16 Comments
Sep 3, 2023Liked by haley larsen, phd

I feel this. I am in my last semester of my second MA and am planning to apply to PhD programs. I am very uncertain about it. I want to keep learning. I want to keep thinking in this critical way that feels so rewarding. And I have no illusions about it leading to an academic job. But I've heard and read a lot about the kind of mind-f*ck that if gives you, that you describe here, and I wonder if it will be worth having to constantly fight that.

Expand full comment
author

Hi emily. Thank you so much for writing! I felt so burned at the end of my MA that I took a year break, and I think that space between programs helped me think about what it would mean to go back and ultimately decide that, even if I couldn't get an academic job, I wanted to keep going (to "keep thinking in this critical way that feels so rewarding," as you so wonderfully put it). In the end, it was all worth the mindf*ck. :)

Expand full comment

When this landed in my email I set it aside. I didn't want to read it. Perhaps I wanted to read it when my head was clear and I could form an immediate response which your writing so deserves.

Thank you for putting words to the chasm that forms after the degree and being the odd one out. When everyone else is looking at you with disbelief and pity. 'Then why did you do PhD in the first place?' Seldom do they understand it's a way of life and not a vocation. For me, it is. There isn't a time stamp when I stopped being a biochemist. I will always be a scholar of proteins. You will always be a scholar. No matter what the world pretends to tell itself. No matter how we utilise our online writing spaces or blogs. And I absolutely understand what this space means for you (even though no experience of literature in academia at all- this bifurcation of arts and sciences is anyway ridiculous) and I hope you continue to think, write, analyze, discuss, and grow in any form you want to, academia or not.

P.S. Three years since I left academia and it has been the most stimulating three years. Peaceful too.

Expand full comment
author

I always love our academic conversations, Sayani!! Thank you for this reminder. <3

Expand full comment

I love this honest reflection, Haley. You always write so well on both acedemic pieces and personal narrative. I resonate also with your wish to write well but not get entrenched in the ideas around "content" ceation and all that it entails in terms of "popularity" and such. I think it can be hard sometimes to identify exactly what we are trying to achieve here, through our writing and ideas, but I for one look forward to both your close readings and more personal musings. Perhaps we have to allow ourselves to explore the subjects which feel right to us, and trust that the right people will find what they connect with.

Expand full comment
author

Thank you so much, Kate! I think that there is still such a wide terrain for us all to explore in the space between "writing for academia" and "writing academia-ish things for non-academic spaces" and the trick is what you said, I think: trusting that the right people will find us, if we continue to publish and put our ideas out here.

Expand full comment
Sep 4, 2023Liked by haley larsen, phd

What a lovely and brave reflection and journey you’ve been on! Really touched me

I turned away from academia much earlier, being talked into masters and PhD I quit in the last minute before I had to pay the fees.

I quit the idea after having received offers from the most renowned schools world wide.

It was hard, I felt like I’m disappointing those who supported me, saw my “ academic talent”, gave me jobs in academia i shouldn’t have had based on my “low level” of a bachelors degree vs PhD. I felt like stupid of turning down a place thousands of people would love to be in.

I miss writing, researching and finding parallels where they haven’t been any obvious ones. Guess that’s what has also drawn me to Substack 3 years ago.

And I love love love my career in startups and later on larger tech companies. Less frustrating, less old school, better pay and mental capacity to write on the side.

I have many friends who stayed in academia and the worlds feel different and opposing at times but I think it’s so important we bridge them. And allow finding out own path no matter how, where and when. ❤️

Expand full comment
author

Thank you so much for reading, Carmen! I love your thoughts about bridging these worlds. We all take such different paths, but for so many of us, these bridges of beautiful ideas can bring us back together. Thank you for your words and for staying close to academia, even with an earlier departure!!

Expand full comment
Sep 4, 2023Liked by haley larsen, phd

Whatever you are searching for...you seem to have found already. Less searching and more writing! You are good at it. This one was interesting and enjoyable.

Expand full comment
author

Thank you Ehud!!

Expand full comment

That martyr complex is also a good bit of what pushed me out of newspapers. I'm glad you're finding your own way into continuing to think about and engage deeply with storytelling!

Expand full comment
author

Oooooof the martyr complex, yes!! I saw a Reel with some clip of something Jessica Chastain said in support of the SAG strike this week, where she basically said, Just because we love acting and are grateful for it, doesn't mean we should have to die for it/put up with terrible conditions for it. I feel like these creative spaces--writing, researching, acting, publishing--are rampant with that martyr complex and I love reading how people learn to push back.

Expand full comment

Yes! Just because our passions don’t love us back doesn’t mean we deserve to die for them hahah

Expand full comment

I made the same decision 15 years ago when I quit a toxic post-doc to work at a software company.

I have no regrets when I get together with old friends who stayed in academia. Their careers forced them to stay focussed on their narrow fields. They are the experts in those minute fields, but they have no outside interests. They haven't grown as people or experimented or tried new things - just written papers, taught classes and chaired committees.

I love that I can be on the PTA at my kids' school, do a qualification in bookkeeping, take up competitive quilting, be a first aider at work, or run a hobby farm (just not all at once!)

Leaving academia has given me far more opportunities to learn and grow. I think it has also made me a more interesting person.

Expand full comment
author

Kirsten: I saw this comment on my phone earlier this week and didn't have time to respond! But I wanted to tell you your last comment there, about leaving giving you far more opportunities to learn and grow -- and become a more interesting person -- has been on my mind all week long! I've been thinking, oh my god, how true that is for me, too. I think that moving into new spaces, outside of academia, forces you to reposition yourself and consciously adapt your skills and your ways of being, in ways that can be uncomfortable and difficult. Thank you for spurring me to think about that in a new way.

Expand full comment

'“the ones who stick around get rewarded with a job, eventually,” a professor told me, “because everyone else gives up.”'

This is so silly. As if there weren't graduates every year.

I also made the decision not to go on the academic job market. Thankfully it wasn't an uncommon thing in my department. I graduated last year and I honestly don't know in what direction I want to go but I do know, deep down, even through the bouts of nostalgia, that the tenure track in the current state of the humanities and higher education just wasn't for me.

Expand full comment