Want to Contribute a Story to HTLA?

Hi everyone!

We at HTLA are planning to do a major expansion of our site in the upcoming weeks and months. Now that the e-book is finally published (and we've had a chance to lay back and enjoy Actually Having Accomplished That Big Thing We'd Been Working On For a Year, yayyy!), we are ready to get back to updating and expanding the content available on our site.

Along those lines, one thing that we want to do is to create a section in which postacademics can tell their "leaving stories" and have them published on our site for others to read.

We aren't going to solicit these from specific people, and we aren't looking for a particular type of story or for stories from people with particular types of jobs. If you're just a normal, everyday postacademic who left and found ... something? If you're doing academic advising or managing an office or directing a think tank or working at a diner or temp agency or running a side business? Then we want to hear from you. All of you.

Don't sugarcoat your story if you don't want to. If your journey has been great, then tell us that! But if you've struggled, or have been desperate, or if it's been hard? Don't be afraid to tell us that either. We want more postac stories to get out there, and aren't picky about what those stories are.

We are happy to keep stories anonymous if you want us to. See the announcement below.

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We want to expand our site and include more personal stories of #postac life that focus on how people found work and what it’s like to work in different kinds of #postac or #altac places. Also interested in your “just for now” job experiences.

Keep it personal and not preachy, pretty much anything welcome. Brief is fine; no dissertation required.

It’s fine if you need to remain anonymous.

We are happy to link to your website, business, or twitter account.

We do not pay. This is gratis, because our site is peer-to-peer. (Maybe someday when we start raking in the big bucks we can offer compensation; for now, our income from the book (which is our only source of HTLA income and - given that the book is bargain priced - isn't much, covers basic site maintenance.)

Message us on Twitter:
@mamanervosa (Lauren)
@leavingacademia (JC)
@projectreinvention2012 (Kathleen)

Or just use good old fashioned email:
laurennervosa@gmail.com
leavingacademia@gmail.com
projectreinvention12@gmail.com

What You Can Do With "Any" Postac Job

The other day, I happened to notice a twitter conversation going on between several postacs and near-postacs, in which one of them seemed to be lamenting the fact that if their efforts at networking and job hunting didn't pay off shortly, they would have to take "any" job after leaving academia.

The implication there - not necessarily coming from that person, but in general - seemed to be that taking "any" job would be a letdown for a postacademic - a signal that you'd failed, or would no longer be doing postacademia "right" or something like that. Right? Because if that wasn't the case - if there weren't good or bad postacademic jobs, as I've argued - then "any" job wouldn't be second-best, right? "Any" job would be what you were going for!

So of course, I jumped right into that conversation, arguing that there was nothing wrong with taking a "just for now" job, and that a person who took a job like that should still have plenty of free time to work on furthering their career (or whatever else they want to do).

After jumping into that conversation (and sending out some random tweets later that night), I thought that this might be a good week to write about what my first job after leaving academia (three years ago!) has meant for my financial stability and plans going forward.

(This post is also a partial response to some criticism that we've received on the privilege piece at HTLA, in which some commenters (one at Versatile PhD in particular) have suggested that we are doing postacs a "disservice" by pointing out that some of them are in dire straits and might need to find a temporary, just-for-now type of job to pay the bills while they work on their future careers. I'm not sure if I understand why such advice is a "disservice" - because it's bad to point out that some people are struggling? Because everyone should follow a certain postacademic path, and deviating from it - even out of desperation - is a bad idea? I don't know...but I know I disagree.)

In brief: taking a random job to pay your bills does not mean that you will stay in that job forever, or that you've given up on your chance of having a different or better career. And to bring it to a meta level: recommending that a struggling new postac go work at a temp agency or to wait tables to pay their bills does NOT mean that we are telling them to stop thinking about their career dreams, or to stop trying to be an entrepreneur, or to stop working on skill translation or networking or anything else.

The Ph.D. Placement Project

Hey all! Long time no talk!!

