2 posts tagged “ph.d.”

Last night I sat down to work on the book. I drove to my favorite local coffee shop -- a warm, friendly space named the Green Muse -- and settled down with an iced coffee. The space was cozy, the coffee was good. Several people smiled at me. I pulled out my laptop and a draft of my book prospectus.  I tried to work. And . . . I just felt all wrong. Completely wrong.

I fought the feeling for a while, but eventually left the coffee shop and drove home. On the way, I began to sort out the feeling. It was this:

For the first time, I felt that I had lost my scholarly self. It wasn't that I didn't want to work on the book. I just felt so far removed from any of the scholarly practices and conversations -- and the time needed for intensive work -- that had defined my scholarly life for so long.

• I felt, for the first time, that being an independent scholar was an unnatural, impossible thing.

• That you cannot write scholarship in isolation, the way one can write creative works. You have to be at the conferences, in touch with the other scholars, teaching in the field, in a university department.

• And you have to be putting more time into it than I have been willing to commit. I want to write. But I also want to run, to play music, to cook, to spend time with friends, to read other books, to travel, to fix up my apartment. To get enough sleep at night.  To have a child. Good scholarship isn't something one does on the side, unless you're willing to devote all of your spare time to it. It just takes too much time to keep up with the literature, conduct research, write, and maintain collegial contacts.

Today I'm feeling better. Had a good little breakthrough on the book proposal this morning. But I'm feeling fragile, and sobered. I will finish the book. But then?  I may decide that I cannot be a scholar. At least not the kind of scholar that I have always strived to be.

I feel . . . a little . . . crushed . . . . Though I have chosen every step that brought me to this place, and would chose that path again.

Last week I spoke at the university from which I received my Ph.D. I was one of six grads asked to speak about our "alternative careers in English" to current grad students.

The other five panelists outlined their current jobs and how their graduate work in English had prepared them for those jobs. They only briefly discussed why they chose a non-tenure-track path.

I was different. I had pursued the traditional track, received multiple tenure-track offers, taken one, and then, astonishingly, abandoned it.

And so I had a storytelling choice to make. I could focus on the joys of my new career and how it had lured me away from the tenure track. Or, I could instead tell a more honest story: that I had left my academic post primarily because I was absurdly miserable. My subsequent "alternative career" had emerged only after I had quit the tenure track without having another job lined up. In fact, I was unemployed for nearly 7 months.

I won't outline to you all the reasons I left my 65-hr week job, in a tiny rural Stepford-like town, working with primarily wealthy students, far away from my partner and friends, surrounded by other faculty who worked all the time and thus led identically dull lives. 

The important point is this: I outlined all those reasons to the students (and faculty) sitting in that room. I was by far the most negative voice on the panel, but I had a positive point to make: to pursue the life I had always wanted, I had to leave the tenure track. But I had done it, and I now have more intellectual stimulation, control over my career, varied social circles, and -- no lie -- more writing time.

I wonder if others out there are also telling little fictions about your paths. It's risky. I would rather look like someone who consciously chose her current path, rather than admit that I stumbled into it after having fallen from the hard and narrow way.  But there you have it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 . . . for now.