What is the "Right" Postacademic Job?

Crossposted from JC's blog.

As you may have just read (and if not, go read it now!), my fellow post-academic and co-editor Kathleen has landed herself a new fulltime job working for an online university! She will be working with and mentoring university students, teaching a few online classes, and will be staying in the geographic location that she is currently living in without having to relocate. Oh, and it will also pay her a generous full-time salary with benefits. Yayyyyy Kathleen!!

(Because I feel like I should say this: I know what school she will be working for, and it's not one of the "diploma mill" online schools that are often criticized. Though for reasons that I will outline below, I wouldn't care if it was ... because I firmly believe that any nonacademic job is a valid choice for people who leave academia.)

So, the other night when Kathleen emailed Lauren and me to tell us about her new job, she was a little worried that she would be considered a "postacademic impostor" once she announced her new job: that she would be criticized for not taking the "right" kind of postacademic job (because online universities have come under fire lately from folks in academia and postacademia), or that taking a job that involved teaching and mentoring was not far enough outside of traditional academia to truly qualify as a postacademic job.

As I told Kathleen last week, I don't agree with that assessment at all. And thinking about that conversation has actually motivated me to write my first blog post in a long, long time.

I've been out of academia for nearly three years now, and the postacademic blogosphere and world have changed considerably during that time. Most of that shift has been wonderful - we are getting national press coverage and having public conversations about leaving academia, and the decision to leave is losing a lot of its stigma and the people who do it are being brought out of the shadows.

But along with the growing visibility of the postacademic blogosphere, I've also noticed a not-so-great shift in the types of conversations we're having.

The postacademic blogosphere used to be primarily about how individual bloggers were leaving academia without a net or a guide, and about their success (or lack thereof) at finding some job - any job - that would help them fully break free from academia's totalitarian culture and strict guidelines for what was acceptable. We had popular postacademic bloggers who worked as temps, as secretaries, as office managers, and even those who were unemployed for a while as they tried to find a new job. But we supported each other, and we reassured each other, and we talked about how even our not-so-glamorous jobs were terrific in comparison to adjuncting! And that our stable jobs (no matter what they were!) were better than begging for graduate funding every year while we took multiple futile stabs at the academic job market. At that time, leaving was the end goal for postacademics. It didn't matter what you did next, as long as you broke free of academia.

In contrast, today's postac blogsophere has been more focused on scathing critiques of higher education and academia, and on profiles of successful people who have left academia and are well-established in new careers. I think that these types of pieces are certainly useful for new postacademics to read (scathing critiques abound in my archives, of course!), but this new focus has left a noticeable hole in the blogosphere. The highly personal, individual stories about the struggles and ups and downs of individual people as they are initially leaving academia and trying to find some stable footing elsewhere are all but missing in today's postacademic world. (Though such stories abound in our e-book, which can be bought here or here!)

That's understandable, to a point - as postacademia becomes more public, the types of conversations that we have will change. But to tie this back to my conversation with Kathleen--in which she worried that her new job meant that she was "doing postacademia wrong"--I worry that the absence of stories about the struggles and hard decisions that many postacs go through as they leave may inadvertently make future academic leavers feel anxious or apprehensive. If new postacs don't know what kind of career they want after they leave, is that okay? Because most of what they will read in today's blogosphere is about people leaving and landing awesome, elite, PhD-level jobs.

Similarly, if they don't land a perfect, academically-approved postac job right away, are they doing postacademia right? If they wind up temping for a little while as they figure out what comes next, should they feel like failures? If they get a good job with a generous salary and benefits in an industry that other postacademics are criticizing publicly, should they stay quiet because it's not a "good" job??

I worry that if postacademia continues to highlight only the biggest postac successes, they will be inadvertently ignoring people whose paths out of academia aren't quite as blessed. And in turn, I worry that we may be doing a disservice to the people who will be looking to the postac blogosphere for advice in the future, especially if they don't know exactly what they want to do next. (You know...people like Kathleen and me, 2-3 years ago.)

So in today's shifting postacademic blogsophere, I want to be clear about something that I believe with every fiber of my being (and that I do believe most postacademics believe, for the record): short of contract killing or drug trafficking, there are no "good" or "bad" postacademic jobs. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to do postacademia. 

In order to do postacademia "right" (according to me), you need to find a job that fulfills two goals: (1) one that pays you enough money so that you can live a stable life, and (2) one in which your employer treats you better than how folks are treated in the worst aspects of academia.

