Today I am truly honored to have Maureen Ogle, PhD as my virtual guest. I met Maureen on Twitter (I know, it’s weird to say that) when she told me she was another prof who decided to leave — and that was after writing her tenure book! In 2007 she wrote a fantastic piece about leaving and becoming a popular historian. It’s well worth reading, and the basis for a few of my questions. If you’d like to see more of Maureen’s work, check out her blog, Twitter feed or any of her her books: Ambitious Brew; Key West; and her latest (in progress) Meat: An American History.
The lady writes about meat and beer. Could she be any cooler?
Q: In your BU article you describe your general disenchantment with academia. Was there a definitive moment (or moments) that cemented your decision to leave?
Yes. I was driving down the street, thinking of nothing, and suddenly, and for the first time, I “got” that Thoreau quote about men leading lives of quiet desperation. And knew I had to get out. But that was the end point — much had led up to it (not least was that I was living 1100 miles from my husband). I was a 30 year old waitress with a high school education when I decided to give college a try and ended up with a PhD. I honestly thought life as a professor would be nirvana and was stunned by how much I hated it.
And when I looked at older colleagues, many of them seemed —- quietly desperate. So. That was that.
Q: How did people (colleagues, family, etc.) respond to your decision to leave, especially since you’d already done ‘the hard part’ i.e. writing your tenure book?
My husband, an academic (who LOVES his life), wanted me to stick around long enough to “officially” get tenure so, as he put it, “you’ll have something to fall back on.” But, I explained to him, the whole point was that I wanted to burn the bridge and force myself into a new life.
None of my colleagues said anything to me (which, ahem, was part of the reason I loathed my particular job so much. Even Richard Russo couldn’t have found humor in the grotesqueness of that joint.) The only weird thing was that many people assumed I was “retiring,” as if I planned to, I dunno, take up golf or scrapbooking full-time.
Full disclosure: My husband actively and insistently encouraged me. He wanted me to be happy. Plus we both thought that, ya know, I’d make some money writing history for a general audience. So far, the happiness part is off the chart; the money part — well, let’s just say I’m still waiting for that. But I’m able to do this because his income supports us both. Yes, I am incredibly fortunate, and I don’t take it for granted.
Q: I’ve gotten many comments from grad students (and even professors) on the fence about their career choice. What general advice would you give to anyone thinking of leaving academia?
Make a plan, both a “life” plan and a specific plan.
In my case, this was a genuinely existential moment. As I noted above, I expected nirvana and it hadn’t occurred to me, who felt incredibly lucky to escape my pink-and-blue-collar life, that I wouldn’t LOVE being a professor.
So I engaged in deep, hard thinking. I asked myself what my “perfect” life would be, assuming I had the power to make that happen. Turned out, heh, that my idea of a good time consisted of sitting in a room all day, reading, thinking, and writing. Or: academic life minus the crap and bullshit.
So the question became: How can I make that happen? As I noted above, I was and am fortunate: I had a source of income. But initially I pondered other options.
For example, I thought about publishing calendars. (Don’t laugh.) I was staring at the sky one day, enjoying the cloudscape (one of my favorite pastimes) and I thought, “People are suckers for calendars. How hard could it be to create calendars and publish them?”
That’s what I mean about thinking about a “life” plan and a specific plan. I’d never even imagined doing something like publishing calendars, but if I was gonna leap into the abyss, I wanted to examine every possibility. So: be creative.
But my husband encouraged me to turn my degree and my “talents” toward writing for a general audience. At the time, the idea struck me as beyond imagining. Me? A “writer”? (Yes, academia had truly beaten the life out of my soul.) I knew zero about the publishing biz, so I spent several months studying the industry. I read everything I could find; read up on agents and editors; on how to write query letters. Studied the lingo; read about publishing houses. Anything I could find.