I'm writing today because everyone who hasn't already done so should head over to the Chronicle of Higher Education and contribute to their new Ph.D. Placement Project. There are numerous ways to do this - you can take the anonymous survey (if you've completed your Ph.D.), follow them on Twitter, email them directly (PhDPlacement at Chronicle dot com) if you have any ideas for how they should proceed, or sign up for their email list to receive updates on the project.

(This wonderful project seems to primarily be a response to William Pannapacker's most recent column in the Chronicle, where he laments the lack of data on Ph.D. job placements. Kudos to the Chronicle for trying to tackle this challenge and to assemble the necessary data).

They've already received more than 600 responses, and they are clearly excited about the huge response to their initial survey. But as they write in that article, this is just the first step in what they intend to be a much larger project:

...the survey we've posted is only a starting point. We intend to use it to collect ideas and advice that will help us determine how best to proceed in collecting detailed, accurate placement information.

When we publish placement information about individual Ph.D. programs, it will be based on a formal research project, not on a Google survey.

In short, if you're interested in the issue of placement rates and Ph.D. programs, please keep communicating with us.

At this point they are only collecting survey data from people who have completed their Ph.D.s ... so if you're a current grad student or a dropout like me, you can't take the survey. However, you can still follow them on Twitter, email them with suggestions, and sign up for their email list. So if you haven't finished your Ph.D. but you are interested in this project, there are ways to get involved.

On Compensation

Postacademic in NYC wrote an interesting post last week, where she discussed the somewhat disconcerting feelings she's been having as an hourly wage worker in the world outside of academia. In this post, she wrote that the lump sum payments she received every month or so in academia were fine with her, while the hourly pay she gets now is causing her to have some uncomfortable feelings about how her work is "quantified" in dollars.

More specifically, she's been calculating how many hours of work at the temp agency she needs to put in in order to earn enough money for the things she likes to buy - a sandwich or a coffee or a bottle of booze. This, in turn, is (I think) making her feel a bit discouraged. I got the feeling from her post that her pay in academia was lower, possibly ... but that despite that, she felt less exploited/dehumanized because it wasn't as easy to translate her work hours into a dollar amount.

I enjoyed the post, and some of it definitely rang true to me. Until I got my promotion and raise this spring, I was also an hourly wage worker at my current office. And while I was paid fairly well and could afford a decent quality of life as an hourly worker, I would occasionally catch myself thinking "if I buy those concert tickets, I'll have to work a full day to pay for them," or "damn, I'm working 4-5 hours for a tank of gas? Ridiculous."

So, I've definitely done the "quantifying what I'm purchasing in work hours" thing, and it did feel a little weird. Now, I never found myself calculating the amount of work that would "pay" for a sandwich or coffee - I really never got down to the nitty-gritty of what, say, 15 minutes of my labor was "worth" in terms of consumer goods. But if I wanted to spend a decent chunk of money? Yeah, I'd sometimes find myself calculating the number of hours I'd need to work to earn that money back.

And I agree, it's kind of an odd feeling to be able to directly calculate how much money your work time  is "worth," in such concrete, calculable terms.

But looking back on my time in academia and then on my time as an hourly wage worker outside of academia, I can honestly say that I preferred being paid hourly to the pay I got in academia. And I'd still go back to hourly work any day before I'd go back to academia. With absolutely no hesitation.

Now, PAINYC's outlook on her job is totally valid. Her job is far different from mine, and her work environments sound challenging, to say the least. I'd have a hard time not feeling like a cheap cog in the wheel of my workplace if I was working in buildings that have butlers (WTF?), doing basic tasks for the top 0.1% of wage earners in this country, alongside miserable and exploited support staff. There's absolutely no question in my mind that I'd feel pretty damned exploited and underpaid if I were in that position.

But I wanted to put up a post here that explains the outlook that I had on my life and my compensation as an hourly worker. Because my outlook and my experiences have been different from PAINYC's ... and while I don't think there's anything wrong with her outlook, I want readers of both blogs to understand that there's no guarantee of how you will feel about a job that pays hourly until you have one. Perhaps you will feel like PAINYC ... but perhaps not.

