure — less fraught, perhaps, but no less weighty.
All of that means that contemplating telling them brings up lots of gunk: shame about choosing to leave, fear about their reaction, maybe even anger about their part in your being where you are and needing to leave.
Why you need to do it anyway
Assuming your adviser isn’t an abusive asshole (and if they are, you can mostly ignore everything I’m about to say), there are several reasons it’s a good idea to tell them.
They need to know. Since they are, in some administrative sense, “responsible” for you, they need to know that you’re disappearing and that it’s because you’re choosing to leave, not because you’ve had a horrible accident and can’t answer your phone or email.
They need to know why. You won’t be the only student of theirs who questions academia. If they understand why you’re choosing to leave, they’ll be better able to advise future students.
They might be helpful. Although we tend to view our advisers primarily through academic lenses, they are, like us, fully-articulated people with lives that go beyond their office doors. They may know someone. They may be able to connect you with someone else who once did what you’re doing.
You need closure. Unresolved relationships feel pretty terrible. Whatever else your adviser is, they’re someone you have a real relationship with, good, bad, or indifferent. Giving that relationship (or that phase of the relationship) a period frees up your head to think about the future instead of about the past.
How to deal with the gunk
Like I said, knowing it probably needs to be done doesn’t make it any easier. There will likely be Big Feelings. This is totally normal.
The best way I know of to deal with Big Feelings is to uncover and examine them. Yes, it’s scary. But it also makes them much less powerful.
We often resist uncovering our deep-seated shame and fear and anger because we’re afraid they’ll take over. We’re afraid we’ll never get back out. We’re afraid they (and by extension we) are irrational or silly. But every feeling we have is rooted in a real, true, human need — for safety, for acceptance, for autonomy, for creativity. In other words, even if the form of the feeling is silly, the feeling itself never is.
Uncovering and examining is a two part process. First, you write down as much as you can — what are all of the fears or beliefs or whatevers attached to this feeling? Second, you ask yourself questions about each and every one of the fears and beliefs. Is it true? What’s the evidence that it’s likely to happen? What would you or could you do if it did happen?
By doing this, you bring things into the light and you connect to your own capacity to handle things. The combination of demystifying the dark and realizing that even if something terrible happened, you’d be okay (you aren’t going to die a pauper in a box next to the river, for example) helps make everything seem a little more manageable.
Make a plan
Figuring out a few things ahead of time will make the whole experience less scary and more doable.
- What do you need to in order to help you have this conversation in a good way? What will help you feel calm and centered and strong going in? Maybe you need to meditate first. Maybe you need a friend to remind you of all the reasons you’re doing this. Maybe you need to write everything down. Maybe you need to role play it so you aren’t having to think on your feet. Do whatever you need to.
- What is your goal and how will you achieve it? Sure, your goal is to tell your adviser, but are there other goals along with that? Often, we secretly want people to agree with us or approve of our choice — and that’s a goal you can have, but one that’s less under your control. Maybe your goal is to get out without crying. Maybe your goal is to provide feedback on the department. Maybe your goal is to reassure your adviser. Focus as much as possible on goals you can control, rather than goals that involve trying to make someone else do or feel something.
- What do you need to recover? No matter how well it goes, it’s going to be a wee bit stressful. So plan on ways to take care of yourself afterwards. Maybe you need time by yourself. Maybe you need a good cry. Maybe you need a drink with a friend. Maybe you need a run. Whatever you need, plan ahead so you can have what you need.
A few things to remember
Their reaction, whatever it is, goes far beyond you and this conversation.Like everyone else, they’ve got a lot going on in their lives, and their reaction is going to draw on all of that — most of which has nothing whatsoever to do with you.
Their reaction doesn’t determine whether or not your leaving is a good idea for you. Your adviser, however brilliant, doesn’t know the whole of you, and he or she cannot predict the future. You’re a much better judge of what should happen in your life than they are.
It’s going to be okay. However they respond, whatever happens next, you are going to be okay. It might not be fun, but in the end, it will be okay. As a favorite signature line of mine says, if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
Those of you who’ve left, what advice would you give people about telling their advisers? What helped you?
Some of us are the kind of people who can think our way into change — we can imagine alternative lives, we can believe that we’re qualified for this other career, we can create step-by-step plans to get us from here to our dreamed-of future.
But some of us need things to happen in the real world for us to be able to figure anything out.
What about this?
If you’re the type of person that needs to interact with the great wide world to figure things out, relying on brainstorming and research isn’t going to cut it.
In that case, try experimenting.
In other words, if you’re interested in doing something other than academia and you aren’t sure if it would work, apply and see what happens. At the very least you’ll get experience applying and you’ll be able to observe your own reactions to the possibility. At most you might get real feedback on your skills or even, gasp, get a job offer. Right there you’ll learn things about yourself and what you want to do next.
Nothing is all or nothing
The thing that usually holds us back from experimenting is the fear that if we apply, we have to take it. Or if we take a short course in something to find out more, we’re obligated to take the next one. Or if we contemplate doing something else, we’re turning our back on academia entirely, forever and ever.
But it’s not true. You may wade into the waters of the post-academic world and decide you like things the way they are. You might learn something that you can bring back to where you are and change it for the better. You might simply answer the “what if” question that was at the heart of your restlessness. Who knows?