I read lots of “popular” history to see how that differed from scholarly writing. And was horrified at how dull most of it was. The final push came from Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage. At the time (1998), it was on the NYT bestseller list and had been for months. So I got a copy. And tried to read it. And couldn’t get past page twenty. And thought “Damn. If that’s all it takes to get on a bestseller list, I’m good to go.” (Which, okay, was a bit naïve on my part.)
But the point is that I made a plan. And that’s key to making the leap. Figure out what you WANT to do and then look for ways to do that.
Q: Can you talk a little about the difference between academic writing (both research and writing) and what you do now?
The research end is precisely the same: I’m in the archives. I spend an absurd amount of time sitting at microfilm machines. I read the primaries and slog my way through the secondaries.
I was determined, when I started doing this, to prove that it was possible to write history for a general audience and maintain scholarly standards of research and analysis. (That goal was inspired by all the profs I’d encountered who oozed scorn for historians on the “outside.”)
Learning to write in a new way was much harder. There’s a galaxy-sized chasm between demonstrating your scholarly chops to other academics and writing a “story” intended for a general audience. I’d never heard the phrase “narrative arc” until an editor (the one I still have now and whom I adore) explained it to me.
Not, I hasten to add, that I’ll ever be known for my glorious prose. But I have figured out how to shape the documents and those hundreds of hours of research into a tale that will (I hope) interest general readers.
That’s key, by the way: I always remember who the audience is, and that I can’t assume prior knowledge on their part.
BUT, and this is crucial: That doesn’t mean I need to dumb down the work. It means I have to be a skilled translator. And I think that’s where many academics get lost: Time and again I’ve had conversations with academics who insist that it’s not possible to do good “work” without including all the “details.”
I disagree. It’s possible to convey what matters, what’s crucial, what’s important, the “lesson,” as it were, without bogging the story down in footnotes, citations, a survey of the secondary literature, and so forth. Readers want to know what happened and why it matters. They don’t give a rat’s ass if you’ve mastered the “literature.” So master the literature on your own time, and give readers the essence.
Q: You’ve already written about the steep learning curve when transitioning. Let’s say you have only 30 seconds: what’s the most valuable lesson you can pass on about the real world?
Be prepared for scorn from your former colleagues. Once you leave, they’re not gonna take you or your work seriously. You could win a Pulitzer and you’ll still be a sell-out. But if you’re an academic, you already have a thick skin, right? Just plan on doubling its thickness.
Also: There’s no safety net and no guarantee. Which is why people who want out need to make a plan. Without the support of my husband, I probably would have stayed in. But to escape drowning in a sea of despair, I would have abandoned hopes for promotion, and done precisely what I’m doing now. Only difference is I’d still have the misery of students and committee work – and the scorn of my colleagues. Some fun, eh?
Q: You and I have discussed the need to make higher education relevant to real life. What kind of changes do you think need to happen and how likely is it that they will happen?
I’m going to answer that with an anecdote: I fell backward into grad school (I had NO idea what a master’s degree or a PhD was, but I’d decided it was something that might be good). My first week consisted of walking into a classroom to teach “recitation” sections. I had no idea what those were or what I was supposed to do. (No, I didn’t get much sleep the night before I met my first class.)
A few weeks later, I got my first set of exams (essay). And right away realized that most of my students didn’t know anything either. Worse, I came across an exam written by a young woman who was a functional illiterate. I was stunned. I couldn’t figure out how she’d gotten into college.
And so the scales fell. I’d always assumed a university was a place of noble intention filled with smart people. I was wrong. Soooo wrong. And things only got worse over the next thirteen years.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that the problem with the university as it now exists is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be.
On one hand, we apparently think EVERYONE should be able to go to college. On the other hand, the structure of the institution is still geared toward the best and brightest (more or less).
So there’s this disconnect between how we perceive “higher education” and who are its “consumers.” As a result, higher ed can’t help but be at odds with “real life.” If we’re gonna run every kid through the higher ed mill, then we need a higher ed system that functions like a trade school. (Which is why community colleges have been so successful. They make no bones about being glorified trade schools.)
