Dr. Karen is on vacation in Italy July 2012. During that time she is re-posting older blog posts her regular Tuesday and Thursday posting days. She’ll recommence new posting some time in August.
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~~~~This post is an invited Guest Post on Worst Professor Ever. (originally published July 2011). Visit Worst Professor Ever for some of the best alt-university commentary on the web! Worst Professor Ever is the brainchild of Amanda N. Krauss. She left a tenure-track position to have a life.~~~~
This past year I left my tenured professor position and administrative role as a department head at a Big Ten Research University. I was making close to six figures and was in my sabbatical year.
Why would I do something like that? Why would anyone? I am obviously out of my mind.
A little background: I got my Bachelor’s in Japanese Literature from the University of Michigan in 1985. I completed a Ph.D. In Cultural Anthropology, specialization on Japan, from the University of Hawai’i in 1996. I was offered a tenure track position at the University of Oregon that same year, received tenure at the UO, and was recruited to a tenured joint position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2003. In 2004 I was made Head of one of my departments. I was Head for the term of 5 years. In 2010 I took sabbatical. During that year my family and I accomplished our long-awaited goal of moving back to Oregon. I submitted my final resignation to the U of I in early 2011.
As a department head of a small foreign language and literature department at a major research institution in the Midwest I made, as I said, an excellent salary. I had graduate students, generous summer research funding, and few obligations beyond the ones for which I was paid: holding faculty meetings, balancing the department budget, running searches, meeting staffing needs, handling tenure cases, filing faculty paperwork, and calculating faculty raises, on the occasions there were any. Don’t get me wrong, this was a great deal of work. I was busy, stressed, and I worked hard. But I was not nearly as busy and stressed as I had been as a new assistant professor. And I had far more to show for it at the end of the day. I enjoyed administration.
So why would I leave?
This is a hard question to answer in a single blog post, because obviously, my reasons were many, and unique. But in the end they revolved around two fundamental problems: 1) I needed to remove my children from a bad custody situation; and 2) my soul was dying at the University of Illinois.
These two problems intertwined over time—the difficulties I faced in caring for my children became so all-consuming that they forced a major life decision: focus all my non-work energies on my children, and give up research, or continue doing research, and put my children’s well being at possible risk. I made the decision without a second thought, but the outcome of making my children my first priority, while remaining in an administrative position, was an end to my writing and research. When the time came to address my second problem — my unhappiness at the University of Illinois – I did not have a publication record that would allow me to move to another faculty position.
And so, my partner and I made a joint decision. If she found a job back in our beloved Pacific Northwest good enough to support the family, I would leave behind academic work entirely.
This was not a completely wrenching decision for me to make. I was ready to leave academia. I had created a jewelry business and was enjoying building that. And I was desperately unhappy at the University. I had reached the unfortunate point where just being on the UIUC campus reduced me to tears.
And this brings me to the crux of the issue: the whole dying soul thing. Why was my soul dying in Illinois? Why was I so miserable? Why was it so bad that I was willing to chuck a highly successful twenty year career to get away?
People instantly assume it is because Illinois is “conservative” or “homophobic.” It is neither. It is a blue state. It is Obama’s state. It is politically moderate to slightly left of center in much of its northern half. The college town I lived in was of course an even more liberal-ish sort of place, with more than its share of progressives and the occasional radical.
And as far as homophobia goes—-that was a non-starter. From the university to our neighborhood to the kids’ teachers to the plumber who came to fix the toilet—people pretty much took us in stride. Even the court system, when custody was at its most contested, categorically refused to countenance any hint of a homophobia, or to consider us as in any way less than or different from a heterosexual family. I won custody. It was heartening.
No, life in Illinois was bad mostly because of the University itself. It was a dreadful place.
When I was at the University of Oregon, even as a harassed assistant professor, it was kind of fun. The students were curious. My colleagues were funny and irreverent. The staff was capable and opinionated. The administrators were down to earth. Nobody took themselves too seriously. We weren’t paid for shit. It was actually humiliating how badly paid we were—from administration on down. But people had their unassuming little houses and sweet gardens, and spent their weekends rafting or hiking or biking or driving about visiting wineries. Nearly everyone had a vibrant life outside of work. Dinner invitations flew back and forth, and when someone was facing a life crisis, people pitched in. We organized dinner brigades for new parents, helped out with yardwork for ailing friends. When I had my kids, delicious home-cooked dinners were delivered to our door every night for three weeks.
