Leaving Academe

I've recently started looking at the "leaving academe" discussion site on the Chronicle of Education website. A little late, I realize. Anyway, I've been posting. Here is one of the columns I've been following. The original post is:

"I'm thinking of retiring early and wonder if anyone out there who's done that would be willing to share their experience.I'm 54, thinking it'd be great to retire at 59. This is the soonest I can retire and still take advantage of my upcoming sabbatical. Over the past few years, I've gotten more and more oriented toward research and writing. This is in contrast to my early years in which teaching was pure heaven; I loved the challenge of turning weak or reluctant students around and helping them become real learners, and I've been pretty successful at it. But these days that process takes more and more energy out of me, and now I live for term breaks and summers when I can really think and write.I can survive financially, if not thrive. (Health-insurance costs are something I haven't yet calculated. I do have a partner who's willing to help support me if I need it.) I'm hoping that with free time to do a lot of writing, I might be able to bring in enough income beyond Social Security and TIAA-CREF to relax just a bit -- but that's not critical to my survival.If you've retired early and regretted it, why? If you've done so and been delighted, why? What factors might I not be thinking of at this stage? Stories, thoughts welcome."

Someone responds with:"You haven't calculated the health insurance costs? That's major. MAJOR. Don't even consider it until you have that angle completely worked out.Prytania,who can go out in 2012 (provided the world doesn't end)"

My response is: "I just left academia this fall at age 49. Left a tenured position and a lifetime security because, well becuase this is simply not what I wanted to do with my life. Nothing more complicated than that. I "did not have every angle figured out, especially health insurance." But I knew it was time to go. Hell, it was time to go probably ten years ago. If you are happy in academia, then I say god bless. Stay there and don't go anywhere else because you have found your bliss. But if not, well what is wrong with moving on and tyring to find out what you are supposed to do with your life before you die. The thing is, even with the best health insurance, you die anyway. There is a beautiful essay by Pico Iyer you should read, about how he left behind a very successful writing life in New York and now lives in a two room apartment in Japan http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/the-joy-of-less/"If you’re the kind of person who prefers freedom to security, who feels more comfortable in a small room than a large one and who finds that happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs, then running to stand still isn’t where your joy lies." If you're interested, I am keeping a blog of my journet at xphilosopher.blogspot.com

You know you've bottomed out when

The way you figure out it is Thursday is that you know you watched The Prisoner on Sunday night and it was a three part series and last night you did not watch The Prisoner

Part 3

I did not rely only on psychology but leaned pretty heavily on philosophy as well, for despite all the ambivalent feelings I may have about my profession I believe that at its best it provides wisdom and insight that can be invaluable, or at least that I, a man without religion, could not do without. Two philosophers in particular came to mind: William James and Jean-Paul Sartre.
In his essay “Existentialism is a Humanism” Sartre tells the story of a student who comes to him for advice about whether to join the French Resistance. Although the young man strongly feels the pull of duty to country during wartime, his mother is ill and he is her only support. What should he do? Sartre’s answer is the only one a serious person could provide in such a situation: I can’t help you. For Sartre, we are defined by/the sum total of our choices. In this case, there was not one right choice; rather, there were two choices each which affirmed a different value scheme. The young man had to choose and then accept full responsibility for the choice: nothing more and nothing less. Applied to my own situation, it meant that there were no words from a friend that would make my choice clear, no insight I would stumble upon if I reflected on the issue longer. Rather, there were two paths, and I had to choose by which one I wanted to define what was left of my life.

If Sartre clearly showed me the nature of the choice and what was at stake, it was the American philosopher William James who provided the methodology that may have ultimately decided the day. In “The Will to Believe,” James had argued that when we are faced with a genuine option—a choice between two momentous alternatives— the only sane way to decide, if it is not a matter of scientific reasoning where the evidence clearly lines up on one side (sorry creationists, birthers, and global warming skeptics) is with our passional nature. When I put the choice in those terms—where did my heart lie—the answer was clear, at least from a negative perspective. That is, I knew my heart was not in the academic game. I could go back, but it would not be out of passion for a calling but because of fear of losing health insurance premiums. True, when I thought of life without academia my head spun, my stomach turned, my heart rate increased. Of course, that may have been the side effects from the medication. But it also, at least to me, signaled an energy for a path which led I knew not where.
I knew what I had to do.

