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!
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.
The inimitable Sisyphus, who has been looking for a job for a while now, describes an all-too-common situation in academia:
A while back I had decided that I need to just give it up and move back into my parents’ house, but then little things keep popping on the horizon that look like possibilities, and I think, hey, I might be able to get this one and why bother dealing with moving if I’m going to be moving somewhere permanent soon anyway? Then that oasis turns out to be a mirage, and I keep crawling along.
Anyone who’s struggled with finding a job has had this experience — the just-missed, the nearly-there, the what-if. It’s the incrementalism that kills you. “But this next one won’t take much effort, and what if it’s the one? But this next one won’t take much ….”
So how do you decide enough is enough and it’s time to move on?
Give yourself the gift of a limit
The problem is, there’s no clear cutoff. There’s a limit to how many times you can take the bar exam, but there’s no limit to how long you can spend looking for a job.
And that means you have to create limits for yourself.
This is most easily done at the beginning. How long are you willing to do this? One year? Six months? Two years? What feels reasonable? What feels like enough time to find out what’s what?
And then you mark it down somewhere, make a date with yourself to reassess.
It doesn’t mean you have to stop at that limit. It only means it’s a point at which you stop, you look around, and you see what there is to see.
A few things you might see
When you do stop to look around, there are a few things that are worth thinking through.
- Has anything changed? That is, has something happened externally to improve the situation? Has something happened internally to improve the situation? What’s different now than when you set off on this particular phase of the adventure? What does that suggest about moving forward?
- How close have you come? If you’re repeatedly getting almost-there but not quite, it may only be a matter of time. If you’re knocking on door after door and not getting much response, it may be better to cut and run.
- Do you still want it? We can be creatures of inertia and bull-headed to boot. Do you still want this or is it now mostly a matter of pride? If you got the job tomorrow, would you be exhilarated or would you think, “well, shit”?
And now what?
Depending on what you find when you stop to look around, you may want to set another “let’s look around” date and keep going, or you might want to take this opportunity to choose something else. What else is appealing? What else can you do?
That’s not to say either is an easy choice, just that you have the choice. But you won’t consider your choices unless you give yourself the time and space to do so.
What if the beginning was a long, long time ago?
If you’re in the midst of it, see if you can take a break right now.
Ask yourself the questions above. How long have you given to this? How long are you willing to give to this?
It’s really easy to be motivated by pride and it’s shadowy sister, shame, to just keep pushing through, to keep trying, to make one last effort for the 57th time.
But stop and look. What do you want now?
Also? This sucks. And it’s not you.
Whereever you are in the process, though, and whatever choices you make when you stop and look around, know these two things.
This process blows. It’s distressing, demoralizing, and crazy-making. The process itself, the time it takes, the amount of work, will make your head explode even if you’re successful. And if you aren’t getting the offer you want, then it’s even worse.
And finally, it’s not you. You’re fabulous and wonderful and smart and talented. The system is pretty broken, and “success” here looks a lot like “sheer, unadulterated luck.” Sometimes we have it, sometimes we don’t. It doesn’t have to mean more than that.
One of academia’s very favorite myths is that everything within it is based on merit. Only the best students are accepted to the graduate program. The best students get fellowships and scholarships. The best students get the best jobs. The best work gets published. The best candidates get tenure.
And then there’s the flip side: If you didn’t get in to the program of your choice, it’s because you weren’t good enough. If you didn’t get the assistance that would have enabled you to actually get through the program, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough or you weren’t smart enough. If you didn’t get a job, it’s because you weren’t savvy enough, weren’t skilled enough, didn’t publish enough or strategically, didn’t have the right people behind you. If you didn’t get published, it’s because either your work was crap or you weren’t persistent enough. If you didn’t get tenure, you’re clearly not cut out for this system.
