Well. Hello.

I think we can all agree that December 2009 kicked my ass. Between the usual holiday madness and leftover being-so-ill-I-had-to-take-to-my-bed, well, I can only say I’m glad that month is over.

Because of all of that, I had to postpone the December teleclass, Recovering Yourself After Academia. I’m really excited about this one, because so many of us go around like the walking wounded after we’ve done the already-hard work of making the leap.

We have all the wounds of our own self-judgment. We have all the wounds of a changed identity. We have all of the leftover grief we might not have been able to express if we chose to leave (rather than getting forced out in one way or another) — and therefore people think we should just be happy. We have all of the shame and grief if we did get forced out, either through a tenure review or through a crappy job market or through the vagaries of graduate school. We have the severed or changed relationships with people we were once really close to. We have all kinds of thoughts about debt, about time we might have spent differently, about what might have been.

All of these things — while totally normal, totally to be expected — are now in our way. They aren’t serving us any longer. And so taking the time to pull them out, to look at them, and to examine them in a supportive, mutual setting can only serve us.

If you’re thinking about leaving, you’re also welcome. Noticing and working through some of these things before you leap can make the transition easier and less fraught.

Wherever you are in the process, please join me on a FREE 90-minute teleclass on Wednesday, January 6, at 8ET, 7CT, 6MT, and 5PT to share, to examine, and to start healing this old, crappy stuff. If you’re interested but can’t make the call, sign up anyway — I send the recording out to everyone who has signed up.

How to sign up? Just go here. I look forward to talking with you!

So, would you believe that, of all things, I seem to have contracted MONO? Three years in college myself, eleven years teaching college, and I never get it. Now, years out of academia, and I manage to come down with it.

All of which is to say, I’m a little slow right now.

Tell me your stories — what’s the craziest thing you either experienced about or heard about mono? Stories about students — and the crazy stories they tell — are fair game.

Welcome to Escape the Ivory Tower!

This site — and this blog — are meant to serve as resources for you as you work on crafting the life that makes you deeply, passionately happy, whether it’s within academia or outside of it.

Regardless of where each of us ends up, our shared experience of academia — its joys, its difficulties — is what we can come together around.

So put your feet up, take a look around, and join the conversation about the struggles of academia and how you can turn those struggles into joys — one way or another.