There is certainly a common sense argument that says if you are going to leave a job for life you should at least have something else lined up, even if it involves the phrase “would you like fries with that.” And as it is always easier to get a job if you already have a job, this would entail not leaving academia until you have assured yourself of alternate employment. As I myself spent a year looking for a job while teaching, I am obviously not unsympathetic towards this line of reasoning. But for my two cents worth, I would now advise against leaving a long term academic career and moving immediately into another position for the same reason I don’t think it’s a good idea to walk out of a fifteen year marriage and without taking a beat go back to the altar. In both cases, some time off seems called for.

This is precisely what I am doing now. As a result, I can’t provide any closure for this article because there is none in my life. But I will keep you posted. I do have one last thought. Having gone over the ground in more detail than I had planned, I am reminded that when asked why he left Walden Pond, Thoreau replied “Perhaps it seemed to me had several lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.” It strikes me really that this is all that needed to be said.

Essay, part 2

Thus began the great job search of 2008-2009. Of course, I had no idea what positions I was going to apply for. The best bet seemed to involve the fact that as a returned Peace Corps volunteer I had what is known as non-competitive eligibility, which essentially means that if a government agency so desires they can hire you without the trouble of going through a job search so long as you meet the minimum qualifications for the position. The advantage to the agency is that a federal job search is, well, a federal issue, and oftentimes the ability to avoid the mounds of paperwork and man hours involved is enough of an incentive to get someone with non-competitive eligibility hired. With this in mind, I turned to the website usajobs.gov, the site where jobs with the federal government are posted, and soon found myself applying for positions such as Intelligent Research Specialist with the Department of Homeland Security, a Writer/Editor with the Veterans Health Administration, Management and Program Analyst with the Department of Education.

Applying for government jobs is both mind numbing and time consuming. Each application requires you to answer between half dozen and a dozen essay questions requiring a couple of pages each on how you fit the exact qualifications for that specific job. As a result, few of the replies can be used in more than one job search. To make a long, sad story a short, sad story, I spent hundreds of hours filling out dozens of applications to receive a grand total of one (unsuccessful) interview. I knew I had hit bottom when I applied to be an Education Advisor in Iraq. I had more success with my other plan, which involved applying to graduate schools in social work. Here, I had managed to get myself accepted to three, including one in the state that offered the opportunity to pursue the degree while I was teaching. By then the spring semester had ended and I was no nearer to a decision than I was when the school year had started

So I decided to leave town for the summer and travel to Asia, not because I thought it would help me make a decision but because, well, I’m not really sure why I took this trip. In any case, before I knew it the trip was behind me and summer was drawing to a close. Time was running out. Not only was there my self-imposed deadline to make a choice before the next school year started. I had also provided a drop dead date to my university when I would let them know whether I would be returning for the fall. Desperate, I drew up pro and con lists, talked with friends, and even consulted the on line I Ching. I seemed in an impossible position. Common sense argued that I could not simply throw a career away. But that voice inside screamed out that I could not under any circumstances walk into another classroom.


As I reflect back, I know one factor that weighed heavily on me was the knowledge in my heart that the only reason I was staying was out of fear. I was afraid what would happen if I left academia: afraid of the loss of status, afraid of the loss of income, afraid of the loss of health insurance. As I meditated on this one undeniable reality, I concluded that I did not want my life to be ruled by fear. Now, granted, some fears are healthy fears. All I can say is that this fear did not feel like a healthy one.

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.