Even when we choose to walk away, these stories of failure dog us. (In our own minds, if nowhere else.) Leave before tenure? It’s because you couldn’t hack it. Decided not to go on the job market because you didn’t want to stay in academia? You wouldn’t have gotten a job anyway. Decided not to finish graduate school because it’s making you hate the universe? You weren’t smart enough to finish.
Excuse my language, but this is all a fucking load of steaming crap.
Even a cursory look around the academic landscape will reveal dozens of people you know personally who are brilliant, savvy, hard-working, and persistent and who have not “succeeded” in all of the ways academia suggests they will, what with all of those meritorious traits.
Brilliant and well-published graduate students who can’t find a job to save their lives because the job market sucks.
Smart, interesting researchers who don’t get published because their work doesn’t quite fit the neat little boxes of disciplines and journals or because they aren’t in the middle of the latest hot topic or trend.
Fabulous researchers and teachers who didn’t get tenure because they got caught in the gender politics of service.
I’m not saying that merit has no place in academia. But I am saying that, by the time we’re even as far as graduate school, absent true outliers, the differences between the “best” and the “worst” are, in some ways, often too small to be meaningful. Academia has been winnowing the pool since kindergarten, after all.
I am saying that the myth of merit doesn’t do us any favors. It doesn’t make most of us feel expansive and energized — it makes us feel small and scared and clenched. It doesn’t motivate most of us — it makes us avoidant and procrastinating and miserable. It doesn’t build us up — it makes us live in fear that, any day now, someone is going to figure out that we aren’t as smart as they think we are, and then they’ll kick us out.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a lot of merit to that situation.
We need to be suspicious of the myth of merit. We need to pay attention to how much outright luck contributes to “success” and “failure” in academia. We need to cut ourselves some fucking slack and begin to imagine that we are, in fact, smart, capable, wonderful people who, for various reasons, had a certain set of experiences with academia, some of which we had something to do with and some of which we didn’t.
We have a lot of baggage around the idea of a calling, we people of this century.
Sometimes, the whole enterprise seems, well, self-indulgent and stupid. My mother’s father, for example, wouldn’t have recognized the question. He fought in WWII and sent money home to his family, he worked in the quarry, he volunteered at the fire department and the police station and the water station, he raised three girls with a wife he loved, and when they retired, he dragged my grandmother all over the country on special elder-tours. By all accounts he was satisfied with, even pleased with, his life, without ever engaging the idea that he needed to live out a special mission.
Sometimes people take it too far. I’ve watched more than one college near-graduate refuse to take a job on the grounds that it wasn’t inherently fulfilling to them, blithely neglecting to remember that the only way that works is if someone else, who isn’t necessarily thrilled with every moment of their job, either, subsidizes the project. (I suspect this is rarer now than it once was, the economy being what it is.)
And sometimes it sounds just a bit too religious for our intellectual, post-humanist selves.
Most of us, however, end up somewhere in the middle — longing for a sense of meaning, connection, and purpose while simultaneously not being convinced that anything we’re running up against is It.
It’s like we believe that what we need to do is just find our (avocational) soulmate, and then everything will be fine, everything will unfold after that, but this avocation has a bad sense of humor, and that one is too uptight about money.
This is why leaving academia can feel like divorce, right down to the question of who keeps which friends. We found our One True Love, but what happens when the shine is off that particular rose? Does that mean we’ve failed? Does that mean we’re doomed to marginal happiness ever after?
Just like there’s probably not one person in the whole world who will automatically make you happy forever, there’s no one calling that will make you happy forever. Rather, there’s no simple conception of your calling that will make you happy forever.
Your calling, just like your marriage, your relationships, your life, and you yourself, is always growing and evolving. You’re always learning more about it. New possibilities are always opening up. And that means that what was right five years ago isn’t necessarily right now, and what’s right now isn’t necessarily what will be right five or ten or twenty years down the road.
Because so many of us experienced our fields and our work as a calling, it can be brutally troubling to run up against dissatisfaction. Because we felt called to academia, realizing that call is no longer there is painful.
