One of the difficult parts of struggling with academia is that we can feel really alone in our grief, in our struggle, in our confusion.
If I learned anything from my women’s studies classes (and I learned a lot), it was this: Telling the story of our experience is an act of great freedom and great power, and that freedom and power is multiplied when we tell our story in a space that is safe and validating.
I am creating this page as one such safe space.
I invite you to tell your story by submitting a comment. If you want to do so anonymously or with a pseudonym, rock on. (Just use a fake email when it asks you for one.) I pledge to use the power of the comment-delete button to erase anything negative or critical of the comments or posters posted here. You’re welcome to be as negative and critical in telling your own experience as you’d like to be.
Twitter: WorstProfEver
Basically, I decided that I was sick being judged for being funny, attractive, and wanting a social life.(See rant here if you wish.) And sick of not getting to choose where to live. And sick of crazy, narcissistic whack-jobs who honestly thought they were suffering nobly for their art when really they were just pompous, out-of-touch blowhards. I love history, don’t get me wrong, but I sure didn’t feel like this was the way to promote it to real people. Now I’m a web developer living in Austin, where I always wanted to be, and much much happier.
I am still trying to sort out my story. I can see now that I started graduate school for absurd reasons. I didn’t know if I wanted to be a professor but I wanted so badly to write a dissertation. Somewhere along the line I became very committed to being a professor and worked really hard toward that goal. Then I went on the job market and was forced to actually think about what that meant. When I got honest with myself about what I wanted to do with my time, and what I was willing to sacrifice to do it, academia no longer fit. So I made the decision to finish my dissertation and research options for different careers. I spend a lot of time being really fucking terrified. Given the current economy, and the fact that I still don’t really know what else I can or want to do, and that I am making this decision partially so that I can limit location, sometimes I feel like I might never get a job. But, I also know that I can’t keep doing what I’m doing. And that I’ll never figure out what else is possible if I don’t let go and try.
As I made this decision, I promised myself that I was going to be really conscious about what I was doing so that when I finally did find a career, I knew that I had made the best, most informed decision possible. To that end, I started a blog, which I’m finding is a really useful tool for organizing my thoughts and figuring out how I got here. But also, yeah, isolation sucks and I hope it’ll help a few people feel less alone to read it.
My story is also a work in progress.
I started out in academia because I wanted to see the world (National Geographic style)! I wanted to learn more about nature and to be out in nature. Plus, I was an excellent undergrad – I just love reading, listening to lectures, taking in information. When I first started doing real research I hated the uncertainty of it, the fact that there are no right answers, the fact that the answers are unknown. This wasn’t like undergrad at all! Yet over time I got good at research, especially producing: pumping out data, presentations and publications. Because I am good producer, I became pretty successful, grants and awards came my way and kept me going. And I did indeed get to see a good chuck of the world in ways that many people never will (National Geographic style). I didn’t think too much about being a professor, but I suppose I wanted it since it represented the next step to success.
But like Julie’s ex boyfriend, described in Avoid the infinite deferral, I worked myself into the ground (I am a compulsive achiever – nothing is ever enough). This awakened me a little. I stopped deferring things: I decided to start a family, I started to see joy in the little things (riding my bike to work, playing with my kids, enjoying a sunny day). I realized that in some ways my definition of success had changed. Now part of me didn’t want that tenure-track job (and then tenure, and then, and then, and then …) – not if it meant working all the time and missing out on the little things. But, the achiever in me didn’t go away, I still want a meaningful job, one in which I feel like I am changing the world for the better, one in which I am helping people in some way, inspiring them to work together for the greater good – not only for individual success.
But how to I combine this job that feeds my passion with having enough time for the little things? And if I am passionate about a job, how do I leave it behind in order to spend guilt-free time with my family?
That is where I hit a wall. Whether I stay in academia or not, I have a belief (maybe a misconception) that in order to be a success and/or in order to change the world (be it through curing cancer, conserving biodiversity, inspiring young people) one has to work all the time. There is always more to do. I cannot seem to get that out of my head! And as long as I feel the need to choose between my achiever self and my “awakened” self, I remain stuck.
I had a list of reasons a mile long for leaving, but ultimately it boiled down to a toxic department culture. It’s hard to capture the degree of negativity, so I’ll just say that it permeated everything. The tipping point was when I applied for and got an internal administrative position, and the senior faculty who had applied, but didn’t get the job, decided to make my life horrible. I spent one year trying to deal with what was happening, and the next year, I went on the market. I left academia for a job in the private sector, and I love it. I still set my own schedule and do research that I enjoy. My co-workers are positive and supportive– what a change!
A funny thing happened in the midst of agreeing to take a leave w/o pay to follow my husband for two years: I gave up my tenured position. Oops!
Although not QUITE that oblivious, my flight from the ivory tower was not entirely intentional and I’m in the midst of figuring out what I want to do now. I refuse to mourn the tenured job that was and will never be again and want to focus on the other things that I can do with my passions and interests and skills. (And I want to make money. Is that bad?)
