In this episode, we talk about the difficulties with deciding to leave academia. We ask two important questions: What made the decision to leave academia difficult? Once you decide to leave, how do you know where to go?
While most people with PhDs do not go onto a tenure-track position, feelings of failure with leaving academia still persist. These feelings are valid but aren’t grounded in fact. Scientists can go out into the world and do things besides academia that are important to society.
To decide where to go next, we talked to a lot of people (including dialog with ourselves), went on informational interviews, and read about different careers. Taking those next steps helped a bit with overcoming the fear of the unknown and the uncertainty about life outside of the ivory tower.
“Your next job doesn’t have to be your last job.”
“It probably won’t be.”
“And that’s ok.”
–@Doctor_PMS, @IHStreet, @LadyScientist
It’s possible to leave, and it’s less painful than you might think.
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Hi Dr PMS, Amanda and Ian,
Thank you so much for starting these podcasts, it’s great to hear other people expressing the thoughts and feelings that have been going round my own head as I grapple with whether to leave academia or not. Though there’s a lot of written advice out there, hearing your voices definitely humanises the issue and helps one realise we’re not alone.
Though I feel I’ve made my decision and have a clear idea of the new path I want to take, one of the things that is holding me back is the thought of letting my mentor down. I fear disappointing him by abandoning what looks from the outside like a pretty promising career, and thus seemingly having wasted his time, faith and investment. By telling him I no longer have a passion for what he does might present me as some kind of fraud who was happy to take his time and money while I planned an escape route. What does one do regarding references in such instances? I’m almost embarrassed to ask academic mentors to provide them for non-academic jobs because they won’t necessarily understand my thought processes and feel I’m throwing my career away and wasting my ability.
Are these issues you’ve had to face, and if so, how did you deal with them?
Many thanks for all your support and what you’re giving to the community. Keep up the good work!
Yours faithfully,
Dan
Hi Dan,
I had similar fears when I told my mentor that I was leaving academia. I felt like I was letting him down and that he’d be disappointed in me. As it turns out, he wasn’t disappointed. He was pleased that I was doing something that I liked and that suited my situation.
Everyone that I’ve told so far wasn’t upset or thought I was a fraud or was taking advantage of the system. Something like only ~10% of graduate students will go on to a TT position, and it’s not like the other ~90% of graduate students were defrauding their mentors. Once I normalized leaving academia in my own head, and figured out my “script” for what I would say to people (I’m very introverted and have to practice what I say), it became easier to ask people about non-academic jobs and for recs for non-academic jobs.
Good luck! And I’ll see if my co-hosts have anything else to pass on. 🙂
Take care,
Amanda
Hi Dan,
It can be a difficult discussion to have with where you want to take your career. And if it isn’t in academia, that needs to be OK (esp. since academia is not the major employer of PhDs these days). It’s not a wasted investment if you use the skills you’ve developed as a PhD to do something else– PhD training is valuable in many places!
I’ve made my desire to leave academia known for awhile and am trying to make it actively happen. My advisor has been pretty open about being OK w/ his trainees going on to do other things in life, so that’s been good. Have there been other people from your lab that have gone on to do things beyond academia? Maybe ask them how their transition was from your lab to whatever else.
As for recommendations, I am using my PhD advisor, my postdoc advisor, then a 3rd person in the digital communications world that I’ve done a fair bit of work with. I may also ask a few other people that i’ve done work with that aren’t academics to recommend me.
I do think your academic mentors will be more understanding than you think.
Good luck and thank you for commenting and listening!
+Ian
Hi Dan,
I’m glad to hear you are enjoying our podcast. We know how is hard to make the decision to leave academia (and finally leave), so we wanted to try to make everybody’s transition smoother.
Answering your question, yes, it was tough to tell my PI that I was leaving academia. But what I actually realized is that the monsters that we create in our heads are usually not as scary as they seem. If you have a good relationship with your mentor (and it seems so through your message), I am sure that ze will understand that the academic pathway is not for you, and most likely support your decision to seek a career that will bring you enjoyment and happiness!
What I found out is that the hardest (at least for me) was actually deciding that I was going to leave academia. There was a lot of doubt if I should “throw away all those years invested” and for the uncertainty of the unknown. That was terrifying! But when I finally convinced myself that academia was not what I wanted anymore, all the decisions and conversations became much easier.
Hope this helps! And good luck with your transition 🙂
Doctor_PMS
Thank you all so much for responding! 🙂 Your comments are all very helpful, and I agree that one can have a tendency to build these things up in the head before a conversation’s actually had. Staying in a position that’s not enjoyable anymore just for fear of disappointing someone else is not a good enough reason to do so. We have to live for ourselves and loved ones, and by extension work to live, not the other way round as academia likes to tell us.
Looking forward to the next episode (in both life and podcasts)!
Cheers!