CU #6: Who is to blame when someone quits academia?

Conscious uncoupling from the ivory tower, Part 6

Note: This is the sixth part of a series of essays using the book “Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to a Happily Even After” by Katherine Woodward Thomas to stimulate conversation about academic careers. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Please check out the last newsletter, where I stepped away from this series to discuss the effect of anti-trans movement in Missouri on our decision to move away. I think there is some useful conversation in the comments about supporting red state scholars—and I’d be glad to hear more of your thoughts.

When I was starting to tell folks about my part in The Big Quit, almost exactly a year ago, someone joked that I should get a set of business cards that said “Yes, it’s your fault” on one side, and “No, it’s not your fault” on the other side. The idea was that this could speed up the many conversations I was having with folks about my reasons for leaving, since so many of my colleagues were worried that they were somehow to blame. To be clear, this was just a joke—there is no one person or group or institution that made me quit academia. As I’ve said before, there were many factors. But it was still funny!

I was reminded of this joke this week as I re-read the chapter on Step 2 of Conscious Uncoupling, entitled “claim your power and your life”. As I mentioned in Part 5, in this chapter Thomas argues that a key part of learning from a breakup comes from considering the ways in which you contributed to the situation.

Ask yourself: When I stop pointing the finger and look below the surface to examine the actions I took and the choices I made, what can I see about how I am responsible for this situation?
—KWT, Conscious Uncoupling

To be frank, my first response to this section was pure annoyance, because this way of thinking is frequently used to blame individuals for problems that are actually systemic. (Advising workers to meditate instead of making their work lives better is a good example of this). Also, PLENTY of people who have left academia can legitimately point their fingers at their school, their department, even at a single person as the reason for their departure. Contingent faculty, minoritized folks, and those without generational wealth are particularly vulnerable to a system that exploits their labor. Those folks should not be asking themselves if they are to blame.

As a white lady full professor at a private R1 school, my situation is a little less clear. While I’m still trying to understand how systemic versus personal issues played into my decision, I have been thinking a lot about internal versus external factors. This approach seems useful both as I try to understand what I just went through, and as I share that story with others.

On Friday, I had a thought-provoking conversation with a new writer/scientist friend here in Portland. She was really interested in how I made the decision, and especially the role of internal factors. On Twitter I basically said a version of “it’s not you, it’s me”: “this job no longer gives me the joy that it used to”. In other conversations I have listed external factors—exponential increases in workload, less time for my own work, a desire to move closer to family, my university’s response to COVID. So—is it me, or is it everything outside of me?

Pros and cons in balance

This has been interesting to think about, because in the moment I experienced the decision as a gestalt, a blurry kind of knowledge rather than a nice logical pros and cons list. In retrospect, I can visualize the decision as a scale—one side leaving and the other side staying:

On the staying side were internal factors—like love for my research—and external factors—like a well-paying job for life. One the leaving side were internal factors like my disinterest in teaching and external factors like my swelling administrative workload.

Different internal and external factors could have tipped the scale towards staying. If I’d been able to convince a west coast university to hire me, I might have stayed in academia because I would have been able to take the external factor of “geography” out of the “leave” side of the scale. If I’d been willing to re-focus my work on research that drew in more students and postdocs, I might have been able to keep the internal factor of “joy” in the “stay” side.

For many years, staying and leaving were in enough of a balance that I stayed. Until one day, they weren’t. I just realized that I didn’t want this job anymore (how that came about is another story for another time). I don’t honestly know what tipped the balance in the end. But I do know that figuring out the answer(s) to the question “why did you leave” is as important to me as the answer to “what are you doing next.” As KWT says:

“By looking to discover yourself as the source of your experience, you’re essentially becoming a seeker of truth.”

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Discussion section

• If you left academia, do you feel it was due to more internal or external factors?

• Same if you considered leaving but stayed. Internal or external?