Life Coaching: Working with One, Working As One

Posting on behalf of Kathleen "Currer Bell" Miller.

We at How to Leave Academia have observed the growing popularity of the life coach, both as a resource for folks transitioning out of academia, as well as a new career path for those billing themselves to post-and alt-ac individuals. Since a few of our readers were uncertain as to what a life coach does, how to locate a coach that’s a good fit for you, and what to expect from life coaching, Kathleen “Currer Bell”  has designed this handy-dandy guide to life coaching full of general information with examples from her own practice and knowledge. She is nearing completion of an intensive training seminar with Martha Beck (author and monthly columnist for O: The Oprah Magazine) and is currently working toward her life coaching certification. She is happy to announce that as part of her certification process, she is taking on clients for a very low fee.

What is life coaching?

In a very general sense, a Life Coach helps people clarify and articulate what they want most from life and how best to achieve it. More specifically, coaching helps people get past their obstacles in order to create the results they want in life, work, relationships and spiritual growth. Coaching is like having a “personal trainer for your soul.” Life coaches don’t tell people what they should do; rather they ask powerful questions in an effort to help the client find the answers that always lie within. A good life coach will not tell you what to do. Coaching is particularly helpful if you feel out of balance, i.e.; working too much, playing too little (or the opposite); if you feel something is missing but can’t put your finger on it; if you want to pursue a new career or change jobs; or perhaps you simply want more joy in your life. Coaching gives you someone who holds the space as you grieve and grow, and promotes accountability for your own transformation. Change can be difficult and it’s useful to have someone navigate the journey with you.

 

You can see why life coaching would make sense for people in the middle of the huge transition out of academia, especially if you have no clue where you are going or what to do next. But people in many life situations might want to consult a coach: people going through a divorce, folks who are navigating empty nest or retirement transitions, or people who have just lost a job, are changing jobs, or who are facing a medical diagnosis that means lifestyle changes are imminent, etc.

 

Coaching is not a substitute for therapy

Let me clarify that coaching is no substitute for therapy. It is not for people with serious emotional problems. Coaching is about creating results, not dealing with crises. It focuses on the future and, as a result, can assist to change attitudes resulting from past experience. Life coaching might be a great option if you have processed your emotions and are ready to make a next step.

 

How long does coaching last?

Coaching is an individual process and so clients may sign up for sessions ranging from 1 to infinity. However a good coach ultimately wants you to be able to coach yourself. They will teach you the tools to do the work of coaching on your own; a good coach doesn’t want to set up a codependent relationship. Clients may benefit most from 3-6 months worth of coaching, or even up to a year in some cases. After all, making long-term changes in thought patterns and behavior isn’t work one does overnight! But there should be an end date to a good coaching relationship. You can discuss finances up front, and most coaches can come up with a flexible range of services to maximize your value while working within your personal budget. Newer coaches in the process of certification (see below) often offer services at a discount or even for free as they establish their credentials.

 

How do I pick a coach?

Most life coaches will offer a free 20-30 minute information session. During that time, you can ask questions related to the coach’s training and experience, how sessions typically progress, reimbursement, etc. Your potential coach may offer a brief sample of his/her coaching technique in order to help you decide. Remember, this is a time for your coach to interview you, but it’s also a time for you to interview and determine the fit of your coach.

 

While picking a life coach, you may want to consider the rapport you have over the phone or Skype. Does the coach’s voice resonate with you--its pitch, tenor, pacing? Do you enjoy your coach’s energy? Does your coach laugh and joke around? Is s/he more serious? Do you get the sense that he/she is listening and responding to your specific situation and desires? Personal communication preferences will be key here, so pick someone who complements your own energy and communication style. Go with your gut.

You should also look at consider the program your life coach completed. Coaching is an unlicensed industry, so people can declare themselves life coaches without training or certification. The International Coaching Federation (ICF) is taking steps to make life coaching a more regulated industry and if working with a coach from a coaching organization is important to you, you may want to search the site for someone who is ICF certified.

Life coach training programs are very diverse, and some are pyramid schemes designed to get money from trainees, so investigate the program with which your coach is affiliated. Reputable programs like Mentor Coach and the Martha Beck Coach Training Institute are respected programs with articulated philosophies for their approach to life coaching. Some programs adopt a positive psychology approach, while others are devoted to goal setting; others are more holistic in their approach. You can imagine that the philosophy under which a life coach is trained says a lot both about their own values as a coach, and the advice and style they will offer you.

A program like the Martha Beck Coach Training Institute draws from Eastern philosophy, Western medicine, mind-body coaching, cognitive behavioral therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. I was drawn to Martha Beck’s holistic approach, as it used the tools of many different philosophies to push back against painful and limiting beliefs we have about ourselves and our stories. Plus, Martha Beck is a former academic and her scholarly, but humanistic approach, appealed to me. Coaches trained by Martha Beck are also encouraged that their most powerful coaching comes from their own “to-hell-and-back” story. Life experiences then become a powerful indicator of choosing a “right fit” coach - and this might be a good strategy for you to use as you look for your own coach.

If you’re struggling as a new divorcee, you might want to consider looking for coaches who specialize in relationships, or for those who have been through experiences like divorce or single parenthood themselves. Of course, it is definitely possible that a coach who has not been through a particular life event can offer excellent coaching on that topic, but you may find that someone who has navigated the waters you are venturing into may be particularly resonant in their advice for your situation. So along those lines, if you’re a post-ac leaving academia, you may benefit from a coach like Julie Clarenbach who has made the transition, conducted a successful post-ac job search, and worked outside the academy.

How to Contact Me

If anyone is interested in my services or has additional questions about coaching, they can contact me at kathleen.miller127@gmail.com.  I look forward to speaking with you!

"Finding Life After Academia...:" HTLA, Currer, and Lauren featured in NYT Article

The New York Times published a thorough and interesting article about the trend of post-ac and alt-ac in the last few years. Journalist Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow covers the gamut from Versatile PhD meetups to reports done by the Council on Grad Students, NSF, and Stanford. Currer Bell and yours truly are featured on the second page, linking to HTLA, Currer's article about hating your post-ac job, and our co-authored post-ac manifesto.

We're really proud of our work here, and we want to thank Rebecca for the article!

Student Loans: A Life Sentence of Punishment For Grad School

I used to be one of those people who thought that arguments for the abolishment of student loan debt were mostly whiny. They're called loans. We knew that when we got them. I pay my loans. I've written extensively about my complicity in the insanity of higher ed debt. I accept my responsibility.

But student loan debt in its current form is not only unfair, it's unjust. Those of us who took on greater debt even than the average college student are going to, en masse, be impoverished for life under this system. Current student loan debt has huge and obvious implications for the economy, as discussed in these articles, but I wonder if people are considering the plight of a smaller but still significant population of under- and unemployed academics who will be saddled by enormous payments (not to mention the outrageous effects of interest on the final bill. for a much longer period of time).

I'm talking about myself here.



It's Campus Equity Week Oct 28 and the focus is on adjunct justice, the move to technology to replace teaching, and (ETA) student debt relief. Some of their events (e.g. the play For Profit, which explores not only the moral quandary of working in for profit, but the issue of corporatization of all higher ed, and the issue of student debt. This is the precise situation of someone I am very close to, btw.) I want to make it clear that public higher ed is just as guilty of fleecing students as for profit. I have some personal experience with for profit education. Its critics are not wrong. But higher ed is complicit in the boom-and-bust loan cycle as well. It's not a bad guys versus good guys scenario.

The real kicker is that there is no way to declare bankruptcy on student loan debt. If you go on an ill-advised shopping spree and can't pay off your new furniture and car in a few years, you can discharge the debt or deal with it for pennies on the dollar. This could even apply to gambling debts. But student loans are not an option.

Kids -- and I was a kid -- in my situation graduating in the early oughts, were sold a bill of goods.

We cruised into grad school on the tail end of an economic boom, during a time when credit card companies set up tables in the commons and gave us free t-shirts if we signed up.

We were told by our professors that jobs would be waiting, that the baby boomers would retire and with more and more students attending college every year, well. The math is clear.

We were permitted to recklessly take on more and more debt with little to no counseling about what it would mean for us down the road.

We were recruited eagerly as part of a higher education scheme predicated on the cheap labor of willing graduate students to deal with the masses of students. We were underpaid for our work and many of us were denied benefits to subsidize higher education, despite the astronomical inflation of tuition over the last decade. Is the current structure of TAs anything other than intellectual sharecropping? Are loans not liens? And is our harvest not decimated by factors out of our control?

And then the economy tanked, and the job market for academia went from "precarious" to "deadly."

