Career Talk

Feeling Stuck?

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By Mary Morris Heiberger and Julie Miller Vick

Editor's Note: Mary Morris Heiberger, a columnist for this site since its debut in 1998, died on November 10 at her home outside of Philadelphia, after a long bout with cancer. As a Career Talk columnist, she helped countless readers who wrote in with questions about the academic job search. Throughout, she greatly enjoyed the mail she and Julia Miller Vick received from readers. Below is the final column the two wrote together for Career Talk.

Question: I have promised myself that this will absolutely, positively, be my last year of adjunct work, despite having broken that promise to myself for each of the last 10 years. I really want a faculty job, but I can't go on like this. On the other hand, I haven't a clue what I could do instead.

Question: I've been at my campus for many years and I'm tenured. But I'm not happy. The job isn't what it was when I took it. Everything is different now -- standards have risen, and if my job was advertised today, I wouldn't be competitive for it. I can't see myself languishing here for years in what I've come to find a toxic environment, but I don't think I could find a job with equivalent salary and benefits, which are barely enough to sustain us as things are.

Mary: We encounter both of those sad scenarios frequently. As career counselors, we find both situations frustrating because, realistically, neither lends itself to an easy solution. If someone has poor interview skills, we can offer advice and make a big difference quickly. But the more difficult problems described in those two questions are a different story. A bad situation can almost always be improved, but it takes time.

Julie: If you aspire to a faculty position and you have the necessary qualifications, you probably have more career options in the nonacademic world than you realize, simply because of the intelligence and discipline that brought you to this point. You have a contribution to make to society, and you're not the only one who is affected if you're not able to make it.

Mary: While the academic world can be exciting and invigorating, something about it seems to erode the self-confidence and optimism of doctoral students, as well as their ability to see a wide variety of career options for themselves. The academic tendency to question things -- coupled with the pressures of a tough faculty job market -- can cause a poisonous slide into cynicism and bitterness.

Julie: In a book I recently read by Peter Cameron, The City of Your Final Destination, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002), the protagonist, an advanced doctoral student, answers a question this way: "I don't really know. ... I can't really speak intelligently about it. It isn't my field." The person with whom he's speaking answers, "I have noticed this: this hesitation to speak about anything outside of one's field. This caution. How boring it makes everything. It didn't used to be like that. People used to talk about whatever they liked." The protagonist answers, "One gets a bit scared in academia. You can get in trouble for saying the wrong thing."

While some people lose their confidence in graduate school, others lose it later, on the job. For some people, developing expertise in a narrow field causes a reaction like the one the character describes. Getting involved in other activities -- even those that require a minimal amount of time (which is often all an academic has) -- can help restore your confidence.

Mary: There are good reasons to pursue an academic job, especially the love of teaching and/or research. A job that lets you do either lets you contribute to the world. A job that forces you to do either when you'll do the work bitterly or badly doesn't let you contribute. At their worst, embittered academics turn off students to learning or let a "who cares" attitude lead to a sloppiness in research that then undermines the integrity of the academic enterprise, which is already under enough assault from other sources.

Julie: Why be an unhappy person when you might be a happy one? As many First Person and Beyond the Ivory Tower columns on this site have shown, deciding to leave academe, while difficult, often proves unexpectedly satisfying and liberating. If you're relatively young, you can change fields, and doing so now is better than languishing, hanging on year after year waiting for a job that is increasingly unlikely to materialize.

Mary: If you're an older faculty member in a tenured position that makes you unhappy, you may have more reason to hold back before abandoning academe. Unfortunately, age discrimination exists, and your age may weigh against you as you enter a new profession. Financial problems or family commitments may limit your mobility. Sometimes you are truly "stuck" and it may be the best decision to stay in your tenured job, do your best, and leave your work at the office at the end of the day. Don't take a bad work situation home and brood. Find something that will provide some joy in your life!

Julie: If you can't move (at least for the time being), you have several options: You can start to distance yourself emotionally from your job, find a constructive group of kindred spirits at the workplace, or fight to change what you can't stand. Sometimes changing one small aspect of your work is enough to tip the scale in a direction away from misery. For example, having one friendly person to have coffee with every Thursday morning can give you something to look forward to.

Mary: It may be unrealistic for you to change fields quickly, but you can begin a course of study that will enable you to do so gradually, over a period of years. Juggling more demands may make life more difficult temporarily, but the outcome will hopefully be worth it.

Julie: You also might talk to other faculty members who aren't at your institution. Perhaps you are still in touch with people who were in your graduate program, or you could locate them and rekindle contact. How are they faring? Are they happy in their careers? If not, what do they do to keep themselves from becoming miserable? It can be helpful to share and see that you aren't alone. However, don't focus on griping. Instead, try to provide help and ideas for each other.

Mary: On the other hand, if the people in your own field are part of your source of unhappiness, it may be better to develop a new network of friends and acquaintances, pursuing a new interest altogether.

If you're reading this and thinking our advice is all ridiculous because the "remedies" seem so minuscule and trivial in relation to the problem -- well, that's the attitude we'd like you to drop. Just as you've told students about the importance of footnotes or meticulous lab reports in doing good work, so too, in the business of trying to improve your work life, do large successes result from small steps.

Julie: We know people in academe who are unhappy with their work but unable to leave their jobs, for a variety of reasons. We would like to end by listing some of the things those people have done to keep themselves going:

• Worked to preserve a local watershed.

• Raised show dogs.

• Taken up aikido.

• Taught aerobics and Pilates fitness programs.

• Joined a rock band.

• Participated in all kinds of writing.

• Researched and written family histories.

They've developed other interests and taken steps on their own to enhance their lives. You can, too.