Not That Kind of Doctor - Jobs Outside of Academia
TLTE
Author
12/02/2024
Added
0
Plays
Description
s academia a one-way street? Join us in this insightful episode of Not That Kind of Doctor as we sit down with Dr. Julie Rust and Dr. Dave Lewis—two former academics who dared to step beyond the ivory tower. Julie is now shaping futures at an independent school, while Dave is preserving history at the Library of Congress.
We explore their bold moves, the identity shifts they faced, and their advice for anyone contemplating life outside academia. From practical tips on navigating job boards and networking to redefining success beyond tenure, this episode is packed with wisdom for graduate students, professors, and career changers alike.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this video are those of the speakers based on their personal experiences and do not reflect the opinions or policies of their current or past employers.
đź”— Read more on our blog: notthatkindofdoctor.net
🎙 Subscribe for more episodes on navigating academic life and beyond.
Jobs Outside of Academia - Not That Kind of Doctor with Nick Husbye and Guy Trainin www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor
Searchable Transcript
Toggle between list and paragraph view.
- [00:00:00.360]Academia can feel like a one-way street.
- [00:00:03.030]You start with grad school, tenure,
- [00:00:05.490]and then back to school, at school forever.
- [00:00:11.850]I mean, do we have to?
- [00:00:14.880]I mean, we chose to, but is this the only option?
- [00:00:18.600]So what if you don't want that?
- [00:00:20.730]What if you don't want to stay?
- [00:00:22.890]What happens next?
- [00:00:24.180]So today on Not That Kind of Doctor,
- [00:00:26.400]we're joined by Dr. Julie Rust and Dr. Dave Lewis,
- [00:00:30.000]two former academics
- [00:00:31.470]who have made bold moves outside of the ivory tower.
- [00:00:35.190]One's helping lead an independent school
- [00:00:37.620]while the other is shaping knowledge
- [00:00:39.450]at the Library of Congress.
- [00:00:41.670]And here's the twist.
- [00:00:43.500]When you are thinking about what is your future?
- [00:00:47.820]It's not just about finding a job,
- [00:00:50.400]it's about really redefining what you want
- [00:00:54.030]and what is your title?
- [00:00:55.110]Because if you go the academic job,
- [00:00:56.970]it's very clear you're going to be an instructor
- [00:00:59.280]or a professor or a researcher.
- [00:01:01.740]But here it's a little bit different.
- [00:01:03.930]And how do you navigate this?
- [00:01:05.820]Yeah, so if you've ever wondered about how to,
- [00:01:10.020]think about life outside of academia,
- [00:01:12.240]what are the possibilities, what could that look like?
- [00:01:16.080]Or if it's even possible for you, you're in the right place.
- [00:01:19.740]My name's Nick Husbye.
- [00:01:20.880]I'm an associate professor
- [00:01:22.020]of elementary literacy education here at UNL.
- [00:01:24.900]And I'm Guy Trainin, professor of education here at UNL.
- [00:01:28.080]And this is Not That Kind of Doctor.
- [00:01:30.588](upbeat music)
- [00:01:38.820]All right, so today we're branching out,
- [00:01:42.750]we're trying new things, and we have guests,
- [00:01:45.450]people who want to talk to us
- [00:01:47.580]or I coerced into talking to us.
- [00:01:51.504]It's good to have friends.
- [00:01:53.370]Checks are in the mail.
- [00:01:55.350]So before we dive into conversations
- [00:01:58.470]about jobs outside of academia,
- [00:02:01.800]I would love to give both Julie and Dave a chance
- [00:02:04.560]to introduce themselves
- [00:02:06.030]and share a little bit about how they got to where they are
- [00:02:10.530]and where they think they're going.
- [00:02:12.540]So Julie, would you mind starting out?
- [00:02:15.930]Tell us about your current role, what led you there,
- [00:02:19.650]and your kind of experience in academia
- [00:02:21.810]before making the shift.
- [00:02:23.340]Thanks, Nick.
- [00:02:24.600]Well, once upon a time,
- [00:02:26.940]I used to be a grad student with Nick.
- [00:02:29.610]In fact, my very first grad school class,
- [00:02:33.810]I didn't know how to find peer reviewed articles, really.
- [00:02:37.320]And Nick was like,
- [00:02:38.220]Julie, there's this thing called Google Scholar.
- [00:02:39.900]Have you heard of it?
- [00:02:40.733]It might help you.
- [00:02:41.673]It might be really important in grad school.
- [00:02:43.710]This is the trajectory I took.
- [00:02:45.300]And so in grad school, I think a lot of us are like,
- [00:02:47.970]hey, I'm gonna be a professor, I'm getting my PhD.
- [00:02:50.850]Both of my parents, professors, fun fact.
- [00:02:54.510]So it was really embedded in me.
- [00:02:56.250]This is kind of a great job in terms of life balance
- [00:02:58.950]and flexibility and doing the thing you love.
- [00:03:01.980]And so that was my plan.
- [00:03:04.200]And while in grad school doing the interviews,
- [00:03:08.280]got a job in a place I didn't really anticipate,
- [00:03:10.680]Jackson, Mississippi, at a really small liberal arts school
- [00:03:13.920]called Millsaps College.
- [00:03:15.750]And I wasn't sure if this question of like,
- [00:03:19.410]do I accept a job that comes to me?
- [00:03:21.690]Do I stay on the job market?
- [00:03:22.830]It was kind of early in the season.
- [00:03:25.080]But I had happened to just have given birth
- [00:03:26.880]to my third child about two weeks before the job offer.
- [00:03:29.550]And so I felt a little bit like, you know what?
- [00:03:32.340]I could go on the job hunt with a newborn in tow,
- [00:03:35.850]or I could just accept this job at this sweet little school.
- [00:03:38.580]So I did that.
- [00:03:40.620]And honestly it was a wonderful five years
- [00:03:43.260]working with very small cohorts of students.
- [00:03:45.630]And I think one really important thing
- [00:03:46.950]for folks to understand early in their careers
- [00:03:49.410]is it's not as though academia is one-size-fits-all either.
- [00:03:52.680]I don't even know if I would call
- [00:03:53.910]what I did at Millsaps, academia.
- [00:03:55.620]I mean, I certainly was writing, but I was teaching a lot.
- [00:03:58.500]I was doing a ton of service and advising
- [00:04:00.570]and participating in building programmatic things.
- [00:04:03.390]And to be very honest,
- [00:04:04.800]a lot of what I did then and what I do now is identical.
- [00:04:08.220]And so that's one thing I kind of wanna disrupt
- [00:04:10.290]is this binary of like academia is one thing,
- [00:04:13.560]and then you leave academia and it's a separate thing.
- [00:04:17.190]I mean, I actually think a lot of these jobs
- [00:04:18.660]are really blurry,
- [00:04:20.280]and perhaps it feels starker if you're at an R1
- [00:04:23.790]where I think the academia side is more heavily emphasized
- [00:04:28.350]and it's like you are a researcher,
- [00:04:29.880]you're only teaching one course or whatever.
