The Dentist and the Oracle

By Harrison S. Key

It's early last December and I'm shopping on the Internet -- but not for warm socks and a coat for brother. I'm shopping for a job, and it's not the kind of job that Ph.D.'s should be looking for during The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

Just a week earlier, I had decided I was unhappy with academic life. Really unhappy. Less than a year as a Ph.D., and I wanted to leave academe for good. It was a delicate time. A man spends his whole life in education and then just leaves. I was supposed to die at the lectern; I would slump over and they'd roll me into the recycled paper bin. But now I wanted to leave.

Where would I go? I had heard stories about smart young Ph.D.'s being kidnapped by secret government agencies to solve world problems, but I think those people are usually scientists who know about asteroids. My knowledge is not suitable for saving anything. I have a Ph.D. in theater. Governments aren't looking for me unless they want to subject Iraqi detainees to experimental productions of Antigone directed by unreasonable graduate students.

Until then, I needed to find a job, which is what I was doing on the Internet while everyone else was decking the halls. I was about to take my first-ever career inventory, and I was scared. I had heard about those things. You take them and then click something and the computer tells you your future. Like Oedipus talking to the oracle at Delphi or something. Nobody says oracles have to be sweet.

I diligently answered all of the questions, even the ones about whether I preferred to plant flowers or eat them. After an hour or so, I was a click away from the oracle. Here's what I wanted it to tell me:

You would be most fulfilled as:

1. A secret agent.

2. A cowboy.

3. John Grisham.

What it actually said was:

1. A philosopher.

2. A college professor.

3. A dentist.

My first reaction was to throw the computer out the window at one of those enthusiastic orientation leaders who give tours to new freshmen.

My second reaction was to wonder how one gets a job as a philosopher.

And the college professor thing -- well, that was to be expected. Even the oracle can be wrong.

I liked the idea of dentistry, though. Dentists seem happy. They get to wear their pajamas all day. They're surrounded by gorgeous women with good teeth. And they're loaded. They don't sound like nerds to me. They sound like a bunch of Arab sheiks. I can be a sheik. I'd only have to go to school for, what, four more years? After 25 years, four more is nothing.

So you can imagine my kind wife's response when she caught me reading All About Dental School in bed one night.

"Are you nuts?" she said.

"Yes," I said. "Nuts for dental school."

Later that week, we saw the Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special on TV -- the one with Hermey, the elf who would rather be a dentist than an elf. Upon finding Hermey fixing dolls' teeth in Santa's workshop, the Head Elf says, "You'll never fit in. Now you come to elf practice. Learn how to wiggle your ears and chuckle warmly and go 'hee-hee' and 'ho-ho' and important stuff like that. A dentist. Good grief."

My wife was the Head Elf, but fortunately for me, a more sympathetic version. She was about to get on me for the dental-school book, but she saw the fear in my eyes. She knew it was just a little chance to dream again. To feel what it would be like to be anybody. She let me read the book in peace.

But then I realized I didn't want to spend my days drilling holes in people's heads, so I got a little more realistic. I sat down and wrote. You should, too, if you're unhappy with academic life. Ask yourself:

• Why do I want to leave academe? (The words "pay" and "check" come to mind.)

• Why would I stay? (The words "summer" and "vacation" come to mind.)

• What do I do well? (Even if I don't enjoy it.)

• What do I enjoy? (Even if I'm not good at it.)

• What are the jobs I've always dreamt of being offered? (One of mine: a writer for A Prairie Home Companion.)

• What do I fear? (Some of mine: being homeless, being a loser, being in sales.)

Then I went to the library, where I checked out a great many really bad career books. I think they were written by people without jobs. A better name for one I read would have been The Complete Career Guide by Idiots.

The only one worth reading was Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius's So What Are You Going To Do With That: A Guide to Career-Changing for M.A.'s and Ph.D.'s (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001). It reminded me that I was not the only ingrate out there who wanted to throw his life away and get a new one.

I also got back on the Internet, reading other things written by bad writers, and Christmas break started turning rank. I had no prospects, no possibilities, no hope. Why weren't my friends and family calling with words of encouragement?

Then I remembered that I hadn't actually called them. So I rang up my parents, my best friend, even my brother the farmer, and told them I was leaving a good job and that I had no idea what I would do for money come May.

They were all very surprised, but only because I don't usually call them much. Here I was, "It's Christmas, I'm about to jump off the top floor of the library," and all they could say was, "Just get me DVD's this year." That was sobering. I had grown so used to the idea of tenured job security that I had forgotten how normal people live. Normal people change jobs all the time. They get fired. Times get hard. They get bored.

I needed to get over myself. So I was looking for a new career? So what? It's not the end of the world, it's the beginning of a new one.

All of a sudden, I was just a man looking for a job. I asked myself, "What are you good at and what do you enjoy?" And I knew the answer. The answer was always there. I wanted to ignore it, to tell myself I really could be a dentist. But what I loved and what I knew had always been, well, education.

So that was that. I would work for some college somewhere. Maybe I could raise money or be an admissions counselor or be an assistant associate interim dean of something unimportant. I sent résumés to every job opening at the 50 colleges where I had ever wanted to study or teach. I felt like a 30-year old National Merit Finalist.

I was still jobless, but I was happy again. I knew where I wanted to be.

Of course I still had doubts. Was I afraid to leave the university? Was I afraid of the business world? The thought of starting out at $75,000 was nice. Why not pharmaceutical sales? I'll tell you why. Because I've never seen a play called Death of an Interim Dean.

So education it was. I might not teach anymore, but that didn't mean I had to leave education altogether. It just meant I might have to tuck in my shirt. I could do that. I'd probably even make more money. (Ultimately, I did make more money. Lots more. We can talk later about how I got the job I finally got, and even how I quit that one for another one. But I haven't left education. It's where I'm supposed to be.)

So, the next time you find yourself feeling like Hermey and hiding in the closet with Dental School and You, try to remember why you got into education and whether you care enough to stick around.

It doesn't really matter if you have to trade in your dry-erase marker for a PDA. It's OK. Nobody's watching but God and your dissertation adviser, and only one of them can actually damn you for it.