Define Your Lane (with Criteria, Not Fantasy)

We continue with 52 weeks of focusing on what you can control!

By now you have done three things: You clarified your career values. You audited where your time actually goes. You wrote a professional bio that does not sound like an abstract.

Good. That is groundwork.

Now we deal with the dreaded question of… direction. I say “dreaded” because for PhDs, direction to this point has been written in. Do this, then this, then this. Voila, PhD. It’s linear. It’s regimented. Dare I say, it’s predictable. (I said this once on FB and got yelled at by someone who said, “predictable??? I’ve never seen anything less predictable in my life.” But you know what I mean, right? It’s all laid out in stone. Whether you individually get to walk that stone path is a separate matter…)

Anyway, you get my point: Once you step outside the linearity of academia, there is no more “then do this.” Concrete steps get replaced by vague… hopes?

• “I’m staying in academia” (but that can mean everything from SLACs to R1s to teaching colleges to alt-ac jobs like advising)
• “I’m open to leaving” (but mean … nothing specific at all)
• “I’m flexible” (but mean “anxious”)

I get that vagueness feels safe, but it is actually the exact opposite of safe. It leaves you adrift. It is the anti-strategy.

If you try to prepare for every possible future, you will prepare for none of them well. You will scatter your energy across incompatible goals. You will write documents that attempt to please everyone and therefore persuade no one. And you’ll overwork, in a scattershot way that doesn’t produce results. Leading to even more burnout and fatigue.

You need direction, even if it’s temporary. Which by the way, is one of the shifts in thinking you must make. These are not the all-or-nothing, black-or-white binaries of white supremacist, ahem, academic thinking. These are all, rather, routes just to the next landing pad or stepping stone, where you’ll pause and re-evaluate.

So, this week you are going to define one primary lane and one secondary lane to pursue for the next 6–12 months.

NOTE: They must be structurally real, not aspirational labels. Each lane must meet at least 3 of your career values from Step 1.

This will help keep you from choosing paths based on our old nemeses:

• prestige/imagined status
• fear
• sunk cost
• advisor expectations

It will also free you from (I hope) random applications with generic resumes, scattered networking, “open to anything” paralysis and burnout from trying to prepare for every market

A really important note: We all know the job market out of academia is also horrible. My 25 year old son has been looking for a job in the social work field for MONTHS. Most people don’t have the luxury of choosing just one or two lanes as a permanent strategy. Heck Seiji (my son) is now applying for receptionist jobs!)

Like all the exercises in this series, this one is also about training yourself to both recognize and claim clarity of purpose. So that, even if you eventually choose to (or are forced to) pursue multiple different possible lanes, you still do so with a plan.

Now, some further guidelines:

A. If you are staying in academia, lanes might look like:

• Teaching-focused track (SLACs, Community Colleges)
• R1/R2 research track
• Visiting/lecturer track
• Alt-ac within higher ed (research centers, admin, ed-tech, student success)

Side note: If you say you are staying in academia, “getting a faculty job” is not a career plan. It is a wish. Mayhap, a fantasy. But no matter which, there are multiple distinct academic career tracks, each with:

• • different labor structures
  • different reward systems
  • different quality-of-life implications
  • different political realities

Lumping them together is one of the biggest mistakes academic job seekers make, especially when it comes time to create the documents for each type of application.

Before you write another cover letter, submit another application, or attend another conference, you need to name and understand the academic career you are actually targeting.

B. If you are leaving academia, some common lanes are:

• Policy/nonprofit
• Industry research
• Instructional design
• Program management
• Consulting
• Data/analytics
• Writing/editing
• Starting a small business

If you are undecided between A and B at present, then as a thought exercise, choose one academic lane + one non-academic lane.

Answer three questions:

1. Which lane best aligns with my career values from Week 1?

2. Which lane fits my actual labor patterns from Week 2?

3. Which lane matches my current professional narrative from Week 3?

Where those three overlap, that’s your primary path.

Remember, the path is criteria-based, not identity-based.

Identity – ie, I am a scholar, I am a specialist in Basquiat, I am an academic –  keeps you frozen, because your identity has been over-enmeshed in academic values.

Criteria  – ie, I value X, I prioritize Y, I can be flexible about Z – open, by contrast, new possibilities rather than close them off.

This step forces you to stop saying:

“I just want a job.”

And start saying:

“This is the work life I am building toward.”

That shift changes how you position yourself, how you network, how you publish (or not), and above all, the story you tell about yourself both in your inner narrative, but just as important, your brief “bio” that you share with people around you.

Here’s my example, if it helps – a bio, and the criteria that follow from it:

“I am a person who loves translating across difference, and making the strange familiar. This led me to do a PhD in anthropology with a focus on Japan, but for over fifteen years now I’ve been running a business translating confusing and often obscure academic values and norms for the people who are trying to get their foot in the door and become professors, and in turn successfully find other kinds of jobs outside academia. I help people with PhDs see the full range of skills they gained in (and outside) grad school, and master how to translate those for many different careers.

I love this work because it serves my ethics of challenging systems of privilege, it’s flexible so I can work from anywhere in the world, on my own time, and it gives me the autonomy I cherish to be my own boss. It keeps me working with brilliant academic minds without the drudgery of an academic job. And last: it makes solid money, enough to put two kids through college.”

Now, mind you, this little bio is something I can write 15+ years after starting the Professor Is In. I would have had a lot less certainty before. But nevertheless, challenging privilege, cherishing autonomy, seeking flexibility, and delighting in academic brilliance were as true then as they are now. My criteria have not changed much. My only new criterion right now would be: I’m 61 so my work has to start dialing down toward retirement. In my life, that is my biggest ongoing theme for self-inquiry.

But enough about me. For now, just a reminder, you’re not deciding your life. You’re choosing where to aim your primary energy for now. Direction is not commitment. It’s organization.

Even if it changes.

Even if it splits.

Even if it evolves.