I am looking at Plan A and Plan B and who knows what else. One is #alt-ac and the other is wwaaayyy out in left field.
Having a support system in place is, I’m learning, totally necessary. I’m working on affording a life coach; I have had informational interviews with people in #alt-ac in the cities near my new location; and I offered to be the resume and cover letter guinea pig for a friend looking to start up an #alt-ac consulting business. Julie’s blog and newsletters are great reminders and boosts when my energy for all this “new” flags and giving up seems logical.
As with “thedustbiter” above, I have started a blog to sort through my process of job hunting, or exploring what comes next. I didn’t have a toxic department to flee, and boy do I miss the collegiality!
My epiphany came mid-PhD degree when I realized that I probably wasn’t going to get a faculty position in the city I’ve always wanted to settle down in. If anyone had told me, pre-grad school, that I would have to apply for faculty positions all over the world in order to score one somewhere, I doubt I would have considered grad school. I worked incredibly hard during my PhD in hopes that I would have so many publications that the universities would be knocking down my door to try to hire me. Of course, that never happened and now I am unhappily working at a postdoc, uninterested in the narrow focus of my research. While I am interested in the broader ideas/impacts, 95% of the science research I do is troubleshooting technical problems.
I haven’t quit yet because I am unsure of what kinds of jobs I might be eligible for. I want to stay in the university setting, and I would be very interested in doing administrative work. Yet, when I tell friends and colleagues of my potential plan, they scoff and say that I would not even be eligible for that, given that I haven’t completed secretarial school. I’ve applied for over 20 faculty positions and over 20 administrative positions, and have scored ZERO interviews of any kind. This is all very frustrating and thus I continue to plug away at postdoctoral research that makes me miserable.
In my case leaving academia is not a strategic choice; it is a matter of being honest.
After 11 straight rejections I think I am done. I have been submitting papers to peer-reviewed journals since May 2009 and until today nothing has worked out. My tenure is now in serious danger. The point is that I do not want to fool myself any further,the brutal truth is that I am just not good enough. It is normal to find excuses, to complain about the peer-review system, but probably it is just me.
The reviewers do not know who I am and they are expects; if my papers were truly good some should have been accepted for publication. The reality is that 11 different people, who are professionals, believe that I am not good enough, why should they be wrong? I think it is that more plausible that I am wrong.
I am starting to think that my past has been a lie. The admission to a very prestigious PhD program, the positive remarks of my PhD examiners.I think that I have been probably very lucky until now. Probably I simply met nice people who wrongly believed that I was good, while in fact I am not.
My school career proves my point. I have been a very strange student. Some teachers thought I was very good, some that I was very bad. I experienced getting the highest and the lowest grades. My results had nothing to do with my effort, I has always been very studious. In the past I believed that the teachers who did not value me were fool, maybe I was the fool.
There was a time in which I thought that the system was unfair; I questioned the validity of peer-reviews and of the tenure-track system. Now I am ready to be honest: I was deluding myself. The tenure-track system is just there to make sure that people who seem to be good but cannot deliver, like myself, are kicked out.
I have no alibi. My institution gave me enough time to work on my research. It is true that in my institution I have no one to share my work with, but it is also true that at this stage of my career I should be able to take care of myself.
There is something very very sad about all of this. I am a very hard-working and honest person. I work as hard as I can and put all of myself into what I do. Nonetheless, it is not enough. Getting published is not about how hard you work, it is about how clever and original you are.
I still have 2 years before I am up for tenure and to be honest what scares me the most is my determination and persistence. I know that I am a very strong willed person, but here is the problem: is persistence always a virtue? What if we delude ourselves that we can do something when we just cannot? We can try all our life to walk through a wall, but we will never succeed. I think that may be persistence is sometimes a form of dishonesty. In my case, I feel that I cannot accept being a mediocre scholar and will keep trying to prove others wrong. In the process I will kill myself with work, worries, and anger and then…I may still fail. I am sure you read stories about people who failed countless times but succeeded in the end. But what if it is also true that some people destroy themselves in trying and nothing is achieved. I read many times that failure is the key to success. Is that true? I know very brilliant people in my field who very rarely fail. I know stories of great athletes who knew only victories. Why should struggle be part of success?
My struggle now is to reach the point is which I am truly totally honest. I am not looking to a strategic way to consider my situation, I only want the truth. A part of me still hopes that may be I am good enough. This part scares me; I feel this part is the voice of my delusion and dishonesty. I feel that this voice is the voice of arrogance, the arrogance of a person who refuses to see his limitation and to say: I am not good.
In response to to Anthony’s post: I kind of feel like I am a fraud. I worked extremely hard during my degree and was incredibly successful in terms of the number of publications. However, I worked a lot harder than my peers, and a lot harder than I would have liked. I don’t think this is a case of “imposter syndrome” – I really do feel like I don’t belong in academia if I have to work so hard and sacrifice my mental health and my personal life.
That said, I still do feel like academia is the easiest option. I know how to get an academic job – pump out the papers, put together a nice research statement. But when it comes to non-academic jobs, I feel like it’s just a role of the dice.