Those are the goals you should be focused on. You shouldn't be wasting your time thinking about whether you're getting the "right" job (according to your former academic colleagues or according to what you read in an interview with a successful postac that one time). Just find a job that breaks you from traditional academia and that lets you live a stable adult life.

Goal #1 will vary based on your individual circumstances. Maybe you have a big savings account already or a wealthy partner, so you can afford to work sporadic, one-off jobs after you leave. Or maybe you have a well-paying academic job that you don't despise, so you decide to hang out in grad school or in your faculty job until you land the perfect nonacademic career you're dreaming of.

Great!! Good postacademic-ing! Keep on looking for that job you really want!

But some people can't hold out for that dream job. Maybe they can only find academic work as an adjunct or on a one-year VAP post across the country, and they need more money and stability than that. Maybe they have kids, or a mortgage, or student loans...whatever it is, their situation is not sustainable in academia. They need to leave now, and can't afford to keep adjuncting (or freelancing part-time or interning for no pay) until their perfect job appears.

So for those people - and I want to be very, very clear about this - taking any job that offers financial stability is a wonderful postacademic move.

Even if you are working for the most soul-sucking, nasty, for-profit corporation in the world, you are doing postacademia right. Because you have broken from academia and you are making ends meet, and you have therefore given yourself the freedom to pay your bills and think about what comes next for you, career- and life-wise. Maybe you will land a "better" career at the perfect nonprofit think tank you've always dreamed of next. If so, great! But the point is - if you don't, that's great too! Because you are a successful postacademic at the very moment that you break free from academia.

You have removed desperation from the equation. You're no longer frantically wondering if the academic job market is going to come through for you, or what you're going to do if it doesn't. You're no longer eyeing the impending cancellation date for your graduate or VAP health insurance and wondering how the hell you are going to pay for a new plan when you may have no salary if another institution doesn't pick you up. And you're no longer researching how long it will take you to get food stamps for your kids if you find out in June that your adjunct contract won't be renewed for the following year. You are outside of the traditional academic structure and now you can look forward and figure out what comes next.

And this brings me around to goal #2 - how do you know whether your new postac job is "good enough" for postacademia?

In my opinion...if your new job treats you well (however you define that) and your job title is not "Professor," you are a postacademic success story. No matter where you work.

Any job that gives you whatever benefits you, personally, need (on top of a solid salary) is better than the worst aspects of academia, in which you're expected to work for any amount of pay and any crappy benefits that an academic institution is willing to charitably bestow upon you.

Any job that does not demand that you have to suck it up and move to a geographic location in which you don't want to live (and that you are told to be grateful for, because there are 1000 people who would love to be in your shoes!!) is better than the worst aspects of academia.

Any job for which being fired or laid off would qualify you for unemployment benefits is better than the worst aspects of academia.

Any industry that hires year-round, rather than during the same four-month schedule every year (and too bad for you if you need a job in May!), is better than the worst aspects of academia. Bonus points if your interview for said job took place in an office, rather than on a hotel bed.

Any job where you're treated like an employee rather than an indentured servant who should be grateful for the opportunity is better than the worst aspects of academia. I don't care what industry you're working in or what your job title is ... if academia is forcing you to live in poverty or to be utterly miserable, any other job is an upgrade from that.

So my job at a consulting firm (with fulltime salary and benefits in the town that I want to live in, on a contract that has no foreseeable end) qualifies as a postacademic job, and a success. Kathleen's new job as a mentor/instructor at an online university (with fulltime salary and benefits in the town that she wants to live in with a contact that has no foreseeable end) qualifies as a successful postacademic job. My friend who works at a research center at our old university (with the same benefits as above) is a successful postacademic. The secretarial job that the old blogger Recent Ph.D. got after she left academia (fulltime salary, benefits, city she liked, indefinite contract) made her a successful postacademic.

Every one of those people is a successful postacademic because they have found something better than they could get in academia. The point is not what your job title is or what your qualifications are, but that you are refusing to play by academia's batshit rules anymore. You are declaring yourself as a qualified and educated adult who deserves some stability and a living wage. And once you have that, you are a successful postacademic.

So if you find that stability and a living wage in a teaching/mentoring position without the title of "professor," then that's great! Good postacademic-ing! If you find that in a secretarial job, then that's great! If you find it in a freelance or entrepreneurial career, then that's great! High-five!

Because no one - NO ONE - who leaves academia should feel bad about the type of job that they get. (Again, unless they are becoming a contract killer. If you are doing that, you should feel bad.)

The point of postacademia isn't getting a certain type of socially-approved job. It's about breaking free of academia's bullshit rules and of getting yourself a sustainable adult life.