- [00:04:32.730]But really my job was primarily teaching.
- [00:04:35.670]I was doing some writing, doing some research.
- [00:04:39.450]And then came the news
- [00:04:41.370]as has come to many small liberal arts school,
- [00:04:44.280]that they were cutting their education program.
- [00:04:46.170]And so I was at a bit of a crossroads
- [00:04:48.360]where I was offered a teaching and learning gig
- [00:04:51.000]at the college to kind of work on faculty development,
- [00:04:54.240]or I was essentially called to come work at my kid's school.
- [00:04:58.560]It's K-12 independent school here in Jackson,
- [00:05:01.590]Episcopal School.
- [00:05:02.820]And there was just something about it
- [00:05:04.770]that kind of like got me excited.
- [00:05:08.010]And I think all of us in the field of education,
- [00:05:11.550]which again this question of what's academia and what's not,
- [00:05:15.690]but those of us in the field of education
- [00:05:17.250]I think are constantly, when you're a professor,
- [00:05:20.070]you're looking for sites for research
- [00:05:22.140]and sites for getting your practicing teachers into schools.
- [00:05:25.080]And this notion of actually working in the site
- [00:05:27.930]was exciting for me in terms of enacting change
- [00:05:31.770]and being able to be around the energy of K-12.
- [00:05:33.810]And so when I was first hired, I was at this strange title,
- [00:05:37.860]I think they called it
- [00:05:38.693]Associate Head of Teaching Innovation,
- [00:05:42.030]I don't know, it was an interesting title.
- [00:05:44.190]And I reported to the middle and upper school head,
- [00:05:46.410]and I just really was in classrooms,
- [00:05:48.900]a ton of coaching teachers.
- [00:05:50.820]I was making some academic-y decisions,
- [00:05:55.560]but mid-level, I was very middle management.
- [00:05:57.630]And it was really, really fun
- [00:05:59.010]to make the switch from 20-year-old undergrads
- [00:06:03.030]and reminding them,
- [00:06:04.320]you can be an adult, you can be an adult,
- [00:06:06.480]which was primarily the job
- [00:06:07.620]of pre-service education at Millsaps.
- [00:06:09.450]I mean, not just that, but,
- [00:06:11.580]to actually working with full grownups
- [00:06:14.010]who were very much like,
- [00:06:15.480]hey, you say this thing about education,
- [00:06:18.270]but my experience proves this, fight me.
- [00:06:21.120]And it was this sort of challenge
- [00:06:23.910]that folks bring to this work.
- [00:06:25.890]And again, that might not have been such a stark difference
- [00:06:28.110]if I had been doing tons
- [00:06:29.280]of doctoral level work with students,
- [00:06:32.010]even master's level,
- [00:06:33.120]you're often working with practicing teachers,
- [00:06:34.710]but my job was primarily undergrad, previous.
- [00:06:36.990]And so I have really enjoyed the move
- [00:06:40.440]to admin in a shocking way.
- [00:06:42.150]I really planned on doing it one year
- [00:06:43.470]and getting back into the professor market.
- [00:06:46.080]Shockingly, the job market isn't that easy to get back into.
- [00:06:50.040]I don't know if anyone's heard that, it's shocking,
- [00:06:53.250]even if you're spectacular and amazing,
- [00:06:55.320]like Dave and I are, obviously.
- [00:06:58.620]But even more than that,
- [00:06:59.910]I mean, my kids had now at this point
- [00:07:02.370]lived here for six years,
- [00:07:03.630]my husband was ingrained in the community here,
- [00:07:06.780]and I found myself continually challenged
- [00:07:09.180]and stimulated in ways
- [00:07:11.910]that I really kind of wasn't in my previous job.
- [00:07:15.720]I've certainly grown more in the last five years than I've,
- [00:07:19.230]and it's kind of a good time to talk to y'all
- [00:07:20.880]because five years in the job
- [00:07:23.550]as an assistant professor of education
- [00:07:25.230]and now I'm entering my sixth year here
- [00:07:28.650]in some sort of administrative role.
- [00:07:30.000]My new role now as assistant head of school for academics
- [00:07:32.340]has sort of shifted throughout
- [00:07:33.420]so now I'm doing more whole school, big picture-
- [00:07:35.970]Nice. Things.
- [00:07:36.803]But yeah, so, long intro,
- [00:07:39.570]really excited about this conversation.
- [00:07:41.670]Excellent.
- [00:07:43.200]So Dave, what about you?
- [00:07:44.730]Talk us through kind of your pathway
- [00:07:46.740]'cause you're outside of education,
- [00:07:48.900]you're coming from a different kind of area.
- [00:07:53.730]Where were you and how did you get to where you are?
- [00:07:57.090]All right.
- [00:07:57.923]Well, in thinking about this,
- [00:07:58.770]I realized I have left academia twice.
- [00:08:02.370]Oh, bonus.
- [00:08:03.630]The first time- Yeah.
- [00:08:05.730]Nick and Julia and I were all in grad school
- [00:08:07.530]at the same time,
- [00:08:08.460]although I was in the Department of Folklore
- [00:08:11.040]and Ethnomusicology at Indiana.
- [00:08:14.070]And about the time I was finishing up my PhD,
- [00:08:18.570]the job market for ethnomusicologists
- [00:08:21.060]was really, really not great.
- [00:08:23.340]And so I played this giant game of chicken for many years,
- [00:08:26.460]like, I'm almost done with the document
- [00:08:30.750]but I don't wanna finish quite yet
- [00:08:32.280]because there's, you know,
- [00:08:33.210]so I'm sure you all have students who have played that game.
- [00:08:38.610]So I was doing that for a bit.
- [00:08:40.860]And I had worked my way through school
- [00:08:45.570]working in archives on the IU campus,
- [00:08:48.330]including the IU archives of traditional music
- [00:08:50.940]where I really got my hands into that world.
- [00:08:54.293]I mean, that was my whole trading
- [00:08:56.670]in archiving at that point, but I was good at it.
- [00:08:59.790]I was good at it and I liked it.
- [00:09:01.020]And when I finished, I got so many more bites
- [00:09:03.600]for those skills than I did for the PhD.
- [00:09:07.620]So I left academia the first time
- [00:09:10.650]and went to work for two years at a small,
- [00:09:15.930]medium-sized history museum
- [00:09:20.220]in Bristol, Tennessee-slash-Virginia.
- [00:09:24.342]And it was a great time, I got to open a museum,
- [00:09:26.730]who gets to do that?
- [00:09:27.840]It was so much fun.
- [00:09:29.340]It was so exhausting, I never wanna do it again.
- [00:09:32.670]But I got some really good experience.
- [00:09:35.250]I got to sort of learn firsthand
- [00:09:38.010]and show myself that partly because I had finished the PhD,
- [00:09:42.330]I'd done all this research, I had all these skills,
- [00:09:44.310]I could teach myself new things.
