why we stay

Over the years, I've had countless conversations with friends about leaving academia. We'd have long talks over too many glasses of wine detailing our fantasies of becoming pastry chefs or farmers. The next morning, hungover, we'd schlep back into the lab and into reality again.

Despite our earnest and frequent musings, academia had a steely grip on all of us. I know a couple of people who left graduate school to pursue other avenues, and a couple who were asked to leave. But most everyone I started school with did finish, and did go on to do postdoctoral work. Yet many still toy with the idea of leaving their research behind. Why is it so difficult to leave? Why are there online forums for people considering leaving? Why am I blogging about it?

One word: Tweed. We stay because we want the tweed jackets as badly as medical students want white coats. Professors are admired, respected (though this generally has nothing to do with the tweed jacket itself or any other item in the professorial spring line). That respect is deeply ingrained in communities, families, and individuals, who regard academic work as pure and, therefore, somehow noble. Money? Pah! They don't do their jobs for the money, they do it for the love of knowledge, for the raw intellectual challenge.

A number of people have also echoed a thought I've had myself --one that always makes me cringe -- that they stuck it out through their Ph.D. to prove that they could do it. As a student, math was always my worst subject. So when I got to college -- freshman flagellant that I was -- I signed up for Honors Calculus I&II, taught as a one semester course for math majors. This sort of attitude stayed with me through college and graduate school, through my first months as a postdoc. Some part of me hung onto the idea that if I could be successful at something that was both challenging and highly regarded by society, then I'd be happy.

About five months into my postdoc, my parents came to visit. I wanted so badly to convey that I was doing well despite being so far from home. But I also wanted to talk to them about my plans to leave my postdoc. Until that point, the conversations I'd had about leaving were mostly sardonic, mostly with friends. I needed new sounding boards, fresh ears who could hear me out and provide support. The subject came up over dinner one night during their visit. I resolutely presented my case to the judges who had been assigned to me for life. And as I described how unhappy I had been with research, I watched their faces stiffen. It was a blow to their bragging rights.

Over the next few months, as I went through the motions of being a postdoc and began to translate my CV into a resume, I thought a lot about failure. My gut told me that I had somehow failed. My parents' faces had seemed to confirm that. I obsessively read horror stories online of people whose advisers labeled them failures when they announced that they were not interested in the tenure track. But after some serious wallowing and visits to a couple of shrinks, I realized that I'd be failing myself if I stayed. Sometimes it takes a lot more faith in yourself to leave than it does to stay.