 

Rolling Jubilee has great data on this, and their goal is to buy off student loan debt, but look at the small amount they've raised ($60k to fight $12mil in debt. I can't afford to give them money to help people like me, because I can barely help people like me!). Not nearly enough of us are engaged in an issue and fight that should be at the heart of the post-academic movement. ETA just discovered the Student Debt Crisis website. Awesome!

We are all in this situation, post-ac-ers! We are Margaret Mary if she had taken out $100,000 to pay for her education. This is a CRISIS for those of us in a new class made of the highly educated and financially screwed. Inasmuch as adjunct issues are issues of concern for anyone post-ac/alt-ac/higher ed, student loan debt is an issue for us all. No one interested in higher education reform can ignore the issue of student loan debt and its profound and unjust impact. 

My partner and I work full time and we are treading water each month. At a time in our lives when we could start 529s for our daughters or think ahead towards retirement, we feel lucky to make ends meet. We sometimes do not. We don't qualify for welfare because of our income, but that figure doesn't take into account the $1k we pay each month to debt collectors. We have very little credit card debt compared to a LOT of people, own 2 cars that are over 10 years old, and a house with a very reasonable mortgage compared to our earnings. We're on IBR. We are not extravagant spenders. Every month we scale back and scale back. Our lives more and more closely resemble the lives of working class earners despite our upper middle class education. (I'm basing this on wikipedia. Forgive me. If Sloan Sabbith could explain this to me, it would be great.) We're one car breakdown away from screwed. Christmas this year looks... iffy. I'm not sure our kids will go to college even though they are CRAZY smart. I mean, what were we thinking, to have a family at all? LOL, right??!

I did some reading about the structure of federal lending and was really appalled to learn about the difference in rules that apply to these programs versus garden variety debt. I never took out private loans because the word on the street was that they were horrible, predatory, ruthless collectors. I thought, The benevolent government has all these plans! All this flexibility! Loan forgiveness! Boy, what a crock. If you default, you are not eligible. * If your student loan servicer changes three, four times, it is easy to accidentally miss a payment because you have to learn a new system, reestablish payment dates and procedures, etc. Everyone is late sometimes. If you're deciding to pay a grand for student loans or a grand to fix your car, you're gonna fix your car! Ten years of absolute perfection is unrealistic, and amounts to is indentured servitude, and there is no wiggle room.

Imagine the drain on the economy. The percentage of under/unemployed college grads is crazy; the percentage of grad students even more so. Those numbers are growing, and many of us are facing 10, 20, 30+ years of this financial situation. It's simply unsustainable. It's economic suicide. It's beyond a disproportional response to ignorant, poor choices. It punishes everyone. It's corrupt and lousy and cruel and I'm adding my voice to those who think abolishment is appropriate and just.

 

* Edited to clarify and correct information about eligibility for PSLF. Don't forget PSLF could be repealed and there's no guarantee it will exist in 10 years. The more you know!

How To Leave Academia In the Press

Excited to be mentioned in this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. 19 Sept 2013.

As Web sites became easier to build, and blogs became common, more and more forums were developed to share information about nonacademic careers. Some of the best include Lexi Lord's Beyond Academe (for historians), Branching Points (for scientists), and How to Leave Academia. (Readers: If you've found other such helpful sites, feel free to mention them in the comments below.)

Deciding who to work for: finding employment outside academia

This guest post is from Chris Humphrey at Jobs on Toast, a post-academic career advice blog. Check it out!

‘Who do you want to work for?’ and ‘Where do you want to work?’ are two questions that you’re unlikely to hear in any discussion of the current academic job market! Given the desperate state of the market today, with many more candidates than posts, the idea of a new PhD having a choice about their first post in academia seems crazy. People are resigned to going to places where they can get a job, even if the position and location aren’t a particularly good fit (adjuncting in North Dakota anyone?).

If you ask these two questions in the context of jobs outside of academia however, you get a very different response. Try it yourself! The sheer amount of options can be quite overwhelming at first: ‘You mean, I get to CHOOSE who I work for, and where?!’ Well, obviously you still have to apply for and get the job! But you definitely have more control over your employment terms (salary, workload, work-life balance, location) in comparison with your options inside higher education. So let’s look at the abundance of career opportunities outside academia, with a view to helping you choose your first job post-PhD.

Careers outside academia

We might mistakenly imagine (from inside academia) that PhDs can only venture out of higher education as far as publishing houses, or into research labs. The reality is that PhDs are enjoying successful careers in a broad range of organisations outside of higher education. I recently listened to a radio profile of Angela Merkel, a PhD in quantum chemistry, who as Chancellor of Germany is running the biggest economy in Europe! There are a number of dedicated websites where you can go and read interviews with PhDs who are working outside the academy. Just take a look at PhDs At Work (www.phdsatwork.com) for instance. This fantastic site has profiles of PhDs who are employed across a range of sectors, from coaching to environmental health to film and the arts (look out for me!). They are succeeding on the back of the skills and experience gained through their doctoral research, not in spite of them. You can check out my blog post on ‘Life after the PhD’ for a list of the top websites which carry interviews and profiles with PhDs employed outside academia.

Who do you want to work for?

So, who do you want to work for? You might decide that you actually want to work for yourself! An increasing number of PhDs are doing this, setting up their own businesses in fields like marketing, consulting and coaching. Being your own boss may not be that different from being a PhD – a lot of the same skills are required, such as time-management, self-motivation and dedicated hard work.

If you decide you want to work for someone else, you have three main options – non-profit, government and business:

1. Working for a non-profit, you are going to be using your skills to support the organisation’s mission. This mission could be health-related, environmental, artistic or may involve helping disadvantaged groups in society or in another country. This is a great way to put your expertise to work, in a research capacity (e.g. with a medical charity) or as a subject specialist or an administrator.

2. Your second option is to work in local or national government. In local government you’re going to be responsible for the delivery of a service to the public– this could be heritage, libraries, schools or planning, to name just a few of the options available. I know several PhDs who’ve gone into museum management for instance – they are now heads of their own collections! If you go to work in national government, you can find a home for your research skills in a policy unit, or perhaps further afield as a diplomat. One of my contemporaries from the University of York is now the British High Commissioner to Kenya!

3. Your third option is to work for a company. From the perspective of academia, it’s easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to business, and think that you have to sell your soul to work in one. Actually, there are many companies which are doing a great deal of good in the world. I would strongly encourage you to do some research into small and medium-sized companies with an ethical, social or sustainable mission. Companies in the ethical and green sectors tend to have an open-minded recruitment policy, and want to employ people who are aligned with their values – ideal if you want to change the world!

Where do you want to work?

Having spent a long time living and working in a university town or city while completing your PhD, it can be quite a wrench to have to up sticks and move for the sake of a job. Certainly for new PhDs, it would be quite unusual for a suitable academic position to come up locally, so relocation is a very likely prospect. When considering your career options outside of academia however, the ability to stay put can be a nice perk. Why not start your business in the location you know best – your home town or city? Or go to work for a local employer who’s looking for someone of your calibre and potential? While the offices of big employers like Google or Microsoft may be located hundreds of miles away, you may find that one of their subcontractors has an office just down the road …

On the other hand, if you fancy a change of scenery, a job outside of academia can be your passport to a dream location. Very few jobs will come up at the University of Hawaii for instance, but if you look for work outside of higher education, and are prepared to be flexible, an opportunity may present itself!

It’s your choice!

If you follow any commentary on the academic job market, you’ll know that it’s currently dominated by feelings of scarcity, compromise and under-employment. PhDs are taking temporary, low paid teaching work in universities in the hope that by ‘staying in the game’, something more permanent will eventually come up. This is an understandable strategy, but realistically the odds are stacked against you, and you have no control over when or where you’ll finally get a job. By contrast, we’ve seen how you can get back a degree of choice and self-determination, if you opt for self-employment, or if you go to work for an organization locally or elsewhere. I would love to hear your answers to the two questions posed at the beginning of this post – please leave your comments below!

 

Dr Chris Humphrey is the founder of Jobs on Toast, a blog dedicated to helping masters students and PhDs find fulfilling careers outside academia. Chris obtained his PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of York (UK) in 1997, and he is the author of The Politics of Carnival: Festive Misrule in Medieval England. Since leaving academia in 2000, Chris has worked in a range of project and programme management roles in the areas of sustainability, transport infrastructure and training. Chris regularly gives workshops at UK universities on the subject of marketing yourself for a career outside academia, and he will shortly be launching an online directory of paid-for products and services benefiting doctoral researchers.

PhD PTSD: Find the Joy in Your Sorrow

Guest post by Sacha Siskonen. She currently exists somewhere between academia and the non-academic world in a nether region of teaching. She hopes to exit this realm in the near future, but she has been told she is overqualified for any jobs that pay a living wage. In the meantime, she blogs at The Saskatchewan Review.