I assumed that that’s how campuses are. I thought they were communities. In fact, being young, and ambitious, I spent much more time focusing on what I didn’t have at the UO—-a decent salary, adequate research funding, status.
So, when the offer came from the University of Illinois, I jumped at it. I was sure I had made the right decision. Money, status, research funding… all these things beckoned.
And then I found out. Found out what it’s like to be at a place where most everyone is convinced, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they are very, very important people. Where most everyone is convinced, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they are doing very, very important work. Where most everyone is convinced, beyond the shadow of a doubt, they are very, very smart. That they are, indeed, the smartest boys and girls in the whole world.
I discovered the unbridgeable, heartbreaking chasm between a place where noone takes themselves very seriously, and a place where pretty much everyone takes themselves very (very) seriously.
A few encounters set the tone quickly: In the first week when I had my music playing as I unpacked boxes in my office, a colleague came by within minutes to say, “please turn that off; it’s very distracting.” In the first month or so, when one colleague and I drove out into the country for a secretary’s housewarming party, and discovered, awkwardly, that we were the only 2 of the 20 or so faculty members invited, who actually had bothered to show up. In the first semester, when, while teaching a seminar in the department seminar room, the Head burst in to berate me in front of the students for not getting his authorization first. In the first year, when I entertained colleagues at dinner parties only to have them act as if they had never met me when next I saw them. When, with painful regularity, the averted eyes and contact avoidance in the hallways made me wonder if Aspergers Syndrome was epidemic on the campus.
Human connection was virtually impossible. Early in my first summer I asked a colleague in English if she’d be free for lunch one day. “I’m sorry, I’m on a strict writing schedule. I only have the nanny from 8 to 5 four days a week over the summer, so those days are out. I could schedule you in one of my off days I suppose.”
Of course at first I assumed these encounters were exceptions, and that soon I would find the fun colleagues, the ones with a sense of humor, the ones willing to take time for a human connection. But as the years passed by, I was forced to admit, there really weren’t any. At least among the regular humanities and social science faculty members with whom I mostly interacted. I found a few friends in the professional schools, and heard rumors of dinners and parties among colleagues in the sciences “North of Green.” And I found one good friend who was non-tenure line. Even the Jews and the queers, far from being the people with the loudest laughs and the raunchiest jokes, were, with but a couple of exceptions, stiff and self-important. Self-important queers? I couldn’t even wrap my mind around that one.
The only thing that people “did,” outside of work, was leave town. Leave town, that is, to work. I said we invited people for dinner, but really we didn’t often succeed in that, because most invitations were met with, “Sorry, I’m at a conference that weekend.”
In desperation we started attending a church. It was better. Mostly because no university people were there. But of course, that felt odd too. My family is half-Jewish. And we were, after all, university “types.” I like that whole academic schtick, with the sarcasm and the irony and the obscure references. The people at church were mostly lovely, but it never really stuck.
The few times I met others on campus also sadly trolling for human connection, they were on their way out. Nobody who cared about community stayed long at the UI, at least that I could see. I certainly would have exited within a year or two at the most, had I not been tied down by truly inextricable personal circumstances.
As it was, I stayed and kept trying to make it my home, for far, far longer than I expected. But in the end, I failed. Ultimately I too gave up and stopped trying, and became exactly like the others—insular and unavailable.
I, who have lived and thrived in countless parts of the globe, could not thrive in East Central Illinois. Sure the weather sucked. But truth be told, I didn’t care that much. Sure it was flat and ugly. But in reality, I could live with that.
No, it was the people. The people on campus. I couldn’t make it at the UI because of the culture of the UI. It was a culture organized around ego, self-importance, defensiveness, and pretension. Nobody trusted each other. There were no alliances.
At Oregon, the battles around the recruitment and representation of Native American students and faculty had been intense. I had been called on the carpet by Native American students in my classes, and had learned, through hard, earnest dialogue, to be a better, more aware, far less race-blind teacher.
At the UI, such dialogue was impossible. One of my departments fractured the year I arrived when the Latina/o students and faculty finally lost patience with the institutionalized racism and exclusion of the campus. Supported by the wonderful then-Chancellor Nancy Cantor (who was hounded out shortly after by the Good Ol’ Boys and went to Syracuse), they spoke out. But they were not heard. There was no way to hear them. There was no trust or good will. The black students, the Asian students, the white students, the faculty as an appallingly defensive collective—the department splintered into racialized factions, and never recovered, as far as I could see.
