How Do You Leave Academia? Part I

One story about how it's done...plus a fall preview

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

Hi everyone,

I’ll start by saying that, if you like your job and aren’t interested in my backstory, you can probably skip this post (but scroll down to the announcement at the end, just for fun). But if you’re a grad student on the market, or contingent faculty, or have a tenure-line job but are miserable, maybe there’s something helpful in here for you.

This time of year, people start saying things to me like “you give me hope that there’s life outside of academia.” Or “it’s amazing to see someone with a PhD that’s actually HAPPY with what they’re doing.” Or, my favorite, “I don’t get how you actually make money for what you’re doing, but….that’s cool I guess.” Over the next few weeks, I thought I’d write three pieces, along with my usual writing posts, about my path from the tenure track to where I am now.

Get me outta here….

As most of you know, I left my job as chair of a political science department at a SLAC in the midwest once I realized that I simply couldn’t keep working 65 hours a week in the middle of the pandemic with three little kids thousands of miles away from our families.

At this time, early in the Great Resignation, I didn’t really know anyone who had gotten tenure and then walked away, so I really went through the process of making things up as went along.

Today, these things are true: 1) This year I will earn close to double the amount of money I did as an associate professor; 2) I like 100% of the people I work with; 3) I feel intellectually engaged every day; 4) I live exactly where I want to live; 5) my schedule allows me to pick my kids up from school, stay home when they’re sick, and chaperone field trips; and 6) because of 1-5 I feel very little anxiety. Here’s how I got there.

Step One: Mapping my skills

When I knew I wanted to leave, I struggled a little bit to think about what I was good at. Academia is really bad about is helping us articulate what we're actually doing - everything just falls into "teaching" "research" "service," silos, without differentiating what skills you’re using or how to quantify the impact besides h-indices and other metrics no one cares about.

I started keeping a long list of all the stuff I did, breaking things down into as many pieces as possible (so for one research project, I managed a team, trained and onboarded members, conducted a lit review, designed a research protocol etc.... when you do a program review you manage a team, meet with stakeholders, engage in strategic planning, craft evaluation metrics etc...) I did this again last week actually, adding to my list everything I did graduate school and what skills I acquired because of it.

Step Two: Coming up with a passion plan

Not only did that process give me language for my resume and cover letters, but it also helped me to disaggregate what I liked doing from what I didn't like doing. It didn’t take me long to realize that the very core of what I wanted to do was to help people write books. I wanted to talk to them about book writing (coaching), read their books and help them make those books better (developmental editing), and then make the book sound pretty (stylistic editing) and then help them get the book published (more coaching/book proposal editing). Unlike a lot of people I've always felt pretty interdisciplinary and like I didn't have a lane to stay in, so I was happy doing most non-technical things. 

I also knew I needed to diversify beyond that. An easy way was to just add articles and other academic materials to the list of what I would happily edit. I also kept brainstorming what I didn’t like. I HATE asking people for money, so I didn't want to apply for anything that involved grant writing, but I love helping people get money, so I'm always happy to review grants for other people. I get anxious about the nitty-gritty of event planning, so I didn't want to do anything like that, but I do like facilitating workshops, so I didn't mind hosting faculty development and writing retreats. 

I also thought a lot about the cadence I wanted for my life. I have three little kids, so I wanted to be able to be the flexible parent (after six years of my husband playing that role). I wanted to be able to work on a variety of medium-term projects at once--I didn't want one client taking up most of my time, but I also didn't want to have dozens of one-and-done relationships. So I was willing to have moderate risk built in so I could avoid getting bored but also build relationships with people. 

Finally, I thought about how much interaction I wanted to have with other people (lol). I knew I didn't want to be in an office 9-5 or anything close to that. I also didn't want to never talk to other human beings. Some balance of coaching/ consulting/ facilitating and editing helped me balance that. 

Step Three: Feeling qualified

Like any good academic, once I decided these things, I knew I needed to take myself to school and get my credentials in order. I knew a lot intuitively, but also wanted some formal training as well. I joined the Editorial Freelancer’s Association, started working my way through their professional development courses. I earned a certificate in proofreading, and took an incredibly helpful Developmental Editing for Academics course. I also started doing what I thought of as cross training, attending webinars and listening to podcasts about things like fiction editing and how to get an agent for your poetry collection because I wanted to understand the broader landscape of the writing world.

Finally, I also reached out to everyone I’d ever edited stuff for (which was a shockingly long list of people, really—so much of this was built into my day job before it became my full-time job.) and asked them to write testimonials, which they all graciously did.

I figured out Squarespace, built a website, took a deep breath, and emailed everyone I knew, telling them the exciting news about my new business…..

Step Four: Living the dream….kind of

I’m starting my third academic year of this being my exclusive job, and it’s not always perfect (which is what my next post on this topic will be about). But every time a job post crosses my desk, or someone talks with me about working full time again, I do a gut check that reaffirms that this is exactly what I want to be doing right now.

So this summer, ask yourself: do I love what I’m doing? If not, start mapping out skills and dreaming about what life could be like—even outside of academia.

A Fall Preview

A little while ago I asked you to fill out a quick survey about what the writing world needs more of. Overwhelmingly, people said two things: a private accountability group, and more writing challenges.

SO: this fall, I am going to combine these needs into small group coaching sessions with 5-7 people. For three months, we’ll meet together weekly in a small group. We’ll set goals for the semester, and then hold each other accountable while we work toward those goals. I’ll have more details to come, but if this sounds like something you might be interested, in stay tuned! We’ll start in September.

I hope your summer is off to a wonderful start!

Keep writing,

Kelly