I am–possibly–a failed academic. Or I am–perhaps–an academic who made a calm and considered decision to walk away. Or perhaps I felt I had to walk away from academia because I’d failed, or perhaps walking away was itself a failure.
I don’t know. I really don’t know the answer to this, over ten years later, and that bugs me. It doesn’t eat away at me every day–I’ve built an entirely new life since then, including a career that I’m quite happy with in an entirely different field, and building a new life, frankly, just doesn’t leave time for that kind of constant introspection. But wondering about the choice I made, and why exactly I made it, and whether it was a good choice or not, is still something that bubbles up in my mind every now and then. And I’m bothered by my sheer lack of answers, and my distrust of those few answers I do come up with.
It was a big choice–a choice considerably bigger than many career transitions, and certainly of a completely different scale than my more recent career move from technical writer to software developer/consultant, because being an academic is not–or at least is not supposed to be–just about having a particular job. Academics, like doctors, politicians, artists, writers, musicians, clergy, some lawyers, and a good-sized handful of other professions, are supposed to do what they do because the job is part of who they are. They give up comforts, endure grueling training, and make less money than they otherwise might (OK, maybe not the doctors) because their field speaks to their soul. Leaving such a field is like–or at least, it’s supposed to be like, and can certainly feel like–leaving behind a major part of your self.
At any rate, leaving is just what I did, and I’m not alone. My wife is an ex-physician, and I’ve met ex-mathematicians, ex-performing artists, ex-public defenders, even an ex-seminarian, although I haven’t known many of these people very well. I wonder if I could learn from the stories of people who made a decision like mine, or if people who have made that decision–or have thought about making it–could learn from my stories. So I’d like to get that discussion going.
Here’s the deal: I’m looking for stories of people who made a deliberate decision to leave a field that is like one of the fields I’ve mentioned–the sort of thing that is supposed to provide a significant component of your identity. In addition, I’m looking for stories of people who almost made that decision, and turned back at the last minute. What were your reasons? How did people in and outside of your field react? Are you happy with your decision? Were you happy at the time? What are you doing now, and do you feel like you’re better off for it? Do you have any words of advice for someone who is contemplating such a big step?
Despite the title of this post, I’m not claiming that all cases of people deciding to leave these fields count as real failures, and contributing to the series is in no way an admission of failure. I’m not ready to admit that I failed, for one thing, although I’m willing to consider the possibility. The title came from the idea that members of these fields are often taught to set themselves and their peers apart as part of a select priesthood, and so leaving is often percieved by others–and at least briefly considered by the self–as a failure. This is one of the most interesting aspects of the leaving process to me; how do people come to terms with the social and internal pressures to remain devoted to something they’re supposed to be so honored to be a part of?
I’m afraid I’m not offering a paid writing gig here, just a chance to express yourself, join a discussion, and maybe help someone else. If that’s still interesting, here are the ground rules:
- Participate in any way you’d like–commenting, contacting me (I can either edit and post what you send or give you a Contributor account), blogging about it yourself (in which case please either comment on or ping a post in this series with a link), whatever. In any case, you’ll be credited, of course–as explicitly or anonymously as you desire.
- No inventories of wrongs. I’m not interested in stories about being screwed over again and again by the horrible people in various fields. If negative experiences with people in your field influenced your decision, it’s fine to talk about it (although I’d prefer that names be left out), but if it’s the primary focus of the story, you’re probably treading near or over this line.
- I’m maintaining final editorial control. I won’t make substantive changes to anything anyone sends me without their approval, but I do reserve the right not to post it at all if we can’t see eye-to-eye.
And no, I’m not letting myself off the hook. I haven’t talked about my own experiences in any detail yet, but I plan to rectify that soon.