But if we’re going to cling to the idea that “higher ed” is truly higher, then we need to stop admitting every kid who wants in. Because every kid simply does not have the wherewithal to manage “higher” education.
I don’t say that to be mean. This screwball idea that somehow every kid is “special” and every kid who shows up automatically wins a prize at the track meet is beyond fucked up. And has and is also fucking up higher education. So we either admit that not every kid is able (or willing) to study philosophy, or we demolish the existing university system and build a new one based on the community college model. But we can’t have both.
Q: I was very impressed with your biography and noticed that your life followed a very different trajectory than that of most academics I’ve met. Do you think this difference informed your experience and choices?
Absolutely. Among other things, it explains my lack of patience with the “system.” On one side I had colleagues whining about how awful their lives were because they were only making $40,000 a year and had to teach four classes a semester. It was all I could do to restrain myself from suggesting that they go wait tables full-time for a year and then get back to me. (Unless I had a few drinks in me, in which case I let loose with a full-blown rant.)
On the other side, I was confronted with classrooms full of (mostly) immature adults with an over-developed sense of entitlement (because, ya know, they’re all so special!). If I had my way, NO ONE would allowed in college until age twenty-eight. At least. Let ‘em spend a few years earning a living. Wait tables for a few years, or work construction for four years (as I did) and believe me, sitting in a classroom sounds real good.
Q: Do you think that what you’re doing now (bringing history to the people) is compatible with the mission of ‘public history’ programs in higher education?
No. (Heh. Am tempted to leave it there so we could all enjoy the soul of my wit…)
As near as I can tell, public history programs are geared toward preparing people to work in museums and/or as “institutional” historians (eg, working for the federal government).
People working in museums are certainly more in touch with “the public” than are university professors. But even there, they often focus on presenting a “scholarly” version of history that runs the gamut from the inane to the incomprehensible. (No offense to all those slogging away in museums.) Or, they end up behind the scenes, cataloging, identifying, handling boxes of “stuff,” rather than interacting with people.
But, hey, I could be wrong. That’s just how it looks to me. I simply never found any evidence, during my thirteen years in hell, that anyone in the history profession gave a rat’s ass about “the people.” Plenty of lip service, sure. But not much action.
I mean think about it: Can you imagine, for example, a history PhD program that required students to learn to write narrative history so that they’d be equipped to write for popular magazines, or construct op-ed pieces, or write books that a general reader could enjoy? Or, heaven forbid, required students to do at least one of the above in order to get the degree?
Bare minimum, PhD programs could encourage students to blog, for example (which I find to be an immensely creative and satisfying way of sharing my work with regular folks).
Q: I’m just going to admit it: I’m jealous that you get to write about beer and food. You’ve talked about the pleasures of pursuing topics because you like them—so were these topics that you’d secretly coveted the whole time you were writing ‘proper’ academic prose? Should we all be paying more attention what we’re really interested in doing?
I had no idea that I’d end up writing about these things. That’s what kills me about all of this! When I was still a professor, I looked at topics and projects in terms of “how does this fit into the scholarly system? How might this project mesh with the received wisdom?”
But escaping the asylum unleashed a font of creativity that I had no idea was in me. (That may sound arrogant. Believe me, that’s not my intention.)
Only after I left, for example, did I realize that I’m fascinated by what it means to be an “American.” All my work since then has been an effort to answer that question, and I’ve gone about that project in ways that I never imagined possible back then.
So yes, you’ve nailed it: If you’re stuck in the asylum and dissatisfied (or quietly desperate), ask yourself what you’d do if there were no constraints. What would “good history,” for example, look like to you if you weren’t constrained by the need to publish in scholarly journals and give conference papers? (Obviously you wanna wait till you get tenure to start asking these dangerous questions.) Clearly some people in academe are able to think beyond the obvious, but not many do, or feel free to even try.