So no matter what kind of postacademic job you get, be proud of yourself. I sure am.

#MovingOnPostAc E-BOOK AVAILABLE NOW, ALL FORMATS, $2.99!

 

We are thrilled to announce that Moving On: Essays on the Aftermath of Leaving Academia has now been released!! We've been working on this book for a year and are excited to share these wonderful stories with everyone interested in the experience of leaving academia.

Here is the link to where you can purchase the book on Amazon for your Kindle, or simply to read in your browser via Amazon.

Here is the link for all other formats, via Kobo.

The e-book is $2.99, and costs go towards publication expenses and site maintenance. We priced it as low as possible to make sure it's available to anyone, even us brokeass ex-grads. It would also make a great gift to anyone you know going through this.

If and when you read the book, please leave a review on Amazon. THANK YOU for your support of our project and for your support of all post-academics.

If and when you read the book, please use hashtag #MovingOnPostAc to share your thoughts!

"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!

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!

Seeking Contributors to Post-Ac E-book and Website

If you've always wanted to share your story of academia; written a post-academic/alt-blog; or benefited from the blog posts you've found here, mama nervosa, From Grad School to Happiness, Project Reinvention, or Ruminations: Life After Academia (and countless other post-ac sites), we want you to join the conversation! 

We plan for this website to be a "one stop shop" for people in the process of leaving academia. We're interested in short, friendly, advice articles on different aspects of leaving. If you have something in mind, please contact us at the emails below. We are also seeking contributions for our e-book on leaving academia. See CFP (har har!) below.

Moving On: Personal Stories of Leaving Academia (tentatively titled)

Have you left academia? Or are you currently in the process of leaving? Share your story!

As post-academic bloggers, we know firsthand that there is a desire for stories that explore more than just the career aspects of leaving the ivory tower. People want to know how, when, and why you quit; emotional issues related to quitting; and examples of post-academic success. We envision this book as a source of advice and support for readers who have quit graduate school before getting their Ph.D., people leaving academia even after they have finished their degrees, and people who are adjuncting or working in academia who are looking to leave. Many stories of the post-academic transition have been told on personal blogs and websites, including our blogs and web site www.howtoleaveacademia.com (forthcoming), but this is the first collection has been organized to speak directly to people’s experiences leaving academia.

We’re looking for thoughtful, personal pieces (non-fiction or creative non-fiction) that tell a story or develop a theme related to the process of quitting academia. Like any good paper, the essay should have a core thesis or concept that you’re exploring through your writing. We prefer submissions that are relatively jargon-free and more casual in writing style. Your essay can be any length, with a general goal of 5-10 pages double spaced (but we’ll consider shorter or longer!).

If you have poetry, art, or other (digitized) creative work that explores these themes, we’d be interested in that, too.

This collection will focus primarily on what happened after you quit; thus, we are not interested in treatises about the failures of grad school or the problems in higher education. You’re welcome to explore the reasons and circumstances under which you left, but please continue the narrative forward from there. You can be as anonymous as you like, although please include enough detail that the reader can be drawn into your story. We invite you to explore the messiness, difficulty, and contradictions in the quitting process. Not every story has a happy ending, and that’s OK. We encourage submissions on any of these topics, as well as proposals for essays that explore any gaps between them:

• How, when, and why you left academia: hopes/expectations versus realities in grad school, specific incidents/anecdotes, the job market, what you wish you’d known.


• Emotional dimensions of leaving -- loss or changes of identity, “deprogramming” from academic thought, relationship difficulties and transformations, isolation, mental/physical health issues, joys and new discoveries, family issues, etc.


• Career Transitions: Teaching stories, writing stories, stories of how you discovered a new vocation/path.


• Alt-Ac Careers, Adjuncting -- Life on campus when you’re not a prof or student, changes in relationships with “the academy.”


• Success Stories: how quitting changed your life for the better, how happy you are, how glad you are to be gone.


• Failure stories: screwing up, falling down, awful jobs, bad experiences, floundering, despair.

If you want to share a simpler or more straightforward story of your post-academic journey, please consider submitting to the website (email Lauren or Currer at the addresses below and specify that your submission is for the website).

Timeline:
250 word abstracts due: Feb 1st
Goal of getting back to accepted folks mid-February
Final essays due: April 1st
Goal of publication by graduation in May 2013! :)

Email submissions with “E-Book Submission” in the subject line to Lauren at lauren.nervosa@gmail.com or Currer at projectreinvention12@gmail.com  by Feb 1 2013.