I don’t want to suggest that those losses shouldn’t be mourned if you’re experiencing grief. I do want to suggest that you open up your conception of yourself to see what you’re being called to now.
Parker Palmer talks about your calling as the place where your deepest desires meet the needs of the world. In other words, while there are any number of things you’re probably good at, and while there are infinite problems in the world to solve, the particular configuration of your heart and this moment illuminate what you’re being called to now.
What are you being called to now? How well does that calling work within the structures of academia?
One of the many ways people get stuck in the varied halls of academe is by confusing what is essentially a job with a calling.
Professoring? It’s a job. It has a regular paycheck, clear (if also somewhat tortured) expectations, regular reviews, and the possibility of getting fired, at least until tenure, and even then, if the economy goes far enough south.
But academia has long thrown the mantle of calling over the realities of the job. There’s a particular academic myth that suggests that the Life of the Mind is a sacred path, and as such we who trod it should accept all manner of challenges, forks in the road, sleepless nights, and witches disguised as beautiful women. We are the elite priests who have been chosen to carry on the tradition, and our glory is in the upholding of the tradition.
For some people, that myth works. For them, research and teaching is a sacred path, one they would follow even if they weren’t paid. For them, academia is a calling, one that swells their hearts and whispers celestial songs even in the darkest hours of indexing footnotes. The difficulties of the job get subsumed into the story. For these fortunate people, calling and job have intersected seamlessly.
For many of us, though, there is no grail here. There’s no holy path; there’s only trying to figure out how the hell we’re going to pay the mortgage and do research this summer, since we’re only paid for nine months and summer teaching, however lucrative, really puts a crimp in the “write four chapters” plan. Teaching doesn’t feel like victory or exaltation.
If you take on academia as a job, with all of the boundary issues and challenges to negotiate as any other job, that can be fine. Sure, it has its special hells, but what job doesn’t? They’re problems to be solved and moved on from.
But when we confuse the two, things tend to go extra-badly. When we confuse the two, setting time-boundaries around our work looks like lack of commitment. When we confuse the two, taking time to nurture an infant looks like a like of discipline. When we confuse the two, we become the failed Knight, instead of an everyday person in an everyday job making everyday choices for our everyday lives.
Now, far be it from me to denigrate callings. Callings are amazing things, impulses that can sustain us through many a dark night and difficult time. Callings, when our lives are aligned with them, can give meaning to even the most annoying day.
But callings are vague things. You can’t write them neatly in the census form explaining what you do and thus who you are. And because they’re so vague, callings can manifest in many different jobs.
Maybe you’re called to help impoverished children graduate from college. Sure, that may involve being a professor. But could also involve raising money for a small school, writing innovative curricula, creating after-school programs, or creating outreach programs. There’s no telling how that one calling could exist in the world.
So I want to ask you this: Right now, do you need a calling or a job?
The answer might be both. Right now, you might be craving both meaning and a stable paycheck, and that’s important to know. But your answer might be one or the other. Maybe, right now, you’ve got meaning out the wazoo, and all you want is consistent work. Maybe you’ve got a job you’re okay with, but you’re craving meaning and a sense of your work connecting with something bigger.
Whatever your answer is will help determine what needs to happen next, because figuring out your calling and finding a job are distinct tasks. Getting a job won’t necessarily illuminate your calling, and figuring out your calling doesn’t usually come with medical.
But as you’re thinking about it, remember this. There’s no job outside (maybe) “minister” that is inherently both calling and job. Any job can be part of a calling, and any calling can have lots of different jobs over time. If you want both, you’ve got to figure both out.
So tell me — how have you experienced this job / calling conflation in academia? And what are you needing right now in your life?
For most academics on the semester system, there’s about two months left to go. (A lot of you are on spring break now, or near it, and I can hear the sighs of gratitude from here!) And that means that, if you’re thinking of leaving, this is a good time to start thinking about applying for other jobs.