- [00:09:46.170]I couldn't get a foothold
- [00:09:47.070]in archives, libraries, and museums without the MLS,
- [00:09:51.210]without yet another degree.
- [00:09:54.420]And I dragged my feet for a little bit,
- [00:09:57.120]but finally found a quick three-semester program
- [00:09:59.430]where I could get credentialed.
- [00:10:02.520]And halfway through that program,
- [00:10:05.700]I landed a tenure-track librarian position
- [00:10:09.900]in northwest Ohio doing the same thing kind of that I'd done
- [00:10:15.420]while on the IU campus, working with sound recordings
- [00:10:19.020]as an information professional,
- [00:10:20.190]I was gonna probably teach a little bit.
- [00:10:24.270]And because of the tenure-track, I had to publish,
- [00:10:27.240]but I could also publish from my ethnomusicology work.
- [00:10:29.850]So it seemed kind of perfect, kind of tailor-made.
- [00:10:33.630]I mean, it was in Ohio,
- [00:10:34.770]that was probably not exciting for my husband.
- [00:10:40.170]But we made the move
- [00:10:44.430]and I stayed there just long enough to get tenure
- [00:10:48.000]before I realized that maybe this wasn't actually
- [00:10:51.210]where I wanted to end my career.
- [00:10:55.620]And there were several reasons for that.
- [00:10:59.400]One of them really was location.
- [00:11:02.670]My parents were getting older, my brothers having kids,
- [00:11:05.730]and it was a long trek from Ohio
- [00:11:08.820]all the way back to Virginia.
- [00:11:13.770]And public transport in the Midwest is not great,
- [00:11:20.670]just transport options in general, not great.
- [00:11:23.400]So that just made it difficult.
- [00:11:27.210]But also I just, I felt like I had felt at the museum,
- [00:11:32.430]there was always more and more and more being piled on.
- [00:11:35.070]We lost an entire position in my very small unit
- [00:11:38.040]while I was there and everything just got redistributed
- [00:11:42.270]and there was more service
- [00:11:43.470]and just more stuff being piled on.
- [00:11:46.410]I was teaching full classes as well,
- [00:11:48.390]which I was not doing when I started,
- [00:11:50.790]and looked like I was going to have to do that
- [00:11:54.000]without being paid more,
- [00:11:55.200]that was just sort of part of my job.
- [00:12:00.000]And I agreed to that partly
- [00:12:01.350]because it seemed like a good way
- [00:12:02.910]to make sure I kept my job.
- [00:12:06.060]They were really pushing librarians
- [00:12:08.250]to teach full courses more and more and more and more.
- [00:12:11.190]So I was like, fine, let's go ahead and do it,
- [00:12:14.520]and they don't pay me any more for it,
- [00:12:17.220]I'm not gonna be fresh on the chopping block
- [00:12:18.870]if anything weird happens.
- [00:12:20.460]Mm-hmm.
- [00:12:22.350]But about when I was approaching tenure,
- [00:12:26.242]that's kind of a decision point.
- [00:12:27.420]And I went ahead and applied for tenure of course.
- [00:12:29.040]And I did it early, I finished, I got it,
- [00:12:32.340]but I was like,
- [00:12:33.173]I don't think this is actually where I want to end up.
- [00:12:34.920]So I looked very selectively for jobs,
- [00:12:37.980]and I surprised myself
- [00:12:40.050]because most of the jobs were not in academia.
- [00:12:43.290]I looked at large public library systems,
- [00:12:45.450]I looked at the government,
- [00:12:46.283]I looked at sort of mostly jobs outside of academia,
- [00:12:50.820]and they were all stretch jobs.
- [00:12:53.580]And after my previous time on the job market,
- [00:12:58.560]I was kind of shocked that I got interviews
- [00:13:01.410]for almost everything,
- [00:13:03.000]which was really validating and very exciting.
- [00:13:05.850]I didn't get interviewed for lateral jobs,
- [00:13:07.470]but for the ones that I was like,
- [00:13:08.460]oh, I don't know if I could, it worked out.
- [00:13:14.528]And so yeah, I landed here about a year and a half ago.
- [00:13:20.370]I'm now at the Library of Congress
- [00:13:22.080]at the National Audio Visual Conservation Center,
- [00:13:25.680]which is a campus not in DC,
- [00:13:27.600]we're out in Culpeper, Virginia.
- [00:13:29.370]It is where LOC puts all of their audio, video,
- [00:13:32.610]and film materials.
- [00:13:33.690]So I am heading a small unit
- [00:13:35.850]that processes archival sound recordings and manuscripts
- [00:13:41.250]for the recorded sound section.
- [00:13:42.990]So I still have my fingers in the same stuff
- [00:13:45.870]that I had my fingers in when I was a grad student,
- [00:13:48.390]I just found a way to make that a career almost by accident.
- [00:13:57.330]Well, but it also seems like both of you
- [00:13:59.880]made some pretty specific changes, right?
- [00:14:05.490]I keep thinking back to grad school and how myopic,
- [00:14:09.210]almost dare I say,
- [00:14:12.210]cult-like sometimes graduate school can feel.
- [00:14:14.850]Like, you'll be a professor, you're gonna work in academia,
- [00:14:18.240]you're gonna get tenure, R1, R1, R1.
- [00:14:21.810]And I'm fascinated by those moments
- [00:14:28.890]where you decided how to leave or to leave.
- [00:14:34.860]Like Julie, in your case, you had this opportunity
- [00:14:39.540]to kind of stay in a different kind of position,
- [00:14:43.770]and you left.
- [00:14:44.730]Dave, seems like you were having this internal conversation
- [00:14:49.080]about, is this where I want to be?
- [00:14:50.753]Is this an organization that I wanna be part of?
- [00:14:53.280]I would love to know a little bit more
- [00:14:56.850]about what were the inner criteria?
- [00:14:59.220]What were your quick criteria for like,
- [00:15:02.400]oh, I need to make this change, I need to move on,
- [00:15:07.620]this is it, I'm done.
- [00:15:09.120]Wow, that's a good question.
- [00:15:11.580]I have them every once in a while.
- [00:15:12.750]It's every once in a while.
- [00:15:14.844](Dave laughs)
- [00:15:16.830]And yeah, it's one that's hard to answer
- [00:15:20.340]'cause I feel like the seeds for what I'm doing now
- [00:15:23.130]were really planted so early.
- [00:15:25.200]And so for me it was just this long process of realizing,
- [00:15:29.910]oh, wait, this is really what I should be doing, right?
- [00:15:32.670]I mean, this is sort of like
- [00:15:35.370]what the universe keeps driving me towards.
- [00:15:38.850]Oh gosh, are we manifesting, Dave?
- [00:15:40.560]Is this what this is?
- [00:15:41.393]I don't know, I don't know.
- [00:15:44.250]But like even-
- [00:15:45.083]Is this a different podcast than I thought?