Not all faculty members were politically passive during my years there. Some worked to confront the racist Chief Illiniwek mascot, just as some worked to unionize. As I said, it is not a conservative place. No, in the end, it was something worse, for me. It was a cold place. It was an empty place. It was a place where nothing, not any damn thing, was more important than the next publication, the next grant, the next conference.
And I couldn’t do it. I could not make it work. Ashamed of myself, lonely beyond belief, alienated in ways I had never imagined possible for someone as energetic and passionate as I am, I stepped away. Faced with the choice between money and status there, and no money and no status in the place I’d known before and loved, I chose the latter. And I have not looked back.
I’m not bitter. I don’t hate academia. I know what it means to enjoy an academic job, and I hope that a few lucky individuals still have the opportunity to do that. To that end, I’ve created this business, The Professor Is In , offering my institutional and practical knowledge to graduate students and junior faculty who need it.
For myself, I feel spectacularly lucky to be back in Oregon, raising my kids, building a business, hiking the trails, and working half-time at the University, this time as an advisor in the McNair Scholars program, which prepares exceptional first generation, low income, and underrepresented undergraduate students to apply to and succeed in Ph.D. Programs.** I am in the right place. I made the right choice, and I’m happy.
**Update 7/2012: I have left the McNair Scholars position at the UO to go full time as The Professor Is In. The business has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, and I am thrilled to be able to devote all my energies to the business of helping junior academics confront and overcome the dilemmas of an academic career (including the dilemma of deciding to leave it).
fabulously written piece which is reminiscent of (sadly) many educational institutions worldwide. You did the right thing, but don’t be too disheartened – there ARE workplaces in academia which are thriving, fun, inspirational places to work, where creativity can thrive. Difficult to find though…
thanks for writing, Mary! I’m glad to hear you say that. I notice from your email adddress that you might be from the uk? Are the thriving, fun workplaces you speak of all there? Because, that would be saying something significant, about both the U.K. and the U.S.
Dear Karen -
A wonderfully written piece and obviously you made the right decision. It’s so hard to find a good sense of community in academia. And after a while, after seeing close friends not get tenure or move away, I think your soul tends to harden against making new connections, which is a sad thing.
I’m referring my grad students to your site as I’m undoubtedly one of the worst advisers ever (ventriloquating Amanda Krauss).
Karen Nakamura
Yale
thanks for reading and commenting, Karen! The comment stream on the original WorstProfEver site is also incredibly illuminating, if you’re interested. You cannot be a worst advisor ever if you think you might be a worst advisor ever. Because it’s the clueless sanctioned ignorance and overweening self-regard that are the core characteristics of the worst advisors.
So nice to see that there are like-minded people out there in academia. Unfortunately, my graduate program became so hostile and threatening to dissenting opinions that I am leaving after this quarter. I’m sorry that you also had to leave, because we need more good people teaching at universities!
I mean no disrespect – but may be you did not try hard enough? People do work for pay – becuase they have to support their families, think of IRA and professional growth. That people did not attend an invited dinner – well, hell with them, find someone who would. After all, Universities are not about the social mingling (although this is a very important part of life), but rather about how to profess in teaching students, how to create new and attractive courses, how to give the students an education, not a training.
But I still like your blog very much!!!
It can be incredibly lonely at some research-focused schools. I have had many parties (usually potlucks, but I cook for 2 days before so there’s LOADS of food)…and very, very few of the people who seem to have a delightful time ever reciprocate. The culture is one of cocooning and compulsive overwork, and heaven help you if you aren’t married w/kids. I conclude that the socializing is simply happening around/without me…and it’s not nearly as bad as you describe…but I do recognize elements of the vibe alright. Good for you for getting out and taking the leap!
Thanks, Sarah. It was always that lack of reciprocating that most startled me. It’s so rude!
I am wondering if it’s a Pacific Northwest thing? I teach at a small liberal arts college where I have coffee with colleagues — just for fun — all the time. One of my friends at a Large Midwestern Research I institution said that I would never survive at his university because I “care too much about the students.” It sounds horrible. I taught at Columbia University for a year before getting my position here, 20 years ago, and I had the same experience of asking a colleague if she’d like to have lunch, and being asked what was on the agenda and could we do it over the phone? Yeesh. I am lucky to have found my match made in heaven here in the northwest.
