BlogU

  • The Career Counselor Is In: 'Should I Drop Out?'

    By Megan Pincus Kajitani May 19, 2008 5:29 am

    I received a letter with this title from “Amanda” -- a PhD student at an Ivy League institution who wants to know if she should jump ship. Her letter is excerpted here:

    I'm just finishing the first year of my doctoral program, and I'm having strong doubts about whether I should even be here. My key concerns are: 1) I'm about to turn 35 and I want to have children. 2) I am the breadwinner in my relationship. I took a $50K/year pay cut and moved across the country to work as a student research fellow in an expensive city. 3) I know I don't want an academic career, and I'm afraid that my original rationale for pursuing a doctorate — an interest in PhD-level [think tank] research and consulting jobs — just doesn't hold water now that I'm here.

    The only thing keeping me here is my fear that I'll regret dropping out after I move back across the country to rejoin my partner, who still lives on the West Coast. Why would I regret dropping out? Because learning opportunities are fewer and farther between in the working world. In my mind, quitting the program now represents the end of my freedom to explore different career options and grow in my field. At the same time, this PhD program has been very frustrating and painful so far. Do I really need a PhD? Are the trade-offs worth it? I'm especially worried about delaying pregnancy, which I think I'd need to do for about another year because of the demands of my work and school schedule.

    Amanda, I feel your angst, and I’m sorry for the stress you are under. You are certainly not alone in your questioning of these issues; I know this.

    I know it so well, in fact, that after my own experience in making this decision, and talking through dozens of other doctoral students about theirs, I came up with a list of the most important questions to answer in the “should I leave?” process.

    You’re already asking some of them, and I urge you to dig deeper for your own answers; even better, see the graduate career counselor or another counselor on your campus to work through them with you. An outside, objective ear can be a big help in echoing back what you are actually saying.

    These are the eight questions:

    1) Why did I start this program in the first place?
    2) What kind of work do I want to do after this?
    3) If I leave my program, where will my regrets lie, if I have them?
    4) Can I live with myself if I don’t finish?
    5) What are my true priorities?
    6) What is the point of diminishing returns?
    7) What is really wrong here?
    8) Is there a middle ground?

    I have published an article elsewhere further discussing each question in depth, and clearly many questions relate to each other (they actually work as couples). But for the sake of blog brevity, I’m going to quickly hone in on the three issues among these questions that jump out at me for you, Amanda: regrets, true priorities, and career/learning opportunities.

    Regrets: Whether you can live with yourself if you “quit” is really the heart of this decision for all of us. How will you feel if you leave? Or if you postpone motherhood? Will you be able to let the PhD go as something you tried that wasn’t the right fit after all, or will you label it a “failure” and allow its incompletion to eat away at you for years? Those of us who are able to do the former (let it go) can leave and pretty happily pursue other career paths (and mothering), valuing the PhD experience as a learning one that led us to wherever we are. Those who feel the latter (that they can’t let it go) usually stick it out and finish, which can be a happy path if you commit and embrace it, or an unhappy one if the holding on is actually more of a “should” than a true desire. Which leads to…

    True Priorities: Bottom line, I think what determines whether people can let it go or not comes down to their true priorities. True priorities meaning the priorities you actually, truly live by, not those you’d like to someday live by or think you should live by. This kind of a life-changing decision calls for stopping and deeply examining your own true priorities (or true values). All of the books I mentioned last week have exercises you can go through to come up with your own, and a career counselor can help you with this as well. If you can articulate what is most important to you, in your heart of hearts, you can find your answer (which may be to stay, to leave, or some “middle ground” – which means options like a leave of absence or change of programs). Please know, this process is deeper than just saying something like “I value education” (as I think anyone here does), but really examining what education means to you, what it symbolizes, how it manifests. Which leads to…

    Career/Learning Opportunities: I urge you to also explore your beliefs that there will be no advancement of learning or career opportunities for you if you leave the PhD program. I must beg to differ on this. There are opportunities to learn everywhere, and careers can take unexpected and wonderful turns at any point in a person’s life. There is absolutely no reason you cannot continue to learn and grow in your career without a PhD. True, you may not continue on the path you had planned, if you leave — you won’t move up a structured ladder determined by university degree — but if you set your mind to lifelong learning and growth, you will find it wherever you are.

    Lastly, Amanda, it’s important to know, as I hope and assume others have told you, that the first year of a PhD program is often the most painful and disconcerting. It’s a huge and challenging transition, especially coming from the “outside world” of work for some years (I did that, too). So, it might be worth getting through this first year, having the summer to process and take a deep breath, and then seeing how things look in your second year before you make your ultimate decision. Or, it might not be. If you really take the time to face these questions in a deep way, I believe the decision will become clear for you.

    I hope others will weigh in with experiences and ideas on this important question as well. What I most want to offer you, Amanda, is support and encouragement to dig deep for your own answers and open wide to the possibilities for creating a life that works for you — even if it may not look quite like what you thought it would.

    Wishing You Your Own Vision of Success,
    Megan

    P.S. I invite and welcome your questions on any academic/non-academic career transition issues. Please just send an email to my attention at mamaphd@insidehighered.com

Go to comments (5) »
Advertisement
Don't Miss a Great Opportunity

Comments on The Career Counselor Is In: 'Should I Drop Out?'

