A Sociologist's View on Whether to Leave - Part 4

Apologies for the delay in posting the final part of my analysis of the orgtheory post. I've had some computer problems for the last week or so, and blogging's been pretty low on the priority list as a result. Things seem semi-resolved, though, so I wanted to finish the series so I can move onto other topics in the next couple of days.

This final post covers reasons that the author thinks it's valid to decide to leave grad school - and needless to say, I agree with his reasons. But, here they are ... with my own observations about each:

A Sociologist's View on Whether to Leave - Part 3

Part 3 of my review of the post from orgtheory, by a sociology faculty member.

Now, covering (in his opinion) bad reasons to leave a graduate program.

"I hate my department/advisor/university/cohort/dissertation. In a few years, you won't have an advisor, and you'll be at another place with different people, and you'll finish the diss and move onto other topics."

I agree wholeheartedly with this advice. Don't leave graduate school because you hate your advisor, or your department.

But I would argue that if you're finding yourself being immensely unhappy with your advisor or your department or something like that, it might be worth taking a few minutes to think about why you're so unhappy with that particular part of your grad school experience. If you are unhappy with your department because it focuses on academic research and you want to focus on pedagogical research and teaching, you should stick it out and look for teaching jobs after graduation. If you are unhappy with your advisor because they are slow on reading your dissertation chapters, just push through it and finish. You won't be under their thumb forever.

But if you - like me - find yourself being annoyed with the entirety of academia or your discipline? If your annoyance with your advisor isn't their behavior but the fact that your project itself makes you miserable, so you resent the time your advisor makes you devote to it? Or your annoyance with your department has to do with the fact that you find departmental seminars and colloquia to be nothing more than "mental masturbation" (a term coined by a fantastic colleague of mine), then it might be a problem bigger than a situational dislike for your department. For me, I realized that it wasn't just my department ... I was aggravated by conferences, and journals in my field, and the "hot" research topics and theories and the conversations I overheard by people in my field. In short, I didn't/don't hate my department. I hate my discipline.

So, to sum up, I completely agree that leaving because you don't like your advisor or department is a bad idea. The solution there is to finish up and leave for a new job. However, if your dislike of your "department" is really a dislike of the discipline, like it was for me? Then I think leaving might not be a bad idea.

Side Note - Go Read about Adjuncting, Now

Something I never realized until I started reading other post-academic blogs was the way that adjuncting is, more and more, holding up the entire university system on the backs of people with completed Ph.D's who work for less money than I make via my grad student stipend while teaching 3 or 4 classes per semester on multiple campuses, with no benefits.

Neither my graduate or undergraduate program used adjuncts (my grad program has tons of grad students to take on that role for them!), so I was woefully unaware of how exploitative and widespread the practice of adjuncting is.

To those of you reading here who are not in a top-5 program (so you're less likely to land a tenure track job due to the hierarchy of rankings), or who are in the humanities or a very specialized field where there are very few job opportunities, I really recommend that you go read some blogs about the reality of adjuncting. This has been eye-opening to me, and has further solidified my decision to leave. Not only do I not want to wind up as an adjunct, but I don't want to contribute to a system that relies so heavily on such an exploitative system.

The list is small now, since I'm just learning about this new area of academia that I was previously pretty ignorant about. But I will tag this post as "resources," and add to it as I find more good blogs and articles about adjuncting life.

A Sociologist's View on Whether to Leave - Part 2

I just had to go back and correct a typo in my previous entry's headline ... wow, clearly I am an idiot who can't cut it in grad school if I don't even notice a typo, right???

Kidding, I'm kidding. :)

Okay, onto part 2 of my review of the sociology blog post that I started talking about yesterday. Today's segment will discuss the negative aspects of a career in academia, as described by someone working in a top R-1 program.

A Sociologist's View on Whether to Leave - Part 1

So as I've mentioned, I'm currently an advanced graduate student who is planning to leave academia. I'm not sure if I'm going to finish my dissertation or not - it will depend on what kind of job I get, and whether I feel compelled to finish after I'm away from my grad program - but since I'm actively looking for a job outside academia without a completed dissertation, I'm currently classifying myself as someone who is preparing to quit graduate school. I might return later, but for right now, I'm done with it.

So, I ran across this old post on a sociology blog, where sociology faculty offer some very sensible advice for people who are considering leaving graduate school. I thought it would be useful to people reading here to link to and write a bit about this post.

Obviously, this post will be about how I, personally, view and relate to each of their points about when to quit. But I advise everyone reading to think about how you feel about each of these points.

I'm going to address this post in 4 separate posts over here, so that you aren't reading a 40 page blog entry. Here's part 1.

The Frustration of the Last Minute Job Opportunity

I just got an email from one of the faculty members in my grad department, who is not technically my advisor, but is someone who's been generally supportive and helpful throughout my time in school.

Since I am one of the remaining students on the market who hasn't landed a position yet, he'd been sending me all of these email listings for a number of these late-appearing one-year positions around the country. VAPs in Idaho, adjunct positions in South Carolina, etc. I never applied to one year positions while I was officially on the market, since I didn't want to pick up and move for one year, just to do the academic job hunt dance again in less than a year. It would be different if I didn't have my part-time job, of course, but since I do have a job and I'm in a top program, it just wasn't something I wanted to do.

But as the spring semester went on, he kept forwarding these one-year positions to me. Last month I finally sent him a long email, letting him know that while I knew I had "failed" on the market, I wasn't upset and actually had made the (positive) decision to look for jobs outside the academy. I told him I had a "pay the bills" job and that I was feeling excited and happy about having some control over where I would live and a wider pool of jobs to focus on. He seemed to understand.

Today, I got an email from him basically offering me a one-semester gig teaching at a nearby college. UGH.

Reason I'm Leaving #3: I Deserve Free Time

Since making the decision to leave, I have rediscovered weekends/hobbies/free time. And it's been wonderful. I've read a couple of "just for fun" books, took an impromptu daylong trip to a nearby city with my partner, and have been able to catch up on a bunch of errands and participate in household duties.

In short, I'm having a normal person's life. Between my part-time job and applying for different jobs, I'm working about 40 hours per week. And when I'm not doing those things? I'm relaxing. I'm taking my dog for a walk or wandering around a store or watching a movie or catching up with a friend over the phone.

As I've mentioned, academia is rife with the idea that you should be working 24/7 ... and that if you're not working at any given moment, you should be ... or at least that you should feel bad and guilty about the fact that you aren't working, since your laptop is right over there ... and if you're sitting down to read, you should really read a book related to your research...