A client asked me a question last night I had never thought to answer on here: Is my life better now, after having left?
You have no idea
My life is better in about a thousand different ways. My time is much more my own. I read more now than I did when I was still an English professor. I can follow my interests wherever they lead me. I have more interesting conversations. I have friends who do lots of different things. All the parts of me that I denied in academia because they weren’t cool or weren’t intellectual enough have gotten reintegrated.
In a weird way, all the things I wanted from academia are things I have now — I’m just not paid for all of them. Not being paid for them means there’s a lot more freedom around them, and right now, that’s working for me.
That isn’t to say the journey to get here was all sunshine and roses or that I was happy as soon as I left. I left in 2005, and not only was there not yet an internet community around leaving, I didn’t personally know anyone who had decided to leave. Transition always sucks, and I didn’t know anything about transition then, so I spent a fair bit of time worrying that maybe I’d done the wrong thing. All of my friends were academics, and so I didn’t really have anyone to process with except my wife, who was going through her own big transitions.
From where I’m sitting now, I wouldn’t trade that crappy time for anything. I have never regretted leaving, even when I was worried that I should be regretting leaving and what did it mean about me that I didn’t? (It meant that I really shouldn’t be an academic.) Having done a lot of work, I no longer feel shame or grief or guilt or any other negative emotion for leaving.
I loved my experience in graduate school. Being a professor was not for me. Pretty much everything about my life got better (eventually) when I was able to accept those things and more forward.
Will it be better for you?
That isn’t to say that leaving is right for everyone and no one should stay. Only you can know that.
That’s not to say your journey will look like mine. Yours will look like yours, and while the overall patterns will probably be the same, the specifics will be yours alone.
It is to say that it’s possible to leave, to craft a great life for yourself, and to be happy.
And the first step towards being happy — wherever that will be — is to tell the truth about your own experience.
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