I get this question all the time: When did you know you needed to leave?
For some people, there was a single moment, an experience that, for whatever reason, provided a crystal-clear knowing that this path was finished. Maybe it was the fifty-seventh time they listened to a colleague complain about students. Maybe it was getting the final rejection letter in the mail. Maybe it was staying up half the night to finish grading papers while juggling a puking toddler.
But most of us don’t get a moment like that.
What I knew was that I was unhappy. Desperately, miserably unhappy. The thought of teaching these classes for the next few years — forget the rest of my career — made me want to cry. Nothing in my research was compelling. I could barely keep from rolling my eyes during committee meetings. The idea of going to conferences made me want to crawl in bed and pull the covers over my head.
My doctor put me on anti-depressants. My wife worried about me. I did the bare minimum I needed to do to get by.
The year before, my best friend had moved away to another position at another, much more prestigious, state school. I considered applying for another position, but that wasn’t appealing either. I knew enough people at enough schools in enough different positions to know that the things I was running up against weren’t about this position. They were about me and a bad fit.
That spring, I decided to apply to positions outside of academia. I’d give it two months, I thought, and if nothing had turned up, I’d teach for another year and try again. I wasn’t so far gone that I would consider leaving mid-year. Two weeks later, I had two job offers — and it was only then, when I agreed to take what was actually a pay cut when you figured in cost of living, that I realized that yes, this was the right choice for me. I was willing to sacrifice to get out.
So if you’re thinking about whether you should stay or go, know this: Don’t be hasty, but don’t hold out for certain knowledge, either. Experiment. Try on possibilities. Throw your line out into the water and see what happens. You might be surprised what you learn.
For those of you who have left, when did you know leaving was the right answer for you?
In one day, I knew it.
I turned away a friend who needed me,with promises of dinner soon.
My husband had spent the whole weekend with my son, and after nap, my 4yr old son was reading books at my feet, while I worked, asking when could we play, and my answer was ‘soon’ and he would ask ‘when will you be done working mama?’ and mama wanted to say ‘never, mama will never be done working.’
then we played for 2hrs and mama went back to work, feeling frustrated w/my work, isolated and no one to talk to, my son came back into my office dragging his air mattress to sleep at my feet while I worked again.. and that damn air mattress made SO much NOISE!
right then i knew it. there was going to be many many more frustrating nights where I felt isolated by my work from my family. i was going to feel many more nights of inadequacy as a PhD student, wife, mother and friend.
and I knew then that I was compromising my values for attaining a personal goal- that may not be necessary for obtaining rewarding employment.
Your experience sounds like mine in terms of knowing I was miserable, except that I refused to seek treatment for depression because I convinced myself that that would amount to being drugged into staying! (Yeah, clear thinking is not a signal characteristic of depression 🙂
I’ve blogged the process of deciding to leave over the past 2 1/2 years, but the short version is this: I was starting to find the repetitiveness of teaching stultifying in my first t-t job, but I had such a lovely, cheerful department and living situation that I was, overall, quite happy. Then what seemed like the perfect job for me came up: lower teaching load, grad teaching precisely in my specialty, prestigious school, etc. I got that job and by the time the first winter set in, I was depressed. I felt trapped in an isolated place in a job that should have been my dream job, and was certainly the dream job for lots of friends I had beat out when I got it. I realized I did not share the values of my colleagues in a research-oriented dept.; I had always loved teaching, but the joy had gone out of that, and at that point I had nothing left. The summer after that first year is where my blog picks up. In my second fall there, I was invited to apply for a couple of similarly fancypants jobs, but I knew for certain that doing the same job in a different place, even a much more congenial place, wasn’t going to solve the problem. I think it was that point, when I could do the thought experiment “What would it be like to do this work if I could do it in a place I love instead of a place I hate?” and STILL know in my heart that I wouldn’t want the job that I knew it was time for a change of career. It took till the start of my third year to be able to tell people in positions of authority that I intended to leave, and it took all of that academic year to extricate myself. In retrospect, I could have gotten out a lot quicker if I hadn’t been so concerned about Doing the Right Thing, but the time to really think about what kind of work I want to do has been valuable.
I knew in my second year of grad school. And yet, I didn’t leave until 9 years later, PhD finally in hand. Why? Sheer stupid stubbornness, I guess. Not wanting to be a “quitter.”
That moment came when I was walking through my department late one night, having just finished a homework assignment. It was close to midnight. I met a professor in the halls. Astonished to see him at such an hour, I blurted out “What are YOU doing here?” He smiled and ducked his head (he was kind of goofy) and mumbled something about working on grant applications.
That was when I knew that this was not the life I wanted. I did not want to be working until midnight on grant applications. I didn’t particularly enjoy teaching. I was good at research but it never gave me enough joy to sustain me through all the other stuff. I hated reading other peoples’ research papers and hated writing my own even more.
I did leave, but much later than I should have. What can I say? I was a fool, but at least I wasn’t a “quitter.” For whatever that’s worth.
Mine was a mail I received on May 27th this year from a collaborator of my advisor’s. Actually, the mail was just a very polite request of doing some utter nonsense, but in that very moment I realized I was trying to desperately hide that my life has nothing to do with my ambitions. I was so caught up in learning that I put my life on hold, and then realized I was on one side a Peter Pan, escaping any social life, and on the other one, eager to challenge myself by pursuing something very difficult, but which is not my passion and not even useful to anyone. Reseach was making me a worse person.
I haven’t left yet. My family supports me to do so though.
Yeah, those out of the blue moments can be really powerful — more powerful, in some ways, than the big obvious Times We Think About What We’re Doing. Thinking of you.