A friend of mine is studying in Paris for a few weeks. The studying is great. Paris, not so much.
As she put it, she’s not the kind of person who is optimally built for big cities. It’s too big, too loud, too energetic, too much. She’s longing for a little place in the country with nothing but a few cows for company.
Geography counts
This struck me because there’s a cultural narrative, especially prevalent among overeducated people, that privileges the coasts and the cities and denigrates everything else. Somehow, if you’re smart, you’re supposed to prefer cosmopolitan and dense and full of cultural activities.
When people in academia talk about the way geography matters, it’s usually about not being willing to take jobs in small towns in rural areas. That’s completely fair — for some people, cities are life-giving.
But for some people, it’s just the opposite. Cities are overwhelming and exhausting; smaller places in less dense parts of the world are freeing and supportive.
Admitting this, however, is hard in a context in which these things have a distinct hierarchy.
You do not have to apologize
When I coach people who are leaving academia, one of the things we talk about is geography. Where are they now? What constraints are there in where they can live? Where do they want to live?
Time and time again, people who want to live in the cities just say it, confident that everyone understands why that’s important. But the people who don’t want to live in cities invariably jump into defending where they do want to live. There’s family there, or their partner has a job there. On some level, they’re a little embarrassed to admit to where they want to live.
It always makes me sad, because the presumption that we are all the same, that we all want (or should want) the same things in the same way ends up leaving a lot of people feeling needlessly ashamed and embarrassed.
It’s not just geography
It goes far beyond city mouse and country mouse. A colleague of mine from graduate school realized she really wanted to work at a small branch campus, not an R1. She liked the size, she loved teaching, and it was all around a better fit for her.
Some of the faculty never quite forgave her for that.
But why do we think every scholar wants an R1 position? Because they have more prestige. Why do we think cities are better? More prestige. Why do we think academia is better than other kinds of work? More prestige.
When we don’t actually want the thing that comes with more prestige, we often assume it means we’re defective somehow. There’s something wrong with us if we don’t want the city, the R1, the academic job.
Why, though, should we all be the same? The academics I know are a wildly varied lot, and there’s not a whole lot you can say unites them other than an awful lot of education. There’s nothing wrong with being different from the person in the next office over, and there’s nothing wrong with liking things that aren’t coded as the most prestigious ever.
No one is going to give you gold stars on your deathbed for being prestigious. Your only job is to craft a life that is satisfying and meaningful to you. If that means living in the country, if that means working at a branch campus, if that means leaving altogether, then rock on.
What matters to you is what matters to you, no matter how it’s coded in the larger culture.
Today’s post about location and prestige was strangely serendipitous. For just today I began to seriously consider applying for a position in a small community college in a remote but beautiful area of the West. The next closest city is 2 1/2 hours away, at least, in any direction. It is a four hour drive to a major airport.
I looked up reviews regarding employee satisfaction at this school. Despite one comment that it is expensive and time-consuming to travel anywhere because of the location, employees rated this college very highly. The faculty appear to be professionally engaged but also dedicated to teaching. The departmental handbook is beautifully and logically constructed. The program at this college is fully accredited and much better run and more vibrant than the one at the 4-year liberal arts college where I am currently employed.
The location of this community college brings me 2 days’ drive away from my close family instead of 5 or 6. I would actually save hundreds on flights to the west coast, even though I might have to stay overnight in a hotel near the airport on days that I fly. This is a location where my husband would like to live long term, both for professional reasons and because we both love hiking in the mountains.
In my current position, I am near three cities and have many professional connections. Yet I am not happy here, and have not been since I came. The college where I teach has had 4 deans in five years, and is politically a viper’s nest. I walked into a horrid situation in my own department and was given false information when I was hired. Our department is a mess, and change is not wanted by the senior faculty. It is likely that we will lose departmental accreditation just at the time that I must take over the chair position – and there is no teaching load reduction or stipend for the chair position, which is a rotating position. My direct superior does not want me to succeed, really. If our program finally began to thrive under my leadership, after years of dormancy, it would reflect badly on the faculty who have been in place for the last 25 years. The more the programs I run in our department succeed, the more backstabbing I encounter. Professionally I have still managed to do well (I am in the arts); I have received grants and teaching awards; and I have been told getting tenure will not be a problem. But the political situation is so awful that it negates any positives. Close friends of mine, brilliant friends in other disciplines, have been denied tenure for very whimsical, political reasons. I have sometimes felt like I am working for a school that is run by the Mafia. I have had insomnia for five years, ever since I came to this place; it only goes away in the summer. When I explained my situation to an administrator of a very large and prestigious department in my field, she asked me, very sincerely, “And you are still standing?
Of course I have applied for other positions, and I have almost gotten some very prestigious positions. But I am a middle-aged woman who got her doctorate “late,” after raising two children as a single parent, and am in a traditionally male field in the arts. In every case, in five interviews in the past two years, I was second to a male candidate. I have been short-listed for positions at very reputable larger schools and also for positions at smaller, less-known schools, but am getting fewer and fewer interviews. I believe I don’t get the jobs at the large schools partly because the politics in our department prevents me from building our program, which in my discipline is an important hiring consideration. I think part of the reason I don’t hired at the smaller schools is because I am viewed with suspicion for wanting to leave my current position for an equally small school.
If I left my current position for a small community college in the “middle of nowhere,” I know some people would scoff at me. I don’t care – I care much more about job satisfaction than prestige. I am done spending immense amounts of energy applying and interviewing for jobs at larger schools. Every time I am not hired after an interview, it is more ammunition for my colleague to say demeaning things to me. (I have tried to be discreet, but fear the consequences of someone finding out that I lied about my whereabouts when I was at an interview.) I enjoy teaching, and having summer to do my creative work and network with other artists is extremely important to me. I am ready to settle down, and I don’t care if it is not at Acme Conservatory on the East Coast.
So I am going to apply to the community college position. But I wonder whether the search committee at this college will think I am a whacko for leaving a position in a four-year college near major metropolitan cities when I have nearly achieved tenure. If I write in my application letter that their program appears to be vibrant, that their goals seem to be well-conceived and well-defined, that I am as committed to my teaching as I am to my artistic and scholarly work, and that I also love the mountains and believe this would be a stimulating and fulfilling environment where I could achieve balance in my life – if I write all this, will this be convincing? Or will I still look like a whacko trying to escape? (Half of that description is true – I AM trying to escape, but I am very sane.)
I’m so sorry to hear that your current position is so dysfunctional. That sucks.
Any hiring committee is going to want to know why you want THIS gig, and that goes double / triple for community colleges or what are perceived to be “lesser” locations / places. They WANT someone who wants this job, here, so as long as you can talk cogently about what excites you about this opportunity, they should be more excited than suspicious. They, after all, presumably want to be there, so they know it’s possible. They just aren’t going to want to hire someone who really wants something else but is settling.
Do you know Dean Dad’s blog? He writes a lot about community colleges and it might be a good resource as you apply.
Thanks for the feedback and the tip – much appreciated!