- [00:15:48.840]We'll get out the crystals in a second.
- [00:15:50.880]I read my tarot.
- [00:15:53.160]But even my dissertation,
- [00:15:55.260]it was a sort of medical ethnomusicology dissertation.
- [00:15:59.460]I had the chance to make that practical,
- [00:16:02.310]I had the chance to pivot there
- [00:16:05.250]into sort of like the outside world,
- [00:16:09.000]and I really dug my heels in and resisted that.
- [00:16:13.771]And partly because that was at that time not the done thing.
- [00:16:17.760]I will say, I do think a lot of,
- [00:16:19.860]especially a lot of humanities and arts PhDs
- [00:16:24.771]or terminal degrees are doing a better job.
- [00:16:31.860]Not that I had a bad experience,
- [00:16:33.900]but they are being much more concerted
- [00:16:37.770]about giving their students a path outside of academia
- [00:16:42.960]while they're still in grad school.
- [00:16:44.460]Mm-hmm.
- [00:16:45.293]So a class is about arts admin
- [00:16:48.030]or sort of public-facing stuff.
- [00:16:51.300]It's partially because there are less jobs
- [00:16:53.940]so the answer is much more obvious
- [00:16:56.400]that we can't just say to everybody, be a professor,
- [00:17:00.300]because there just aren't enough positions out there
- [00:17:03.960]to answer all of that need.
- [00:17:05.490]But I think you're right that in education
- [00:17:08.100]we are very much in a similar position.
- [00:17:11.070]What's so interesting about that question
- [00:17:12.780]is I think every decision we make
- [00:17:15.930]is a constellation of forces imposed on us,
- [00:17:18.600]an agency we take around those forces, right?
- [00:17:21.210]And so it is, to bring back the crystals,
- [00:17:23.730]it is very much the two at work together.
- [00:17:27.810]In my personal experience,
- [00:17:29.580]I probably just mentioned my kids four times in my intro.
- [00:17:33.150]So for me, the fact that I'm not a single,
- [00:17:36.060]I almost could guarantee
- [00:17:38.370]if I didn't have three kids and a partner,
- [00:17:41.850]I probably would still be a professor, is my guess.
- [00:17:45.090]I don't know, I don't know, but that's my guess.
- [00:17:48.990]And it was sort of the ways in which their realities
- [00:17:51.660]sort of shaped the decisions that I made.
- [00:17:54.030]And I'm not mad about it,
- [00:17:55.470]but I will say I'm still choosing every day
- [00:17:59.220]whether this is what I wanna do.
- [00:18:01.710]I feel like I want the narrative of this podcast
- [00:18:05.160]to be like,
- [00:18:05.993]and Nick, I'm reading the book, Leaving Academia,
- [00:18:08.490]that you and recommended.
- [00:18:10.470]I want my narrative to be like that book, which is like,
- [00:18:13.980]it's awesome, and like, yay,
- [00:18:17.430]but I still feel often like I failed.
- [00:18:20.520]I mean, and this is my tendency,
- [00:18:22.200]if you were to know me well, I'm pretty tough on myself.
- [00:18:24.990]I'm pretty much like,
- [00:18:26.580]let's look back at what could have been
- [00:18:28.170]and torture yourself for years and years for no reason
- [00:18:31.230]even though everything's actually pretty happy.
- [00:18:33.450]But it is a real everyday decision if I'm gonna be real.
- [00:18:37.350]Even though I'm definitely making more money
- [00:18:40.170]than I would be if I were still a professor,
- [00:18:42.780]I'm definitely in many ways growing every day,
- [00:18:45.750]learning more skills.
- [00:18:47.400]I feel like I'm making a more practical impact on the daily
- [00:18:50.700]than I was at my,
- [00:18:51.900]and again, it's just in my particular context before
- [00:18:54.330]where I only often had seven or eight students
- [00:18:56.460]in a class.
- [00:18:58.140]I can name the ways, I'm now able to really write in ways
- [00:19:02.460]that I enjoy like the blog with the teachers,
- [00:19:05.520]doing this dumb podcast that I do with my faculty.
- [00:19:08.400]I'm able to take a lot-
- [00:19:09.600]"Doing this dumb podcast," she points to us.
- [00:19:13.200]Yes, yes.
- [00:19:15.600]So I mean, I think logically,
- [00:19:18.180]I can tell you all the reasons why this move
- [00:19:19.980]has been good for my family.
- [00:19:21.660]I now have the same schedule.
- [00:19:23.760]Probably one of my three kids would've popped in here by now
- [00:19:26.700]going from a class to another class
- [00:19:28.170]but I have a signup that says, "Leave."
- [00:19:30.090]So there's so many personal reasons why
- [00:19:33.060]this has been a really special kind of cool moment
- [00:19:35.100]in our lives for this season.
- [00:19:38.430]And yet I still feel like I failed sometimes.
- [00:19:41.220]And I really practically miss, miss, miss
- [00:19:45.210]the flexibility of professoring.
- [00:19:49.050]There's nothing,
- [00:19:50.040]and I know that's not true for all professors
- [00:19:52.860]and I mean I certainly worked really hard
- [00:19:54.780]when I was at Millsaps, but every day,
- [00:19:57.900]I think I once, when I first switched into this job,
- [00:20:00.000]I was sending, Nick, you may remember this,
- [00:20:02.460]I was sending like Post-it note pictures
- [00:20:04.860]to my professor friends
- [00:20:06.795]'cause I was so shocked by the number of meetings I had
- [00:20:09.630]in a given day.
- [00:20:10.463]I have mine right here to the right.
- [00:20:12.150]And it's like, luckily I was able to make the podcast work.
- [00:20:15.060]And then at 10:50, I'm in a classroom,
- [00:20:16.590]at 11:30, I'm in a meeting, at 12:10, I'm supervising kids,
- [00:20:19.500]at 1:10, I'm in a classroom,
- [00:20:20.940]at 2:15, I'm in meeting with the learning services,
- [00:20:22.980]at 3:15, I'm working on proposals for a conference
- [00:20:26.220]with other faculty leaders.
- [00:20:27.900]Every day, that's a very, that's not like,
- [00:20:29.937]oh, I have a busy day,
- [00:20:30.930]that's a very easy common every day.
- [00:20:34.140]Often I'll have three meetings on top of each other
- [00:20:36.120]and I'm like going to part of a, so it's frenetic,
- [00:20:39.720]which is both, yay, I'm pretty high-energy,
- [00:20:43.140]and I enjoy the challenge, and yay.
- [00:20:45.870]And also like, holy cow, I just wanna take a day off.
- [00:20:48.960]And if I take one day off,
- [00:20:50.820]it's like I have to screw up 12 people's lives.
- [00:20:53.880]And so these are the tensions I think
- [00:20:57.780]when we're talking through what pushed you to this decision?
- [00:21:01.740]Well, every day I'm still sort of deciding.
