Postacademic Rants - A New Series

If you've been reading this blog longer than a few months, you can probably tell that my rants about "how much I hate academia and why I'm leaving" are falling off somewhat. It's true.

Now don't get me wrong - I still hate academia and I'm still leaving. :) I'm just feeling less angry about the whole thing, and more focused on what comes next and how to help the rest of you cope with the process of leaving.

And shoot, I'm just so happy to be not an academic anymore that I haven't been as motivated to write up long ranty posts against academia. Which is good. I need to look forward, not back.

That being said, I know that new readers show up here every few days through searches about hating academia ... and they may be at the stage where they could use some ranting that corresponds to how they're feeling. I may not be able to come up with fresh rants on a regular basis anymore, but I do have some pretty good anti-academia rants saved up from some old writing. Specifically, I have a series of "reasons that I hate academia," which my therapist encouraged me to write when I was first making the decision to leave and was struggling with my emotions. He suggested that I might find it helpful to do some writing about academia that was "just for me" in order to process not only my thoughts about what to do next - but my true, uncensored thoughts about what I was leaving behind - namely, academia.

So, I have these Word documents on my computer - a journal of sorts, which I used to help me sort through my anger toward academia. And they were tremendously helpful to write at the time. Immensely helpful. It felt so great to get everything out of my system, and to vent about how angry I was and how frustrated I was with all of the aspects of academia that I hated or found ridiculous.

So last week, I ran across the journal once again, and it occurred to me that some of the entries might be useful/amusing for people here to read. And since I'm going to be in and out of town quite a bit over the next couple of months (and then job-hunting again after the new year), I think that I might need some filler entries to post to keep this blog going until I find a new job.

So, I think that what I'll do every now and then over the next few months, when I'm too busy or unmotivated to post, is to copy and paste some of those postacademic rants here. I think some of you might find them amusing or even helpful in processing your emotions (if you're still feeling the anger yourself). I'm currently out of town until the middle of next week, but I wanted to put up a new post for you to chew on. So I'll post the first one tomorrow ... and perhaps some more the next time I'm traveling or unmotivated to write a new post.

Importantly, though ... I want to stress that I'm not still feeling this negative and angry. I'm definitely not still stewing away at academia like I was at the beginning. I have my moments, sure - it's hard not to when things like this or this happen - but they're few and far between these days.

However, I know a lot of you might be still feeling the anger. So these rants are for you. I'll set the first one to post tomorrow (since I'm heading out of town today until the middle of next week), and I'll post others over the next few months during times when I don't have time or motivation to write anything more succinct. Hopefully they will make you laugh or help you realize that you aren't alone.

Now, a big disclaimer before the first one posts - I did not censor myself in writing for my therapist, so the language is cruder and there is a lot of cursing. I'm not going to edit them, since I'd like to preserve the raw emotion, so the cursing will remain. I'll put the bulk of the posts behind page jumps, though, so that you can make sure your browser won't be covered with F-bombs in case your boss or advisor happens to walk by just as you're loading my blog. :)

So, this will be a new, if infrequent, series. The first one will post tomorrow. Have a great weekend!