People ask me what they should do if they want to get out of academia, and I always tell them to make new friends. Many retort that they are shy or introverted or too good for this world or whatever. Nobody cares. Like it or not, you’re going to have to do it.
(Though if you want some sympathy here’s a great post by Straight Dope Dad, entitled ‘Introverts Are Not Retarded Or Anti-Social’. My favorite part is when he talks about how extroverts act like spastic puppies, ha.)
The Image results for 'introvert' turned this up at jeffellis.org (http://jeffreyellis.org/blog/?p=57) in a series where the author makes fun of extroverts.
So introverts and misanthropes, despite your worldview — which I understand — you should meet as many people as possible.
I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but hear me out. Being a misanthrope, I might be able to tolerate 15% of people on a good day and I think maybe 10% of humanity is actually competent. Ergo: to find people I can stand to work with, I need to make sure that pool of 10-15% is as large as possible . And we’ve all done enough math to know that 10% of 100 is larger than 10% of 10, right?
And, introverts, practice makes perfect. If you’re feeling awkward about the whole idea, the best way to get over it is to keep doing it. The learning curve is no worse than teaching, trust me. Play to your strengths, which are listening and remembering names and stuff. Check out these Forbes tips for conversational success. And these tips for not feeling sleazy. And consider that introvert leaders may yet take over the world with their mad but stealthy skillz that extroverts ‘just can’t access’. (Gabba gabba, we accept you, we accept you one of us!)
I Googled 'quiet strength' (apparently, this is what introverts contribute to the world) and found their Flickr photostream (hope that's okay, QuietStrength!) FYI, 'quiet strength' is also what women have, embodied by tigers and Angelina Jolie, and the title of several books about sports stars.
I’ve already talked about how to meet people and lately I’ve been hitting Network Roulette at the Brazen Careerist (like speed dating but for work — and by the way, tomorrow’s event is for ‘higher ed professionals’), which gives you the potential to meet 20 people in an hour if you type fast enough.
Is this valuing quantity over quality? Maybe at first, but here’s an interesting story: a friend of mine once worked for Gallup (yes, they were one of those annoying people calling you during dinner). Their technique was to dial as many numbers as possible, not worrying about retention rates. Their co-worker, on the other hand, took great pains to keep people on the line. Guess what? Their success rate was exactly the same.
Nor do you have to be completely indiscriminate; if you’re picky, the work is done for you. I don’t chase people who suck at follow-up, because this demonstrates that they are unreliable, and you’d be amazed how quickly this lowers the number of people worth dealing with.
It’s also important to realize that active networking is its own job for introverts. I’ve known people who can flirt with entire rooms, but I think that would literally kill me. I don’t do Network Roulette every week, and I’m careful not to schedule (e.g. ) informational interviews every day or I just get cranky — something that will not help job hunters. Downtime is important.
Bouguereau's Rest at Harvest (1865).
The bottom line is, you have to network if you want to transition. As I’ve told several people, HR is likely to discard your unorthodox job experience without a second look; you need an actual person to tell them not to. Think of networking as the groundwork for sending off an application, or better yet, a way to meet someone who runs a smaller business and might be willing to give you a shot in a way a large corporation won’t.
Success in any endeavor requires you to do things that aren’t particularly fun. And I’m still gonna say that, as tiring as I find active networking, meeting potentially interesting grownups beats the hell out of killing myself for students — because, let’s face it, teaching is possibly the worst, most exhausting job for introverts. As I learned the hard way.
Okay, can somebody come up with a better logo for the introverts of the world? ‘Cause the results of these image searches are not doing it for me.
You are spot-on with this post. When I was about 14 or so, my dad — who is a hell of a social guy, people love him, and he made a great career in sales out of that — told me to read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. This little book is a freakin’ goldmine. I found some of it intuitive (though clearly others don’t), but it is a surefire winner on how to network. There are probably newer books out there, but this one is still, I think, the gold standard.
The amazing problem most academics have is that they’ve never learned to not talk so much about themselves and instead to ask other people questions about their lives or interests or thoughts and at least try to pretend like they’re interested in the answer. This is the soft underbelly of academics (and of most people, but academics are a lot worse). It’s a simple thing to do but most people never figure this out.
Academics love to bloviate on themselves and their work because, you know, it’s pretty groundbreaking stuff. It’s Important.
When you leave academia you find that other people aren’t as weird. They like normalcy — but at the same time, a lot of regular people get freaked out by all those degrees that academics have earned and are afraid to engage in conversation with you until they realize you’re a normal person (assuming you are), too. I’ve known one of my siblings her whole life but when I got a bigshot Ph.D. she suddenly acted like I was a different person, too smart to talk to or something. A well placed tasteless joke or gesture usually gets her grounded again.
Carnegie’s book will help even introverts with networking. Misanthropes are a harder case, but I hate pretty much everyone and I’ve done pretty well with it. And you even find eventually that it actually helps you make new friends and not just manipulate other people. So that’s a cool cherry on top.
As a former Classicist, I’ve got no bones with oldies but goodies. I’ve never read that book myself, but maybe I should check it out — and right there with you, people treat you very differently when you have a PhD, for no good reason, and it’s up to you to make them see you’re still you!
I am not an introvert, but I understand. I used to despise playing the game, especially during grad school. I’ve learned how to jump through hoops without hating myself, but I also don’t hit them all. Like you said, we all have limits and it’s good to know how we must pace ourselves.
Ah, the hoops, that’s its own topic..and yes, you’ve gotta know your limits on that one. Hmm, if you’re an extrovert, hope you’re not too offended by the spastic puppies comparison!
Something to add about introverts is that they (we) have the capacity to “turn it on,” which is why, according to something I read a while back but am not motivated to find again, there is a surprising number of introverted big-shot CEOs. I guess this is something that can be learned, but it’s also a particular introvert type (and one that I identify with). We like to be by ourselves to “recharge” or simply to enjoy our own little worlds or our own interpretations of the outside world, then we like to hit the town and take the stage.
So, I would say that teaching might be a good job for this sort of introvert. (Though not K-12 where you’re surrounded by little monsters all day.) You meditate on the Phaedrus, then give a sparkling lecture, then retreat back to your hide-out. (I originally wrote “cave,” but that threatened to mix metaphors.)
I think this sort of extroversion might not work quite as well with networking because meeting folks at cocktail hour is not as predicable as lecturing or addressing the executive board, but maybe you can sort of plan and script the networking ahead of time. Informational interviews, for example.
Now I want to poll the audience. I’ve noticed this behavior in myself and other introvert friends of mine: do y’all have long-term arcs of introversion/extroversion? I’ll go on a people bender and hang out all the time for a few weeks or months, then a switch will go off and I’ll be much more recluse. That sounds manic/depressive, but it doesn’t correlate directly with happy/sad.
Yes, I agree introverts can turn it on. I actually think that can be learned even if it’s not intuitive. Eddie Izzard described his act as being a ‘switched-on version of [him]self’ and that’s what teaching always felt like to me…so the trick is finding an environment that allows you to ‘turn it on’ for only a given amount of time per week. Five days a week is a lot, and the act better be at the end of the day! Honestly I’ve known several extrovert teachers and even they find the performance exhausting!
I also agree the ideal is quiet time for most of the day, then giving a sparkling lecture, but that’s rarely possible in academia. So perhaps service (hours and hours of useless social contact) is the true mind-killer?
Being a schedule-oriented person, I usually prefer to have a steady balance: lots of quiet time to write/research/recharge + maybe several performances a week + regular social contact with people I already know and like. Meeting a lot of new people definitely makes me want to be more reclusive, though, so you might call that an arc.
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