How I Knew It Was Time for Me to Leave Academia
The other day a friend asked me if there was a moment when I knew it was time to leave academia. Since then I’ve been reflecting on this question and wanted to share my answer in the hopes that it would be helpful for others.
First, I’ll say that this is a big decision. Anyone teaching in academia has worked years to get their PhD (or other terminal degree). They’ve invested deeply in their research and likely also in their teaching. They have probably been told by many people (most of them tenured faculty members) that there isn’t a better gig than this one.
Second, the decision to leave is deeply personal and impacted by a wide variety of factors, including financial and mental health considerations. We all feel differently about this kind of work, are embedded in departments and institutions with their own unique dynamics, and occupy different kinds of positions in the academic hierarchy.
So in this post, I’m not suggesting that everyone will relate to my story or that it is reflective of most people’s experiences. Rather, I hope that it will help you to reflect on how you feel about your own position and give you some ideas about how to figure out what really matters to you in your work.
I made the decision to leave academia over two years ago now. It wasn’t an easy one. It was a long time coming. (You can read more about that story here.) But in reflecting on my friend’s question, I realized that there was a moment that pushed me over the edge. I have only been able to understand this experience and how it informed my decision to leave in hindsight; I hope that sharing it will help you to be more reflective about your responses to various aspects of your job than I was.
At the time, I was working as an anthropology professor at a small regional liberal arts college and had recently received tenure. As part of my service load, I’d been running a successful undergraduate certificate program. It had only been around a few years, and had attracted a significant amount of students. I enjoyed it because its requirements included academic work along with hand-on experiences (volunteering, internships etc.), giving students a chance to work with diverse communities. It was also supported by many wonderful offices and programs (career and study away centers etc.) across campus who contributed to various aspects of it, including providing financial support. The enrolled students were excited about the program and were thriving. Leading it was a rewarding experience.
But as the program grew, I started to realize I needed more support. This was not just to protect my own time (though that was part of it), but also to have more resources to better meet students’ needs and expand the program in exciting directions. I wasn’t dreaming about the moon, but I thought having some administrative support would be helpful. I also wanted time to design a course to help students think critically think about volunteering, and I wanted support to increase programming and diversify student recruitment.
I went to my dean, who suggested that I write up a plan. I got excited and created excel spreadsheets documenting the current state of the program and what we needed to grow it. I wrote up a vision statement that we shared with various administrators. I imagined what this expanded program might look like and how it would better serve students and keep me from going insane with too much work! You know how it is.
In the end, the administration turned my plan down, saying they could only continue supporting the program at its current level.
At the time I didn’t realize that this was the moment when I would know I wanted to leave. So I didn’t leave immediately after this happened, and I didn’t even immediately realize its importance. But it did nag at me over the next nine months while I remained at my job.
So how can this story be helpful or insightful to you?
I think the reason this experience came to my mind as the answer to my friend’s question is because it was a moment that helped me clarify what I wanted in my work. I’m not pointing to it because I was angry at the administration for not supporting me. They, like many university administrations, had plenty of competing requests and ever-diminishing resources. I’m talking about it because it was a moment when I realized that my job might not be able to give me things that matter to me in my work. When my proposal was turned down, I realized that I could continue running this program in the way that I had been, but that expanding it would come at a real cost to my own time and energy.
That isn’t what I wanted. I wanted to be somewhere where I could try out new things, where I could find resources to support projects that felt meaningful and important, where I could realize my ideas and try to make them flourish. And I wanted to do this in a way that wouldn’t exhaust me or require more and more work.
This moment stands out to me now because that was a surprising lesson. I hadn’t realized (despite having worked a wide variety of jobs before academia, including as a water ski instructor, reporter, conference coordinator, program manager, and English teacher), that this kind of creativity mattered to me. And in the midst of pursuing tenure and just trying to handle the normal things a faculty position throws at you in your first years, I hadn’t really noticed it as something I cared about.
Eventually coming to this realization pushed me to evaluate whether this job was right for me. Some of my work values were very much suited to academia, especially my interest in working independently, enjoying flexibility, and liking work that was intellectually stimulating. But this incident also made me realize that my desire to experiment and exercise creativity were difficult to nurture outside of the classroom and that, if I wanted to, my ability to maintain a healthy work-life balance (another important value for me) would only become more difficult.
So if you are struggling with whether you want to leave academia, spend some time identifying your work values. What do you care about? What do you need to feel satisfied and fulfilled at work? What kinds of work activities and environments do you thrive in?
Whether or not you are thinking of leaving academia, consider making a list of things that you value in your work life. Put the list up in your office or near your home workspace. Consider conducting a yearly audit of your job to see how it aligns (or doesn’t) with these values and brainstorm (and implement) ideas for how to help it align with them more closely.
Of course, deciding whether we want to leave academia isn’t as easy as making a list. After all, we all have multiple aspects of our jobs that we value. If I’d loved teaching more, maybe not having as much support for this program wouldn’t have been a problem for me. After all, there are many ways you can be creative in your teaching. Or if I’d felt really passionate about research (I didn’t), the inability to grow in this other area might not have mattered. But, as someone who had slowly learned that I didn’t love teaching or research, it did matter to me. Similarly, when I looked into my future at my school, opportunities for growth (chairing my department or serving on a more important university committee) didn’t really align with my work values. And of course some people managed to attract additional support for their programs, but I think I realized that I wasn’t so interested in the time and effort that doing so would take.
So when incidents happen at work or when you are presented with new opportunities, think about how they align with your values. If they don’t, evaluate how much that matters to you and, if it does, consider whether there’s a way to shift what is happening to make it work better for you. If there isn’t, note this and pay attention to the quantity of these incidents and how much they impact your overall happiness and wellbeing. It really wasn’t this one incident that pushed me over the edge; it was a long list of things about my job that didn’t work well for me.
After leaving academia, I started my own business as an academic developmental editor. Being a business owner is something I had literally never thought of doing until two years ago. But I’ve since realized that it allows me to be creative, grow my business in new directions, and control how I allocate resources. It aligns with those values the above incident helped me to identify as important. Since starting, I’ve expanded my business into writing coaching and offering scholarly writing groups. Though sometimes stressful, these expansions have been stimulating and exciting and have allowed me to dream big about how to meet clients’ needs in ways that I enjoy.
I’m grateful for the above experience because it helped teach me that being a business owner and being able to fully develop my creative ideas might make me really happy. It has!
Again, my story doesn’t mean that you should leave academia, but it does mean that paying attention to why particular parts of your job aren’t working for you is important. Maybe you can change them or maybe you don’t really care so much about them in the end. If that’s true, then they can be a good indication that you want to stay, at least for now. But if they nag at you, anger you, and/or you can’t envision other ways to make yourself feel satisfied in your work, they might be important signs that it’s time to go.
It also illustrates that the decision to leave can take a long time. So if you feel ambivalent, be patient with yourself and think about how things that happen possibly help illuminate what you want to do. Eventually, like I did, you’ll know. Good luck in making your decision and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions about my pathway.
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