Beyond the Ivory Tower

Cappuccino Dreams

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By Catherine Evans

Last February, I resigned my tenure-track position in the arts at Nearly Ivy University and prepared to leave academe once and for all. It was a terrifying, traumatic decision. I had invested a decade as a student, and half that again as a faculty member before finally admitting that the isolation and devotion required to achieve tenure in my field just weren't for me. I didn't know yet what was.

It was easy to postpone concentrated thought about my future until the end of the spring semester. There were classes to teach, an overdue journal article to write, and a book chapter that had languished on an editor's desk for more than a year and suddenly needed revision. There were a string of guest lecturers who needed to be picked up at the airport, and a labor-intensive, politically charged committee assignment that had to be waded through.

As the end of term finally appeared on the horizon, colleagues began speaking with relief and excitement about their summer plans. I quickly learned it was best to avoid talking about mine, since I could only do so in the vaguest of terms.

"So what's next for you, Catherine?" they asked with genuine interest.

"Umm. I guess I'll be looking for a job," I mumbled. This just didn't sound as promising as a research vacation in Berlin or a university-financed conference in Hawaii, so I tried to spice things up: "Oh, and we'll be visiting Will's mom in Urbana for a week."

My colleagues thought I was crazy for leaving academe. My doing so without a new career in hand indicated that I was doubly loopy and further confirmed their lingering suspicions that I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.

There were no formal goodbyes with colleagues or students. I was two-thirds of the way through my last class before realizing I would not be meeting again with any Nearly Ivy students, let alone this semester's bunch. The process of handing in grades was as routine as usual, but now it meant my professional obligation to the university was over.

Or almost over. For the first time in my faculty career, I had signed up to participate in commencement exercises. Although I had little enthusiasm for the idea by the end of the semester, the event turned out to provide much needed closure. Like Nearly Ivy's newly degreed graduates, I too was leaving the safe haven of a college environment to explore the wider world. As cliché-ridden as the commencement address was, it sent me out on a positive note.

Now, what to do with my newfound freedom? My previous job-seeking experience had been limited to the academic market, and I wasn't sure how to conduct a nonacademic hunt. I started by spending days reading nonacademic listings online and in the local newspapers, without knowing quite what I was looking for. I felt ambivalent and thoroughly unproductive.

My husband, Will, who remains a faculty member at Nearly Ivy, kept encouraging me to simply take the summer off, which we could afford for a few reasons. Although most faculty members at Nearly Ivy are on nine-month contracts, salaries are paid over 12 months, so I would continue receiving my usual monthly income through August. On top of that, Will had just won a grant that would pay him a full summer salary. Taking into account my freelance work, we wouldn't feel a financial hit until January or February. I didn't need to immediately fill the gaping hole left by academe.

Feeling indulgent, I took Will's advice. I closed my Internet browser, dumped the newspapers in our recycling bin, and took the summer off for the first time in 15 years. I enjoyed more time with our toddler, joined a choir, and did some research on our 100-year-old house.

I spent time with friends and neighbors, and talked freely about my job situation and desires. Then, somewhere along the line, I made a thrilling discovery: I was networking.

I thought I had made useful connections as an academic, but the speed with which contacts are made beyond the ivory tower simply blew me away. Forget six degrees of separation: It seemed that everyone I knew either knew someone who did what I was contemplating, or knew someone who knew someone who did.

Mention to a neighbor that you're interested in a certain kind of freelance work, and suddenly there's an e-mail message in your in box with contact information for three other people in town who do just that and can help hook you up. Express interest in writing careers to one of the parents in your child's play group and a week later find yourself invited to dinner with their friend, the technical writer. Joke casually at a neighborhood potluck about the fantasy careers that sustained you in grad school and discover not only someone who has done the first (mail carrier), but also someone who secretly harbors the second (opening a coffee house) and happens to know the owner of an up-and-coming fair-trade coffee roasting venture that just moved into town.

I had gotten good grades as a student and subsequently good jobs by coloring creatively between the academic lines. I knew many people shared my escapist fantasies, and I assumed there were good reasons we weren't all running cozily lit cafes filled with devoted customers dunking madeleines into their third lattes while discussing Proust. My responsible self had certainly rejected such fantasies as too risky and irrational.

But a voice inside my head was now saying, "Hey, you've just quit the tenure-track job that you've spent most of your adult life preparing for. If that isn't risky, what is?"

It went on to remind me that I had degrees in physics and (following a graduate-school change of heart) art history. You're a good learner, it said.

The responsible academic voice countered that, to open a coffee shop, I should really have at least a bachelor's degree in C.S. (coffee science).

But the first voice responded, "You've faced challenges before and met them with éelan, both on the short term (surviving quizzes, term papers, final exams) and the long (writing that dissertation, then slogging toward tenure). Your organizational skills have allowed you to plan daily lecture topics and readings for three courses at a time, an entire semester in advance, with only minimal tweaking once the term began. Your research skills have enabled you to travel to other countries and other libraries, to conduct elaborate treasure hunts to track down the esoteric information you needed to fuel your dissertation. You have learned to negotiate conflicting personalities, to promote your ideas, and to stand up for what you believe in. You survived and even prospered the last time you jumped ship, making that big move from science to art. You know how to work long hours. Now summon all those years of academic training and take the bold next step!"

And so I went out and bought a book.

After reading from cover to cover about what it takes to start up a successful coffee shop, I wondered if I could put theory into practice. I phoned my neighbor, the cappuccino-empire-building wannabe, and we talked seriously about opening a business together. We took her friend Mr. Beans to dinner. We arranged productive informational interviews with current and former coffee-shop owners alike, and sat in on a meeting of downtown small-business owners. We scoped out the too-few local cafes that we thought might be our competition, taking notes on product movement, customer flow, and ambience.

Then we took the "So You Want to Start Your Own Small Business?" seminar at a local community college, and learned in more concrete detail why most people don't make this fantasy a reality. They simply don't have enough capital to invest. Neither did we.

"Don't quit your day job," the instructor said with a wink. Too late.

I will not be opening a coffee shop any time soon. But pursuing my long-held java fantasy has taught me that it's OK to dream again, and in the process I have acquired a great deal of practical information about starting a small business in this city. Other summer projects have generated some truly exciting and far more feasible ideas for self-employment that probably wouldn't have occurred to me at all had I not been feeling entrepreneurial about the coffee biz. I look forward to investigating them further this fall.

Meanwhile, I am about to begin a part-time position at Nearly Ivy's academic advising center, a short-term opportunity that came to my attention not through my connections with the university but thanks to yet another social contact outside academe. The job will allow me to acquire some new administrative skills and to continue working with students, which I will enjoy. And financially, it will extend for another few months the time I have to envision new colors for my parachute.