So as food for thought ... here are three reasons why I found hourly pay to be preferable to my academic salary.

Worried About Your Chances?

I logged into my blog the other morning to check out my traffic stats and blogroll, and to my excitement saw that Jet has landed her first postacademic job!!!! Despite worries she's expressed about her age and health problems, she wowed the hiring committee and was offered a position on the spot!

**Pausing so that everyone can wish Jet a hearty CONGRATULATIONS on the new gig!** :)

This, just a few days after Currer wrote about making it to what seems to be the 600th (and hopefully final) round of interviews for a great job with a publishing company ... and a few weeks after recent Ph.D. wrote about getting her second nonacademic job in two years ... and a month after Literary Emergency wrote about landing her first job out of academia ... and several months after WTF found a new job (which she has recently written is more enjoyable - or at least less awful - than she expected). And of course, Anastasia has been a high school teacher for a full year now.

Now, everything is not perfect for everyone ... PINYC is still temping, Lauren is still freelancing and interviewing for jobs, and Pi is job-hunting in a new city, which is never easy. And it's not like I'm in my absolute dream nonacademic job over here.

But, to my readers who are contemplating leaving academia ... do you see a pattern here? Nearly all of us have landed nonacademic job interviews very quickly after leaving academia ... often within a few weeks or months of sending out our first resumes. And some of us have even found that in the nonacademic world, sometimes interviewers or network contacts will offer to send our resumes to someone else who might have a job that's a better fit for us! (How different is that from the academic world, huh?)

Even little old me - with my noncompleted Ph.D., quelle horreur! - landed three nonacademic job interviews in about 4 months (while only job-searching part time) before deciding to stay put in my current job for now. But when sending out resumes, I found that nobody flinched at my ABD status. Sure, no one would hire me to run a policy research organization or anything without a completed Ph.D. ... but I don't want that kind of job anyway. And as it has turned out, being ABD has not harmed me at all when looking for jobs where I'm not the head honcho. People are impressed with my masters' and with my teaching and research experience, and evaluate me as a candidate from there. It's been incredibly reassuring.

Why Chronicle Readers Love their Academic Jobs

I found myself on the Chronicle of Higher Ed's "Leaving Academe" forums a few weeks ago, after following some links from their food stamps article. I've been writing and editing this post ever since, trying to streamline and shorten it up ... but somehow it keeps just getting longer. So that's it - I'm just going to post it as-is. You all are used to me being wordy, right??? :)

The thread in question I'd like to link you to is this thread, in which current faculty were asked by a potential academic leaver to describe what they love about their jobs.

Some of the posts really resonated with me - people described those terrific moments in the classroom (rare as they may be) where students really seem to "get it." How much they loved the long summers off or being able to take sabbaticals. Being around young people. That stuff really can be pretty great.

But at the same time, I wanted to highlight some comments over there that compare academia to the "real world," which I think you can take with a HUGE grain of salt.

I'm not trying to be a huge Negative Nelly here, or to encourage everyone to cut and run from academia. But as as all of us postacademic bloggers have written a million times ... current faculty need to stop encouraging grad students and fellow Ph.D.s to stay tethered to academia for the wishy-washy reason that "it's the best job in the world!" There aren't enough tenure-track jobs for all graduating Ph.D.s anymore. A thousand comments about how totally awesome academia is (like you find in that thread) aren't going to magically open up ten thousand tenure-track jobs. So academics need to quit denigrating nonacademic work and start encouraging grad students to explore other options.

So while I read that thread with interest, it gradually started to bother me. I could picture miserable adjuncts who want to leave academia reading that thread, thinking "...I want to leave, but nonacademic jobs are all so awful!! Academia is the only good job out there!!!" As we've discussed before ... that's not true. But that's not something you're going to hear in that thread.

