can they do that?

I had a pretty good idea of what my perfect job would entail. The question then became "Is that possible? Is there anyone out there actually doing this?"

When you've spent your life in school -- and always assumed that you'd spend the rest of your life teaching and working at a school -- it's not surprising that you don't know about careers that exist outside of school. As part of this process of figuring out what went on out there in the real world, someone suggested that I find some role models, essentially people who had studied what I'd studied and didn't end up in academia. Reasonable, yes, but easier than it sounded. On my first pass, I found a science writer and a TV personality, and that was about it. No joke. There was no obvious industry drawing people away from universities.

Lacking role models, I spent every waking hour looking at job postings and reading job descriptions. There's the Chronicle of Higher Education job board (which has separate sections for non-academic careers). Science and Nature have job listings, some of which aren't at universities. But more interesting were sites like Indeed, which searches listings from tons of job sites and aggregates them for you. Here, I found job titles I'd never heard of: Program Coordinator, Assistant Editor (different from Editorial Assistant), and Awake Overnight Life Skills Coach (also known as your boyfriend/girlfriend).

I also made lists of companies I admired for whatever reason, whether they had anything to do with my specialty or not: The Gates Foundation, United Nations, Wikipedia, and countless others. I made lists of places I liked to spend time: Museums, national parks, libraries, cafes. For each of these companies and venues, I checked out their online job listings to find out what people there actually do. What are their job titles? What sorts of backgrounds do they have? What value would they see in a niche-geek like me?

When I started looking outside of the academic bubble, I got really excited. There are thousands of interesting companies out there and millions of people doing really interesting things. But I also got worried because I didn't see many job ads geared toward people like me.

In reading my posts about this whole process, you might get the impression that I approached it all rationally and intelligently like a good scientist should. And to some extent, that's true. I knew that I needed to figure out for myself what I wanted in a job, and I needed to figure out how those desires fit in with the already existing working world. But at the time it felt like utter chaos, and there were many times when I was hard on myself for not knowing what I wanted to do next. It didn't feel rational or intelligent to give up things like money, health insurance, and direction in hopes that I'd find something better. It was kind of a mess, and I can't claim that I navigated the process with grace, but I did eventually find a job that met all of my criteria.

do what you like

So I knew that I wanted to do something that kept me in touch with the big-picture scientific questions. And I wanted to be able to draw upon that well of scientific information in my head lest it become like a bottomless cup of decaf coffee -- completely useless in most situations. To avoid falling into another unsatisfying job, though, I had to figure out what I did and didn't like about academia.

I've mentioned some of the aspects of research science that I disliked. At first, I was so consumed with the idea of escaping academia that it was difficult to look objectively at my job and see the things that I did like. But there were actually a lot of things that I liked about it and that I wanted to find in a new role.

Writing. Those days and nights of writing papers, of being knee-deep in references, of trying to put my own meager contributions into the context of decades of work, and of tweaking sentences and paragraphs were my favorite part of the scientific process.

Being around smart people all the time. Academics are generally pretty intelligent, and I like being around smart people.

Variety. I like to dabble in a lot of different projects and do a variety of tasks. Writing is great, but I can't do it 8 hours each day. Teaching is fun, but teaching the same thing year after year doesn't appeal. Ditto for data analysis, labwork, and putting together prensentations. I do best when I have a lot of variety in my day.

I could also identify some qualities I wanted in a new job: I wanted to talk to people during the day; I wanted to have a more obvious connection to what was going on in the real world; and I wanted to work more collaboratively, so that whether or not I showed up to work actually mattered.

fantasy vs. reality

In thinking about what I wanted to do next, there were a few things that I had to figure out for myself:

1. Did I want to leave science all together and pursue one of my butcher/baker/candlestick-maker fantasy careers? Or did I simply want what's usually called an "alternative career" in science?

2. What was it that I liked about my job in academia? What didn't I like? These likes and gripes would serve a purpose in evaluating future job possibilities, should any actually arise.

3. What do people actually do outside of academia? Aside from the professions in which the tasks are fairly well-known -- doctor (the real kind), teacher, lawyer, etc. -- I really didn't know what was out there or how I might fit in.

In the next few posts, I'll look at each of these in more depth. For now, we'll just look at the fantasy career question.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'd come up with a lot of careers that I thought would be more fun than being a scientist. This was not a difficult thing to do since everything looked more fun than what I had been doing. I'd wander through Williams-Sonoma silently choosing the Wusthof knives for the kitchen of my haute-vegetarian restaurant. Or I'd read a Kristof piece in the New York Times and spend hours researching careers in public health. Most of these fantasy careers involved working more directly with people -- feeding them, serving them good coffee, helping them. But another thing these jobs had in common was that I'd never done them before.