6 Comments
As Avrom at least knows, I walked away from one profession that was a passion and nearly walked away from another. The two are related…
I guess I don’t consider myself a “failed” chef because I never really tried, or never got far enough along that path that leaving it was costly in the way you describe. But I do wonder sometimes why I didn’t pursue it. My standard answer — that it was the best job I ever had except for the low pay, long hours, and appalling working conditions — is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. I often wish I’d gone for it, or at least gone a little further…
For me, now, being a professional philosopher lacks the passionate commitment that cooking had, and sometimes still has for me. I enjoy my research, and sometimes I’m even excited by it, but I have trouble feeling connected to it. It’s too individual, too cut off. When I went back to it, I did so because it was convenient and easy for me to do so, not because I really loved it and missed it. So now I don’t know. I miss being involved in something that I’m passionate about — that I can say “this is only worth doing if it is worth doing well, with all your heart, with an eye towards being the best.” I don’t feel that way about philosophy. I do feel that way about cooking professionally. But perhaps that’s the reason I didn’t want to do it — perhaps I didn’t want that level of commitment and responsibility.
Hmm… I’ve got to run now, but I’ll come back to this…
jk
Thanks for your contribution, Jon. While I did know about your relationship to cooking, I actually didn’t know all of the details of the emotional content your decision had for you. In particular, I didn’t know that you didn’t actually think of your “standard answer” as “not going very far.”
There’s something, in particular, interesting about cooking–something it shares with the arts, and (arguably) in recent years journalism, which it doesn’t share with academia, and shares even less with fields that actually have licensing requirements (such as medicine or the law)–there is a role in our society called “serious amateur chef.”
I don’t think very many people who describe themselves this way are at anything like your level (for those who don’t know Jon, we’re talking about a level of seriousness and sophistication that is “amateurish” only when compared with that of ua tiny handful of professionals at the very top of their field), but people who, to a lesser or greater extent, devote themselves to cooking without expecting financial compensation or recognition by the professional community are not terribly hard to find, and I don’t *think*–although in fairness, I don’t know–that they’re automatically looked down upon by the professional community. This is in contrast to fields where amateurs really are more or less automatically looked down upon or where amateur practice is actually illegal (again, see medicine, or law).
I’m also fascinated by your theory that maybe you didn’t enter into cooking professionally precisely because you were *too* close to it. There’s something in that that resonates with me. “Follow your passion” is advice that’s repeated so often it has become a platitude, but like lots of platitudes, maybe it’s not only truistic but untrue. Perhaps it’s possible to be so passionate about one’s work that the relationship becomes an unhealthy one–not simply in the trite sense of workaholism but in the sense of a nearly–or even actually–unbearable feeling of responsibility, or a similarly unbearable dependence between one’s work and one’s sense of worth. I used to think of philosophy as an almost holy undertaking–perhaps I should have regarded that as a warning sign right there. Thinking of something that way is likely to make your relationship with it quite frought.
There is a New Yorker article from a while ago –
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/24/080324fa_fact_macfarquhar?currentPage=1
–
that expresses both what I’d like to have been able to do and what I feared.
This speech — Chang yelling at his staff — is again, something I long to be able to do, and something I’m glad I can’t:
“I haven’t been spending that much time in this restaurant because of all the shit that’s been going on,” he began, “but the past two days I’ve had aneurisms because I’ve been so upset at the kitchen. On the cooks’ end, I question your integrity. Are you willing to fucking sacrifice yourself for the food? Yesterday, we had an incident with fish cakes: they weren’t properly cut. Does it really matter in the bowl of ramen? No. But for personal integrity as a cook, this is what we do, and I don’t think you guys fucking care enough. It takes those little things, the properly cut scallions, to set us apart from Uno’s and McDonald’s. If we don’t step up our game, we’re headed toward the middle, and I don’t want to fucking work there.
“We’re not the best cooks, we’re not the best restaurant—if you were a really good cook you wouldn’t be working here, because really good cooks are assholes. But we’re gonna try our best, and that’s as a team. Recently, over at Ssäm Bar, a sous-chef closed improperly, there were a lot of mistakes, and I was livid and I let this guy have it. About a week later, I found out that it wasn’t him, he wasn’t even at the restaurant that night. But what he said was ‘I’m sorry, it will never happen again.’ And you know what? I felt like an asshole for yelling at him, but, more important, I felt like, Wow, this is what we want to build our company around: guys that have this level of integrity. Just because we’re not Per Se, just because we’re not Daniel, just because we’re not a four-star restaurant, why can’t we have the same fucking standards? If we start being accountable not only for our own actions but for everyone else’s actions, we’re gonna do some awesome shit.”