But you'll hear it from me, again and again. Academia is not the only good workplace in the world. Every nonacademic job is not awful. And many of the things you like about academia can also be found in the nonacademic world.

Let's talk about what we find in that thread that needs a little elaboration...

A Postacademic Job You Could Get! ... Round Two

Go check what recentPhD has written about the job at her old employer. Go now.

Then read her follow up post about why she thinks a postacademic would be perfect for this job, and how she's involved in this hiring process and would potentially be able to directly help the right postacademic candidate get this job.

Want a potential lifeline out of grad school misery or adjunct hell? Or even out of a good tenure track job that you hate? Live in or around DC, or ever wanted to move there?

Email her now. Now now now. recentphd [at] gmail <dot> com. Or go check out the job ad on Versatile Ph.D. and apply.

But then email her so that she knows that you're a postacademic who's applying for the job, so that she can try to help you out! I can't speak for her, of course, but I know that if anyone ever applied to a job at my company and referenced that they were a reader of my blog and were a postacademic, I would definitely go the extra mile in making sure that person at least got an interview. And I can't imagine that she'd be blogging about it if she didn't genuinely want postacademics to apply.

Decisions, Decisions ... and Another New Blog for You!

Before I get bogged down in my own stories ... another new postacademic blog has arrived!

Literary Emergency is written by an English Ph.D. who is currently in the middle of a career change after (I believe) failing to land a tenure-track job. Already, zie has written some interesting posts about the insanity and expense of the academic job search - something that, obviously, appeals to me given my recent series on privilege in academia.

Zie has also written an insightful post about how pursuing an all-encompassing career like academia is the perfect way to ruin your love of something (in hir case, books) ... and how you should think about this reality when you are searching for new jobs. Zie has posted a "sweet spot" theory that I really appreciate - basically, the idea that you should find a "sweet spot" of things you enjoy doing but don't love, and focus your career there. Then, save the things you love for your hobbies and interests outside of work so that you don't get burned out.

Oh, and how could I forget ... zie illustrates every entry with an awesome cartoon. Oh, how I wish I had artistic ability or a consistent sense of humor! :)

It's good stuff. Go check it out!

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Now, onto me me me me and more me...

So I met with my boss yesterday about a potential raise and promotion that would keep me at this job for a bit longer ... and to my amazement, the offer he made was quite a bit more generous than I was expecting.

A Few Random Things...

Thanks to everyone who gave me advice a few posts back about the interview offer I got from an office in Dream City.

After thinking about everyone's advice and talking to my partner, I called and let them know that I'd "signed a contract" to stay on at my current job for a few months, to supervise our software transition and generally keep the office stable until the end of the year. I had to leave a voicemail for the hiring manager so I have no idea of how it went over, but hopefully they will understand and won't immediately pitch my resume if I do find myself applying for a job in their office later on.

In the end, (1) I didn't want that job right now, but at the same time, (2) I got an interview off of just the second resume I sent out in Current Industry ... so that tells me that if I do default to looking for work in Current Industry in the future, I will probably be able to find something.

Oh, Come On...

So ... this week, things at my work got very, very, very, very busy. Like, we've taken on a number of new projects and are about to go through a massive training session and a months-long transition into a new computer system and an entire overhaul of how we do things. I got appointed to be one of the "point people" overseeing this transition, since I've worked here for awhile and since I have a background in teaching and have thus always been particularly good at training my colleagues and answering questions.

My boss is going out of town for a few days, but before he left, he said that if I was willing to stay on for a bit longer (just to see us through this transition, which should be over by the fall or perhaps very early winter), he would be willing to "pay me a lot more."

Basically, I'm working here for now anyway and would probably be here through at least the first part of the transition. But if I'd agree to sign a contract for 6-8 months saying that I wouldn't leave until it was up, I could get a big raise. And would then be free to leave once the transition is done in the fall or winter, as long as I gave a few weeks' notice (which I would definitely do, just out of respect).