But if this rant-opportunity encourages anyone still inside to look deep and, as you say, pay attention to what the deep brain and inner voice are saying, well, I’ll die happy. Just not today, thanks. Gotta finish this new book first.
Q: Anything you’d like to say to the Academy at large? Was there something they could have done to change your mind, or something they could be doing to retain interesting and talented individuals like yourself?
Given how solidified/entrenched/petrified the existing Academy is, no, I don’t think there would have been any way for them to keep me. Because, look: the system is structured around teaching, research, and service. But as we all know, the rewards only come for the second of those three tasks. And so to get the rewards, you gotta play the scholar’s game. Period.
The exceptions are people like Doris Kearns Goodwin, who played the game until she had amassed enough rewards so that she could plagiarize, er, I mean, do “popular” history to her heart’s content (and, I might add, to the benefit of her checkbook. She’s surely made far more money writing popular history than she made at what was, I imagine, an already well-paying job).
On the other hand, universities are undergoing more turmoil now than at any time since the 1950s (when turmoil arrived in the form of the GI Bill and the first of the baby boomers). The chances of being rewarded for research are being eliminated right and left, as state legislatures clamp down on those lazy bastard professors and demand that they get back in the classroom and by god do some teaching and quit screwing around researching stuff like Plato and modern sexuality and other useless crap.
So I think the window of opportunity for genuine creativity in higher education is closing fast. Because what legislatures want now is utility, which means standing in a classroom, not sitting in an archive. (Clearly if you’re at Harvard or another Ivy, none of this applies. But let’s face it: the vast majority of college students go to a joint where the purse is controlled by legislators.)
And don’t even get me started on the schools of education, which crank out the people who go teach history or whatever in K-12 — and who, in effect, ruin those kids forever on the idea of enjoying history or whatever. By the time kids get to college, the idea of learning or getting excited about ideas is dead.
And when they graduate, it’s more of the same: Professors can’t be bothered to get out there and mingle with the people, which reinforces the idea that learning is useless and that what happens in universities is irrelevant. So when legislators ponder the funding for said universities, well………… Can you blame them for their lack of enthusiasm?
Ed. note: Nope, not one bit! I think Maureen is doing a great thing, both by telling it like it is and communicating her love of history to ‘the masses’. Give the lady a shoutout if you agree!
There is so much good advice and information in this interview. Thank you.
And congratulations for Maureen for getting out and writing about what it means to be American (aka food and beer).
Unbelieveable! I haven’t read such an impacting interview in a long time. I am going to have to reread this gem. Thanks WoPro for featuring Maureen.
You’ve nailed truth on so many topics from the reality of college consumers to the problems of history programs. AND you managed to get a proper dig in against Ambrose while pointing out how Ed majors destroy students minds. Brilliant stuff. Seriously. I’ve already found you on Twitter and hope to connect with you and become familiar with your work.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Maureen Ogle, Jo VanEvery and A. Rascal, Clay Morgan. Clay Morgan said: The Professor Who Got Out Alive: Interview With Author/Historian Maureen Ogle http://t.co/xee0gJq #highered @maureenogle @WorstProfEver [...]
I’ve followed her on twitter as of 30 second ago. What a fantastic and admirable woman! My list of mentors with PhDs has grown to 4, and only one is a professor in the traditional sense.
(I blogged about it! <a href="http://collegereadywriting.blogspot.com/2010/05/non-academic-mentors.html"
http://collegereadywriting.blogspot.com/2010/05/non-academic-mentors.html
Keep up the good work of finding people to interview about being a successful non-academic!
I agree that it’s insane to imagine graduate programs teaching popular historical writing. They’re not really equipped to teach writing *at all*. We all beaver away at our dissertation, supervised by people whose expertise lies in the narrative, not the construction of a narrative.
So not only are graduate programs uninterested in popular writing, they couldn’t teach it even if they wanted to.
As for Ed degrees…chime.
I so enjoyed this interview…I read it twice. I love the idea of two plans: life and specific.
