5 Lessons Learned in 5 Years Out of Academia

It’s been five years since I decided to leave academia. When I left, soon after getting tenure, I was overcome by a profound sense of loss: loss of my professional identity, of an imagined future and of personal value that I very much associated with my role in higher education. I’d been profoundly unhappy in academia, so I was surprised by the deep mourning I felt.

Since then, I’ve heard many other faculty members express related fears about leaving. “Will I matter outside of the academy?” they ask. “I can’t give up all the work I did for my Ph.D.” I felt these same fears, but over time I’ve learned that what initially felt like losses weren’t, in many cases, really losses at all.

The reflections I share below are shaped by my new career path. I’m now a freelance developmental editor, helping faculty think through the conceptual level of their work (argument, structure, analysis, etc.). I work for myself and set my own hours. I was lucky to have some support at the start in the form of a tiny severance package, unemployment benefits and a husband with steady (though still contingent) academic work and health insurance. These factors have shaped these insights, but my conversations with others who have also left academia suggest they are widely shared. I hope these reflections will help dispel some myths about life on the other side of the academy.

I’m still an anthropologist. One of the hardest parts of leaving was feeling like I would lose a part of me that I had worked so hard for. Who would I be without this analytical lens? When we moved across the country, I packed my anthropology theory books in a box and marked it “Theory. Do not open.” It felt like my anthropology life was also sealed up, abandoned forever.

In the years since, I’ve come to understand that I am still an anthropologist. In part this is because I continue to engage with the field through my editing work. But how I understand and engage with the wider world is also shaped by this background. When I listen to my clients’ stories of how writing is difficult for them, I feel my anthropological training in analyzing people’s challenges and motivations activated. When I observe 7-year-olds’ interactions on my son’s field trip, I am thinking about social organization and how inequality manifests in everyday life.

So you don’t lose your scholarly identity when you leave academia. It may manifest differently, but it’s still there.

I still have value, even though I’m no longer a faculty member. It had been drilled into me from even before graduate school began that the only truly valuable path for Ph.Ds. was to land a tenure-track job. I did that and got tenure. I’d done the thing so many scholars long to do. People in and outside of the academy valued my faculty status. Where would my value come from once I left?

For a long time after I left the academy, I still introduced myself as a faculty member: “Well, I used to be a professor, but now I am an editor.” Pretty much everyone I’ve met who isn’t wrapped up in academia has since helped me to learn that my value extends beyond my faculty position. When I started introducing myself as an editor, people reacted exactly as they did when I introduced myself as a professor: mild interest. I was more than my job to them—a parent, a clogger, a community member—and there wasn’t really that much that was special about academia. What matters was how I felt about my job, not what it was.

Work can be intellectually stimulating outside of the academy. I’d gotten my Ph.D. partly because I enjoy being intellectually challenged. I like working through problems or figuring out the meaning of complicated texts. So when I left, I worried I would miss this work.

And, yet, I’ve managed to find a new career that suits these interests and skills much better than my faculty position ever did. While teaching required a lot of high-level cognitive skills, as an introvert, I never loved being in front of a classroom. And while research involves intellectual work, the amount of time I could devote to that pursuit shrank each year as my administrative duties grew.

As I plotted my career change, I realized that I could think about how the many skills I’d developed as a faculty member intersected with my desires for a particular kind of work. Editing allows me to engage with intellectual ideas on a daily basis; this part of my life has flourished outside of the academy.

I can still write if I want to. But I can write what I want. As a faculty member, I wrote some articles and a book that I’m proud of, and I’ll always be grateful for that. Some colleagues heavily encouraged me to keep writing and publishing about my past research topic (magically, with no remaining research budget or library access?!) after I left. I didn’t want to do that. In fact, I didn’t know if I would write again at all or what I would write if I did.

But I like writing, and I soon found myself writing a lot, more than I ever had in the academy. This work focuses on scholarly writing and takes new forms: newsletters, blog posts, editorial memos to clients, some public-facing work. I really enjoy writing about a practical topic that helps people as well as writing what I want, when I want. If you think of yourself as a writer, you’ll find a way to stay a writer, and it may be even more fulfilling if you can have more control over this work.

I don’t miss the summers off. Really, truly. Like many people, I said I didn’t want to leave academia partly because of the amazing vacations. How could I give up those summers? And I did enjoy my summers as a faculty member, but I also worked through them, albeit at a less frenetic pace than during the semester. I had to. I had new preps, stuff I had to publish for tenure and a growing load of service work that didn’t disappear come June.

Now I usually take off six weeks a year and am truly off during that time. No email. No editing. I like having a week off in the fall and spring when my son is still in school so that my vacation is just for me. I like taking a week off before the holidays so I can approach them calmly and not in the three days after grading is done. I enjoy taking more frequent breaks. So the distribution of my vacations looks different, but it also feels more like a break.

I hope that you are happy in your faculty position. But if you aren’t, know that life on the other side can also be meaningful, fulfilling and valuable. If you are considering leaving, you might begin by thinking through how you want your life to be. How much do you want to work? What factors are important to you in a job? (Flexibility? Intellectual stimulation? Salary?) Are there ways to shift your current faculty job to help you better achieve these goals? If not, what pathways outside of the academy could get you there?

If you get serious about leaving, think through what careers might support your vision. Consider doing some informational interviews with people (especially ex-academics) in the industries you are considering. Ask them about the skills they use in their jobs, what they love about their work and how it differs from academia. Read books on leaving academia. Join a support group for scholars who have left or who are considering leaving.

Above all, pay attention to your own health and happiness. If you are feeling miserable in the academy and don’t see a pathway to a happier existence there, know that positive change is possible and that life on the other side can be pretty darn great.