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Home » Happiness in Academe

Happiness in Academe

January 9, 2009 by Micheal Hickerson 1 Comment

There’s a very interesting article today at the Chronicle of Higher Education, How to Be Happy in Academe ($) by Gregory Pence, professor of philosophy at Alabama-Birmingham. He’s writing about how career expectations can become defeaters, leading you to feel depressed about perfectly fine academic work. He shares his own tangled path from New York City to Birmingham, and how much more rewarding his “Plan B” has become than he ever expected.

Compare Pence’s article to two recent articles published on InterVarsity websites – Christian Professors Flourishing? by Terry Morrison and Loving the Academic Life by Dorothy Boorse. All three get at the issue of fulfilling one’s academic calling, but all from different perspectives.

Any stories to share of unexpected rewards of working at “second-tier” schools? Feel free to change names to protect the innocent.

Micheal Hickerson
Micheal Hickerson

The former Associate Director for the Emerging Scholars Network, Micheal lives in Cincinnati with his wife and three children and works as a web manager for a national storage and organization company. He writes about work, vocation, and finding meaning in what you do at No Small Actors.

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Filed Under: Christ and the Academy, Finding Work Tagged With: flourishing, philosophy, tensions

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Christi Hemati says

    January 11, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    Mark Schwehn’s book, “Exiles from Eden,” is also a good resource on this topic.

    Reply

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