Great questions, WoPro, and very intriguing answers. Good to “meet” you Maureen!
great interview, wopro! i enjoyed reading maureen ogle’s story & opinions. she gives me some things to think about.
as a phd student currently in a public history program, i want to respond a bit to maureen’s assessment of those programs. in general, i agree with her assessment of many public historians. in my opinion, the problem comes down to a problem in many (most? all?) academic departments–the administrators/workers in charge (of a university department, a museum, or a government site) don’t want to let the incoming generations do things any differently. why do museum labels in a new way when doing it the old way validates what the person(s) in charge were taught?
i had a long talk with my dissertation supervisor about why i wasn’t permitted to write a book that people would read in lieu of a dissertation. his reasons were 2–1) it would take longer (although i am still not convinced of this) and 2) dissertations are framed that way for a reason, to prove proficiency. honestly, i think reason 2 boils down to “that’s the way i did it.” after all, isn’t proving proficiency what comps are for or could those questions be addressed in the proposal defense?
on the flip side, my program is trying to be progressive in some ways. one phd student was permitted to do a shorter dissertation (essentially a literature review) coupled with a documentary fit for public consumption. some of us scholars are pushing the boundaries, earning some compromises from the academy, and hopefully making a new way. the public deserves the kind of history that maureen presents: rigorous and engaging!
Great interview, but depressing for those of us who do not have a husband to support us when we realize we are living a nightmare…52 year old single mom here who hates academia, but see no way out. What advise does Maureen have for me?
Working on that, have no fear — I feel the single-income pain, believe me.
Thanks, WorstProfEver and Maureen. As a nontenured philosopher considering skipping out on a tenure-track job (dear god, in this economy! but it’s my soul at stake!!), I am relieved to hear my fears confirmed. It might be best to jump ship now and write that novel instead of another edited volume…
Excellent information. My favorite part was “[M]y idea of a good time consisted of sitting in a room all day, reading, thinking, and writing. Or: academic life minus the crap and bullshit.” Coincidentally, last year when I told my wife I wanted a job outside of academia, she asked what I would do. I said the above line almost verbatim. It’s good to see that there *is* life outside of the academy. Maybe one day I can get there . . .
Hey, people. THANK YOU for the kind words and feedback.
I’m so intrigued by the description of k10death’s grad program. At least someone out there is trying. My guess is that your proposal to write a book instead of a diss got the kiss of death for reason no. 2: it’s designed to show “proficiency,” which, let’s face it, means you’ve mastered the secondaries and added your .ooo2 cents worth to the lit. And if you wrote a publishable book, well, hey! You wouldn’t be doing that.
jo, I DO have some advice: If you’ve got tenure (eg, you’re “safe”), then just think of yourself as having two jobs: do what you’re “supposed” to do for your “real” job — eg, teach, hold your office hours, sit on the goddamn committee (find one that takes as little time as possible…). And then use all the rest of your time to do what YOU want to do, whatever that might be.
Got an idea for a book that has zero to do with “your field”? Write it! Your degree gives you the entree to trade publishing: you’ve got credentials. (I definitely would not have landed an agent or editor had I not had the credential…)
Want to do something completely different from “your field”? FIgure out what and how and then just go do it. As long as you’re doing what you’re SUPPOSED to do (eg, teach, meet students, grade exams, sit on committees), you can’t be faulted. No, you probably won’t get another promotion and your raises won’t be much — BUT your “other” job might bring in some money.
So, in essence: as I said in the original interview, be creative. Figure out what you’d do that would engage and excite you, whittle your academic work to the bare minimum, and then go for it. Who knows? In a few years, you might have an actual “real” other job out of it, and then you can say screw it to the uni.
But again: Think hard about what an alternative life would look like, and then plan accordingly.
Thought I’d start another comment so the previous one doesn’t turn into a tome. I probably should have included this in the original interview, but didn’t. So let me add a few words here about money.
