movingfinger (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
movingfinger) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
agonyaunt2020-02-11 10:25 am
movingfinger) wrote in agonyaunt2020-02-11 10:25 am
Dear Prudence: My advisor is angry that I'm leaving academia
Dear Prudence: I will have my Ph.D. this summer (in a humanities field). Despite graduating with a decent publication record (three articles and three book chapters, along with a dozen or so leading conference presentations), routinely high CIFs, and connections to a well-respected private university, I do not have a tenure-track job offer lined up. Over the past year, my mother’s health has declined suddenly and dramatically. She may have one or two years left to live, if she’s lucky, and she certainly cannot work. Moreover, the family is already deeply in debt over medical bills—with more on the way—and, thanks to state cuts to Pell Grants, three of my younger brothers are delaying their plans to attend college.
I have decided to transition out of the academy. The jobs simply aren’t there any longer. I’ve also been offered a lucrative job with a philanthropic organization near my parents’ home. My dissertation adviser is a truly extraordinary woman who’s invested in me professionally and personally. She took the news badly and said, essentially, that she regrets the extent of her mentorship and support. My school’s graduate program is quite selective, and I understand that I took someone else’s position, someone who could have gone on to contribute to the field. I already feel enormously guilty for taking up so much time and so many resources. But I also know that the academic life isn’t for me. I’m simply not willing to spend the last years of my mother’s life chasing tenuous opportunities across the country, uprooting my life and my partner’s every year, and putting my life on hold in the hopes that a dream job materializes somewhere. How do I communicate the news to my colleagues, many of them dear friends, without losing their respect or disappointing them as deeply as I did my adviser?
A: Release yourself from the burden of trying to make sure your colleagues don’t experience disappointment. Tell them your news, acknowledge the difficulty of your decision and your excitement over being able to take a job that will help you make ends meet and care for your family, and let the rest go. Hopefully they will be able to handle any subsequent disappointment with more tact and grace than your adviser did. But even if they don’t, you can’t place your own future at risk chasing a job that may very well never appear when you have the opportunity to support yourself right now.
I have decided to transition out of the academy. The jobs simply aren’t there any longer. I’ve also been offered a lucrative job with a philanthropic organization near my parents’ home. My dissertation adviser is a truly extraordinary woman who’s invested in me professionally and personally. She took the news badly and said, essentially, that she regrets the extent of her mentorship and support. My school’s graduate program is quite selective, and I understand that I took someone else’s position, someone who could have gone on to contribute to the field. I already feel enormously guilty for taking up so much time and so many resources. But I also know that the academic life isn’t for me. I’m simply not willing to spend the last years of my mother’s life chasing tenuous opportunities across the country, uprooting my life and my partner’s every year, and putting my life on hold in the hopes that a dream job materializes somewhere. How do I communicate the news to my colleagues, many of them dear friends, without losing their respect or disappointing them as deeply as I did my adviser?
A: Release yourself from the burden of trying to make sure your colleagues don’t experience disappointment. Tell them your news, acknowledge the difficulty of your decision and your excitement over being able to take a job that will help you make ends meet and care for your family, and let the rest go. Hopefully they will be able to handle any subsequent disappointment with more tact and grace than your adviser did. But even if they don’t, you can’t place your own future at risk chasing a job that may very well never appear when you have the opportunity to support yourself right now.
no subject