- [00:21:03.990]And obviously all of us are trying to make our jobs
- [00:21:06.750]more the thing we want them to be.
- [00:21:09.450]So I really lean into the professor-y things, I think,
- [00:21:13.050]in this job,
- [00:21:14.160]and I really don't enjoy the parts
- [00:21:16.740]that feel not professor-y.
- [00:21:21.090]Yeah, no good answer.
- [00:21:23.610]Well, I mean,
- [00:21:25.710]you just described our years-long text messaging.
- [00:21:29.610]Right?
- [00:21:30.750]These are things that we've been talking about for years.
- [00:21:33.060]Mm-hmm.
- [00:21:34.500]But you bring up a good point
- [00:21:35.910]around there's things about academia
- [00:21:42.090]that influence who we want to be, like our personalities.
- [00:21:46.920]And I would love to know from the two of you,
- [00:21:50.250]you have these established careers
- [00:21:53.250]that were in some way, defined by our roles.
- [00:21:55.830]Like, I'm a professor,
- [00:21:58.230]and then all of a sudden all of these character attributes
- [00:22:02.070]are ascribed to me, only half of which, if that, are true.
- [00:22:08.850]What has it been like to step away from that?
- [00:22:13.050]And Julie, you talk about this notion of failure,
- [00:22:17.820]and Dave, it sounds like you feel very empowered
- [00:22:21.960]moving out of that,
- [00:22:22.793]and the tensions between these two narratives
- [00:22:25.380]is just fascinating to me.
- [00:22:29.370]So I would love for you to both talk about
- [00:22:33.210]some of the identity work that you're continuing to do
- [00:22:36.480]and had to do as you shift out of academia.
- [00:22:42.510]Yeah, and so for me, just to be a counterpoint
- [00:22:46.260]to Julie a little bit,
- [00:22:47.160]not to invalidate her experience at all,
- [00:22:51.000]but I am finding being out of academia freeing.
- [00:22:56.310]Because from being in grad school,
- [00:22:59.130]we are sort of trained that, or we are swimming in this pool
- [00:23:03.570]where our work is just always here.
- [00:23:05.280]And I have my hands behind my head,
- [00:23:06.690]no one can see it 'cause this is a podcast,
- [00:23:08.430]but it's like always waiting.
- [00:23:12.090]It's always there, it always needs to be done,
- [00:23:14.520]there's always something else, and it never shuts off.
- [00:23:20.460]And one of the glorious things about my current gig
- [00:23:23.910]is that more or less,
- [00:23:24.990]I mean, I have to answer a couple emails
- [00:23:26.520]or if someone's gonna be out,
- [00:23:28.530]but when I leave the office whenever I leave the office,
- [00:23:32.640]4:35, sometimes 3:30, I go in earlier,
- [00:23:36.540]but shut my laptop and I don't engage with anything
- [00:23:42.300]until the next day if I don't want to.
- [00:23:47.756]And if I do work an hour or two extra on a given day,
- [00:23:51.150]I can get that time back.
- [00:23:55.290]And I mean that has felt revelatory.
- [00:24:01.440]So I'm enjoying the sort of built-in work-life balance
- [00:24:05.340]where I am now.
- [00:24:06.300]But even more than that,
- [00:24:08.040]I am trying, not sure if it's working,
- [00:24:11.550]but I am trying to bring my identity
- [00:24:13.860]as an ethnomusicologist, as a scholar,
- [00:24:17.370]into the work that I'm doing now.
- [00:24:18.690]I still have plans to do a couple publications,
- [00:24:21.870]but I'm not on a tenure clock.
- [00:24:24.090]I mean, the library likes people to publish,
- [00:24:25.770]but they don't care how often you do it
- [00:24:29.520]so I can do it on my own time.
- [00:24:31.620]That means I also have to work on it on my own time,
- [00:24:33.600]I have to work on it outside of work, but I mean, it's fine.
- [00:24:38.370]But I am trying
- [00:24:40.470]to still sort of bring that identity into my work,
- [00:24:44.400]hopefully in a way
- [00:24:45.233]that doesn't seem like snobby and egghead-ish.
- [00:24:50.270](Nick and Guy laugh)
- [00:24:51.450]So, but yeah, I really am trying,
- [00:24:54.120]I still go to conferences every once in a while,
- [00:24:56.160]not as much as I did but I'm still active
- [00:24:59.610]in Folklore and Ethnomusicology.
- [00:25:03.420]And I also realized that I am very, very lucky
- [00:25:07.110]to have a job that allows that flexibility.
- [00:25:09.840]But that is to say then that these jobs are out there.
- [00:25:15.090]You can find a job
- [00:25:16.170]where you can get rid of of some of the parts of academia
- [00:25:19.680]that are taxing, but hold on to,
- [00:25:22.530]if you really enjoy the research and the presentations
- [00:25:25.593]and that kind of academic back and forth,
- [00:25:30.060]there are ways to keep that.
- [00:25:32.550]It just might take a little bit of creativity
- [00:25:34.800]and a little bit of bullheadedness on your part.
- [00:25:39.930]Fair. So, so true.
- [00:25:41.550]And yeah, this may be a podcast about
- [00:25:46.170]rather than leaving academia,
- [00:25:48.270]and maybe a podcast about three things,
- [00:25:53.490]academia, admin, or what do we call what you do, David?
- [00:25:58.230]Dave, very cool-
- [00:25:59.429]I mean, you can call it admin.
- [00:26:01.451]I mean, I'm-
- [00:26:02.909]A very different admin.
- [00:26:04.650]One weird admin, one cool admin.
- [00:26:07.830]No. (Nick and Guy laugh)
- [00:26:09.242]Listen, I will say I go to way more conferences now
- [00:26:12.330]than I did as an academic.
- [00:26:13.230]So as an academic at Millsaps,
- [00:26:14.520]I generally would go to one or two per year.
- [00:26:17.820]I'm presenting more and I am going to more conferences.
- [00:26:20.310]The conferences are far more practical,
- [00:26:22.230]I'm organizing one right now for academic leaders
- [00:26:25.170]at schools similar to mine,
- [00:26:27.420]and we're going through proposals.
- [00:26:29.400]And I mean, again, I'm not sure how different really
- [00:26:34.380]my old job is with my new job when it comes down to it
- [00:26:36.840]in lots of ways,
- [00:26:37.920]and I think that's the distinguishing factor.
- [00:26:40.680]But I will say this.
- [00:26:42.360]A few times I've looked at other jobs,
- [00:26:44.940]considered getting back into the professor time
- [00:26:47.190]in my six years here at St. Andrew's.
- [00:26:49.320]And one thing I really have thought a lot about is,
- [00:26:54.240]wait a minute,
- [00:26:56.100]am I gonna be able to go back to faculty status?
- [00:27:00.810]When right now here's the big identity switch I've had
- [00:27:04.110]is this move into leadership,
- [00:27:06.450]which is a field that really bugs me in lots of ways.
