Leaving behind the academic value system
On learning to ask yourself what you want
Hi there, I’m Emily! 👋 Welcome to Hired Humanities, a biweekly newsletter devoted to helping humanities students build careers on their own terms.
There's been a change around here. Have you spotted it?
No? That's okay! If I'm being perfectly honest, I didn't think you would notice.
Last newsletter I updated the tagline "a biweekly newsletter devoted to helping humanities students build careers they love" to "a biweekly newsletter devoted to helping humanities students build careers on their own terms."
In today's issue, I thought I would explain why I made this change and share what you ultimately stand to gain from leaving behind an academic value system that places passion for a chosen field above all else.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
The problem with passion
The tagline update was inspired by Anne Helen Petersen's book, Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. A former academic turned journalist, Petersen's work traces the historical path to our current cultural climate. In a chapter entitled "Do What You Love and You'll Still Work Every Day for the Rest of Your Life," she unpacks how the Millennial willingness to trade decent pay and job security for the opportunity to fulfill their passions in a "cool job'' has set up an entire generation for exploitation.
The entire chapter resonated with me, but the section on academia hit the nail on the head. Academia, where devotion to the "life of the mind" reigns supreme, is perhaps the consummate example of how employers benefit from what Petersen calls the hope labor industrial complex. You're expected to devote your time and energy to the relentless pursuit of scholarship, of securing a tenure track job, of fighting the good fight on behalf of your field with little financial return or security. To leave academia is the ultimate betrayal of this value system:
If and when academics find themselves disillusioned with the system, that disillusionment is often accompanied by a sprawling and stubborn sense of shame. It doesn't matter if they followed every piece of advice on how to mold themselves into an ideal job candidate, or that the system thrived on their seemingly infinite stores of ambition and labor. What matters is that they spent a decade or more of their lives working toward what they loved— and failed to reach the finish line. That's what happens when we don't talk about work as work, but as pursuing a passion. It makes quitting a job that relentlessly exploited you feel like giving up on yourself, instead of what it really is: advocating, for the first time in a long time, for your own needs.
Here Petersen captures the emotions I felt when I walked away from my PhD program in 2015. I thought I had failed myself by making the choice to place my wellbeing above my passion for Classics. And, to be honest, the radio silence from my professors after I let them know I was leaving seemed to confirm that failure.
Building a career on your own terms
I now understand that rejecting the academic model of passion-as-work was one of the greatest things I've ever done for myself.
Changing my value system didn't happen overnight by any means. Initially I felt like I could only apply to a subset of jobs that were "acceptable" vis-à-vis my passion for Classics and education, like academic administration or teaching at the elementary level. There's absolutely nothing wrong with these jobs, but I was limiting myself to what I believed was worthy of my time and energy. In other words, I was just projecting academic values onto my non-academic job search.
Once I started asking myself what I needed (flexibility to choose where I lived; separation between work and home; financial stability) and what I wanted to accomplish in my next role (learn how to write for a broader audience; develop business acumen) things started to change. My horizons expanded; I discovered new industries that interested me. I began applying to jobs in communications, and eventually landed my first job at a boutique public relations agency.
Look, I didn’t magically figure out how to advocate for myself as soon as I got my first job. (Full disclosure: I’m still figuring it out!) I also continued to struggle with feelings of shame even though I had “made it” outside the academy. But my point is that by choosing to focus on what I wanted and needed of my work, I had begun to build a career on my own terms.
And that brings us to Hired Humanities and the change I made to its tagline. After reading Petersen's examination of academia, I felt that the phrase "helping humanities students build careers they love" was more aligned to an academic value system than the one I want to promote, where all your goals are valid and should contribute to the choices you make for your career. In other words, it's not just about finding a field or industry that you love engaging with, it's about building a career that supports the life you want to live. It includes accepting that the desire to make money is valid, that needing time for family is legitimate, that it’s perfectly fine if your job isn’t solely focused on the “life of the mind.”
I want to be clear that I’m not suggesting you throw the idea of enjoying your job out the window. I certainly enjoy what my current role entails. I have fun learning about people and understanding what makes them tick. Thinking about how organizations can help people grow and succeed energizes me. But I also like having financial stability and being closer to my family in California. And that’s perfectly okay.
My hope is that Hired Humanities can help you discover and advocate for your own goals and needs. Finding your voice is always going to be a process, but if you start asking yourself what you want, you’ll be surprised at what you learn about yourself and what you can accomplish outside the academy.
A parting note
Thanks for tuning in this week! Please don't hesitate to drop a line if you have questions or feedback. And, if you think someone else in your life would love to receive this newsletter in their inbox, feel free to spread the word.
Onwards,
Emily
Reading List
A few of my favorite links
🎧 If you’re curious about Petersen’s work, definitely check out her interview with NPR.
💲 Speaking of the “hope labor industrial complex,” I enjoyed revisiting Fast Company’s excellent article on internships this week.
🏅 This Op-Ed video for the New York Times by Olympic runner Alexi Pappas.