If you've never done something before, it's very easy to fantasize about it. In these daydreams, it somehow never sinks in that bakers actually have to get up at 2 a.m. to prepare those lovely warm croissants they serve you in the morning. Or that many chefs work until 2 a.m., sleep for a few hours, then get up early to get the freshest fish at the market. If you've ever fantasized about owning a restaurant, I highly recommend reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Bourdain bills himself as a renegade chef, which gets pretty annoying, but he describes his life as a chef, and it's horrifying. All the things you never thought about in your glowing vision of chefdom are brought out into the light.

The greater message here is this: Really think about these fantasy careers. Are these jobs things you'd like to do for an afternoon or for a month? Or are they really something that you want to do day-in, day-out for years to come. One of the best ways to figure this out is to actually talk to someone who does that job for a living. Talk to your barista, and you'll realize that she's making minimum wage and has coffee burns on her hands. What are these jobs really like? Stop fantasizing.

The other thing I realized about my fantasy jobs was that I wasn't qualified for most of them. Sure, I'd waited tables for a summer in college, cooked dinner for friends, and made truffles for my valentines, but did that mean that I could effortlessly slip into a glamorous career as a personal chef? No. Did my Ph.D. qualify me in any way for a career in public health? No. In the course of getting a Ph.D., you realize that you can pretty much learn anything. You learn how to learn, and you learn how to learn quickly. You figure out how to learn on your own, with a book and a stack of journal articles. So it is easy to think that you can do anything you want. And you certainly can. But when I looked at many of my fantasy jobs and what it would take to actually do them, I realized that many of them would require more school. I love learning and all, but going back to the classroom to learn held no appeal for me. At some point you have to stop loading and start firing.

Crazy (okay, nerdy) as it may sound, in college I fantasized about becoming a science professor. I now knew that that fantasy career was unsatisfying, but there were aspects of science that I was still drawn to. I kicked and screamed my way through labwork, but still loved to spend hours puzzling over the big-picture questions that had been challenging scientists in my field for decades. I still had a sense of wonder about the overall concepts in science. And over the years those questions and concepts had come to shape who I was and how I viewed the world. I didn't want to leave them behind completely, but I did want to change how I approached them.

There are a few well-trod paths into the world of alternative careers in science. Science education and outreach. Science writing. Science policy. What these all have in common is, well, science. They offer the opportunity to stay in touch with those seductive big-picture concepts, while trading the nitty-gritty details of academia in for other nitty-gritty details that might be a better fit.

I loathe the phrase "alternative careers in science," so you won't see it here again. With less than 20% of science and engineering doctoral degree holders in tenure-track positions 4-6 years after graduation, it's clear that academia is just one of many choices that are out there*. To describe non-academic careers as "alternatives" is silly and only furthers the perception that those who don't pursue the tenure-track are failures.

* In 2003, the actual number for the physical sciences was 16.7% [National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 (NSB Publication 06-01, Arlington, VA, 2006)]. For more statistics, check out the National Postdoctoral Association.

pleasantly surprised

Telling my parents that I was leaving my job rated about a 7 on the Dread Scale. I knew they thought I was crazy for doing it, but I figured that they saw my leaving a "perfectly respectable" job as the latest in the slew of questionable decisions I'd made since leaving their house to go to college. The conversations I was really dreading were the ones I had to have with my postdoc adviser (an 8.5) and my graduate adviser (10).

I started with my postdoc adviser, since he'd only invested a few months in me. I had been spinning up a new project in the lab, and we'd gotten a proposal funded for it, but I hadn't actually done anything in the field or in the lab yet. When I told him that I was leaving, he seemed completely unfazed. We talked about the reasons why, and he suggested some alternatives. Would I be happier at another university? Different projects? Then he said a couple of things that gave me the nerve to talk to my graduate adviser. First, that you have to try to find something that will make you happy. If it isn't academia, bail! Second, that he's had about a dozen students and postdocs at this point in his career. Some have stayed in academia, and some have left. In each individual case, he was completely unable to predict whether a student would stay or leave based on that person's performance or intelligence.

With that conversation out of the way, I composed an email to my graduate adviser. Over the years, she and I had had a few personal conversations, but our relationship was primarily professional, and we weren't very close. Yet I couldn't imagine her freaking out or getting angry with me for what amounted to a personal choice. And I was right. Her response to my email was truly incredible and extremely kind. She wrote that she thought it was a good time to be exploring all my options. She herself hadn't really done that at any point in her academic training and career, and had wondered if she'd be happier in another field.

Telling my mentors that I was leaving lifted a huge weight off my chest. Instead of constantly looking backward (Should I not have wasted all those years in school?) or fantasizing (Oooh, maybe I'll go to culinary school!), I started looking forward to what I really wanted to do with my life.