- [00:27:09.660]But like everything, once you start doing it,
- [00:27:12.360]you're like, oh, this is actually far more interesting
- [00:27:14.550]and complex and whatever than I thought.
- [00:27:16.770]And not everybody's a jerk like I thought they were.
- [00:27:20.997]Some of them still are and still incompetent,
- [00:27:23.100]but this is a fascinating vast field, right?
- [00:27:27.750]So I've essentially sort of entered a new field.
- [00:27:30.120]And what came with that in terms of identity shift is,
- [00:27:33.150]as a professor, my identity was 100% mentor,
- [00:27:37.980]kindly, dare I say, almost motherly,
- [00:27:40.980]'cause they, again, they were all like 19, 20, 21,
- [00:27:43.530]motherly, shepherd of future teachers into the classroom,
- [00:27:48.870]and people crying in my office all the time, et cetera.
- [00:27:53.730]Serving, feeling like I was doing service
- [00:27:56.250]all the time and collaboration,
- [00:27:57.960]into this role here
- [00:27:59.860]where the title itself makes sometimes people nervous
- [00:28:02.880]to just come talk to me.
- [00:28:04.080]Which you guys can tell already on this podcast,
- [00:28:07.451]I don't have that air of like, I'm intimidating.
- [00:28:10.260]I have no, whatever, everything's hard,
- [00:28:12.480]we're all doing our best.
- [00:28:13.800]But just because of the title,
- [00:28:16.020]there has been a big identity shift
- [00:28:17.640]where I have to work a little bit for folks
- [00:28:19.470]to A, know that I care and know that I'm not a jerk,
- [00:28:22.950]because of their past experiences, I think, with admin
- [00:28:25.950]that have sort of, or that I'm not incompetent.
- [00:28:28.860]And so again, I've been here now six years,
- [00:28:31.860]that first year there were some rocky moments,
- [00:28:33.810]now pretty much everybody's bought into me
- [00:28:35.490]and sees me for who I am.
- [00:28:36.840]Which has affordances and constraints,
- [00:28:39.960]sometimes people are too comfortable.
- [00:28:41.460]But I will say, I mean, I have had moments where I'm like,
- [00:28:45.480]oh, so then I would have to give up
- [00:28:47.730]being in the room where decisions are made?
- [00:28:49.560]I kind of don't know how well I would handle that.
- [00:28:51.600]I feel like I would constantly be looking at the admin
- [00:28:54.360]at the college if I were to go back to higher ed
- [00:28:56.190]and be like, oh, my gosh, run a meeting correctly.
- [00:28:58.740]Or you know, how do you build a,
- [00:29:01.097]you're not even building a program correctly,
- [00:29:03.030]you haven't even talked to stakeholders.
- [00:29:04.740]You can foster that in a much more,
- [00:29:06.780]like I now have done enough of that.
- [00:29:09.390]So I don't know, is it power?
- [00:29:11.370]Is it that I've had a taste of evil power
- [00:29:15.390]that's like evil.
- [00:29:17.280]But that has been a surprising identity shift.
- [00:29:19.320]And I will say lots of times it feels gross.
- [00:29:21.660]I don't enjoy when people seem nervous to talk to me.
- [00:29:24.270]That is not inherent in,
- [00:29:26.250]I have never been interested in that.
- [00:29:28.330]So sometimes I like that part of this new identity
- [00:29:30.840]and sometimes I'm fighting actively to disrupt it
- [00:29:33.330]and say like, no, I'm teaching a section of senior English.
- [00:29:37.170]You saw how my students made a big mess the other day
- [00:29:40.320]'cause I didn't manage it well.
- [00:29:42.390]Let me constantly tell you how I screw up.
- [00:29:45.300]But it's an interesting identity thing.
- [00:29:48.240]So as you're thinking about,
- [00:29:51.240]you have made the move and started in academia,
- [00:29:55.200]left academia, maybe twice left academia,
- [00:29:58.140]which is double the experience.
- [00:30:01.080]And really as you're thinking about this,
- [00:30:03.990]what is your advice to somebody who's contemplating
- [00:30:07.440]whether they're graduate students?
- [00:30:08.820]And we really encourage our graduate students at least
- [00:30:11.400]to think beyond just academia, it's not the only option.
- [00:30:15.360]And as Julie said, there's also a variety of institutions
- [00:30:19.950]that are very, very different
- [00:30:21.480]and the job descriptions are very different in them.
- [00:30:24.120]So what would be your advice to them,
- [00:30:28.290]and what would be the first move?
- [00:30:30.900]For me, the thing that I always tell people
- [00:30:32.910]who are sort of looking to pivot into anything,
- [00:30:35.820]I mean, mostly people come to me
- [00:30:36.990]for library archive, museum stuff.
- [00:30:40.680]Number one, comb the job boards.
- [00:30:44.160]Just look and see what jobs are out,
- [00:30:46.260]what are they looking for, what kind of skills do they need?
- [00:30:49.560]What kind of credentials, if any, are they asking for?
- [00:30:52.260]Just get an idea of what people are wanting,
- [00:30:54.360]and do this way before you're on the job market.
- [00:30:56.880]I mean, this is good advice no matter what,
- [00:30:58.650]even if you are staying in academia,
- [00:31:00.780]but especially if you're trying to pivot out.
- [00:31:04.350]Reading job ads
- [00:31:05.250]can not only give you a little sort of microcosm
- [00:31:09.090]of whatever the field is like,
- [00:31:11.970]but it can also clue you in on some of the jargon
- [00:31:17.220]that people are using
- [00:31:18.053]in whatever field you're looking to pivot to.
- [00:31:20.130]That's gonna be really important
- [00:31:22.140]because as a grad student in whatever field that you're in,
- [00:31:25.170]you are marinating in jargon,
- [00:31:27.930]it has become second nature to you,
- [00:31:29.880]at least in your chosen field.
- [00:31:33.360]So to put on a new hat and pretend like, not pretend like,
- [00:31:37.590]and embody the fact that you are in this different field
- [00:31:42.180]and you'll be good for this job
- [00:31:44.520]and you'll be able to get things done,
- [00:31:46.320]you just need to speak their language.
- [00:31:49.650]And the other thing is, take meetings with people,
- [00:31:53.250]talk to anyone that you can that is in the field.
- [00:31:55.860]Again, you have been in grad school
- [00:31:57.330]for whatever you've been in for a long time
- [00:31:59.280]and you've developed some great networks
- [00:32:01.650]that are probably not gonna be as useful when you pivot.
- [00:32:08.141]And don't think of these meetings as networking
- [00:32:10.200]because then they'll be not useful.
- [00:32:14.550]Just think of them as a chance to talk to people
- [00:32:16.830]that are in the field to get an idea of what they're doing,
- [00:32:19.320]to get an idea of what skills they wish they had,
- [00:32:21.870]maybe to get an idea
- [00:32:22.740]of how you can very quickly gain some of those skills
- [00:32:27.930]before you're on the job market.
