How to tell your adviser you’re leaving

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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?