Go PNW! (But don’t tell anybody!)
Thanks for sharing your background in this re-post for us new-comers. It is clear that you made the right decision for your family. I hope you all have a great time on vacation!
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This is interesting. I am looking at leaving my current post in the UK to come to the USA for similoar reasons. I think that it is fair that you simply “outgrow” your role in a university – Tenure track or no. It comes to a point that even the job security isn’t enough. A person needs change (to quote the phrase “a change is as good as a rest”). I think you made the move that was right for you and I respect that.
~By the way, I am getting a whole load of useful information from your blog. As a senior academic in the UK, I notice that the application system is SOOOOOOO different. Thanks for this work.
thank you, Scott! The move has been more fulfilling than I ever could have imagined when I first made the leap.
It is amazing how different the UK and the US are in academic practices.
I find this website valuable in many respects, and I certainly recommend it to my graduate students. However, it’s important for younger readers to bear in mind that the cynical attitude toward academic culture that we find on this blog represents one person’s experience and perspective, and that of a person who left academe because she was unhappy. That was clearly the right decision for her, and it will be for others as well. But you should know that some people are actually happy in academe, and our perspective will of course be different from Dr. Karen’s. As one of those people, I’d like to offer the following to balance the perspective in this essay.
The main satisfaction you get from an academic job really has to be the work itself, not the social interaction with colleagues. You should look at the academic workplace as primarily that: a workplace, not a place to find your main social fulfillment. A workplace should meet your professional needs, but it is unlikely to meet all of your personal needs, and you shouldn’t go into a new job with that expectation. It’s true that you may get lucky and make close friends among your colleagues, but that is not the main purpose of academic employment (or any other employment). And in any case, I have learned the hard way that personal friendships with colleagues can be risk, if the person in question is insecure, emotionally volatile, or incapable of keeping confidence. Yes, there are people like this in academe, as there are in the world at large. Developing a personal and social life separate from your work is healthier in all respects than expecting your department to meet these needs.
It is true that people work very, very hard at research-focused campuses. But many of us find the research deeply rewarding. People who spend their weekends and breaks researching and writing, at least after tenure, are doing it because it’s exactly what they want to do. In my case, not from blind ambition, but from sheer love of the subject. The tone of this blog posts suggests that there is something wrong with that, but there simply isn’t. I realize I am fortunate not to have lost the passion, 10 years out from my Ph.D., but there are others like me, and you may (or may not) be one of them.
It’s also true that some of the behaviors and attitudes described in Karen’s department at the University of Illinois are just plain rude. But in some cases, I can easily see the other person’s side of the story. The person that was bothered by Karen’s radio had come in to get work done and the radio was interfering with that. The person who didn’t want to go to lunch because it was in the middle of dedicated writing time had paid for child care to have time to write. For some people, it’s hard to get back on track after taking a long social break in the middle of the day (I would have welcomed the break, but people have different needs). She was trying to do something very difficult in raising children and being a productive scholar. If you are burning the candle at both ends, it’s hard to have time to socialize. That doesn’t make you a bad person. Also, remember that academe is full of introverts. They may not become your closest friends, but this does not make them bad people or bad colleagues. If you adjust your expectations to these realities, you’ll be much happier.
“Developing a personal and social life separate from your work is healthier in all respects than expecting your department to meet these needs”: I would like to see some evidence about this…
Dear Karen,
I am happy to read that there are people who love their academic positions and do not share your views. Unfortunately, I think that the situation you describe is familiar to many of us. It’s just that most people do not have the courage to express their feelings. There is a taboo about admitting dissatisfaction in a tenure-track or tenured position. It is considered shameful to reveal it; that is probably why so many people get sick, because they somatize a discomfort they feel, but cannot allow themselves to express. I thank you for your courage and for revealing the dark side of research universities, the loneliness that one can feel working in a place in which it is impossible to establish any real connections with colleagues, a place where one does not find any of the values that one considers crucial in education. It is dishartening when the administration creates the conditions that forster competition at the expense of collaboration and social interraction. Human beings are social beings and when the workplace becomes so dehumanized, it might well be the time to leave, especially if your entire family is affected. Working in two departments and disciplines is also an often overlooked factor that adds a lot of stress. I can well imagine why you decided to leave academia. I don’t know whether there are studies about people holding a dual position, but I can tell from experience that it is extremely tough to juggle that load, especially without any support from colleagues. Thank you for your frankness!
