More Lives to Live (Part 1)

Before I joined the Peace Corps I wrote a piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education (which I've posted somewhere on this blog) about my reasons for leaving. I am working on a follow up piece and thought I would post it here in installments as a way of motivating me to write. The title is still undecided, although I am leaning towards "More Lives to Live," a line from the last chapter of Walden ,where Thoreau explains why he left Walden Pond (Perhaps I had several more lives to live and could not waste any more time on this one").



MORE LIVES TO LIVE

Remember me? When last we met, I had taken a leave of absence from my tenured position in order to serve a two year mission in China with the Peace Corps. Since I talked at some length in the original article about my reasons for my temporary exodus from academia, I won’t review the details here except to say that at its core it involved nothing more or less than the fact that after fifteen years I had grown bored with university life. Another detail from the original essay worth repeating is that there was an implied commitment on my part to return to teaching at the end of my time in China and on the university’s part to take me back. Despite this mutual agreement, I confess I felt less than fully obligated to return to my old job, in part because I knew the administration would be happy to see me gone and in part because I was fairly confident my department would have no trouble replacing me. I mean, hiring a new philosopher is not exactly like spotting a minority at a tea bagger rally—in fact, it’s more like finding the crazy person among all the tea baggers. So morally if not legally, I felt little pressure to return. Financially, it was another matter. And so it was that after two years, having no other prospects and insufficient savings, I opted to reenter the life I had left behind what now seemed like a lifetime ago.

Almost immediately I was certain I had made a mistake. A big mistake. Worse than the time I had put a deposit on the cartload of Chicago Cubs World Series paraphernalia I was going to make a fortune selling on ebay. My entire being cried out: “This is wrong. You are not supposed to be here.” Of course, I may have just been hearing the echo from my Dean’s office. In any case, I knew I faced a choice. I would either have to quiet the voice, put my head down and finish my working days as an academic or make a complete break by the end of the year. In truth, it wasn’t all bad. After living on $150 a month for two years, it was nice to have a steady income again. The short term financial boon, however, was little comfort in the face of the impending existential crisis.

For the first couple of months I essentially did nothing about the situation, simply rented an apartment, taught classes and went about my life like nothing had happened. Perhaps part of me was hoping that the overwhelming feeling that I had to get out of there would fade and I would be able to slide seamlessly back into the comfortable life of an academic (and make no mistake, no matter how much anyone complains, it is a very comfortable life). Of course, this worked about as well as ignoring the hacking cough that won’t go away or the mysterious lump that continues to grow. Once spiritual symptoms of this magnitude occur, they generally don’t disappear on their own. And so it wasn’t long before I could delay no longer; it was time to act.
When I did decide to do something about my condition one of the first places I turned to was the Chronicle in general and in particular the forum “leaving academia.” Be warned, however, this is not the cheeriest of chat rooms, and probably ranks right below “cancer patients who have been involved in disfiguring car accidents during their bankruptcies” in the upbeat nature of its participants. There were few success stories. Worse, there were even fewer strategies that seemed applicable to my circumstances. Many of those who dropped out of the game had another family member to support them, or they were very early in their careers. I came across only a few tenured faculty with my length of experience who had decided to throw in the towel. That fact alone did not bode well for my prospects.

Among those who were similarly situated a few had switched into administration, which was a non-starter for me. Not only was it akin to going over to the dark side. More importantly, it did not offer the sort of radical change I felt necessary. One thing in the Chronicle that did pique my interest was an essay by a long-time faculty member who sounded like he had been struggling with issues very similar to mine and had bargained with his Dean for a reduced teaching load of one semester a year. Overall, he reported he was pleased with a move that had calmed his angst by freeing up more time for him to engage in projects he was interested in while allowing him a modicum of financial security. Although I was not initially enamored of this half-measure, on reflection I had to admit that it did strike a note of moderation, a virtue I had grown to admire as a result of my time in China.

Indeed, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a possible solution. Brimming with confidence from the writer’s bold assertion that a university would be happy to keep around someone with experience and institutional loyalty, I approached my chair and then my Dean with this idea—and was promptly laughed out of two offices. But I would not go gently into that good night. Instead, I informed them that I would start looking for a job outside of academia, which of course got even more laughs. In any case, I informed them that although I would give consideration to my teaching schedule, of course if the right offer came up I would not hesitate to take it. In other words, I would give them about as much consideration as they had given me.