One of the biggest psychological hurdles I faced when I was thinking about leaving was the financial angle. I was 45 at the time and I’d been supporting myself since I was 16. I knew that if I started this new career, there would be a few (and I assumed just a few. Silly me) lean years during which the husband would have to pick up the slack.
I had a hard time with that idea. I’d never relied on anyone but myself for income. But I finally decided that a few years of leaning on him would be worth it for the long-haul strategy.
I honestly never dreamed that the “leaning on him” part would drag on so long. I REALLY believed I’d be able to come close to replacing my university salary (when I left, I was earning, if I remember right, $41,000 a year and was due for another raise and my promotion raise).
Obviously that part didn’t work out. For the record:
For the calendar years 2000 through 2010, I’ve earned $114,000 (roughly) from my books. (That’s after my agents’ 15% and, say, 30% for taxes.) I’ve earned another (roughly) $12,000 from speaking gigs (which, alas, dried up when the economy conked out). That works out to a dismal $11,000 a year (more or less).
Most of that book income, by the way, is from advances: I got a $100,000 advance for the beer book, and that’s ALL I’ve earned from it. I got $125,000 for the meat book. I am hoping (hoping hoping hoping) it will sell better than the meat book and perhaps I’ll earn more than the advance. But I know the odds are not in my favor.
So. Yes. I am incredibly fortunate that, once my husband and I realized the income part wasn’t playing out the way I’d expected it to, he was more than happy to “subsidize” me while I plugged away at my now-elusive goal of being self-supporting.
Okay, another thought for jo (I promise I’ll shut up after this):
One thing that might help is to think about what precisely you hate about academia. I didn’t mention this in the interview, but when I realized how much I hated it, I made myself try to pinpoint precisely what was bugging me so much.
And for me, it was the sense that I’d been locked in a convent. I didn’t come from an academic background and had worked at all kinds of jobs suitable to a high school grad (waited tables for years, worked commercial construction for four years, drove a cab, worked at a hotel changing sheets and cleaning rooms, etc.)
But in academia, I felt like, well, I was living in a cloister. I knew there was a big, busy world out there, but I wasn’t part of it anymore. Or so it felt to me. So had I not had the chance to get out, I suspect that I would have started looking for ways to re-engage with the rest of the world. That’s what I love about what I do now: my books are for the rest of us, not for a handful of academics, so I’m “talking” to the rest of the world. My speaking gigs are with ordinary people (because, ya know, no one in academia wants to hear what I have to say…)
So, for example, if what bothers you is the sense that what you’re doing is kind of pointless (because what’s the point of writing a book six people will read??), then think about ways to engage with another audience. That, by the way, is what I love about blogging: I can talk about anything I want with a diverse audience. Many of my posts there are related to history, but they’re structured in a way to convey maximum info to a general audience AND connect that info to ongoing events in the real world. (A lot of those posts are catalogued on the blog on the “Other Projects” page.)
So again — think hard about what makes you unhappy, what you WANT, and then how to avoid the bad stuff and maximize the good stuff.
Hi Maureen,
Thanks for your advise. I am a working class girl…worked my way through school on my own, waitressed, etc. Thought academic life would be heaven. Well, that was a mistake. I hate the back-stabbing, passive-agressive, mine-is-bigger-than-yours BS that confronts me everyday. I actually get sick to my stomach walking from my car to my office. Yes I have tenure, but getting that in the department I am in was, well, soul killing. After which my husband left me for my grad student (25 years younger). I am over that. By all accounts I am a successful academic, tenured, well-known, Director of [interdiciplinary progarm], generally well liked by the upper admin, but… I know what I would rather do. I want to bake bread, yes bread, and write about cross-cultural baking (you likely just figured out what dicipline I am in!). I am a great baker and I am thinking about taking a commercial baking certificate course at the local community college. Your advise to do the minmum and make my dreams come true (dream= a small bakery in a place other than the state I am living in — hopefully in my home state) is a goal I do think I should try for. I will start by taking the first class of the certificate in commercial baking course at the community college this summer. At least that is what I keep telling myself…Somehow decorating cakes sounds so peaceful to me. Again, thanks for your long replies. You are awesome!
