Dear Future Amanda,
If you’re reading this missive, it means that you’ve started
to give serious consideration to leaving the professoriate. I might say,
“Congratulations,” but I don’t know the circumstances. Maybe you’ve stopped
looking forward to being in the classroom. Maybe you’ve run out of research ideas
(I know, this sounds unlikely). Maybe you can’t stand your colleagues any
longer but know the odds against lateral move. Or maybe the state government
has succeeded in destroying the public university system. I don’t know what’s
brought you to this point, but I do have confidence that you can make this
transition to a new career.
Do you remember when we decided to pursue a doctorate?
Super-Past Amanda decided to go to graduate school when she was a young pup of
20. Super-Past Amanda really enjoyed her first US history classes and thought
she’d like to learn more. Although she gave herself permission to drop out if
so inclined, once she got to graduate school she just kept going. When she
finished the PhD in 1999, landing an academic job was a crapshoot with even
odds. The “jobs crisis” dating to the 1970s hadn’t yet turned into the
structural divide of the twenty-first century academic job market. When she
lucked into an academic position that the first choice candidate turned down, she
settled into the job and built a life around it. A good life, until now, when
you’re considering whether to leave the faculty.
You don’t have to be trapped by Super-Past Amanda’s myopic
decision-making. You aren’t less competent than she was. You know from
parenting your daughters that you can’t map out your whole life. You should
make the next right choice. Perhaps that means it’s time to leave the academy.
It might have been a while since you taught a course on Career Diversity, so I want to remind you some of what Past Amanda
learned this spring semester teaching graduate students about planning their
own professional paths.
There are plenty of resources for PhDs seeking careers
outside the academy. I know that you know about Imagine PhD, Basalla and Debelius’s “So What Are You Going to Do with That ?,”[1]
the AHA’s first-person essays from a broad range of historians, VersatilePhD, and Beyond the Professoriate. I
won’t try to summarize their insights. Instead, here are some personal suggestions
to lay the groundwork for your next steps. Hopefully you are still cultivating
these practices, but in case you forgot about them, here’s a reminder from your
past self about why they are worthwhile.
First, you should use your energies for your community, outside your formal job. Volunteering for the
public good helps you recognize your existing skills that non-academics see as
valuable. Is the mayor of your small city (himself a former humanities
professor turned politician) still giving you opportunities to participate in
local government? Past Amanda has already worked her way up from chairing a
short-term task force on the city’s housing code to membership on the
relatively relaxed Architectural Review Board and now the city’s Plan Commission. Keep
it up and build your local network. When your neighbors know what you can do,
they might open professional doors for you.
Second, you should deliberately undertake professional development, even though
professors generally don’t use that term. The PhD is a terminal degree, but it shouldn’t
be the end of your education. Obviously your teaching and research have taught
you more about history. But you should also keeping learning new skills.
Remember that writing project that introduced you to WordPress? The time you put in then paid
off when your digital history project ended
up on a WordPress platform. You started playing with coding after a visit to
your daughter’s middle school Tech Ed class; how far did you get on Code.org? I’m not saying you ever have to penetrate
the mysteries of the photocopier—there are limits after all—but do welcome the possibilities
that intrigue you.
Finally, keep up those connections
with your students. Your decades in the classroom mean that you have
already built relationships with students who are now embedded in work
environments that welcome historians. Other professors probably won’t be helpful
building your new career, but the students who remember you fondly might be
excited to have the chance to return your service with an informational
interview or an entrée to a position. Your students already know you respect
them as whole people whom you want to help for their own sake. They might
welcome the chance to see you as a whole person as well.
Know that your PhD is not an anvil weighing down your job
search. Rather, like other forms of education, a PhD is a battery: it powers
you, and it fits a wide variety of machines. Whether you want to leave your
career or are feeling forced to, you can adapt your PhD to many different applications.
To be sure, your PhD is a C battery—suited for flashlights, radios, toys, and
tools. To fulfill your childhood dream of a seat on the Supreme Court, you will
need to earn that (J)D battery instead. But your PhD is never wasted, even if
it is time to try it out somewhere new.
Love,
Present Amanda
[1] Susan Basalla and Maggie DeBelius, “So What Are You Going to Do with That?’:
Finding Careers Outside Academia, 3rd edition (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2015; originally published 2001 by Farrar Straus
and Giroux).
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