Career Counseling Update - and You're Not Alone (#10)

So, I had my career counseling appointment at Grad U this week. I have a couple of other half-written posts in the pipeline, but first I thought I'd do a quick post recapping that visit, since I seem to be in one of my Writer's Block Periods this week. I blame the beautiful weather.

Overall, I was happy that I went to see the counselor. I wrote last week about how I've been dealing with some job-hunting inertia in the last few months, and I'm hopeful that this meeting will help me break out of that funk a little bit.

Part of what was hanging me up was the fact that it's difficult to voluntarily apply for new jobs when you (1) like your current job and (2) have absolutely no idea of where you want to go in the long term, career-wise. Part of me understood that I really needed to spend some time figuring out what career I wanted to aim for in the long term before I would really be excited to apply for jobs ... but part of me was chastising myself for not applying for jobs 24/7.

It's that damn academic mind again - popping in to tell me that every moment spent researching careers was a wasted moment that I could have used to apply for jobs. It's time to get moving!! Work work work!!! Any free time is time you should spend getting things done!!

But all of the mental chastising from my crazy academic brain wasn't making me apply any faster. Deep down, I knew that I had to give myself some time to research careers, but I needed an outside voice to tell me that I wasn't a slacker if I spent a little bit of time doing that. And thankfully, the career counselor agreed with me. She pointed out that since I wasn't desperate to find *any* job (since I have one now), it made little sense to be applying left and right with no idea of where I'm going in the long run. Even if I know that my "next job" will likely be related to what I'm doing now, it makes sense to try to decide what "forever job" I'm working toward in the long run. In other words, it's not irresponsible to think and do research rather than just forging ahead on some poorly-thought-out career path. After all, that's what got me in trouble in grad school!

On Job-Hunting Inertia

So, in late January and early February I wrote about how I'd been applying for a few jobs and had had a phone interview. I never got a call back after that interview, so it looks like they hired someone else ... which is actually okay with me, since the interview went well but I wasn't overly excited about the job. It would've been nice to have been considered further, of course, but I'm not upset that I wasn't.

Since then, however, I haven't accomplished much on the job-applying front. I've sent out maybe one or two resumes in the past 4-6 weeks. Mostly, I've just been working and hanging out with my partner and friends and dog. It's true that I was pretty sick for about a week and also had to make an unexpected trip out of town for a funeral, so some of my inaction has been justified. But more generally, I just haven't been doing much of anything on the "trying to get a new job" front.

It's a little embarrassing to admit, but as I've written before, I want this blog to chronicle both the ups and downs of leaving academia. I've talked endlessly about the good stuff I've experienced since leaving. Now it's time to write about one thing that's been tough for me - actually getting off my rear end and sending out resumes at a rate that might get me a job sometime in the next year.

Notes on A Postacademic Weekend

Does this title of this post make it sound like I'm about to tell you about some wild-and-crazy weekend where I traveled widely, ate exotic food, and had a night full of drinks and laughter with a bunch of friends?

Ha ... not so much. :)

On Thursday, I was on day two or three of an impending sinus infection. I was sneezy, sniffly, overtired, and had a sinus headache brewing.

Around 3 pm, I got a call from a human resources person at a company I applied to a few weeks ago (surprisingly enough, from the first resume I sent out. How unlikely is that?). HR person asked me to call them back. I had a meeting all afternoon, so couldn't call hir back until Friday morning.

We played phone tag all day Friday, but never managed to actually get on the phone with each other. When I called HR person back after I left work on Friday and got their voicemail, I sort of started to worry. "What if I blew my chance by not being available this week? They must have other good candidates who already interviewed." Then I started to overthink. "I don't even know what this job will really entail. How do I know whether I want it?"

You're Not Alone - Part 9

Because we haven't had one of these in awhile ... and because I'm  too busy this morning to write a longer post...