  • Posted by Caroline on May 19, 2008 at 11:00pm EDT

  • I strongly relate to the questions posed here. Although I never struggled with the issue of timing re: wanting a baby, I constantly struggled with a sense of not belonging -- of being an imposter -- and wondering if I should have remained in my successful career in the non-profit sector. (Perhaps the feeling of not belonging is more acutely felt among women in ivy league or old/traditional universities? I went to Oxford). While I just successfully finished and defended my doctoral thesis -- a feat I accomplished out of pure/raw persistence -- I'm now left wondering what it is I want to do with my hard-won degree.... While I don't regret my decision to finish -- it was v. difficult but rewarding -- I do think I would have been better served if I had had a clearer/better informed idea of what it was I wanted from the experience and the degree -- and reassessed this on an ongoing basis....

  • Posted by Megan on May 19, 2008 at 11:05pm EDT

  • Although my career and family arc is quite different from Amanda's, the frustration feels all too familiar. One of the things I've learned to remind myself (again and again) is that frequently there is not a right choice. Sometimes there isn't even a clear "better" choice--there is simply the fact that a choice must be made. I think many of us expect that problems can be solved, and if we apply ourselves diligently enough or seek enough advice or work hard enough, then we can succeed at solving anything. We think we can figure out what is the best thing to do.

    Sometimes, perhaps most of the time when the stakes are high, we can't. And if we give ourselves permission to admit that not all problems are resolvable, that itself can be a relief.

    I also allow myself to feel regret--not to regret the choices I make, but to regret the fact that choices must be made. So, I can (and do) say that I regret that I felt compelled to give up an academic job I loved when my first son was born, but I am also happy to have had the time at home with him. I try not to see regret as a symptom or indication of failure--it is merely a symptom of opportunities.

    I don't know if I made the best choice. I've just learned to make my peace with the necessity of choice. Amanda will either stay at her program next year or not. And both choices will entail lost opportunities. I hope she can give herself permission to grab some of those opportunities and let the others go--not without regret--but without blaming herself for not being able to do it all and figure it all out. No one does.

  • Posted by Megan Pincus Kajitani on May 20, 2008 at 9:15am EDT

  • Thank you for the thoughtful and eloquent comments, Caroline and Megan! What powerful statements about our various paths and perspectives.

    I so agree with Caroline that continual self-assessment is so important in helping us feel that at least we are going in the right direction, whether or not we know exactly where it will lead us. The values clarification can be so valuable at any point in the process. You can still do it now, too, Caroline, as you decide your next steps.

    I also so agree with Megan that there is rarely ever one "right choice." So many circumstances and factors make up every decision, and our best bet is to make our best choice in the moment and move forward. I do think the values clarification/ self-assessment can help us feel clearer about our choices, though -- and articulate to ourselves why a decision is the right one for us.

    As for regret, I appreciate that we all may have different perspectives on that concept, too. Let it go, accept it as given -- whatever approach we can each take to be able to live fully and find some inner peace in this complicated world of ours.

    I've been reading up on the recent academic studies on happiness, which basically show that we are in many ways hard-wired with our perspectives, or baseline happiness. But we can take steps to "up" or maintain our happiness through doing some conscious work on how we live and take care of ourselves.

  • Posted by KP , recent PhD on May 22, 2008 at 1:05pm EDT

  • What a great post, and what helpful comments. I'm a recent Ph.D. in the humanities with a job outside of academia, married to another Ph.D. who is job hunting, and expecting a child in the fall. I agree with all the comments and echo the advice to take a long, hard look at priorities and also to know as much as possible about the options.

    Let me just add a word of caution that in terms of wanting a family, time is a significant factor. I'm 36, and we've been trying to have a child for 3 years. Because having several children is something my husband and I really want, and because we knew my age might become a factor, we started trying even before I had finished my degree. We quickly ran into fertility problems we never expected.

    I'm sure Amanda knows this, but I just wanted to emphasize that it's not possible for everyone to have a child precisely when one plans to, and as one gets older, that becomes even clearer. It may take some time to conceive, up to a year or more. Don't forget to factor this into the data when making decisions.

  • Drop out consideration
  • Posted by Lindsay on November 15, 2008 at 8:25am EST

  • Thank you Amanda for sharing your question. I would love to hear what you decided to do.

    I have just begun a doctoral program (in the end of my first quarter) and though the program is great, and I have learned a tremendous amount already, I have been personally miserable. My fiance and I just moved to California and he lives up north, while I live in LA. It has been so hard for me that he is building a separate life from me. My heart breaks every single day.

    I very much want to drop out and move up north and just get a job, but he is strongly opposed to it. He is certain that I will regret it forever (as I basically regret almost every professional choice I make). I have low self-esteem about my career in general so getting into this program was a huge accomplishment for me. However, the emotional pain of this living situation just feels not worth it for the degree.

    When I think about my priorities, they are about being happy, and right now I am so far away from that. I used to value my "career" over everything else, but as I am one year from being 30 and motherhood is my ultimate priority, getting this degree feels like I am going in the wrong direction.

    I really am not sure what the "right" decision is for me. Any feedback or advice you all may have would be greatly appreciated.

Print
© Copyright 2009 Inside Higher Ed