Kia Sorensen, Ph.D. serves as the Deputy Director of Academic Policy and Authorization (APA) at the Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC) in Oregon.  In her professional capacity as the Deputy Director of APA, Sorensen manages and provides strategic oversight for two private postsecondary higher education offices: the Office of Degree Authorization and the Private Career School Licensing Unit. Prior to becoming the Deputy Director, Sorensen was an Academic Policy Specialist in the Office of Academic Policy and Authorization at the HECC, where she led work on postsecondary transfer and articulation, as well as math education reform.  Sorensen also has a background in research and teaching. Her research focused on the intersection of education, policy, and family and has been published in Research in Higher Education, The Future of Children, and Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Sorensen received her B.A. in sociology and interdisciplinary visual arts from the University of Washington and an M.S. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the Higher Education Coordinating Commission in Oregon.

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You’re 27. You’re a graduate student in the top program in your field. You’ve worked your ass of to get here and it was scary, and hard, and sometimes a blood sport. You’ve made it! You’re surrounded by smart, interesting, and witty people. You have access to so many opportunities– opportunities to co-author and potentially publish in top journals, access to some of the top thinkers, policy makers, and speakers in your field, and access to incredible data sets. All you have to do is get a Masters, then a Ph.D., pass all of the advanced course work required to get you there, pass some of the most difficult qualifying exams in your field, and write a dissertation that can result in publication. Oh yeah and you need to work part time to not go into debt… Nevertheless you are EXCITED. Like the first day of elementary school, you purchase a new school bag, a new water bottle, and your favorite pens. You plot out what looks like a cute but not trying-to-hard outfit, and filled with nervous anticipation, you look around at your new cohort of classmates and wonder who might be your new friends.

You’re 28. Your imposter syndrome has paralyzed you. You’ve never had true depression before but you notice that getting out-of-bed is next to impossible, let alone tackling the long and growing list of challenging articles and theories you are supposed to analyze, write up, and present in front of all of those smart, interesting, and witty people. You’ve managed to find a job, but this requires you to learn a new programming language and new software, in addition to the course work that feels like a full-time job. It is competitive to access the many opportunities in your program and EVERYONE around you was either top of their class coming in or damn well near the top. Also, the lifestyle is an adjustment. You can’t afford clothes. You can’t afford anything. You find yourself eating a lot of canned soups because they are fast and easy, and you can sometimes convince yourself that “organic” equals healthy. Most of the time you work. You should always be working, reading, researching, looking for grants, or trying to get a publication. You. Are. Tired. At some point you realize you are too tired. You get on antidepressants for the first time in your life. They help.

You’re 30? 31?  You’ve managed to move on to the Ph.D. You’re still in the program! You must belong here? You’re passing classes; you got your M.S. degree. You took some hard-ass stats classes and you’re not a “quant” person. You even did a quantitative thesis. You can do this? You must keep going? Plus, you’ve got best friends. You’ve got a potential life partner. You have been fully indoctrinated into the culture that to do this is everything, to not do this is failure and besides, what else can you do with this degree? You. Must. Go. On.

Age? Who knows? All you know is you’ve aged significantly BUT, you’ve completed the program! You’re on the job market! You took advantage of many of the opportunities–you have co-authored and published in some of the top journals, you co-authored articles using some of the incredible data readily available, and you received feedback and advice from some of the top thinkers, policy makers, and speakers in your field. But, after spending one year on the job market, you notice a nagging but quiet inner voice questioning if not doing this really equals failure. You stuff that thought down, as you are so good at doing, and soldier on. But, that quiet inner voice will not leave you alone and you find that one day you wake up and your inner voice is now shouting: FUCK ALL OF THIS SHIT. You have hustled, you have had your butt kicked, and you finally let yourself consider the possibility that momentum and a perceived lack of alternatives are not equal to career passion AND perhaps, just perhaps, discontinuing the academic track is not tantamount to failure.

You dare to look around–you make a few inquiries, you take a few meetings, and you start to see that to your complete and utter surprise there is life outside of academia where at least a handful, dare I say maybe even quite a few people are living happy lives in interesting successful careers? You can’t believe you lost sight of this. You pick yourself up–and with the same level of nervous anticipation you had on the first day of grad school–you…gasp…quit.

You quit the whole academic track.

It’s scary and it’s intoxicating. It’s so intoxicating you briefly wonder what else you can quit? But instead, you start applying for positions where your transferrable skills could reasonably be used: research, teaching, and non-academic positions in higher education. You look at resumes of people whom you admire and who are doing interesting things related to your areas of specialization (sociology of education and social stratification). You network, you seek advice and feedback, and you slowly learn how to better market yourself for nonacademic positions.

It’s not easy–it’s humbling and competitive, and you endure a period where you are convinced you will not be able to make the switch. BUT, the research, the rejections, and the time spent learning what is a good fit, helps you to realize that state higher education policy positions combine your interest in research, policy, equity, and education and the outcomes of this type of work can be immediate and far reaching with the potential to improve opportunities for students across the state.

Once you secure the position of an Academic Policy Specialist in Oregon, it finally hits you: not only did leaving academia not equal failure, it led you to you have an intellectually fulfilling job in education policy where the hours are dreamy, the benefits are just right, and you work with smart, interesting, witty people, who care deeply about the same things you do.