Here are search terms that have been bringing people to this blog for the past few weeks:

graduate school good reason for leaving
should i drop out of grad school?
feel like a failure doing phd
grad school lonely miserable
how to tell people you are leaving grad school
i can't handle grad school anymore
i am miserable in graduate school
grad school depression
i hate grad school
i hate my phd topic
phd feel miserable
i hate myself and the academic job market
academia is pointless

Remember, everybody ... you're not alone in feeling this way. Just because no one around you openly talks about it does not mean you're the only one who hates what you're doing or wants to leave. And there's no shame in admitting it to yourself ... even if you aren't ready to admit it to everyone yet.

You're not alone in this.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

I got two more resumes sent this weekend. Yep, just two. But it's okay. As I said last week - I'm not at all surprised or discouraged that the job application process is starting out slow. This is all in keeping with my personality - I start slow and deliberative with any project, and get more confident and speed up as time goes on. I'm setting myself reasonable application-sending goals for now, and forcing myself to be deliberate with what I apply to, rather than just panicking and applying to anything and everything because I need to find a new job right at this moment oh my gosh!!!!!!!!!!

I have a job. I don't need to be desperate. More important to me right now is (1) making sure I'm applying only to jobs that I think I would *want* to do (rather than any old thing I'm qualified for), and (2) trying to find something that will pay better than what I'm making right now. My days of trying to find any old job in a particular category - salary be damned - are now over. I am reasonably financially stable for the first time in my adult life, and I am not about to throw that out the window for any random job that just happens to be located the city I want to move to. I'm going to take my time and take it slow and make the right decision ... this time.

I think I used up my lifetime quota of poor decisions by going to grad school and persisting in it for nearly a decade. Now it's time to make sure I'm doing the right thing for myself. If it takes an extra few months to figure out what that is? So be it.

Anyway, two applications went out this weekend, for jobs I could easily see myself doing. We'll see what happens, and I'll keep looking, and eventually something will work out. I know it will.

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...Which brings me to a random thought that keeps popping up in my mind while I've been reading postacademic job ads and selecting what to apply for.

Random Sunday Observations

A few random observations on this Sunday afternoon:

I got my first job application sent out today! Go me!! It took a little bit longer than I was expecting to get started, namely because I wound up getting sick for a few days and could barely do anything other than go to work and lay on the couch for about a week.. But everything is back to normal now, and the first (official) postacademic resume is out!

I know this will be just the first of many resumes I'll send out, so it might sound weird that I'm so excited about it. However, getting one application out was an important first step for me. I'm the type of person who can easily find myself sitting and obsessing and endlessly revising my resume, or else worrying for hours about whether I'll like a particular job or if I'm really ready to find a new job ... and will ultimately procrastinate on actually getting an application out. This was true for my previous nonacademic job attempts, and it was true for my academic job search, and even back to fellowships and other such things. My brain can get the best of me, and I've found that the easiest way for me to proceed is to finalize the first step of the process. So I'm done with the first step of this job search process - the first application.

Not to mention, applying for jobs is infinitely easier once you have a resume/cover letter template to work with, so you aren't starting from scratch for every job. Now that my first resume/cover letter is out the door, I'm over that first hurdle. So I'm very proud of myself!

Look! A Nonacademic Job You Could Get!! (Also, New Postacademic Blogs for You!)

First off ... be sure to check out the updated blogroll on the right. There are a few new postacademic blogs for you to check out - namely, Project Reinvention 2012 and Unemployed PhD for Hire. They've both already had some interesting things to say in their first few posts ... and of course, I'm thrilled to see more and more people not just leaving academia, but choosing to write about it. Let's pull back the curtain and make sure people understand that (1) academia is not a perfect meritocracy where success is guaranteed, and that (2) it's okay to not like it anymore, even if you think you could get a job. It's okay to want to leave.

Anyway, check out their blogs and leave a comment!

On this lazy Sunday, I thought I'd follow up on recentPhD's recent post by copying the text of an ad for a nonacademic job that requires academic skills. As recentPhD wrote, perhaps this can help you think more positively about your job prospects outside of academia. Most of you probably aren't looking at nonacademic job ads right now ... so perhaps seeing that there are jobs out there for people with the kind of job skills that you gain from academia will help you feel more positive about the possibility of finding work outside of academia if you choose to or need to leave.