- [00:32:30.840]And as you do that, if you're also meeting people
- [00:32:35.280]and making connections that,
- [00:32:38.490]who might hire you later, that's even better.
- [00:32:40.950]But really those conversations
- [00:32:42.690]are for just getting an idea of the scope of the field
- [00:32:48.660]and the duties and making sure it's going to be a move
- [00:32:53.490]that you're going to be happy about a year,
- [00:32:57.960]two, or five later.
- [00:33:01.733]I mean, I think what I would say, a couple of things.
- [00:33:04.860]I mean, the one thing that I tell my students in high school
- [00:33:07.530]all the time is how curvy life is, life is so curvy, right?
- [00:33:10.620]And so just to like,
- [00:33:12.630]in as much as you've built these projections
- [00:33:15.960]of who you are and what you are,
- [00:33:17.880]sort of the openness to that is really important.
- [00:33:20.910]But I also think there is probably a reason
- [00:33:25.260]our professors are pushing us into the academic job market
- [00:33:28.170]so quickly out of grad school,
- [00:33:29.340]and that's because you really are a bit more appealing
- [00:33:33.030]to universities right out of grad school.
- [00:33:35.190]There's some element of your PhD is new,
- [00:33:37.590]especially if you've been
- [00:33:38.550]at a decently reputable, whatever, R1 institution,
- [00:33:42.870]especially if you've got some presentations under your belt,
- [00:33:45.510]your network with your professors is strong
- [00:33:47.460]so they can speak.
- [00:33:48.510]So I don't wanna just be like, eh, do whatever you want,
- [00:33:52.440]you can get back to professoring later.
- [00:33:54.480]I wanna say if you really crave the work-life balance,
- [00:33:58.320]which is so flexible, I promise,
- [00:34:02.160]so much more flexible than any,
- [00:34:03.540]well, maybe not Dave's job, Dave's job sounds pretty sweet.
- [00:34:07.110]But I do think there is an element of like,
- [00:34:09.330]if the life matches what you want,
- [00:34:11.700]and those of you that are in the field of education,
- [00:34:13.980]I think the job market
- [00:34:14.880]is so much kinder than ethnomusicology.
- [00:34:18.777]So I mean so it depends on your field
- [00:34:20.790]so you wanna get a lay of the land.
- [00:34:24.360]So there could be some reasons why
- [00:34:25.950]going for that straightaway out of grad school
- [00:34:27.780]might still make sense, and I think that's awesome.
- [00:34:31.470]But I do think then that openness to look and think
- [00:34:35.700]as you proceed,
- [00:34:37.020]like what is the next curve in life gonna bring me?
- [00:34:40.590]And I think to again not think of these
- [00:34:42.270]as bounded categories.
- [00:34:44.250]Actually, I think that actually does some damage.
- [00:34:46.560]I don't really wanna be thought of as,
- [00:34:48.180]well, Julie left academia.
- [00:34:49.780]Well, I just submitted something to ed leadership
- [00:34:52.380]and haven't heard back for a few months,
- [00:34:54.090]which I hope means, it says, under review,
- [00:34:56.070]so we'll see.
- [00:34:57.870]You can actively be part of academia
- [00:35:00.750]despite the fact that you're not a professor.
- [00:35:02.730]And I think depending on how you define what academia is,
- [00:35:06.780]maybe I don't wanna leave that club,
- [00:35:08.700]but my day job is really busy working with teachers.
- [00:35:11.700]That's probably what I would be doing often
- [00:35:15.270]as a college professor, I'd be doing research with teachers
- [00:35:18.240]or doing some interventions with teacher.
- [00:35:19.770]I mean, again, so I think it's a harder riff
- [00:35:23.820]or it's a harder identity break to think like,
- [00:35:27.330]this thing is one thing and now you're out of this club.
- [00:35:30.030]And I still find my grad school friends who, by the way,
- [00:35:33.420]all of my closest grad school friends are success stories.
- [00:35:36.420]They're all really highly functioning,
- [00:35:38.820]they're doing the thing you're supposed to follow,
- [00:35:41.340]this pathway.
- [00:35:42.840]They're all tenure-track, moved up,
- [00:35:45.150]progressing in these great institutions that are stable,
- [00:35:48.120]and I still find them incredibly supportive and helpful.
- [00:35:52.050]So Dave's point is right, your network might change,
- [00:35:54.840]they might not understand the realities of my life
- [00:35:56.880]and I certainly am not probably as helpful to them
- [00:35:59.100]as I might have been had I stayed,
- [00:36:01.020]but I still think those connections you make in grad school
- [00:36:04.050]are incredibly powerful
- [00:36:05.790]and can continue to fuel whatever thing you do.
- [00:36:09.300]And I'm often thinking about that too,
- [00:36:12.420]the ecology of people we meet and how things fuel you.
- [00:36:17.400]And so, no one answer here except to say,
- [00:36:22.470]think about the life you want, just like,
- [00:36:24.540]it's not just a job situation, it really is.
- [00:36:27.420]I mean Dave made such a good point about location,
- [00:36:29.850]and being a professor really tends to limit you
- [00:36:32.190]to whatever happens to be open.
- [00:36:34.860]So if location matters to you,
- [00:36:37.500]maybe professoring is not the thing
- [00:36:39.810]if that is an important piece in the puzzle
- [00:36:42.090]of your life.
- [00:36:43.050]If not having meetings,
- [00:36:45.570]if you don't enjoy a frenetic lifestyle of like,
- [00:36:47.670]meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting,
- [00:36:48.570]you probably don't wanna be a leader in a school,
- [00:36:50.610]that probably will drive you insane.
- [00:36:52.110]So thinking through, what's your rhythm?
- [00:36:54.420]How do you drive energy?
- [00:36:56.700]And those things can help you, I think, in these decisions.
- [00:37:01.200]Yeah, and can I just jump in one more time
- [00:37:04.380]to thank you all
- [00:37:05.213]for not calling this podcast alt-act anything.
- [00:37:08.969](Nick and Guy laugh)
- [00:37:11.730]I was chatting with actually another ethnomusicologist
- [00:37:14.010]who has pivoted away, is also,
- [00:37:17.220]well, actually now he's back in academia,
- [00:37:18.990]but he worked in government and in nonprofits for a while,
- [00:37:22.650]and he was like, I don't understand this alt-act.
- [00:37:24.840]This is not an alternative to anything,
- [00:37:26.940]this is my life, this is my- This is the thing.
- [00:37:29.580]So yeah, I mean it's, and calling it alternative and,
- [00:37:33.660]I think the ways that academics have historically talked
- [00:37:36.900]about pivoting out of your chosen field
- [00:37:40.050]have also developed this weird stigma around it,
- [00:37:47.250]you're not doing it right, you're not quite doing it well,
- [00:37:50.310]when really, I think now I am as happy
- [00:37:54.000]and probably as well-compensated
- [00:37:55.680]as many of my friends who are still in academia,
- [00:38:01.890]and some of them are increasingly less excited
- [00:38:05.190]about being there.