IMHO, Rebecca M. makes a bit of a straw man argument or at least misconstrues Karen’s position to a degree. No where does Karen state that academia or any workplace should meet “all of your personal needs,” as Rebecca M. suggests. Rather, Karen champions the importance of collegiality at what is, after all, a “college”—a gathering of colleagues. Interacting with students and colleagues is important to the intellectual stimulation that makes academic work possible. We need to hash through ideas and have our approaches challenged, both formally and informally, to do good research. And that can become very difficult if everyone around you is always rushing away to some conference or completely wrapped up his or her own stuff.
Interesting. I spent five years at UIUC. I always assumed that my feeling exactly as you described was a result of my department (music) and advisors. But maybe it’s endemic to the institution.
It was this graduate experience that made me choose to leave academe when I finished. I’m lucky that in my field a non-academic career is very feasible, if somewhat more work, and almost a decade later, I am enjoying myself. But my thesis advisor was appalled. Appalled! He is still not speaking to me…..
Oh, and I am Canadian, so I can tell you unequivocally that winters in East Central Illinois (“Illiana!”) could be worse. Oh yes.
funny and telling…. when i first moved back to oregon i would sometimes tear up at the sheer kindness of strangers and friends…an ethos of caring that was the default, not the exception. I was so accustomed to being treated with such indifference…
This is third time I have come back to read this post. Why? Because it is like reading my life. I did survive the horror that was UIUC as a grad student. I did get my PhD (long before you were there Karen) but also because I now find myself (tenured associate prof) at a University that has the same ugly culture as U of I. I was a miserable grad student and now I am a miserable prof. who wanted to leave after a couple of years because of a complex custody issue could not. And now I have to wait until the kid finishes college (on my own with the tuition). I am applying for jobs, but not at research institutions. I have had enough of this soul stealing culture. The dilemma is this, when I have gotten interviews at SLACs ( I love teaching!) faculty are often baffled by my need to leave the R1. One person even said to me during an interview, I wish I was at University of [fill in the blank]. I just smiled and talked about how much I would love working at their college. I am sure I did not get the job because they did not trust me because I was willing to leave the R1 nightmare I presently work in. Any advise on how to deal with this? Anyway, bravo for your decision. I hope I will be in a position to do the same in the next few years if I cannot find another job.
Hi Karen, many thanks for this post. I just recently found your website when decided to search for answers to my question of how to survive a mid career depression. After complaining at my university about the lack of appreciation and my tiredness I was sent to a counselor who has made me realise how the place I am working does not value community but selfishness and research productivity at any cost. I am even considering changing jobs, the issue is now that my wife is expecting babies. The pay is good but there is a lot of politics. “We” want to become one of the best schools in the UK and the price to pay is sacrifice, but at which cost? We are now killing our junior and temporary faculty with more teaching. I am in the middle. I would like to help the juniors and found myself collaborating with a lot of people both in the UK and elsewhere, but this does not seem to be valued. I could still work there, but will definitely lose the last bits of my friendly and helping soul. Your post made me realise that I could jump at another chance if I see it.
Thank you so much for this post. I am currently a graduate student, struggling with wanting to quit academia before I even seek a faculty position. I am getting my PhD at a research university, and am experiencing just what you describe. People who are convinced that their work is all that there is to life. Worse, the undergraduate program is an absolute joke. Challenging undergraduate students and actually trying to make them learn is clearly not a priority here, as instructors who actually try to make things challenging for students face countless official complaints by students. And this isn’t just a problem of “my” institution–it seems to be a problem at research institutions in general. My soul has already died a little bit, and I don’t even have my degree! Hearing about your experiences at University of Oregon, however, made me think that maybe I can find a university that will be a good fit for me. I guess this post stirred up a few different feelings in me. Validation that I’m not the only one feeling/experiencing these things. But also hope that it will be okay =) I’ll either find a better fit, or it’s simply just going to be okay to pursue another career. Thank you for that.
Is there any advice for evaluating schools and departments on the basis of culture and community in order to avoid that sort of atmosphere? I’d be eager to hear it!
I’ll write a post on this; it’s a good question.
That would be really great, thanks!