One of the most frequent questions I hear is about how those of us who have only ever been academics of one status or another can market ourselves to the outside world. There aren’t a lot of job ads for thinkers who can manage hordes of post-adolescents, after all.
While I don’t think you should think about post-academic careers entirely on the basis of skills (your passion is the most important thing), at some point you do have to put pen to paper (or cursor to document) and figure out how to convince some that you’ve got what they want. So let’s talk about what transferable skills you likely have.
A few things you’re probably really good at
Public speaking. You’ve probably been doing it three, six, nine, twelve times a week for years. That’s more public-speaking time than most public speakers have. You know how to organize information for people listening, you know how to deliver it, and you know how to deal with questions and comments that come up. It’s easy to think this is something “anyone can do,” but trust me, it’s a skill. I didn’t realize just how not-common a skill it was until I was part of a group presentation to a company’s executive team and blew everyone away with my ability to make sense without looking at a piece of paper. Seriously.
Training. It may be called “education” instead of “training” or “development” or what-have-you, but you’ve spent years putting together multi-week training systems with objectives, goals, and thoughtful ways of reaching them.
Management. Recognizing peoples’ skills, helping them notice and develop skill deficiencies, providing ongoing and tactful feedback, helping people understand how projects fit into their larger path — sounds like advising, teaching, and management to me.
Defining projects. Say there’s a problem you want to solve. How do you figure out how to do that? Initial inquiry, defining the problem, defining resources, setting out probable paths, and then doing the work — sound familiar at all?
Event planning and management. If you’ve ever been involved in planning or holding a conference, you’ve done event planning.
Writing and editing. If you’re in academia, you write. You might even write for public audiences. You likely edit your own work and that of your friends and colleagues, and you might have had a stint on a journal.
Consulting. Do you help other people, including graduate students and advisees, figure out what they’re doing? Bingo.
Grantwriting. If you’re in the sciences, you’ve got plenty of experience writing applications to get money. If you’re not in the sciences, you might very well still have plenty of experience doing this. It’s a real skill many non-profits need.
Okay, so I have transferable skills. How do I talk about them?
I’m not suggesting that you’re going to write your resume by saying you “consulted” with graduate students or you “engaged in public speaking on an ongoing basis.” That’s doublespeak of the worst kind, and it won’t help you.
However, thinking about what you do as an academic in terms of the skills you’re applying and what they’re called in the real world lets you do two things.
First, it helps you write a skills-based resume. If you aren’t applying for a job that has a close and clear relationship to what you’ve been doing, then framing your experience in terms of skills will help you help them understand why you might be worth interviewing.
Second, it helps you think through your cover letter. Contrary to popular belief, the cover letter should be more than an elaborate address label. It’s the place where you get to make the engaged, impassioned argument that you have the skills and experience they need to do what they’re doing — no matter what it looks like your resume says. Being able to relate what you’ve done to what they need is an invaluable help.
For example, when I was applying for an editing job, I was able to talk about my ability to handle unfamiliar subjects by explaining how I taught technical writing classes, in which students would focus on their majors and their specialties. (I also got to talk about deer contraception, which was great fun and helped me stand out.) It’s not obvious to someone outside of academia, but that experience was pretty much exactly what an editor faces, and it was persuasive because I obviously understood the challenge.
Deer contraception? Really?
Um, yes. I really did mention deer contraception in a cover letter, and it was perfect for the job I was applying for. (Matching your tone to the company’s tone is key!)
You may not have an outrageous example to throw in, but the bottom line is that you’re fabulous and smart and skilled. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have gotten this far in academia to begin with. There are many other organizations that would benefit from all of the experience, passion, and talent you’ve got in spades. You just have to frame it in a way that they, and you, can see.
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Myths and Mismatches eCourse Now Available! Jo VanEvery and I have put together a free eCourse on the most common myths and mismatches we see in people who are unhappy in academia.
It's one lens through which you can examine your own unhappiness and better diagnose the problem -- which makes finding a solution that much easier.
Find out more by clicking here!
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