When I first began my PhD program, a friend and I used to joke that the people who were ahead of us in the program—fifth and sixth years, the occasional seventh+ year—were afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome. When we chatted with them about the program or the faculty at department functions or social events, these otherwise vibrant, intelligent people suddenly became drones with dead eyes, parroting the party line. It seemed to us that some time around year three or four people in the program stopped questioning the program, and started repeating mantras of “that’s just how it is here” and “you get used to it.” I was told that faculty members who seemed incompetent or even cruel to me “were actually really helpful.” It was creepy and disconcerting. There were lots of jokes about drinking the Kool-Aid that first year.

By my third year, I’d started to exhibit some of this same behavior. I was bitter and angry, stressed and frustrated more of the time than I wasn’t. I felt dead inside. Studying for my preliminary exams was slowly driving me insane; “prelim brain” became the shorthand in our program for the confused mental state, inability to focus, and constant worry exhibited during the exam year. My advisor was unhelpful, dismissive and absentee. But worst of all, I could no longer see the goal at the end of the struggle. I didn’t want the degree anymore. The job market was, and continues to be, disastrous in my field (English/Creative Writing), a tenure-track position seemed almost impossible to get, and I was racking up student loan debt at a quick clip with little hope of a starting position that would allow me to pay it off in my lifetime. The people around me on the tenure track seemed miserable, and I feared becoming them. I was turning into someone I didn’t recognize and didn’t like.

I decided to leave my PhD program last fall at the beginning of my fourth year. The semester had already started and I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I stayed for the year, took a Master’s degree and made plans for my next move. At first this decision made me euphoric. I was finally free of all the stress and resentment I’d been holding on to for three long, hard years. I got a good six months of relief and excitement out of the decision. I was very happy to be leaving. I felt like I had taken back control of my life.

Now, I’ve been out for a little over four months. Emotionally, I feel unbelievably better. Even the stress of a job search outside academia cannot compare to the stress I felt while in the program. And I’m no longer taking on debt, which is great. But I have been surprised by how shaken I feel by the whole experience. My confidence has definitely taken a hit. I’ve got a case of PhDPTSD, self-diagnosed. [I say this partly in jest, but certainly don’t mean to make light of PTSD, which is a real and serious problem.] Leaving a PhD program where you felt abused, poorly treated, ignored, marginalized, etc. can have very real effects on your sense of self, your feelings of self-worth, and your ability to function in non-academic society. I believe these effects are temporary and can be overcome, but acknowledging them is certainly the first step to healing and moving forward.

My PhDPTSD mostly takes the form of a need to confess my status as a PhD dropout. As though mentioning that I left a PhD program recently will explain any erratic behavior or odd tendencies I might display: flights of criticism, rambling introductions, excessive citation. Being in academia was a huge part of my identity and it’s going to take some time to redefine myself. Like an addict in recovery, I feel the need to declare my problem. So when I run into a friend or acquaintance, or communicate with someone whom I haven’t talked to for a while, I find myself telling them, without prompting, “I just dropped out of my PhD program.” To their credit, no one in my life, family, friends, strangers, inside academia or outside it, has said anything unkind about this. I wish for everyone leaving academia the support I’ve gotten from everyone I’ve come in contact with. Even my dismissive advisor offered her help when I told her I was leaving the program!

I’ve been using the word “failure” pretty freely in the last few months. I feel like I’ve failed. I wanted to leave. I’m happy that I’m no longer in my program, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel like a failure. A few of my friends have been kind enough to say this isn’t true, and to reframe leaving academia not as failure, but as success, survival, self-actualizing, etc. I appreciate their reframing immensely. But I also never want to run from using the word “failure” or be afraid of failing. As a writer, hell, as a human being, failure is inevitable. For me, confronting that feeling of failure, letting myself feel it and saying it, is helping me move past it. There’s something freeing about failure. It’s a fresh start, but not a blank slate. Failure is how we learn. Failure is how we improve. Writers are fond of that Beckett quote: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

The part of my PhDPTSD that’s harder to admit is that I also still want credit for the years of struggle and work I put in. I made the mistake of looking at my transcripts recently. All the time and energy I sunk into this endeavor, and I don’t even have a degree to show for it. I imagine that people who did get their degree but are no longer working in academia might feel similarly. You invest so much in a program, in your education, and if you don’t tell anyone or people don’t know that you did all that work, then why did you do it? Maybe for some, who are more evolved than I am, just doing it is the reward. But I want some validation! I’ve been in school for most of my life; I still want the gold star, the “A,” the pat on the head. I want to be the best at dropping out of grad school. And that’s something I need to let go of too. Or rather, I need to let go of the need for that validation to come from an authority figure, some doting or dismissive professor.

Part of this need to confess, in my case, comes from my love of self-deprecation—a quality that was not appreciated in academe where pretention and self-aggrandizement are the norm. I love to tell my friends and family stories about the awful things that happen to me. So this failure is partly fodder for me, a way to entertain and connect to people. Likewise, telling my story is a way to free myself from shame and embarrassment. The more I tell it, the less power it has over me, and the less it hurts to tell. Leaving academia can be traumatic, but remember trauma comes from the Greek word for “wound,” and wounds heal. They’ll heal with or without help, but a wound that’s attended to leaves less of a scar.

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I'm In Love With the Cronk of Higher Ed, Our Very Own Onion!

Post-acers, why haven't you told me about The Cronk of Higher Ed?!! This is post-academic recovery gold!! The Cronk is our very own Onion, skewering higher ed practices and issues and I'm in LOVE with it. At HTLA we firmly believe that satire and humor that pokes fun at and reveal the flaws in higher education are crucial to our academic recovery. Laughter is the best medicine!

Here are a few Cronk highlights to get your started, but you should subscribe to their twitter feed and like them on facebook for a regular dose of reminders as to why you're OUT. After that, check out our other satire and schadenfreude resources for post-ac folks in the category links above.

MOOCS apply open philosophy to faculty recruitment. "Learn Today! Recruited Melanie Drake to teach advanced literature. “We discovered her ‘Twilight’ fan fiction blog and knew our students would love her,” said Pembers."

Small college steals and markets it's overworked adjuncts' home remedies for stress and exhaustion. "The remedies, grouped together under the moniker “Little Black Bag,” promises to revolutionize the floundering college’s fiscal health — and maybe its physical health as well. As adjuncts sign away their rights to privacy and intellectual property when they are hired, the college’s claim to intellectual property rights to 'Little Black Bag' felt consistent."

University requires adjuncts to wear ankle bracelets to keep their hours under 30 and thus avoid insurance requirements. “I put in over 50 hours on campus last week but really only worked about 23, according to my anklet,” said one instructor. “I’ve eliminated class discussions and I don’t call on students with raised hands anymore. The Provost says that I’m a model instructor and may even recommend me for another course next semester. If I keep this up, I might earn enough to cover gas money for my commute.”

Check it out!

You Are Human First: Reframing Identity, Success, and Failure

This guest post was written by post-academic Christine Slocum, who blogs at Seattleite from Syracuse. 

Remember, you are human first.

Academia and graduate school are greedy institutions, demanding a large portion of time and life. When this portion has been carved out, cultivated, and lived for a long time, one’s identity can be colored by it. Worse, one’s identity can be outlined, folded, and shaded by academia if you spend a long enough time in the socialization process. Perhaps once this was welcomed, but I suspect that it may not be now if you are at this web site. That is OK.

Marx thought human’s species-being and the meaning in their life is tied to what they do. Therefore, the means of production is the key to both human oppression and liberation. Not owning the fruits of one’s labor and being able to exercise their creativity was to be alienated from their self. While socialism is hardly a common feature of American thought, identifying one’s self with their work is common in American culture. One is a journalist. One is a mother. One is a professor. All of these definitions involve specific activities. Rarely does one describe their self simply as being instead of the dominant features of their doing.

I would argue that “being” is a good place to center yourself in the midst of a transition.

Hartwig HKD via Compfight

Leaving graduate school has three steps: deciding it’s not working, leaving, and doing something new. This is far easier if your doing and being are distinct entities. Otherwise, how do you determine what that third step will be? If your self was your activity, your sense of self evaporates when your activity does. You are not just imagining a new path, you may be imagining a new you. How daunting.

Remember, you are human first.

Many facets of identity are relational, as though it was not enough to simply exist. I am going to say that you are alright just as you are. You have inherent worth and dignity, independent of how you have spent your days and how others treated you as you did so. Beyond your dissertation or thesis, beyond your papers, conferences, and students, you are human first. When you wake up in the morning, you are a living, breathing person. You need to eat. You need sleep. You need shelter from the elements. You need companionship and relationships. Eventually you will die. These needs are independent of graduate school and academia.