What does anyone in my department care about anyone else’s work? Or even about what I think of their own? Or even about what *they* think of their own work? That passion just isn’t there. And we’re not a team. There isn’t a sense of our striving towards something bigger than us. There are aspects of that in academic philosophy (a little, sometimes), but they aren’t centered around where you work, or how you work on a daily basis…
(I should mention — for those that don’t know me — that Avrom knew me when I was under-medicated for depression etc, and hence actually acted (a little?) like Chang in the above. I’m better now, and mellower. But less passionate…)
It *is* true that I figured I’d have an easier time as an amateur cook than as a am amateur philosopher. But it isn’t the same thing, really. I can play around in the kitchen, but nothing hinges on it. I’m not making a living, I’m not pushing boundaries (I don’t have to), I don’t have to be perfect every day.
Philosophy doesn’t, for me, have that level of intensity. I can be a flake one day, and it doesn’t matter. I can teach a bad class, and it isn’t a huge deal. But even more to the point, I can do *nothing* for a week, and no one will really notice.
The amateur cook community is *weird* — and I say that with love.
But seriously, if you hang out long enough at eGullet, start reading IdeasInFood regularly, etc., you start to get a sense that something is missing… We’ve let technique overtake passion. Or perhaps, I’m just a little burnt out on technique right now.
And, I’m off to give a job talk (!) on Wednesday. And — I had my first “academic” nightmare (that I remembered) in years last night. So maybe I’m not over philosophy, either…
jk
I guess I fit into the category you describe, Avrom, because I too, walked away from a career in academia. However, I’m not sure I was all that passionate about it. At times, sure, but not all the time. My biggest gripe and reason for leaving is this: after completing a grueling post-doctoral fellowship at a very prestigious university (and that after having earned a Ph.D. from another rather prestigious university), the only job I could get was yet another post-doc, making so little money I couldn’t possibly support the family I was ready to start. A career in industry made that possible. I don’t ever look back wondering “what if” because I know that staying in academia would have meant no Laura (my daughter). And anyone who knows me at all knows she is the light of my life (even when she’s having a tantrum) and I wouldn’t trade her for anything. That and I actually really love my job. I’m in medical affairs with a solid, well-respected biotechnology company and really enjoy pretty much everything about my work. So…what’s to regret? Life is pretty good and I have a lot to be thankful for. — Judie
Thanks, Judie.
Externals were certainly part of what went through my mind when I decided to leave academia as well–as Jon put it, the “the low pay, long hours, and appalling working conditions,” although of course those are all rather worse in a kitchen than in a university, even as a temporary worker in a university (although yeah, it can come close sometimes). And having a clear ambition that you perceive as simply incompatible with an attempt to pursue your original goals probably also makes the decision a lot simpler, and may make it a lot easier (those aren’t quite the same thing, of course–sometimes it can be blindingly obvious what you need to do and still be terribly difficult to do it).
It’s interesting that you say you’re not sure you were all that passionate about it, at least not all the time. (Although really, nobody’s passionate about anything *all the time*–sooner or later you just plain run out of energy for that sort of thing. I’m assuming you mean you weren’t passionate about it all that much of the time.) Was this even true when you first, say, started graduate school, or when you started writing your dissertation? I ask because I find it hard to imagine embarking on such projects without a fair bit of passion being involved; writing a dissertation in particular is hardly the sort of fun and high-paying work that attracts those who are just wandering through.
If you *did* lose passion somewhere along the line, did something happen during graduate school to change the level of passion you felt for your field? Or is it just that you now notice that you don’t miss it all that much, and infer from that that it couldn’t have been all that important to you to start with?
Hi Avrom, Thank you for the thoughtful comments. I guess you’re right. I was very passionate about my hopeful career in the beginning. As an undergrad, I LOVED science and just couldn’t get enough of it. As a grad student, I felt near-burn-out sometimes, but most of the time I think I did really love it. My post-doc is what stamped the passion out. I had a lousy PI and very painful personal loss during my post-doc years, but really, knowing that I couldn’t stay in academia AND have a family was the indisputable turning point. Like I said, I have no regrets and am actually quite happy at the way things have turned out now. Funny how sometimes life gives you things you didn’t ask for and at first it might seem like we’ve been cheated, but maybe down the road, it will seem like a big fat blessing in disguise. — Judie
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