When you’re unhappy in academia, it can be hard to tell what your misery means. Is it a sign that this career isn’t for you? Is it a sign you need to shift something within your institution or discipline or career? Is it a sign you need to take better care of yourself?
And just to make things more complicated, it could mean more than one of these things. Maybe you need more self-care AND you need to get off that one committee that makes you dread going to the office. Charming, no?
So how can you tell if you need to hit the road or “just” make some changes? Here are a few ways to tell the difference.
Think back to your last break, whether it was summer or a real vacation or a sabbatical or any time that didn’t have regular commitments of time outside of yourself. After you had a bit of time to decompress, what did it feel like to think about doing work? Were you dreading it? Avoiding it? Excited about it? If you dreaded it even after you got some sleep, then something about this job is not right. If you got excited, then for heaven’s sake, work on better self-care!
Think about each component of your job separately: Your research, your undergraduate teaching, your graduate teaching, your advising work, your administrative work, each and every committee you’re on. As you contemplate each one, really tune in to how you feel physically and emotionally. What patterns do you see? What do those patterns suggest?
If you adore teaching and research, maybe you need to rethink your service work. If you like teaching but hate research right now, does it feel any different to contemplate a different project? Do different kinds of teaching feel different? (I, personally, hated teaching graduate seminars, despite the fact that they were what we were all “supposed” to want to teach.) Maybe a different mix of teaching would work better for you, or a different institution with different students. If you hate teaching altogether, however, academia might not be the right place for you.
Imagine your perfect day: Where do you wake up, what is the environment like, what do you do next? Dream your way through a whole, perfect, everyday-day, and see what comes up. Does anything about it look like your current life? If so, what are the parts you want to keep and what do you want to get rid of? If not, what do you want instead?
Inventory your extracurriculars. What do you do when you’re not working? Do you spend time with a partner, with kids, with friends? Do you have hobbies? Are there things you want to be doing but “can’t” because your work has taken over your life? Academia, like many things, expands to fill the time available to it, and that wonderful time flexibility means there aren’t any external structures to help you keep it within reasonable bounds. If you’re miserable and your job is taking over your life, try setting aside real time for non-job-related fun and see if you feel better. It’s easy to resent even the perfect job if it isn’t leaving room for other things you love.
Get rid of the shoulds. If you take a break from telling yourself what you “should” do, what do you WANT to do? Does anything on your to-do list sound fun? We spend so much time learning by watching in this career that it can be hard to notice what we need to make this work for us. Maybe your colleague can grade four papers a day and get them all done efficiently, while you really just need to set aside five hours in front of Glee reruns. If that’s your way, having “grade 4 papers” on your to-do list every bleeping day will likely make you want to stab your eyes out. And that will affect everything else.
You “should” serve on committees, you “should” contribute, you “should” teach a certain way, you “should” write a certain kind of essay — what happens if you drop the stories?
At the end of the day, there’s no one thing that will tell you whether you should stay or go or how to fix what’s wrong. But by accumulating evidence, paying attention to yourself, and refraining from “should”ing yourself into someone else’s life, you’ll get some clues — and maybe even a whole path.
Thanks so much for posting this. I am about to take my Ph.D. exams, and have been frustrated with academia for about a year… although this is the only thing I ever wanted to do. This article really helped remind me that it’s mainly the type of institution I am at right now that is frustrating me (we’re a tier one research university, and I am very teaching oriented). You give me hope, even as a smite smite smite the horrid bureaucracy of academia and hope to find a small, hopefully public, teaching-based university when it’s time for me to get a job.
I’m glad it was helpful! A friend of mine in graduate school set her sights on — and got — a position at a branch campus of a big state system, and last I heard was still loving it. Sounds like you’d like something similar — good luck! And congrats on knowing what you want. That’s half the battle right there.
Wow, I had no idea there was a blog that would speak so candidly to the fears and frustrations I have had by moving away from academia. Havi always brings us to each other, though;-)
I, too, decided to move away from that world and into a more business oriented world where my passion for art history could be fused with my interest in marketing. So, I didn’t go to the PhD program in art history; rather, I moved to New York City to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology for an MA in the Art Market program.
I’m forging my own path now through free lance writing and my blog. I made the right choice, but it wasn’t easy leaving academia when one’s whole family is entrenched in it!
I’m seconding Lydia on everything! Love your blog, your openness, and I’m also here through Havi. I’ve not left academia yet, though – I’m hoping to first finish my PhD, and after that, all bets are off!
I’ve a request, though: I didn’t know your blog until today, but is it possible to still get the recording of your ‘Struggling in Academia’ teleclass?
@Lydia, wow, having your whole family in academia really would make things harder! My family is decidedly NOT academic, but my in-laws are, and there were some really interested conversations happening there! They’ve been very supportive, but yeah. Growing up in that family culture must have made things interesting!
@Maartje — Absolutely, I’ll send it along this afternoon, so check your email. 🙂
Both of you, thanks for the compliments!