Humans are animals, if social and smart ones who are quick to construct complicated worlds around ourselves. We aspire to the privileged worlds that take for granted the dirty basics of human life. The purpose of the life of the mind is to elevate it above the body. Perhaps you are inclined as an intellectual, but I guarantee you are a corporeal being. Your mind is located in your body, separated from the broader world. Your experiences are possessions, they are not ways to define you. You may identify as a former graduate student, but I say think of yourself as a person who chose something different.

Academia is not the ocean or mountains. Academia is a social institution. It only exists because it was invented to by human beings. Academia could be viewed through the lens of a social fact, in that it is beyond and outside individuals and subjects them to constraints. Of course, it is also comprised of individuals who could form and change it (except they feel powerless to do so and thus buy in). Often the values surrounding Americans are the capitalistic ones of materials and profit. The ones in academia are of reputation, prestige, and elitism. Nonetheless currency, if it’s not the monetary sort. The goal in both places is to accumulate the most currency. If you spend enough time in the academic world, you are bound to relate to those as laudable goals. Maybe your identity was tied into richness as an academic: being a scholar, being a published researcher, or the aspiration thereof. Perhaps you spent your sunny days inside, your holidays away, and your weekends at the keyboard being this goal. Perhaps leaving has the taste of a businessperson closing their shop: failure, inviting a sort of poverty from an opportunity unsuccessfully capitalized upon.

Remember, you are human first.

The first step for me to leave graduate school was to treat it like a job. This is a common strategy suggested to create a work-life balance and to keep yourself on track. I have had many jobs, and the feature I tended to value most was the time in-between. Jobs were things I did, not things I were. This inoculated me from becoming too much of a graduate student and kept my focus on doing graduate school.

Once graduate school became something I did, my struggles and failures became easier to accept (even if I was, overall, pretty good at playing the role of graduate student), because failing did not reflect on me, it reflected on what I did. My sense of self was distinct. Success or failure became a possession, not a feature of my identity. When I started viewing myself with the same care and concern I would give to others, it was easier to disentangle graduate school from my life.

Remember, you are human first. The odds you would have conceived are slim, but here you are. You are lucky. You are valuable no matter what you do; you have inherent worth and dignity as a human being. Academia may have failed, but something else won’t. It may take awhile to find out what that something else is. That’s OK. Struggle is OK. You will be fine, just remember to take care of yourself.

Mary Oliver asks, “What is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” in “The Summer Day.” Before all things, you are a living, breathing person with a gift of time in front of you. If you are living then you are not failing; you are doing alright. Move into your chosen direction, be it staying or leaving, and accept your living self unconditionally. You are human first, and what a success you are.

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Academic Advising as a Post-Ac or Alt-Ac Career: Info and Advice

This post originally appeared on my personal blog, Mama Nervosa.

It’s been awhile since I rapped at ya about alt-ac life and my work as an academic advisor. Last year, when I started my position as an undergraduate advisor at an R1 school, I wrote extensively about what it was like, how it felt, etc etc. I haven’t written about it since then because, well, it’s work, and eventually it stops being that novel and compelling and just becomes your day job. Nevertheless, I get regular queries from friends and readers who want to know what the work is like and how it’s going, so I wanted to give you an update at just under 1 year of work as an advisor. Obviously, this reflects my personal experience and doesn't speak for all advisors in every context (although a colleague in my office with 20 years' experience read this and said it was pretty representative of our gig, at our school). YMMV.



What is Advising Like? Who Is Cut Out For It?

Overall, I like advising. I work with students almost all day, every day, and feel satisfied that I make a difference in their college experience. Although the relationships aren’t as in depth as teaching, I do get to know my 200-odd students well. If you enjoy teaching at the college level, and like freshmen and their quirks and personal issues, then you’ll probably like advising.

Advising keeps me on my toes. There’s always something new happening, and the way advising is set up at my U means that I work with students across a variety of disciplines, which is cool. If you are behind the whole liberal arts mission and enjoy hearing about and learning about stuff happening in different departments, you’ll probably like advising. On the other hand, if you like a lot of consistency, advising can be challenging. Rules, requirements, and policy change all the time. Just when you get something figured out, it will change on you.

Advising can be stressful, but there is really no such thing as an academic emergency. I think that people who can avoid taking on their students problems, emotions, or decisions will find advising less stressful than people who will fret over a student’s schedule or whatever. I can lament a student’s choice or look at something and say “uh oh,” but at the end of the day all I can do is what my job title says: advise. The rest is on the student.

A lot of advising stress comes from the feast-or-famine intensity of it. Some weeks, we are working very hard from the minute we hit the door to the minute we leave. We’re dealing with last minute crises, making phone calls, seeing a dozen students. The next month, we may see two or three students total. We may have nothing on our calendar, and few responsibilities, meetings, or tasks. It’s extremes with few periods of regularity. I kind of enjoy that, because I know the intense periods end, and I don't struggle to find something to do during down time, although I often struggle with boredom. But for some people, the unpredictability is really challenging.

The things I enjoy least about my job are things most people don’t enjoy about jobs. Being here for 40 hours can be a drag, especially if I’ve wrapped up my work early. Meetings are… meetings . Sometimes productive, sometimes frustrating. Advising focuses quite a lot on broad, institution-wide, bureaucratic stuff. There’s a TON of policy and procedure talk. We can be at the mercy of administration at times. This is higher ed, after all!

I tell you what, though, I love getting paid. I enjoy my weekends and evenings free from grading, prepping, or student emails. I like coming to work, having a special place where I do my work, and then leaving it all behind when I depart at the end of the day. I like the social nature of the work, and have great colleagues. I think there’s far too much ignorant poo-pooing of working life among grad students. Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.

My situation is unique to my school, its advising structure, and the (frankly) amazing group of people I work with. And to me and my preferences. I never got super hung up on research or fell deeply in love with my discipline in grad school. I like students, and I can get into just about anything. Every school has a different way of doing advising, but in my opinion, it’s a great career option for teaching-oriented grad students. I hope someday I can get back into teaching, but in general, this is a good place to land if you care about students and like academics.

So how can you get into advising?

As always, your mileage may vary, caveat, etc etc. But here’s what I think:

Work closely with college freshmen. TA, tutor, etc. Teaching experience at the college level is a huge factor in the hiring done at my center. Work with different populations of students — high achieving, low achieving, first gen, transfer, international, whatever. You’ll need lots of stories and strategies to work with different students towards their goals.

Do some research about the school you’re applying to so you can speak to their specific population, resources, challenges, etc. Being knowledgeable about the school makes you stand out. A metropolitan campus with a largely commuter population will have very different issues in advising than a flagship state school in an agricultural town in the middle of nowhere. If you have time, do some light research in advising websites and journals about advising any special groups that that school serves (NACADA is the place to start). Does this school have a large Native American population? Learn a little about advising them. Is the position for a special subset of student, such as Honors? Learn about it. If you have institutional access, you should be able to read journals and such. But don't get carried away -- this isn't grad school!

Learn about the advising structure of that school beforehand if possible. Is it a large center or small? Will you be in a department, or an office that acts only as an advising center? Is advising mandatory or optional? Will you work with one major or multiple? This is good in terms of preparing for an interview, but also in terms of understanding if you want this gig. I work at a large advising center that serves mostly first- and second-year students, and advising is mandatory. I like this setup because I don’t have to deal with faculty meetings and my students are compelled to come sit in my office, which is better for both of us.

Look at the backgrounds of advisors at that school, if possible. It seems that some schools are very open to, or even actively seek, former academics to staff their advising. Other schools may lean more heavily towards people with backgrounds in higher ed admin or student services. This may help you suss out your likelihood as a candidate. Again, there is a huge variance across schools as to how advising is structured, staffed, and managed.

Lastly, think about what you can contribute as a colleague. This is kind of different from how grad students typically think of work life, because teaching and research are largely independent activities. But advising is often a team thing, and people will want to know what it will be like to work with you. If you can speak to experience team-teaching, collaborating, etc, that will probably be good. Sound competent and fun.

You may want to do an informational interview or ask to do some job shadowing at an advising center. Although I’ve never heard of that happening at my center, I can’t imagine we’d have a problem with it, although you may not get to sit in on student meetings due to privacy concerns. The more you can speak to the actual work of advising, versus the fantasy or hypothetical, the better your candidacy is. In my humble, novice, non-hiring committee opinion.

So there you have it: my final say on advising as an alt-ac career for quittas and post-PhD leavers. Feel free to ask questions!