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.

eager emigrant (part II)

So, there I was at my new university to start my postdoc -- new lab, new projects, even had a month of exotic field work to motivate me. It seems like most people I know *loved* their graduate institution and had, at best, middling feelings about their postdoctoral institution. It's possible that my year as a postdoc is colored by the things any postdoc has to deal with: Leaving behind the comfort and familiarity of your old home; Not knowing anyone in a new place; Having to figure out where the printers, paper, and staplers are. These things, and the impact they have on your happiness, are not to be underestimated. But beyond those normal transitional things, I noticed some very disturbing things about myself and my new institution:

1. I was very carefully avoiding talking about science with my new adviser (to the point of sneaking past his office quietly). He didn't seem very eager to talk to me either.


2. I was constantly bored and fidgety during seminars. I started leaving early.


3. Everyone in my building worked with their doors closed. Aside from some of the graduate students, almost no one said hello or smiled when we passed in the halls.


4. The graduate students were afraid to give talks about their research in departmental seminars.

We could debate the meaning and significance of each of these observations, of course. But what they added up to was simple and clear: Isolation. I worked alone. Days would go by and I wouldn't have talked to a single person about what I was doing. So there was an intense physical and emotional isolation. But there was also a practical isolation from the real world.

By definition, the Ivory Tower is a place in which people focus on subjects that are far removed from the concerns of the layman. And many academics seem to enjoy this. My work was no exception in that there was no obvious connection to what went on outside of the university walls. So when I stopped caring about what I was doing, there was really no one left to care about it.

The Ivory Tower is kind of like a Club Med resort on a poor Caribbean island. While you're visiting, you can fret over whether to spend the day snorkeling or sailing, or whether to drink Cuba Libres or apple-tinis. Because you are surrounded by other vacationers trying to make equally critical decisions, you can easily begin to believe that these decisions are meaningful. But one step off of the Club's groomed beaches tells you that they are not.

Lots of academics are fully aware that their work has never had -- and will never have -- any tangible impact on the world. It's not my intention to criticize them. On the contrary, I fully believe in knowledge for knowledge's sake. It's simple. It's beautiful. And in some cosmic way, a greater understanding of our environment at any level advances humanity as a whole.

During my time as a postdoc, I sincerely wished that I could be satisfied in my esoteric niche. I was doing well at it. I had a steady job, a steady stream of publications. The problems that commonly plague scientists, such as difficulty writing or feeling pulled in too many directions, were not issues I was having. But I wasn't happy. At 28 years old, I couldn't see the point in staying the academic course (tenure-track professorship! tenured! emeritus!) for the next 40+ years.

When you step off of the Club Med beach or get away from the gleaming white walls of the Tower, it can be a bit of a shock. You realize that you speak a different language than everyone else. You don't quite know where you fit in. And you're no longer treading the predictable, well-worn path from the baby pool to the big wide ocean.

from eager beaver to eager emigrant

Each Ivory Tower exile has his or her own reasons for leaving. There are some common themes in their stories: Lack of desire to compete for an ever-shrinking pot of federal grant money; failure to receive tenure; a lack of passion for teaching, research, or some fatal combination of the two that leads to the failure to receive tenure; research projects failing or never making it to publication; money, and the perception that you could be making more of it outside of academia. While many of these played bit roles in my own departure drama, they weren't the primary players. In these next few posts, I'll write about why I decided to leave despite being relatively successful at what I was doing.

My ambivalence toward academia became firmly rooted mid-way through graduate school. I had finished up all of my coursework, and was in the early stages of my dissertation research. In other words, I was far enough along to be invested, but far enough from finishing that it seemed implausible that I ever would. Each time I glanced at the hundreds of samples in my "to analyze" stack, my heart felt heavy. It wasn't so much the time that it would take to analyze them or all of the failed experiments and instrumentation issues that would inevitably occur in the course of the analyses that gave me pause. I simply didn't care anymore.

Not caring about my research saddened me, even depressed me for a while. For years, I had soaked up all I could about my field, reveled in it. I knew what it felt like to stay up all night reading journal articles like they were steamy romance novels. My college roommates had made fun of my insatiable desire to learn. Losing that desire was unsettling because I knew what it was like to have it. Without it, I felt like a fake who was simply going through the motions*.

Over the next few years, as I completed my thesis, I had moments in which I truly enjoyed my work. My friends and I propped each other up when necessary, and the bonds between us were genuine and lovely. My mood lightened considerably when I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. By the time I defended I was, by most standards, one of the most promising new scientists in my field. I had published four first-author papers by the time I finished school, and had one more in the pipeline. I had received a highly coveted postdoctoral fellowship -- the kind of fellowship that you don't turn down. Despite my very deep concern about whether or not I wanted to continue in academia, I did. Hoping that a new research direction -- in a new lab, in a new part of the country -- would reinvigorate me, I took the fellowship. Once I arrived at my new university, it became strikingly clear that I needed to leave academia.

* Interestingly, the phenomenon of feeling like a fake who could be exposed at any moment is so prevalent amongst students and faculty members at high-level institutions that it has a name: The Impostor Syndrome. I'll write about it someday.