- [00:38:07.590]Interesting how academia, just the structure of it,
- [00:38:12.270]and we've talked about this on the podcast before,
- [00:38:15.360]continues to push more and more and more on,
- [00:38:17.760]Dave was talking about this earlier,
- [00:38:19.590]so it does allow for that flexibility,
- [00:38:22.380]but the workload just is,
- [00:38:25.140]if you are taking off a couple of hours
- [00:38:27.480]to go to an appointment,
- [00:38:28.440]that workload then gets added to your evenings,
- [00:38:30.660]and it's just, it's super complicated.
- [00:38:34.560]And so both,
- [00:38:36.840]we appreciate you sharing your insights around this.
- [00:38:40.830]And the decision to leave academia
- [00:38:46.650]is something that we're going to cover
- [00:38:49.530]a little bit more deeply
- [00:38:51.300]on Not That Kind of Doctor later this season.
- [00:38:54.120]So we'll take some threads from this conversation
- [00:38:58.800]and pull those out to,
- [00:39:02.220]as we do, create a spreadsheet or a flow chart,
- [00:39:07.200]that's how I roll. (Guy laughing)
- [00:39:09.900]Or just think about how do you make these decisions
- [00:39:13.958]without a spreadsheet?
- [00:39:14.880]Using a decision tree?
- [00:39:15.960]A decision tree, yes. I'm sorry,
- [00:39:17.040]do you make decisions without a spreadsheet?
- [00:39:18.870]At least a pro/con list?
- [00:39:22.230]I don't want to admit right now, but yes.
- [00:39:25.200]And I heard something that both Julie and Dave said
- [00:39:29.010]that I think was a major part of my tree.
- [00:39:33.450]I keep it in, it's abstract, my tree, my pros and cons.
- [00:39:37.290]Yeah, we know it's abstract.
- [00:39:38.700]Yeah, it's very abstract. We know this.
- [00:39:40.590]This is the only way I can create art is in abstract sense
- [00:39:43.920]because I have no talent.
- [00:39:45.480]But the-
- [00:39:47.430]Limited mindset, where's your growth?
- [00:39:49.260]The thing I heard here is that,
- [00:39:52.020]and we talked about this even when we talked about
- [00:39:54.690]where do you want to apply?
- [00:39:56.190]And that is family is a big part,
- [00:39:58.950]family and friends and your community
- [00:40:01.140]is a huge chunk of your decision-making.
- [00:40:03.600]And I heard Julie say we were in Jackson
- [00:40:05.820]and we were looking around
- [00:40:07.500]and we're not excited to move to somewhere else
- [00:40:10.080]just because somebody opened a job somewhere.
- [00:40:12.210]And that's a huge part.
- [00:40:14.070]Or Dave talked about,
- [00:40:16.560]we have aging parents and we need to take care of them
- [00:40:20.220]and this is not viable anymore.
- [00:40:22.770]So we need to have those cluster of opportunities
- [00:40:26.130]and we're encouraging our students.
- [00:40:28.320]But definitely even if you are in your job five years
- [00:40:31.290]or six years even with tenure,
- [00:40:33.030]it doesn't mean you have to stay.
- [00:40:35.010]It means that you have to think,
- [00:40:37.800]to be curious about what's out there, to keep asking,
- [00:40:41.340]and opening the options and really think about that.
- [00:40:46.680]And both of you talked about this really well,
- [00:40:48.720]there's a cluster of things you know how to do
- [00:40:52.200]that might be really, really great in other environments.
- [00:40:55.530]And we don't think about them that way because it's like,
- [00:40:58.020]I know how to do statistical analysis,
- [00:40:59.910]obviously I need to write papers for publications
- [00:41:02.730]that maybe 17 people read,
- [00:41:04.650]or maybe I can do something else with it.
- [00:41:07.020]And so thinking about that is really important.
- [00:41:10.440]Or you could use those skills to create a dashboard
- [00:41:12.570]that I would read every day.
- [00:41:14.490]Yes. My kingdom is the dashboard.
- [00:41:15.652]That's what I'm worried about.
- [00:41:17.580]What are students doing?
- [00:41:19.170]How is this working out?
- [00:41:21.120]That's what I'm asking for, give it, that's all I want.
- [00:41:24.060]That's all I want.
- [00:41:25.242]But okay, so today we have covered a lot of ground
- [00:41:29.940]from a narrow view of academia
- [00:41:32.070]to some of the possibilities available beyond it.
- [00:41:36.270]Thanks to Julie and Dave
- [00:41:38.010]for sharing their stories about transitions,
- [00:41:41.460]about identity shifts,
- [00:41:43.020]and exploring those careers outside of academia.
- [00:41:46.110]Absolutely.
- [00:41:46.943]And if you're thinking about a career shift
- [00:41:48.630]or even if you're just curious, start looking,
- [00:41:52.680]start thinking about your skills
- [00:41:54.450]and how they're transferable
- [00:41:55.620]because that really can give you ideas about other careers.
- [00:41:59.940]And I think both of you talked about
- [00:42:01.770]the fact that you can make a real impact in the world
- [00:42:05.310]outside the walls of academia.
- [00:42:07.140]And sometimes maybe even more difference
- [00:42:10.170]as you're navigating what the universe is telling you about
- [00:42:13.470]what you're supposed to be doing.
- [00:42:15.420]And so this is the first conversation
- [00:42:17.520]in a multi-part conversation
- [00:42:18.840]that we'll have on Not This Kind of Doctor.
- [00:42:21.240]We've got some insights from this conversation
- [00:42:23.760]on Not That Kind of Blog on notthatkindofdoctor.net,
- [00:42:26.970]so be sure to look there.
- [00:42:29.040]And just remember that you are not alone
- [00:42:30.990]in making these decisions.
- [00:42:32.130]We are all wrestling with the same kinds of questions
- [00:42:36.930]about just life and existence even if we don't talk about it
- [00:42:41.040]or have a multi-years long text message chain about it.
- [00:42:45.540]Julie, I'm looking at you.
- [00:42:49.650]But remember you're not alone, we're here to support.
- [00:42:52.620]And thanks for tuning in to Not That Kind of Doctor.
- [00:42:56.040]And next time we'll dive into another conversation
- [00:42:59.430]that might help you think about what's possible.
- [00:43:02.650](lively music)
The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!
You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.
Log in to post comments
Embed
Copy the following code into your page
HTML
<div style="padding-top: 56.25%; overflow: hidden; position:relative; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1;">
<iframe
style="bottom: 0; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; border: 0; height: 100%; width: 100%;"
src="https://mediahub.unl.edu/media/23717?format=iframe&autoplay=0"
title="Video Player: Not That Kind of Doctor - Jobs Outside of Academia"
allowfullscreen
></iframe>
</div>
Comments
0 Comments