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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