Freelancing and Out of Work

The Newshour had an interesting segment on its friday show http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newshour_index.html. Titled "Freelance and out of work," it depicted a number of individuals who had either quit or could not find regular employment and were now attempting to make it as freelancers. Besides portraying a number of interesting and inspiring life stories, it offered some practical information, for example, that there exists a freelancers union which can be helpful in things like purchasing insurance (http://www.freelancersunion.org/). Back to the stories: A woman who had given up a college teaching job in order to work as a musician said, "I always wanted to make music," she said. Another woman who was trying to sell her own jewerly said: "I need to be able to claim something that I can say 'this is me' and I can be proud of that." Another simply said, "I can't wear the suit." A man who was starting his own business said: "Many times I have given up safety and security because I wanted to change the environment and try different things." Although in some ways there were inspiring figures, near the end of the piece things got decidedly less optimistic--"The happy face of freelancing started to sag" was how reporter Paul Solomon aptly put it--and we heard how tought things were for these folks. For obvious reasons, for me the ex-academic story was most compelling: "I hate having to have been extremely successful and then having to make so much less...I hate making less money." This for me is the ghost of Christmas future after my one year terminal sabbitical pay runs out. It's a segment worth watching for anyone contemplating making the move on their own.

The Sickness Unto Academia

There was an interesting piece the other day in the New York Times titled "Kierkegaard on the Couch." The writer, himself a professional philosopher (or as Robert Pirsig named them, philosographers i.e., writers about philosophy and not philosophers themselves) argued that the despairing Dane initiated a distinction that we seem to have lost in the present age: the distinction between a psychological and a spiritual disorder. If we tell someone we are depressed, it is immediately suggested that we go to counseling and/or pick up some Prozac. But in Kierkegaard's world, someone who is in despair can actually be psychologically healthy, while the smiley faced optimist can be a classic case of real mental illness. In despair, if we approach the phenomenon properly, we come to know the true nature of the self. We may indeed simply be depressed (psychological disorder); but it is just as possible we are in despair (a spiritual malfunction).

How is all this relavant? Well, I have been having more than my share of despair these days. No doubt not having anything to do, having no structure for my days, has only exacerbated the situation. But is it only a depression that can be cured with the right career and/or other objective goods. Or is it an indication of something deeper?

At times I take the what I call "What Color is Your Parachute" approach, that is, try to come up with a career path that will utilize my capabilities and provide the sort of self-fufillment we are all after. But K's point would be that if we have a false view of the self, then fulfilling that self could do more harm than good. K's belief was that despair was a sign from our spiritual nature, a cry longing to be heard. It was one of Kierkegaard's claim that one stage of being in despair was not being conscious of being in despair. This he thought was the situation most find themselves in. We can be in despair because we have failed to achieve something (i.e., failed to be a successful academic). But it was K's belief that had we achieved that we would have been in despair as well, even worse off because the accomplishment could have prevented us from dealing with deeper spiritual issues.

This is why as tempting as it is, for me it is important not merely to jump into another task, another career. I have had a sense since leaving that there are things that really need to be dealt with and that weren't being dealt with in the daily sweep of my existence, and that if I did not deal with them now, it would soon be too late. This was the reason I left behind a reasonably fufilling and financially comfortable and secure position. This is about the only way I can make sense of my leaving. I think for me the problem with academia--the despair for lack of a better word, the emptiness--had nothing (or very little) to do with academia and much more to do with larger spiritual issues that were being neglected or not dealt with properly. Theoretically they not doubt could have been dealt with within the context of my career but for all practical purposes really required the separation I ended up making.

For Kierkegaard, to the extent that I think that finding the right career would resolve my current psychic disorder, then I am simply deluded. K would say that academia was not the cause of the psychological state I found myself in, and another career path or any other objective accomplishment will not rectify the situation. And I tend to agree with him here.

Here's the link for the piece. The comments are interesting as well,

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/kierkegaard-on-the-couch/?scp=1&sq=kierkegaard&st=cse