New Location for How To Leave Academia

Hi all! Long time no talk!!!

I am still here...still working...still happy...still doing pretty great, with no regrets about my choice to leave academia in 2011. I'm going to write more about what I'm doing now and how I'm feeling in the next week or so, but it won't be appearing here...it will be appearing over at our recently moved and revamped How to Leave Academia site!

Check it out: http://www.howtoleaveacademia.blogspot.com/

As some of you probably noticed, the old site went kaput a year or two ago, and unfortunately due to work and life demands it took us a long time to fix it. But all of the content that used to be at HTLA is now at this (free!) Blogspot site, and it will remain there until the end of the internet. We promise.

I doubt that any of us will be writing much over there, but I suppose you never know when the mood might strike one of us to write something. So keep an eye on it! In the meantime, if any of you would like to add some content, write a guest post, leave a comment, etc., shoot one of us an email! We would love to add more to the site, and I'm sure that the newer folks who are leaving would love to hear from people who are going through the same process.

And in the meantime, don't forget about our e-book, Moving On, which is still available on Amazon!

I hope you're all doing well and are figuring things out for yourselves. Even if you feel alone, don't worry...we've got your back, and there is light at the end of the academic tunnel.

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

"The Post-Academic Privilege Divide"

Hello, everyone!

Piggybacking on my recent post about what constitutes a "good" postacademic job - as well as the related posts from Kathleen and Lauren - the three of us have put our heads together to write a post at How to Leave Academia that we are pretty proud of.

If you have a few minutes, head on over and let us know what you think.

More soon!

Forum Update - Spammers Suck!

As a followup to my last post - yes, the spammer problem at our new forum is out of control. We are currently working on a solution and will get it fixed as soon as possible. We will post an announcement over there when it's functional again, and I will post an announcement here as well to let you know when it's safe to sign up.

Thanks for your patience ... none of us have ever gotten much spam at our blogs, so we were naive about how much would be attracted by the forums. Ahh! Bear with us and we will fix it...

Exciting News in Postacademia!!

Hey everybody!! (Really, really) long time no talk!!

Everything with me is going well ... I'm still at the same job, still living in the same place ... still hanging out with my partner and friends and family and dogs. Life is good!

I haven't written in a while for various reasons ... to some extent, I just haven't had much to add to the interesting and varied conversations that have been happening in the postacademic world in recent months. On another level, I simply haven't been quite as "tuned in" to academic and postacademic news as I used to be. I do still pay attention, but as I've moved further away from my grad school life I have found that my emotions aren't as raw, my anger not so acute, and my desire to blog about each article and event to be less strong.

(So take heart, new academic leavers - the raw emotions do fade over time!!)

However, I'm back today to tell you about a few really exciting developments in the postacademic world, and with our How to Leave Academia website in particular.

More after the jump...

A Comment on Being #PostAc

If you haven't already seen it, everyone should go over to our new How To Leave Academia site and read the latest post that Lauren and Currer wrote, about the differences between the "alt-ac" and "post-ac" movements. It's a really interesting read, and it helps clarify the differences between the different groups of us who are out here, trying to identify problems in higher ed and to help people who want to leave academia.

Unsurprisingly, I call myself a post-ac. I have been and will continue to be immensely critical of the overall system of academia, which values obscure specialized knowledge over all else and which tells its grad students and faculty that the only job worth having is an academic one, even if it leaves you impoverished and miserable. I've found a job outside of academia, in a for-profit consulting company. I feel no qualms about this whatsoever. I no longer believe that academia (as an institution) is a benevolent entity working toward abstract goals like "providing education" or "advancing knowledge." They are working to minimize costs and maximize revenues, just like many nonacademic companies.

But at least here in the outside world, organizations are honest about it. I'd rather work for a company that is making money and being honest about it than one that tells me with a straight face that I should feel honored to work 60 hours per week for a salary in the teens because I'm contributing to the "life of the mind" ... while they jack up tuition rates on students by double-digits, cut classes and raise class sizes, build a multimillion-dollar athletic facility, and hire two new Vice Presidents of Something at salaries in the mid-six-figures.

I'm tired of the hypocrisy. I'm tired of watching people get hurt by the "bait-and-switch" of academia, and to then turn their disappointment inward, so that they blame themselves for not working hard enough or for not being smart enough. I'm tired of them believing that they should sacrifice because they're contributing to some benevolent institution or some "greater good."

The institution doesn't care about you. And there are ways to contribute to the "greater good" of society without impoverishing yourself or driving yourself crazy with anxiety and overwork.

So I'm a post-ac. Unequivocally.

Belated New Year's Roundup Post

Whew, finding time to blog is hard when you're also trying to work full-time, volunteer a few hours a week, start up a brand spanking new postacademic website, and find a little bit of time to hang out with your partner and pets and yourself! :)

But I really can't complain ... things are going pretty well for me right now. So, yay.

But given that we just had another new year sneak up on us, I wanted to write a brief "year in review" kind of post, to sum up how the year has gone and where I hope to go in 2013.

2012 was a weird year. Upon first glance, it looks like a pretty uneventful year, primarily because nothing much happened for me career-wise. But when I think about it more closely, I actually do think it was a big year for me in my journey out of academia. And even more importantly, I'm hopeful that I'm finally in a good position to make 2013 a really great year.

New Links for the New Year!

Hey all!

I'll be back this weekend with a more substantive post ... I've been meaning to write up a "2012 Year in Review" post like many of the other postacademic bloggers have done, so I'll get to that this weekend.

The reason I've been neglecting my own blog, however, is because Currer, Lauren, Jet and I have been busily getting our new postacademic website up and running. We bought a domain, and set a template ... and now we actually have some content up!

So go check out our new site - How To Leave Academia! It's a work in progress, of course, and we still have some kinks to work out with the template (and a lot of content to add). But it's coming along nicely, and in the meantime we'd love to have folks bookmark it and start sending people over to check it out.

And as I mentioned in my last post ... if you have any ideas for content or if you'd like to contribute an article or a postacademic success story or just a thought about something that you see over there, leave a comment or email one of us!

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A couple of links to new blogs after the jump...

Exciting News! ...Wanna Help? :)

As Lauren mentioned in her post just a little while ago, we have exciting news to report from the postacademic blogosphere!

After months of ranting away on our own blogs, several of us (me, Lauren, Currer and Jet) have decided to move forward with a centralized website and e-book that will provide resources for folks who are contemplating leaving academia, as well as support for those who have already left.

The website won't be up and running for a little while, although we do have a URL and an outline, so it's definitely going to happen. :) The book will follow once the website is up and running, and once we get a sense for the type of information people seem to be looking for and how we can best complement what's on the site.

Our initial plan for the website is for it to provide concrete, tangible information about how to leave academia (how to tell your advisor, how to write a resume, how to deal with financial and other issues that might arise), as well as support and resources to help you make the decision that's best for you and to keep yourself emotionally on-track.

So! We have plans, and we're excited about them! And this is where you come in.