CU #8: Who am I Without the Doing?: Identity Beyond Productivity

Conscious uncoupling from the ivory tower, Part 8

This is part 8 in 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. To recap our progress so far:

CU #1: Getting a Divorce from Academia (intro)
CU #2: Academic Fairytales (chapter 1: shame, blame, and the failure of love)
CU #3: Shame on You (chapter 1: shame, blame, and the failure of love)
CU #4: Eulogy for my Office (step 1: find emotional freedom)
CU #5: Are you my Academic Mother? (step 2: reclaim your power and your life)
CU #6: Who is to Blame When Someone Leaves Academia? (step 2: reclaim your power and your life)
CU #7: Who’s Fault is it if I’m an Asshat? (step 2: reclaim your power and your life)

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In today’s post, we get started on step 3: break the pattern, heal your heart. In this chapter, Thomas is encouraging those going through a divorce to examine the narratives they’ve told themselves about their own identity—both to see how true those narratives are, and to use them for personal change.

The worst part of a breakup is not the mountain of sorrow that comes with the loss of a treasured connection, as much as it’s the sheer insult it can be to one’s core sense of self. —KWT

Another big source of identity is our job. We all, to various degrees, define ourselves and those around us by occupation, and when that occupation is gone it can feel like having the rug pulled out from under you. As the Haswell Lab was formally “decommissioned” on Friday, I’m feeling particularly unmoored (and more than a bit weepy). I’ve been noodling about the academic identity for a while now, and now it seems like time to start delving into the topic. Of course, I’m far from the first to think about this question, so I’ll try to pull in what others have already written (or podcasted) about it.

Who are you without the doing?

Way back in the before-pandemic times, when I still believed that productivity hacks would fix my discontent at work, I bought Unsubscribe, by Jocelyn K. Glei. It was a slim volume of tips for managing email, a monumental and hated task for me (and I suspect many of you). I did get better at email, but it didn't magically—or even marginally—make me love my faculty position.

Around the same time, I also subscribed to Glei’s podcast, Hurry Slowly. An early episode that has stuck with me was “Who Are You Without the Doing?”. While the episode itself was still focused on discipline and productivity, Glei encouraged listeners to ask themselves the question “What am I without the doing?” and described how challenging it was to think of ways to define herself without using a verb (podcaster) or a descriptor that implied an action (playful).

“Who was I if I wasn't in pursuit of a goal? Who was I if I wasn’t trying to use my mind or my body to achieve something?” —JK Glei

Of course, there are many ways to think about who we are—as a part of a couple, a parent, or a member of a family, country, political party or religion. I myself am all of those things. But still, a huge part of my identity comes (or, I should say used to) from being an academic professor.

And what do YOU do?

This question, that—at least in the US—is one of the first things we are asked by new acquaintances, Ever since finishing my PhD, it has been a query that is hard to answer. In life science circles, “I’m a postdoc” is understood; but to outsiders, it can be hard to explain what training you could possibly need after getting a PhD (much less 7 more years!!??).

After starting my faculty position, I would often reply, “I’m a professor”, but that usually led to the “oh, what do you teach?” question, which didn’t feel like the key part of what I did as a professor at an R1. Or I might say, “I’m a plant biologist”, but then people would ask me for advice about caring for their houseplants and I’d have to explain “not THAT kind of plant biologist”. I never really landed on a response that was true and didn’t require a lot of qualifying statements.

Since moving to Portland, I get this question a lot, as we are meeting new people on the regular. And, as you might expect, it’s even harder to answer now. Sometimes I say that I’m a professor, but am resigning in a few months, but that is the start of a longer conversation that usually doesn’t feel appropriate to meeting new neighbors or the parents of my kids’ friends. Once or twice I’ve blurted out “I’m a writer”, felt both great and like a major fabrication.

And what are YOU learning right now?

Maybe a more accurate reply for me at this moment would be “I’m learning to be a writer”. I’ve been writing here, and just completed a Creative Nonfiction Workshop at the Attic Institute taught by the incredible Brian Benson. In the fall, I’ll start the 9-month Atheneum program there, also co-taught by Brian.

“Right now, I’m working on ____” or “Currently, I’m interested in ______” feel better than “I am ____.” They are harder, though. It’s easy to say “I’m a professor” and harder to say “I am studying plant mechanobiology” in ways that are meaningful to the other person.

Identity beyond productivity

But this is just substituting one action for another and doesn’t really get to the heart of “what am I without the doing?”. If you define yourself through action, then once you stop the action, your identity disappears. I was a professor and now I am not.

While it feels right to say that I’m no longer a professor, it really does NOT feel right to say that I’m no longer a scientist. Being a professor was an identity based on doing, while being a scientist is an identity based on . . . perceiving, maybe? To me, being a scientist is a way of experiencing the world, and is something that won’t change about me, even if I stop producing anything scientific for other people’s consumption.

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Discussion Section

• What do you think? Can I still be a scientist if I’m not training people or doing active research or teaching? Someone once told me that “if it’s not published, it’s not science”, but I disagree. It seems important to separate science as a way to understand the world, and the capitalistic framework that we’ve built around science.