Rebecca Schuman's Thesis Hatement

If you're on the fence about getting a PhD in Literature or considering leaving academe mid-PhD program, take a look at Rebecca Schuman's insightful article in Slate "Thesis Hatement." Schuman's article makes many fine points, here is a snippet:

 

Don’t misunderstand me. There is unquantifiable intellectual reward from the exploration of scholarly problems and the expansion of every discipline—yes, even the literary ones, and even if that means doing bat-shit analysis like using the rule of “false elimination” to determine that Josef K. is simultaneously guilty and not guilty in The Trial. But there is one sort of reward you will never get: monetary compensation from a stable, non-penurious position at a decent university.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_dFpKZo54w

Some Legal Differences Between Ac and Non-Ac Employment

This guest post is written by Paul R. Sullivan, Jr., Esq, an employee rights attorney in Pittsburgh, PA. With a keen knowledge of employment law and a personal investment in the experiences of post-acs (he is engaged to How To Leave Academia's own Currer Bell), Paul wrote this post to help make post-acs  aware of some of the legal differences between academic and non-academic employment. You may find him at http://paulsullivanlegal.com or on Twitter at @sullivanlegal.

My fiancée received her Ph.D. in English last year. Since then, she’s become heavily involved in a growing community of grad students and professors who, voluntarily or otherwise, are leaving in droves the sinking ship that is academia. Because working in the academy is very different from most jobs, I decided to put together some helpful tips to help academics transition from the ivory tower to the downtown skyscraper.



There are a number of concerns that go along with any career transition: what types of jobs are you qualified to do, what skills do you possess that easily cross-over into new fields, and how, for the love of god, do you find those jobs. Unfortunately, I don’t have those answers. If you find yourself asking these kinds of questions, you may benefit from the services of a career coach or counselor who works with people making career changes. I can, however, highlight some of the important legal issues you may encounter when leaving academia.

What Is Employment At Will?

Most academics, whether a professor, grad student, or an adjunct instructor, work on a contract basis. A contract provides certain guarantees, such as a defined length of employment and a list of reasons for which you may be terminated. Most jobs in the private sector, however, are “at will” employment. This means, with few exceptions, you can be fired at any time, for any reason. However, even when your employment is at will, federal and state laws protect you from discrimination based on characteristics such as race, age, gender, religion, and disability.

While working at will may seem intimidating, it does provide some benefit to the employee. Because you can be terminated at any time, the flipside is also true. The ability to leave a job at any time can be very beneficial, especially when you are unhappy, or a new opportunity suddenly presents itself.

Pennsylvania, where I am located, is an employment at will state. However, the law regarding at will employment varies from state to state, so if you have specific questions about your local law you should contact an attorney in your jurisdiction.

What Is This Overtime Thing I’ve Heard So Much About?

I’ll refrain from a diatribe on the working conditions most academics face in this new world of temporary positions, adjunct assignments, and grad students working for peanuts. Indentured servitude is an accurate, if slightly hyperbolic description of what many people face in today’s academy. For those of you who have grown accustomed to this way of life, take hope—there are laws to insure you get paid for all your hard work.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), along with similar state laws, require employers to pay employees overtime wages for every hour worked in excess of forty hours per week. The amount of overtime is usually calculated at time-and-a-half, but can be more depending on your local law.

“But I’m a salaried employee, doesn’t that mean I can’t get overtime?” Absolutely not! There are certain exceptions to the FLSA, but being a salaried employee does not automatically make you exempt from receiving overtime wages.

So feel free to continue to put your nose to the grindstone, burn the midnight oil, etc., just make sure you’re adequately compensated for doing so.

Have Questions? Just Ask.

The most important take-away from this post is simply this: always ask questions. When you’ve spent a large part of your life working in one particular field, it’s easy to assume the rest of the world operates in the same way. Don’t let your assumptions prevent you from understanding and asserting your rights.

There are numerous resources on the web, and I’d be happy to point you in the right direction if you have a specific question. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and call an attorney in your area. Most employee rights attorneys will take the time to speak to you on the phone about your concerns. If you have more specific questions about leaving academia, feel free to leave a comment or send me a tweet @sullivanlegal.

Tilting Windmills

This guest post was written by Ana M. Fores Tamayo. Please check out her project Adjunct Justice.  You can sign the petition here.

Tilting Windmills

I was going to begin my fourth year as an adjunct. The pay was lousy, but I loved teaching, and I loved the kids. When I thought about leaving, I could not bear it, because it really meant something to me: I was good at it. Not that I’m bragging. The kids told me so. They hated me at first, they always did. I was too difficult, I demanded too much of them. But in the end, they loved me, because I made them question; I made them wonder; I made them think.



So I began the semester without a hitch.

I always kept my activism off the radar, but that wasn’t hard to do. As an adjunct, teaching dual credit English at a high school, I was not part of the college campus. I was definitely not part of the high school either (I taught in a portable!), and I never saw anyone but my students: I was truly flying under the radar: I was invisible.

Beyond that, everything seemed to be fine.  After all, they had finally cut down the student load, which I had campaigned for heavily last year, so our classes were down to 20-25 students. Life was good. I began teaching, handing out syllabi to little seniors who thought they were big college students. They were excited to begin their writing comp classes; I was thrilled to have an entire new set of minds to mold. One student, though, was a bit nervous. She came up to me at the end of the first class to ask about missing instruction; she had band activities (which are big in Texas!), and she was afraid the syllabus looked too difficult. I told her she needed to work hard, and be in class, as this was her first priority. If she had a problem with that, she should drop the class.

Turns out the student had also failed a placement exam, yet she was still enrolled in the course. I questioned this. But I could never quite grasp what I had started! Emails began flying between administration and faculty, accusing me of not wanting the student. The upshot:

Date: Aug 28, 2012, at 7:37:22 AM, CDT: (actual email to chairman)

ME: I have no problem with her at all. I just met her. I was going by what we were told about the AccuPlacer Exam, which was not this complete information you are now telling me. As long as she can keep up with her work, she seems like a perfectly fine young student, and hard working. Moreover, I commend her for her concern in going to the counselor in the first place, on her first day, to figure out what to do. That shows dedication. It shows me she's off to a good start.

I thought after a second tense day of classes and emails, the worst was over, and all would go back to normal. But, coming home that afternoon, I got a phone call, with no explanation …

Date: August 28, 2012 5:25:59 PM CDT (actual email to dean, chair, dual credit director, and “fixer of salaries”)

ME: And now, at 4:39 pm, I get a call from TCC firing me, effective immediately.

I was floored. Flabbergasted. Angry. Depressed. Hysterical. It seems they just wanted an excuse to get rid of me. They took this student’s complaint and blew it out of proportion, saying I had “negative interactions with students.” In plural! It took me a few days, but I finally began writing. Calling lawyers. Seeing what I could do. I reached out to my first lawyer, on the Internet.

Date: September 7, 2012 6:46:23 AM CDT

Dear Mark,

I have been trying to fight this battle alone. But last night, providence must have guided me to your page...

So, with this, I am up at 4:30 in the morning writing you, because you have given me hope. I begin by telling you I have no money, so this would probably have to be one of those pro bono cases. But I am also not in it for the money. What I want is to expose the fraudulent system that education has fallen privy to, and I want to call attention to the dire need of my fellow colleagues in need of living wages, who like me, are being exploited, much like migrant laborers, but of Academia. Out of the one and a half million instructors in Higher Ed today, one million are contingency labor; that's over 70% of today's professors. And many of those do not earn living wages. I myself was earning $1800 per course, no benefits, no healthcare. I do it because I love teaching. Many of us do. But we also need a living wage. And now, two days into the semester, I was fired, although they said they "were rearranging my classes." I had been working there since 2009. I am not particularly unique. A friend right now has been without a job for 3 months now. Another was selling plasma for the summer to make ends meet. A third is now homeless, though she began teaching on Monday... There are thousands of us…

I won’t bore you with the rest of the letter, written in the wee hours of the morning and finally sent at dawn, detailing the history and horrors of the marriage between college and high school, to everyone’s benefit: parents, students, administrators at both high school and college… but what about us? We were expendable. Are expendable.

Though I could never prove it, I am sure they knew about my petition for adjunct justice, which made it another reason they would want to get rid of me: http://signon.org/sign/better-pay-for-adjuncts.fb1?source=c.fb&r_by=426534. Right after they “dismissed” me, too, I kept getting weird email notifications from people looking me up on Academia.edu and other such academic sites, and as far as I could trace, they always led back to my college.  Then I tried to get my materials back, or to get someone to call me back from either the college or the high school. The high school was completely silent. Though I wrote them, they did not answer. I contacted them again, nothing. A third note: I received a terse answer back from the director of the dual credit program stating she was sorry, she wished me well. Pontius Pilate washing his hands off the entire ordeal. On the other side, the college hid behind its draconian contract; you would laugh if it weren’t so sad. Saying its terms are harsh is putting it mildly. In any case, I went on fighting.