PS, Please don’t shut-up! Keep pushing.
Hi Maureen,
Thank you for writing such a well-articulated and incredibly honest article. It sounds like your experience with higher education was incredibly similar to my own. After getting my English degree, I went to grad school for Art History with ambitions of becoming one of those “people slogging away in museums” which you discussed.
Once it became clear to my academic advisors that I had no intention of staying in Academia and perpetuating the never-ending quest for research, (much less dealing with departmental politics and seeing my name head-lining various academic conferences on a routine basis), my advisors continually tried to talk me out of pursuing a non-academic career path. In the words of one of my professors, “You really want to waste your brilliance at a museum?”
My time in graduate school only strengthened my resolve to escape the world of academic politics. My professors kept pestering me to specialize and narrow my field of study (at the time I was taking classes in everything from medieval architecture to Renaissance art to Modern art, while actually writing my thesis on a Contemporary artist.) However, between my Art and English education, I kept branching out. I was warned that my lack of a specialization wouldn’t make me hire-able in Academia, but I argued that I was making myself more well-rounded, for the actual Real World. Additionally, I loved learning, reading, writing, and art, but I was only allowed to learn, read, or write about art that was particularly relevant to my professors, or to cutting-edge academic research. My creative muse was not my own any more, and as a result, it practically shut down. I was miserable.
And I agree with you that what I missed most while I was in graduate school were the people, the real human public that had outside interests and exciting lives and whose existence didn’t revolve around research. I felt like my professors lived in a bubble where their research, and Art Scholarship, were the only things that existed and the only things that mattered, and I knew that this simply wasn’t true. But I couldn’t meet many non-academic people while I was in grad school, and as a result, my time there was lonely.
I was fortunate enough to have an unpaid internship at a museum in a nearby town, where I spent my final year of graduate school interning
in the PR department. It put me back in touch with the public, with the museum’s collection, and with a world outside of school, and I slowly rediscovered why I enjoyed learning things in the first place. Upon graduation, I was offered a job in the museum’s PR department (semi-surprising for a non-profit arts institution in this economy), and I have been employed here for half a year. I absolutely love it: I get to do research, I get exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking, I’m surrounded by a supportive staff, and I don’t feel like I have a gun to my head or need to jump through hoops to impress academic higher-ups who constantly insist that my work is never good/current enough.
Meanwhile, my grad school peers who elected to stay in Academia, pad their resumes with conferences and stints as research assistants, remain either 1) unemployed, 2) unemployed and standing on their dignity (also known as the “I have a Master’s degree, so I’m overqualified for an unpaid internship!” mentality), 3) stuck in their never-ending quest for tenure and will remain an associate professor for 10+ years, or are 4) working at jobs outside of higher education / their chosen field where they are disgruntled and unhappy, just because they need a means to pay the bills.
I consider myself incredibly fortunate that I left the academic system when I did, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten a job that I love, in an environment which still challenges me to learn and explore on a regular basis. Furthermore, since I graduated, I have been doing my best to present my museum’s art (and its corresponding scholarship and historical baggage) in a way that is accessible to the general public, that doesn’t sound like a doctoral dissertation. If I can hold discussions with people who know nothing about art, and if they are open to exploring a new idea or seeing an object in a different way than when they originally walked into our building, then I have, in a small way, succeeded.
So in a way, I guess, I ended up being a kind of PR/teacher hybrid at after all…although I also didn’t need tenure at a university to do so.
Thanks again, and best of luck with everything…I look forward to reading more of your work, and will soon be following you on Twitter!
