On "leaving" academia
posted by bitchphd
Some of the comments to Sybil's post below, along with similar comments to posts of my own, combined with a really crappy thing that happened yesterday, got me thinking. When people with PhDs (or in graduate programs) talk about doing something other than professing, we always do so in terms of their "leaving" or "quitting" academia. When I left my tenure-track job, I talked abut it in terms not only of leaving a job, but possibly of leaving the profession, though that's not really what I wanted to do. When I talk to unhappy graduate students, I try to remind them that there is no shame in leaving academia. When someone like Sybil talks about not finding a job, we reassure her that it will be academia's loss if she quits.
But the truth, I think, is that part of what's so painful about "leaving" academia is that we usually aren't leaving by choice. More often, academia is leaving us, and all we're doing is having to slowly come to the point of acknowledging that we've been left alone in this big apartment full of books, maybe with a cat or two, and a big pile of bills on the counter. Academia, that bastard; he just up and walked one day, and it took us a while to realize he wasn't going to come back.
Oh, you know, maybe we could maintain the fiction that the relationship isn't over. We could seek him out, hang around in the background picking up a few scraps of part-time attention when he needs someone to fill a gap in his schedule and hoping that at some point he'll realize/remember how great we are and we'll get back together on a full-time basis. Maybe he'll even propose someday, and we'll say yes--of course! does anyone ever say no?--and it'll turn into a lifetime commitment.
That probably won't happen, though. Our friends will try to make us feel better by pretending that *we* left *him*, and we might do the same. Maybe we'll even believe it. But he doesn't seem to be spending a lot of time feeling regret over our loss, does he? We're the ones trying to decide whether or not to hang onto the memories.
But the truth, I think, is that part of what's so painful about "leaving" academia is that we usually aren't leaving by choice. More often, academia is leaving us, and all we're doing is having to slowly come to the point of acknowledging that we've been left alone in this big apartment full of books, maybe with a cat or two, and a big pile of bills on the counter. Academia, that bastard; he just up and walked one day, and it took us a while to realize he wasn't going to come back.
Oh, you know, maybe we could maintain the fiction that the relationship isn't over. We could seek him out, hang around in the background picking up a few scraps of part-time attention when he needs someone to fill a gap in his schedule and hoping that at some point he'll realize/remember how great we are and we'll get back together on a full-time basis. Maybe he'll even propose someday, and we'll say yes--of course! does anyone ever say no?--and it'll turn into a lifetime commitment.
That probably won't happen, though. Our friends will try to make us feel better by pretending that *we* left *him*, and we might do the same. Maybe we'll even believe it. But he doesn't seem to be spending a lot of time feeling regret over our loss, does he? We're the ones trying to decide whether or not to hang onto the memories.
Labels: academia, exploitation
Posted at 9:12 AM
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