My PhD experience and #LeavingAcademia
If you follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn, you might already know that, since last week, I am officially a doctor (PhD)! And with that, my academic career comes to a close after almost 12 years at university. A good opportunity to reminisce about my experience in academia, and my reasons to not stay there.
Bachelor’s and Master’s
I started studying in 2011, after previously having worked as […]
The search is over: The journey to my new job
I’m happy to report that my job search is finally over! As of July 2023, I am employed again! I’m now working as a developer in the field of conversational AI for Germany’s biggest railway company, Deutsche Bahn. This job is a really great fit for me because it combines so many of my skills and experiences – my far-away past as a web developer and media designer with my more recent past doing […]
I'm not an "organizer" and I have spent 50 years avoiding "leadership," but I do think about it sometimes. I often think about the pitfalls and hurdles of #organizing for any positive social change. On my mind lately is how personal motivations and incentives can interact with systemic/structural things to make change difficult.
Because I'm in #higherEd, I'm thinking about two things rn:
#University administrators (deans, provosts, presidents, directors, etc.) consistently act like Republican Senators or corporate CEOs when they make policy decisions and interact with "underlings". They can be seen as filling spots that might otherwise have been filled by people who would act in the public interest; they frequently prevent public-interest actions. The #profit-driven US system has installed them there, blocking change from the #faculty and #students from going "higher," and blocking information, resources and also possibly change from coming "down" to the students and faculty. Administrators, I think, have crippling career expectations, often unwritten, that lead them to act almost according to a script, while also clinging to their positions with a deathgrip and often developing a bad case of chip-on-the-shoulder #authoritarianism while doing it.
The #facebook group "the professor is out" (TPIO) is for faculty in toxic situations wanting advice and support in #leavingAcademia. Great. However, within a year or two of the group's formation, it was very popular so the creators (apparently) quit or lost their day jobs and seem to have made TPIO their entire income stream. They started selling #merch, coaching, workshops, etc. And they started blocking messages threatening their income, like offers of help from "competing" entities and posts questioning the wisdom of guiding all fleeing academics into doing #dataScience or #UX for the companies that fund the politicians defunding higher ed. The mods gotta pay rent, and now the only way they do this (not to mention staying alive if they get sick) is to generate income from this group.
That's all. It's just a tangled, not always helpful #system. It has evolved to protect itself, in interesting (and frustrating) ways.
The Professor Is Out, a (pretty large) group on FB, has become a bit problematic for me. It started as a support network for people having bad experiences in academia and wanting to leave. Very soon it turned into a space where even saying certain things got your post declined, got you a stern talking-to from the mods, or got you banned. Those things included too-positive descriptions of positive academic environments (even in the context of wanting to leave academia), mention of the social justice and political implications of constant recommendations that academics flee to the corporate world and do UX forever, and (of course) criticism of any of the group's policies, whether implicit or overt.
In the past year the mods have started advertising their businesses, (a) a paid consultancy to help people transition out of academia, with individual coaching and paid webinars, and (b) a merch store.
I'd be more sad if this wasn't so predictable.
#highered #theprofessorisout #acadexit #leavingacademia #industry #ux #capitalism #unintendedConsequences
I’ve been creating a montage of all the #LeavingAcademia folk on Twitter for a talk.
1) My heart 💔
2) Notice anything?
Highlighting another posting from one of the best new blogs I've come across. Jess' descriptions of #LeavingAcademia are heartfelt and will resonate strongly with those in a similar situation.
https://totalinternalreflectionblog.com/2023/09/05/jess-is-on-a-break-the-first-30-days/
adastra
Proto Himbo European
Dr Luna Clara Muñoz
Total Internal Reflection
Christiane Gante
Elizabeth Gadd