I found great friends through the New Faculty Majority; if it hadn’t been for them, I would have gone insane. While one colleague helped me write my first grievance letter against the college, the other stood beside me, still stands beside me (virtually of course!), so that I might get through the next few months.

In this at-will and right-to-work state, no lawyer will take my case. I’ve tried to set up appointments with over 30 of them. With my first, I was so naive; I actually believed he would help me. He made an appointment with me for weeks ahead, told me to pay up front, then we could talk about further payment —pro bono or contingency was definitely on the table— but when I actually met him, after 45 minutes or so, he began to frown at his watch, and I knew he was not seriously even thinking about taking my case. Though he feigned eyeing my petition, when I got up to show him details on his computer, he coughed and said, “Oh no, don’t bother, it’s ok. I can do that later. Really, I feel for you. It’s a sad case. But this is an at-will state. It’s a right-to-work state. We will fight for you, of course, but you need to pay us. We cannot take your case on contingency. We would lose money.” I looked around his plush office, his leather couches, one facing the other, very discreet and sophisticated. I glanced at him reaching for his iPhone once again; we really need to cut this short now, he mumbled. “I’m afraid I will not be able to take your case, after all; I have other appointments.” I stood up graciously, actually smiled at him, and thanked him for his time. Thanked him by God.

After that I told all lawyers upfront I could only pay contingency at most. No one called me back. Some wrote rejection letters, but it was all a failure. The first lawyer I contacted —my “4 am guy” I would say— did hang on the longest. I think he actually felt sorry for me. He actually cared because I flattered his ego in that first long exhaustive missive. But eventually he too decided it was too much for him, and in Texas? No, in Texas you couldn’t get anything done. After all, this was the state where a superintendent could make kids “disappear” from a school system, and no one would call him on it. It took years to get the law to finally take him in (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/education/el-paso-rattled-by-scandal-of-disappeared-students.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0).

So I am on my own now. I’ve gotten really good at writing these grievance letters. I’m on my 5^th. When I write them, I go berserk for a few days, crazy whacked unapproachable cranky. You name it. I cry a lot. I scream. My husband stays clear of me on those days. Sometimes he tries to be supportive, but most times he leaves me be, as he knows I’ll calm down once the writing process is over. Or at least for a bit. But then I begin again, because I need to edit my first draft. And he is my editor, after all. It may be a bad idea to have someone so close share something like this with you, but what else can I do? I trust no one. He’s my worst critic but he’s the best too. He’ll tell me like it is and he’ll fight with me, but he’ll make it better. And so yes, we fight. We scream. I cry. But then, finally, after three, no, four, five, six drafts, it’s over. It is finally over. Complete. Time to mail it out.

Almost $70 later this time around, with a bulking file of return receipts requested, and letters from post offices because the college and the high school never signed the slips —so did they really get them? What else is in that file? Oh, the college never bothered to pick up the mail at all, so the envelope is stamped all over and returned to sender… Will I be slipping more of these unopened letters to my file, or will this time around be any different? Will this letter I just sent be so terse, so strong, so flagrant with indignation that they will finally have to answer me directly? After all, I did call them on the fact that they answered everyone else I placed on the correspondence, yet they neglected to answer the one person the letter was all about, the person who actually wrote to them… Maybe the fact that the Attorney General has a complaint file against them now might make a difference. I do give them the complaint number in the letter… So, what do you think? Well, if they do not answer, at least I will make them squirm.

And tomorrow, tomorrow I will go off like Don Quixote, to tilt my next windmills.

Adjunct, A Post-Ac Poem

This guest post was written by Ana M. Fores Tamayo. Please check out her project Adjunct Justice.  You can sign the petition here.

Adjunct

I am a fake.

Walking through the false tears

Of sand, I bristle at the thorns

Of moon.

I know I am nothing.

I come and go dreaming big dreams of empire

Yet sawdust falls around me

Covering my nestled spine in leprosy.

I used to hover orchids purpled in oblivion.

I would linger softly with loving touch over a book,

Rustling its pages, savoring its letters, its text.

But no longer do they speak to me.

No books no writing no words no people.

They have all left me.

And so I stand alone, thinking myself empty

Visible to none, a shattered vessel

Ruined by a broken pen.

 

November 9, 2012

What Does It Mean to Be Postacademic? A #postac Manifesto

Currer Bell and I collaborated to write this. We welcome your feedback.

Recently, the crises in higher education have sparked numerous discussions regarding academic institutional reform. Many of these conversations have been started by the various stakeholders in academic cultures -- Deans, Regents, tenured and contingent faculty, and current and former graduate students (among others). Also in conversation are those individuals more tangentially related to the academy in alt-ac positions that are affiliated with but peripheral to traditional academic disciplinary structures and organizations.

But what about those who have left the “academy,” literally or psychologically/philosophically? For these individuals, we have taken up the term, “post-ac” or “postacademic.” We feel that there is an important distinction to be made between post-ac and alt-ac, and wish to account for that difference here. In our experience, post-ac is more than just being outside of academia or past one’s academic career: it’s a set of values about, and way of relating to, academia. We envision “postacademic”/”post-ac”/the “postacademic movement” as a separate (but related) phenomenon from alt-ac with its own history and its own momentum. If alt-ac is the good daughter of academe, post-ac is the family’s black sheep--ready to air the dirty laundry in the hopes of shaking up the (damaging and corrupt) status quo.

What Is Alt-ac?

First, we think it's important to articulate our understanding of "alt-ac." We draw primarily on resources linked from the Alt-Academy website, mostly written by Beth Nowviskie. This seems to be the clearinghouse for alt-ac conversations, although we know that some might disagree with or dispute our interpretation of this term. In "Alt-ac in context," Nowviskie writes of alt-ac:

... it's really about an alternative academia, a new imagination for the systems in which we operate.

Nowviskie coined the phrase alt-ac to disrupt the binary thinking in academia, in which there are only two options: valid, academic careers, and invalid "non-academic" careers. She writes in "Two and a Half Cheers for the Lunaticks:"

Too much of the discourse suggested that, beyond tenure-eligible employment, you may either be an adjunct in Limbo (presumed to be seeking a “real” academic job) or someone who has moved beyond the Pale, to a “non-academic” career. “Academic-as-fulltime-faculty” or a “non-academic” everything-else. That was it, that was the message we were giving our grad students. But my own experience was very different — first as a member of UVa’s research faculty (my final title in that role was Senior Research Scientist – perhaps the only one ever with an English PhD) and later in leadership roles in a library, a digital humanities lab, a university-based think-tank, and a number of professional societies – all of which certainly felt to me like academic employment. So, a couple of years ago, I began to see a clear need for a banner (a temporary one, I’ll emphasize) under which to host conversations about the special challenges and opportunities facing humanities scholars who choose to keep their talents within the academy but who work outside the narrow zone for which grad school prepared them.

But Nowviskie goes on to elaborate that in her mind, alt-ac is more than merely about where you find work. It's also about practices and relations to the academic institution. She describes alt-acers as "hybrid humanities scholars" for whom "service was never a dirty word" and collaboration, sometimes messy collaboration, is standard (versus the lone genius in the tower with a candle) ("Alt-ac in context"). Currer and I note the importance of this open source attitude, evidenced by the Alt-academy website, which is a "grassroots, publish-then-filter approach to networked scholarly communication" ("How It Works"). William Pannapacker believes this fresh and flexible approach to academic training is the reason that "alt-ac is the future of the academy."  It should be noted that alt-ac is not synonymous with the Digital Humanities. As Michael Berube has written, the two share similar values and mission and have become the repositories of hope for folks in academia: “The alt-ac discussion also tends to be conflated (reductively and mistakenly) with the DH discussion—that is, the emergence of the digital humanities, onto which, in recent years, we have deposited so many of our hopes and anxieties. Somehow we expect the digital humanities to revolutionize scholarly communication, save university presses, crowdsource peer review, and provide humanities Ph.D.'s with good jobs in libraries, institutes, nonprofits, and innovative start-ups.” (“The Humanities, Unraveled”)

See here and here for more lengthy definitional excursions about what alt-ac means. You may also be interested in this Storify conversation, in which I ask a number of alt and post-academic folks to articulate the difference between alt and post-ac.