What a terrific interview! Lots of concrete advice and–gulp–real talk over money. Maureen, thank you for sharing what you have made on your books and what publishing can (and can’t) pay. Seriously, not enough people in the academy and in publishing talk dollars and cents. They treat money-talk like it’s shameful. If advisors (and agents, too) were more open about that, I think it would be easier for people to plan for the future and determine whether or not academia is worth it to them.
*For the record, I had an advisor who was beautifully blunt about the dollars-and-cents factor for academics. That information was a big reason for my leaving grad school, but hey, he saved me a lot of time, trouble and cash! You really have to know if it’s worth it to you.
Interesting interview! Thank you.
Loved the interview! (And the additional details in the comments section.) Thanks so much for sharing your story here, Maureen, and thanks to WoPro for asking great questions. I’m still on the fence about whether or not to leave academia, mainly b/c of the financial issue, so hearing your frank money talk was incredibly refreshing. Writing for a popular audience is something I have always been interested in and I am glad to now know that I better maintain a day job, too.
In my case, either I or my husband will end up supporting the other for a while depending on who has the academic job. He has the job right now, in an isolated, sucky location we dislike, but is willing to quit if I can find a job in a better location. (I’ve got an on-campus gig shortly in a very cool location–so we will see what happens.) We’ve also got 2 kids, so money is, and will be, tight.
But I’ve been thinking a lot about what you mentioned here, Maureen, in terms of having an academic job to pay the bills, if that is what happens: do the minimum you need to do to maintain the academic “day job” but don’t get lost in it. Keep doing other things you love on the side and try not to dwell on all the bullshit. My husband is pretty good at ignoring the BS at his univ., which is why he doesn’t mind academia; I only hope I can follow his example if I end up being the academic breadwinner.
But if keeps his position as BW for the family–at least for now–I’m going to stop dwelling on how he is supporting us all and I should be doing more (to make $$, that is), and start enjoying the time I do have to write what I want to write.
Good luck with your meat book. It sounds fascinating!!
Fascinating interview. Thanks for posting it (I found it on Post-Academic, so thanks to them, too!). Maureen, I appreciate that you admit to a fair degree of luxury here–both in choosing to leave or stay in academia, and having an alternate form of financial support.
I am one of the many, many unemployed PhDs trying to figure out my marketable skills as well as my lifeplan (and trying to write up applications for various jobs by leaning toward my computer over my breastfeeding baby). I also, desperately, wish they had prepared us for more than the academic job in graduate school, especially as there are so many more of us than there are academic jobs. You say that graduate programs should encourage students to start blogs. I love it! I started my blog to let my friends back home know what I’m up to in my new digs across the continent, but it’s turning out to be a very enjoyable writing outlet for me as a mom, an unemployed academic, a wife of a poorly paid underemployed academic, and a non-American in the US. I wish I could figure out a way to create revenue from blogging, but I’m not that tech savvy . . .
I can’t wait to check out *your* blog. Thanks again to you and Worst Professor ever!
-Poor Princess
Please ignore last reply which came out wonky!!
Fascinating interview. Thanks for posting it (I found it on Post-Academic, so thanks to them, too!). Maureen, I appreciate that you admit to a fair degree of luxury here–both in choosing to leave or stay in academia, and having an alternate form of financial support.
I am one of the many, many unemployed PhDs trying to figure out my marketable skills as well as my lifeplan (and trying to write up applications for various jobs by leaning toward my computer over my breastfeeding baby). I also, desperately, wish they had prepared us for more than the academic job in graduate school, especially as there are so many more of us than there are academic jobs. You say that graduate programs should encourage students to start blogs. I love it! I started my blog to let my friends back home know what I’m up to in my new digs across the continent, but it’s turning out to be a very enjoyable writing outlet for me as a mom, an unemployed academic, a wife of a poorly paid underemployed academic, and a non-American in the US. I wish I could figure out a way to create revenue from blogging, but I’m not that tech savvy . . .
I can’t wait to check out *your* blog. Thanks again to you and Worst Professor ever!
-Poor Princess