I'll do this every now and then on this blog, now that I'm reading job ads regularly again (although to some extent, I'm still not really sure what I'm looking for. Eeeeesh).

Anyway, I can't even tell you how easy it is to find job ads that are looking for people with academic skills. Teaching skills translate into jobs as training coordinators. Research skills translate into many jobs analyzing data or running focus groups or conducting surveys or interviews. Reading and writing skills translate into jobs in editing, technical writing, marketing, and a lot of other things. Trust me - regardless of what Professor McFancy in your department tells you, there ARE jobs outside of academia that will value your training and that you will find fulfilling.

So here you go. An ad for someone with research training. Does this sound like a job you could do?

Welcome Back ... to Overthinking :)

I'm back at work today, with a pile of things on my desk and a lengthy to-do list for this week. So, you know, it seems like a good time to write a new blog post. :)

As I've mentioned multiple times before, this job is perfectly fine for the time being. I make enough money to pay the bills plus have a little extra, I like my boss and especially my coworkers a lot, and (perhaps most importantly), this job is not academic work and therefore pays me a fair wage while allowing me to live a normal life without academic guilt and the expectation that I will work 24/7, and on all vacations and holidays. (I mean, my grad student friends who celebrate Christmas were posting on Facebook on the 26th that they were "back to work after a relaxing two days off!" Come on, now...)

The hunt for my next job begins this week, so we'll see how it goes. At this point, I'm looking simply for "a better job than I have now, in Dream City." From there, I'll see what comes next.

You're Not Alone - Part 8

Search terms bringing people to this blog in recent weeks:

-how to leave academia
-i hate grad school
-reasons to leave grad school
-graduate school and i hate it
-i want to leave academia
-I hate grad students
-feel like a loser in grad school
-grad school has made me hate academia

...and my favorite:
-are postacademics happy?

Yep! Or at least I am. I may not be pursuing a Ph.D.-level job anymore or doing academic research. I may just be working in an office and may be looking for a job where I'll have a boss and defined work hours.  I may be giving up my summers off and a little bit of flexibility in my schedule. I may not wind up doing something that inspires an awed reaction like "college professor" does (in certain circles, anyway).

But I'm happy. And to me, that's what counts.

To the rest of you: you're not alone. I doubt the same person has been running all of those searches, so there's at least a few of you out there. Remember: just because no one talks about being unhappy doesn't mean they aren't. You are not alone.

Bravo!

A huge standing ovation to Ohio State for hosting Paula Chambers of Versatile Ph.D. and for opening up the floor to a public discussion of nonacademic careers for people with advanced degrees.

This is the kind of dialogue we need to keep having, publicly, so that grad students can quit feeling like they're doing something wrong by exploring nonacademic careers ... and so academics who are miserable with the academic life can see that they have other options and start working toward a postacademic life.

I attended a postacademic careers section at my discpline's last annual conference, and the room was so packed that people were sitting on the floor between chairs. There is clearly a demand for this kind of information, as much as some academics would like to pretend otherwise.

It's understandable that faculty and administration might not know exactly how to advise students for nonacademic careers. But it's well past time for them to acknowledge that there are massive structural problems in higher education hiring (as well as the fact that every newbie grad student who is in love with academia may not feel the same way ten years later), and to provide their students with some resources for finding other types of careers. Bringing in outside speakers in the form of people who work outside of academia with Ph.D.'s would be a good first start. Let's not only give grad students examples of people working outside academia ... but let's bring everyone who's considering a different career out into the light so they won't think they're alone and will have other people to talk to.

Bravo to Ohio State, to the wonderful Paula Chambers, and to all of the grad students who are actively thinking about their options right now, while they have plenty of time to plan and prepare!

(P.S. While you're reading this article, be sure to click around the links on the left and right for "related content." The Chronicle has done some decent work writing about nonacademic careers and alternatives to academia over the years.)