The cool thing about experimentation is that its goal is simply to learn. At every stage, at every different fork, you can ask yourself what you want, what feels better, and what you want to know next. And that means that it’s always successful — because you can’t experiment and not learn things, even if the thing you learn is that project X is not for you.
So, what kind of an experiment would answer some of the nagging questions you’re facing? What would you need in order to try those experiments? Inquiring minds want to know.
How does your job fit into your life? More importantly, how do you want your job to fit into your life?
When we’re stressing out about our place in academia, whether it’s the identity-based stressed of “what do I want” or the logistical stress of “how do I get a job I want / how do I make this job work,” it’s really really easy to let everything else slide until that’s the only thing we’re thinking about, talking about, or engaging.
And then the trouble really starts.
All the other pieces
Lots of things go into a healthy, whole life — primary relationships, family, friends, hobbies, spirituality, community. If you sat down and listed out all the things that are important to you, I’m sure your career would come up, but I’m equally sure it would be one thing among others.
When one part of our lives is feeling off the rails, it’s tempting to believe that if we could only figure that one out, if we could only get it right, then we’d be happy. Then we’d be satisfied. Then we’d be comfortable and pleasant and fulfilled.
Honestly, the mono-focus of academia only exacerbates this tendency. How many academics do you know who have few interests outside their jobs, few friends outside their colleagues, few activities that don’t involve campus?
But however distressing any one part of our lives is, it’s the whole that matters. And while our careers and jobs are incredibly important to our whole lives, so are many other things.
Put it in context
You are more than an academic. Really.
Go ahead — write down all of the other roles you’re actively fulfilling these days: parent, partner, rock climber, flautist, beer snob, gardener, yogi, fountain-pen enthusiast, chicken farmer, writing group participant, marathoner, family member, volunteer, mentor.
What have you done for them lately?
Blend, baby, blend
The ruling metaphor of the late 20th-century life was “balance” — all those images of fitting it all in at once, having it all, finding that point at which everything fit.
You know what? There’s too much room for failure and too little room for success in that metaphor. Get caught up in a project, and whoops! There goes the balance. Have a life crisis? Whoops! There goes the balance.
“Blend,” on the other hand, allows for more than two things at once. “Blend” suggests that you’re cooking up something fantastic. “Blend” is about more than a single point in time, so you’re not looking at this moment, you’re looking at the composition of a week, a month, a season, a year.
Keeping struggles within the big picture
I bring all of this up because when I talk to clients, I see how easy it is for them to slip into an obsessive focus on whatever piece they’re trying to figure out right now. Everything is about the job search, everything is about figuring out whether they want to stay in academia, everything is about dissecting this job that’s driving them batty.
That means they never rest. That means they aren’t being able to lean into any other part of their life that is working and gain strength and confidence from it. That means they’re focused only on the thing that isn’t working, that’s hard and challenging.
That means they’re fucking exhausted.
I don’t know about you, but I make really crappy decisions when I’m exhausted. When I’m exhausted, I make decisions just so I can be done and I can stop making a decision already, because I’m too burnt out to be able to continue. That’s not exactly the way to a well-chosen life.
So if you’re in that space, make a conscious effort to bring back into your lived experience all those other things that are important. Go hike in the mountains. Go stare at pretty paintings in the museum. Go dancing. Go to coffee with your best friend and critique all the outfits that come in the door. Go read something entirely mindless and unenlightened. Go wrestle the dog. Go on a date with your partner. Go color with your kid. Go catch up on all of the blog posts and forum posts for that beloved hobby you’ve been neglecting.
In short, take a break. Blend the rest of your life back in. You’ll come back energized and more clear-headed and more creative and more optimistic.
Really.
A few weeks ago, I was thinking about what I needed when I was a miserable academic and thus, by extension, what you might need.
What I wanted more than anything during that time was someone to hear me, someone to acknowledge what was going on with me, someone to affirm my perceptions and encourage me to keep problem-solving and thinking about what I wanted and needed. I needed a way to touch base, to reassure myself that I was on the right track.
But I didn’t have that option, because the people I was used to talking to — my colleagues, my adviser, my friends — were all invested in the status quo. Their own lives were tied up in believing that academia was right for everyone.
From the stories I’m lucky enough to hear from you all, many of you are in the same position.
Introducing
Open Office Hours. An hour and a half a month where you’re welcome to call me and chat and tell me what’s up and ask for what you need — reassurance and listening and problem-solving and whatever else comes up.
It’ll be first-come first-serve, and I’ll limit each caller to 15-20 minutes, just so I can make sure to give everyone a chance.
The first set of Open Office Hours will be on Wednesday, June 2, 7:30-9pm ET. I’ll post reminders on the blog a few days in advance.
You can learn more about Open Office Hours — including future dates and times — by clicking here.
I look forward to talking with you!
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Introducing Open Office Hours! Sometime we all still need to sit ourselves in someone else's office chair and dump everything out -- our questions, our worries, our confusions, our hopes.
This is your opportunity to do just that. Once a month, I'm offering an hour and a half of first-come, first-served telephonic Open Office Hours.
Find out more by clicking here!
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