Career Talk

How to Get Unstuck

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines An Academic in America On Stupidity, Part 2 Exactly how should we teach the 'digital natives'? First Person Polished Applications Nothing stunts civility like graduate-student insecurities and competition. gift. Career News Fish in the Shallows Stanley Fish would like professors to impart knowledge without viewpoint. Even if that were possible, it would be undesirable. gift. First Person The Welcome Mat On his first day on the job, an assistant professor is handed an unusual gift. Resource Salaries: Faculty | Administrative Presidential pay: Private | Public Financial resources: Salary and cost-of-living calculators Career resources: Academic | Nonacademic Library: Previous articles by topic | by date | by column Career Talk, Ms. Mentor, and more... Landing your first job On the tenure track Mid-career and on Administrative careers Nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s Talk about your career Blogs

By Julie Miller Vick

The final column that I wrote with my colleague, the late Mary Heiberger, about feeling stuck in your job, resonated with so many readers that I decided to take a suggestion from one of them and write a column about how to get "unstuck."

Better yet, I decided to ask readers to share their stories about how they got themselves out of a rut.

Feeling stuck in your job can happen at any stage of your career. Sometimes it's the result of unrelenting tensions among people you have to see on a regular basis. Being in the middle of a difficult interpersonal situation can feel like an insurmountable problem, yet sometimes only a small change can bring about a significant improvement.

That was the case with one reader, whom I'll call "Sam." His department was in turmoil, particularly because of two colleagues in offices near his whose angry behavior toward others verged on frightening. He found himself working at the library to avoid going to his office.

Sam approached his dean about the situation, urging that a conflict-resolution group be brought in to work with the department. But while the dean seemed sympathetic, nothing happened.

So Sam decided to see if making a small change himself might at least solve his own problems, if not the department's: He moved his office to another part of the building.

That simple move did it. "I felt such a sense of freedom," he wrote. Faculty members in his new office area seemed to enjoy one another's company. They left their office doors open, they talked, and they celebrated each other's victories.

Sam reported that one of the two troublemakers left the university a year later. Several years later the other one became chairman of the department. Faculty members knew that giving him that position was a big risk, but they felt it was worth taking since no one else was willing to take the job if it meant having to deal with the troublemaker. Interestingly enough, becoming the chairman seemed to significantly improve his behavior and interaction with others.

The key to Sam's success here was the notion that a small change could help an intolerable situation. And in the end, a difficult person got a chance to take on a new role and ostensibly remake himself.

Sometimes the only way to disentangle yourself from a bad situation is to leave the job. That may mean leaving academe altogether. Taking such a risk is scary, but the rewards can be significant, as the next two writers prove.

"Les" earned a Ph.D. in political science in the mid-'90s, with an emphasis on international relations and quantitative methods. While completing his dissertation, he worked for two years as a visiting instructor.

While he enjoyed teaching and interacting with students, he realized that academe was not the right career for him. He didn't want a future of "publish or perish." To find the courage to leave, he decided to eliminate all his career options in academe. He did not apply for any tenure-track jobs or visiting positions.

"So there I was -- no job, no plans, no interviews, no help. I was suffering from the lack of confidence that you mentioned that plagues many graduate students, and I lacked awareness of the options available." His department wasn't much help when it came to nonacademic jobs, and the campus career center focused on undergraduates and M.B.A.'s; it wasn't attuned to the career needs of new Ph.D.'s.

After sending out résumés and receiving no responses, Les decided he needed professional help. He charged a sizable fee to his credit card and hired a coach to revamp his résumé and advise him on job-search strategies. He figured that other people had paid him to teach them about international relations, so maybe he should pay someone to teach him about job searches.

The coach helped him look for jobs and refine his two-minute speech to explain how what he'd done in academe could be of use in the business world. And in the process, he got a much-needed confidence boost.

At the beginning of his search, he found that being a Ph.D. meant he was often on the receiving end of a "I'm-not-sure-I-know-what-to-do-with-you" kind of look from employers. To pre-empt that, he would introduce himself by explaining that he wanted to work in international business on strategic work.

Les ended his search by accepting a job in the international division of a large corporation. He travels and works with teams in emerging markets to guide them as they evaluate strategic options, and therefore actually uses his academic training while teaching others. He feels good about his company's work, and he's found that what his company likes best about him is that he's "different." Variety and new approaches are assets for any organization.

Sometimes it's possible to be in a rut without realizing it. "Karl" was a tenured associate professor with more than 15 years of experience at a small private university where he was very comfortable. He enjoyed his teaching, advising, and service duties, and had served as president of the faculty senate. It was nice and it was safe.

Then one day a senior colleague said to him, "I've been watching you for a long time. When are you going to step up to the leadership of an institution?" That was the prod that Karl needed to begin exploring his potential as a leader.

He decided to apply for a leadership position in an association in his field and met his campus president to discuss a possible leave of absence. That seemed to prompt the president to view Karl in a different light. A month later, the president slid an application for the American Council on Education's Fellows Program under his door. The program prepares faculty members, department heads, deans, and other emerging leaders to serve as senior executives in higher education.

During the selection process Karl had two thoughts simultaneously: "This is so frightening. And I want it so badly."

He got it. Becoming an ACE fellow changed his life in ways large and small. The experience of being advised by a president and senior administrators in a large state college, of traveling widely for the first time and seeing numerous other types of institutions, and of meeting regularly with 33 other fellows from all over the country set him on a new career track. Today he is very happy working as an associate dean at a much larger regional university.

One thing that Les and Karl had in common was that they found a mentor or a coach to help them through the transition process. Opening up to someone who can look at your situation objectively and offer advice is a proven formula for getting "unstuck."

Have a question you'd like answered in Career Talk? Send it to careertalk@chronicle.com. While I am unable to answer all of your letters personally, I will consider them as materials for future columns.

Confidentiality is assured.

PREVIOUS ADVICE COLUMNS

Julia Miller Vick is a graduate career counselor at the University of Pennsylvania. She is one of the authors of The Academic Job Search Handbook(University of Pennsylvania Press), along with Mary Morris Heiberger, who was associate director of career services at Penn and passed away in December.

You can order their book directly from the University of Pennsylvania Press or from either of the on-line booksellers below.