Currer and I note that alt-ac is at heart scholarly. It is interested in research, publication, and disciplinary conversation. “Academic” is an active and meaningful identity to an altac person. Alt-acers call themselves “Dr. So and So” and/or identify as academics. Alt-ac has people who identify as “independent scholars.” They maintain CVs. Alt-acers often maintain a research (or R&D) and publication profile, and bring their disciplinary training to bear every day on problem sets of great importance to higher education. ("Alt-ac in context") We also noted that alt-ac conversations often encourage people to finish graduate school and thrive in academia, and to maintain academic activity even if not working on the tenure track. Alt-ac sites/bloggers also invite others to openly share their tips/tricks and “hack” institutional life (e.g. Gradhacker, Profhacker). This seems to be part of the service/open source ethos of alt-ac. To cut through, to a certain extent, the BS.

Alt-acers want to “do academia on their own terms” (Brenda, comment on “Are Post-Ac Bloggers...” at Mama Nervosa). Alt-ac is minimally concerned with the “wholly non-academic (what-color-is-your-parachute, maybe-should-have-gotten-an-MBA) job” (Nowviskie on Prof Hacker). Yet there is an emerging interest in academic entrepreneurship, which expands the definition of “academic” in an interesting way, but also calls into question the parameters that bound alt-ac. (See here as well.) What about people employed at for-profit schools? Are they alt-ac? What if you write novels after leaving grad school, like Barbara Kingsolver: is she alt-ac because she draws on her science graduate work when she crafts fiction? Where does alt-ac end and post-ac begin?

Currer and I feel like there are some problematic hierarchies at work within alt-ac that might reproduce the same marginalization and inequality that already plagues traditional relations in the academy. This is especially concerning when we consider that alt-ac conversations take place in graduate departments across the country, as frustrated faculty frantically try to find places for their graduates to go after the degree. Often, alt-ac careers -- Special Collections librarian, grant writing, adjuncting -- are the only alternatives to faculty work mentioned to graduate students by their advisors and mentors who do not know/understand life outside the academy.

Who is Alt Ac?

And here we mean more than just who "counts" as an alternative academic, but who is doing the talking about Alt-ac. Who are the alt-ac pros?

Alt-ac includes people with academic backgrounds who now work in “alternative” academic careers (Alt-academy says “off the tenure track but within the academic orbit”). Many proponents of the alt-ac mission hold advanced degrees and have prestigious appointments in traditional academic departments (e.g. Beth Nowviskie, Director of Digital Scholarship), in unique centers or projects housed in traditional institutions of higher learning and affiliated cultural institutions; but many are also adjuncts, grad students, or part-timers.

Alt-Ac is peopled with current graduate students who plan to finish their degrees and seek vocations in institutions of higher learning, or other legitimate and related cultural institutions, but do not plan to apply for or work as tenure-track faculty.

Where is Alt Ac?

And by this we are wondering where these conversations are occurring and how people access the alt-ac world. As we perused articles and websites devoted to alt-ac, we noticed that it is primarily in the academy. It is in universities and sanctioned satellite cultural institutions, such as libraries and museums, but it is primarily in institutions of higher education. Alt-ac conversations take place on websites hosted by institutions of higher education. Alt-ac conversations take place at conventions hosted by traditional academic entities, e.g. MLA 2013 featured panels about alt-ac careers for humanities scholars.

Alt-ac conversations take place on the internet in the form of career path advice websites such as Versatile PhD and #Alt-academy, both of which originated as institutionally sponsored projects (VersatilePhD originated as WRK4US, a listserv affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and hosted by Duke U, and#Alt-academy is affiliated with a think tank and hosted by NYU’s Digital Library). Both are open to the public (except some parts of Versatile PhD, which require institutional affiliation and subscription). Alt-ac is all over twitter as well.

What Reform Does Alt-Ac Seek?

From our reading, we created this list of reform actions that we feel the alt-ac community generally supports. Reform that:

• Improves the working conditions of adjuncts as an issue of pressing importance to the future of higher ed, and as an issue that addresses troubling class/labor divisions among tenured faculty, contingent faculty, and staff/service “alternative” academics.


• Transforms graduate education to prepare grad students with more skills for work beyond tenured professorhood. (see for example)
  Opens up the academy, breaks down barriers between the ivory tower and the real world, encourages cross-disciplinary collaboration and conversation. Interested in democratizing knowledge. See for example Visible Margin, a publication of Alt-academy. Alt-ac is willing to acknowledge messy process and the pain of transformation.


• Transforms disciplinary conversations to broaden the application of their theories and concepts beyond traditional academic genres and roles. Alt-acers maintain a strong grounding in their home disciplines and seek to expand what is legitimately embraced in academic conversations (example: “The National Endowment for the Humanities’ Office of Digital Humanities currently features projects that employ mapping, transcription, and augmented reality technologies to make research in textual fields like history and literature more accessible to researchers and non-researchers alike.  Also see “Who We Are” at Alt-academy.

As already noted, Alt-ac is seen by some as the “future” of the academy. The academy will become alt-ac.

In contrast, we offer the following working explication of post-ac as distinct from alt-ac in definition, population, and practice.

 

What is Post-Ac?
At its most basic, post-ac is departure from the academy, either by choice or force. This is the most common definition of post-ac, the most literal take on what it means.   But we think post-ac is more complex than this. Post-ac is a separate movement, perhaps developing from, alt-ac discussions. See here for a rough timeline of these movements.

Post-ac can be both a refusal or an inability to engage with the academy. Post-acs opt out or get shut out. Post-ac is at heart a state of disillusionment.

Post-ac is an identity or way of identifying in relation to the institution of academia, and a belief that the current system is flawed, cruel, unsustainable, and therefore impossible to directly engage with (probably other adjectives could be included here). Lauren once wrote:

I see alt-ac mostly for grad students who plan to stay, selling them the notion that staying is wise and there are options that they can learn to love as much as they loved the fantasy of being a professor. This feels markedly different from the conversations in the post-ac blogging world, which are about breaking with the academy. Our pain is disjuncture from the identity that I think alt-ac is trying to maintain and expand. Our topics and methods feel similar, but our projects feel different.

For many post-acers, post-ac means being “over” academia. It is an identity characterized by completely divorcing oneself and one’s identity as an adult away from academia, as a thinker/writer/worker, away from the academy. (see Jen Polk, Amanda Krauss) Life eventually goes on for post-acers, although the academic experience is indelibly a part of who we are now. However, we claim/practice our academic identity differently than alt-acers. Post-ac makes clear that academia or higher ed is a place of work just like every other place of work. It shouldn't be exalted as a special place, as a place devoid of conflict or problems, or as an ideal. When the academy is demystified, leaving it or staying in it become less charged choices.

Post-ac is primarily interested in helping the academically disenfranchised move on with life. Post-ac is focused on vocation inasmuch as you need an income to have shelter and food. Post-ac is interested in helping people find any job that can help them be healthy and financially solvent, and eventually a career path (whatever it may be, we don’t judge) that might even be fulfilling. That a post-acer may end up working in an alt-ac capacity is incidental to that person’s particular skillset and desires; we believe that it is possible to work in alt-ac but “be” post-ac. (Lauren, for example, does not consider herself alt-ac although she does work in an alt-ac capacity.) Post-ac is interested in issues of personal life and identity as well as vocational prospects. Post-ac is less concerned with “refashioning academic identity” as it is in helping people move on from their academic experience and build a new life and identity that is not centered around vocation or institutional affiliation. This is a hard process, and we acknowledge a lot of pain. Post-ac acknowledges the enormity of the crisis of un- and underemployment for grad students. Post-ac places a higher premium on being able to pay your bills than on CV lines. Post-ac is interested in survival. Post-ac has no shame about corporate employment, welfare, “selling out,” or the need to talk about dollars and cents when it comes to jobs and debt. Post-ac does not care if you finish grad school or not, and does not share productivity tips or talk about surviving the dissertation. Post-ac is a critique of the academy, its mythology, and its structure.

Post-ac discourages people from pursuing graduate work.

Post-ac no longer feels that school is an answer to many of life’s problems. We are skeptical that institutions will be able to fully address the reform needs of students.

We have a hunch that the future of rich, intellectual conversations might exist outside of institutions or conventions that cost hundreds of dollars. Maybe the future exists on some kind of information superhighway filled with smart people. Maybe.

And we're kinda hoping to reduce application and enrollment in graduate study a la Pannapacker. (Is Pannapacker post-ac? We think so. Is Berube? Maybe!)

Like alt-ac, post-ac wants to demystify the workings of academia and debunk myths about academic life. We hope to expose the flaws and negativity that exist within current academic insitutions, genres, processes, and relations, and opens the conversation about academia to include negative, dissatisfying, discouraging, sobering, emotional topics.

Where Do Post-Ac Conversations Take Place? Where does Post-Ac exist?
Post-ac is primarily ex (outside) the institutions of academia. It is on personal blogs of people who have left academia. It does not have access to institutional journals. Post-ac did not have a panel at MLA.

Who Is Post-Ac?
Grad school quittas.
People who hold advanced degrees but have not pursued academic employment.
People who hold advanced degrees and tried to secure academic employment but were unable to.
People who adjuncted and then quit.
VAPs and profs who bailed on academic life.

Some individuals who are currently in the academy -- administrators, faculty, and graduate students -- but dissatisfied with its current state and are actively seeking reform might consider themselves post-ac.

Post-acers may or may not maintain a strong allegiance to their home disciplines, and may not feel a strong need to talk about their fields of former study much once they’ve abandoned them. Although obviously all post-acers draw on their graduate education to find employment, and in their daily lives, they are not preoccupied with the synergy between academia and the real world, or their regular jobs.

Post-acers do not typically  identify as academics, use their official designations (PhD, Dr.), or call themselves “independent scholars.” They may go on to craft an identity (not just a career) that is completely removed from their former life as an academic. Some may call themselves “recovering” or “ex-academics.” If you’re recovering from academia, you’re probably post-ac.

Post-Ac is Interested In Reform That:

• Encourages people to look beyond the tenure track, but also beyond institutions of learning, for meaningful work.


• Is practical and serves the needs of graduate students, not the needs of faculty, departments, or schools.


• Improves working conditions for adjuncts but also encourages people to quit adjuncting.

Because we're writing this history as it happens, we know this may change over time, that these movements might merge or diverge more than they do now. But we think it's important to note that post-ac and alt-ac are not completely synonymous. We hope folks will chime in and add their perspective to this conversation!

A Brief, Working History of the Alt-Ac and Post-Academic Movements

This timeline originally appeared on my blog, Mama Nervosa, on 12.27.2012. This version includes a few additions to the first version of the timeline.

As the humanities unravel, as alt-ac gains steam as "the future of the academy," as our stat counter registers more and more hits from folks distressed, disillusioned, and desperate in their post-academic lives, I've felt like there's more need to articulate the relationship of our website, or more accurately, of the post-academic movement with the rest of the crisis in higher ed. I've been putting together a timeline that I think traces the roots and chronology of the modern "post-academic movement." Currer and I are working on a post that more fully fleshes out what it means to be post-academic (versus alt-academic, or whatever) because we feel like being "post-ac" is it's own thing, it's own branch on this baobab tree of higher ed, grad school, culture, time, history, etc.

I believe that "post-academic" can be used an umbrella term that indicates the counter-academic movement within and without institutions broadly: critiques of academia from within (institutional critiques, etc), including concerns about labor structure, grad student exploitation/experience/professionalization, and the contingent faculty movements that have sprung up; and the proliferation of post-academic, ex-academic, and anti-academic blogs and advice books outside the academy. Not that these are equivalent in terms of impact, but more that they're concurrent. I'm connecting dots here. I believe alt-ac and post-ac share the same roots, but are now diverging in key ways (that Currer and I will get to shortly). But this timeline traces those shared roots and tries to highlight key events/moments/ideas. Please feel free to submit additions in the comments or via email (lauren.nervosa@gmail.com)

 

1967

• Doctor of Arts programs established -- programs briefly flourish, then precipitously fade in the early 90s (seems related because it is a reformed doctoral degree focusing on teaching and application of research).

1960s-90s

• Process theory gains momentum in composition classrooms. This is significant, IMO, in that it generates some serious cognitive dissonance in the academy, and those effects are borne out through the practices of graduate students.


• Foucault. Come on.

1987

• The Wyoming Conference Resolution opposing unfair employment/pay practices for post-secondary English teachers (that is, comp instructors and TAs).

1993

• Susan Miller writes Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition, which is significant IMO because it (a) uses cultural studies to study the institution itself (b) furthers a conversation about hierarchies and exploitation within institutions and departments and (c) talks about how grad students/teachers are complicit in their own exploitation. (There are many other important publications like this. This is the one I could remember off the top of my head.)

1993-2003

• Preparing Future Faculty project (seems related because it focuses on professional preparation for academics.)

1994

• Cary Nelson and Michael Berube write "Graduate Education is Losing Its Moral Base," which stated that grad programs had largely become labor mills to teach undergrads, and pointed out the perilous job market for PhDs.

1997

• A number of "leaving academia" websites spring up.


• I think that Beyond the Ivory Tower becomes a fixture in The Chronicle at some point in the late 90s -- will have to follow up on that.


• Phinished board created with goal of providing peer-to-peer support for folks struggling in academia.


• Piled Higher and Deeper comic founded.

1998

• MLA President Elaine Showalter promotes alt-ac careers at that year's conference and is met with some serious backlash from the grad student caucus at the time, led by Marc Bousquet and William Pannapacker. Michael Berube writes, "Both, in different ways, have come to regard the enterprise as a shell game, and both, 15 years ago, construed Showalter's call as a disingenuous suggestion that people who had trained for a decade to be humanists could suddenly switch gears and become secretaries and screenwriters."

1999

• Paula Chambers founds the WRK4US listserv, which served humanities and social science graduate students in career changes. (See 2010 below.)

• RateMyProfessor.com founded

2000

• Re-envisioning the PhD project founded with goals of improving transparency, suggesting reform, and revamping doctoral education in the US.


• The Responsive PhD project founded to enhance transparency, improve public engagement, and promote diversity in doctoral education. Concluded 2006 with "goals achieved."

2000s

• Composition starts to come into its own right as a discipline by becoming everything it hates (ok, that's an exaggeration). But still, comp starts to feel its own cognitive dissonance as it gains institutional prestige and all the markings of legitimacy (departments! offices! tenure lines! a zillion conferences and journals with parentheses and slashes in the titles!) but continues to focus on vexing issues of racism, sexism, class, oppression, and exploitation in institutionalized practices and hidden pedagogy.


• Marc Bousquet presents "The Excrement Theory of Graduate Education" at MLA (later published as "The Waste Product of Graduate Education" in 2002), which argued that degree-holding graduate students are the waste product of higher education.

2001

• So What Are You Going To Do With That?, a guide for MAs and PhDs looking for careers outside academia, published.

2003

• Scholarly Communication Institute founded, which eventually makes graduate education reform a primary focus (in 2011).

2004

• CLIR post-doc in academic librarianship founded.

2005

• Rate Your Students blog founded, and stories of academic discontent abound.


• Anne Whisnant (under nom de plumme Natalie Henderson) writes "Questioning the Promise" in the Chronicle:

Is there a chance that the alternative-careers movement (which in many ways I laud and admire) has unwittingly sold humanities Ph.D.'s yet another professional pipe dream? Could it be that all of us -- both those still "in" academe (that is, in the professoriate) and those in the nonacademic realm -- still share a misguided optimism about the marketability of a humanities Ph.D.?

2009

• William Pannapacker's Just Don't Go appears in the Chronicle, followed up by part 2 in March.


• Adventures in (Post) Gradland blog founded.


• New Faculty Majority founded.


• #Alt-Academy founded.

2010

• Postacademic blog founded by Arnold Pan and Caroline Roberts


• Worst Professor Ever blog founded by Amanda Krauss


• WRK4US becomes VersatilePhD, a website for post-academics to identify and prepare for non-academic careers


• MLA President Sidonie Smith delivers speech about restructuring humanities doctoral programs and revamping the dissertation.

2011

• From Grad School to Happiness blog founded by JC.


• MLA President Russell Berman writes essay about restructuring humanities doctoral programs by cutting time to completion in half.


• SCI turns its focus to graduate education reform.


• AHA President Anthony Grafton announces that alternative employment will no longer be the "plan B" for historians.

2012

• The Adjunct Project founded.


• Mama Nervosa and Project Reinvention founded, among many many many others (see sidebar, I think over half are new within the last year).


• MLA President Michael Berube writes essay(s!) and delivers speech about restructuring humanities doctoral programs and revamping the dissertation. Argues that wholesale change is required and fixing or tweaking one aspect of grad education won't solve this problem (please see his comments on a former post).
  


• Russell Berman and other faculty follow through with his recommendations by encouraging Stanford humanities departments to make time to completion 5 years.

2013

• M. Berube sums up the crisis in "Humanities Unraveled," remarking that the alt-ac challenge is a good place to start with grad program reform, but also worrying that programs at the forefront of reform are also most vulnerable as investment in humanities programs drops more and more.

 Other bloggers or armchair institutional historians, please chime in with your start dates or other significant contributions. Crowdsource this, people!