At ESN, we deeply value supporting and mentoring the next generation. In this post, Scott Santibanez, an ESN author who often writes for graduate students and faculty here at the ESN blog, takes a moment to share encouragement and advice for students finishing their undergraduate careers and moving on to the next steps in their vocation. If you are a graduating senior, we’re glad you’re here, and we hope this post encourages you in this key moment. If you’re heading to grad school and want to find community along the way, you can learn more about our network of Christian academics here and look for an InterVarsity grad chapter here. If you are a professor or graduate student and you know seniors who are believers, please consider sharing this post with them. For students headed to graduate school, it may be a great introduction to ESN. For others, we hope it’s encouraging as they pursue whatever God is calling them to next. [Read more…] about Advice for Graduates: 5 Things To Do as You Enter the Next Phase of Life
after graduate school
Leaving Academia, Part 3
In my previous posts, I discussed my exit from the academy and questions to better understand a pivot to a non-academic career. In this third post, I discuss practical strategies as you navigate new job application processes.
When I started applying for non-academic jobs, I felt directionless and did not know how to start. Providentially, I stumbled upon the simple realization that I can leverage skills and expertise gained in graduate experience to navigate these new unknowns. By adopting familiar practices of research, replication, and resilience, I became more organized, confident, and ultimately successful in the job application process. [Read more…] about Leaving Academia, Part 3
Leaving Academia, Part 2
In my last post, I shared about my unexpected and abrupt exit from an academic career. In this post, I discuss how my examination of two questions helped me pivot to life outside the academy and become thankful for my graduate experience.
Now what?
As it became clear that I would not have an academic job, I felt lost and overwhelmed. Having given no serious thought to a non-academic career, I wondered if my academic apprenticeship had any value in preparing me for life outside the academy. And I did not know where to start looking for advice or tips that could help guide me in my pivot to life outside the academy.
By God’s grace, my thoughts and self-reflection began to focus on two questions: what was I passionate about, and what was I good at? I spent time thinking about and identifying the pursuits that gave me the most joy in graduate school and the practices that I excelled in. Answering these two simple questions gave me insights into the non-academic jobs and careers I wanted to pursue. It also helped turn my bitterness and resentment into gratitude and thankfulness.
The first question I asked was what I was passionate about, what I enjoyed most during graduate school. At the end of an exhausting graduate career, it was difficult to find any part enjoyable. But as I disaggregated my graduate experience into categories of activities, I identified specific pursuits that were most enjoyable. I realized my passion for the testing of arguments and challenging of claims with empirical evidence. I also enjoy mentoring students to think more deeply and systematically about the world. While non-academic jobs would not have the exact mix of these two activities, I knew that I should focus on jobs and positions that would give me opportunity to continue pursuing these passions.
Second, I asked myself what I was good at. At first, I was tempted to do a complete career reset and think of graduate school as useless training you can never use again. However, I began to appreciate the skills and expertise I had acquired. Seminar classes with heavy reading requirements taught me how to skim large volumes of text and identify key takeaways. Completing long research projects like the dissertation helped me set goals, self-motivate, and manage deadlines. The constant contestation of ideas, theories, and claims sharpened my ability to deconstruct arguments, interrogate evidence, test logic, craft rebuttals, persuade skeptics, and update my beliefs. This gave me confidence that what I learned to do in graduate school could translate into jobs and careers outside the academy.
In identifying the passions and proficiencies I was blessed with during graduate school, I gained new clarity into the types of post-academic careers I would find interesting and could excel in. I began to see how I could use the skills I was good at while pursuing activities and responsibilities I was passionate about. That led me to work in market research, where I help clients leverage best available evidence to make data-driven decisions. I also have the chance to teach and mentor younger staff to deepen and grow their reasoning and analytical abilities.
More importantly, God used this time to help me surrender my bitterness and resentment. I realized how graduate school shaped and helped me hone practices of information processing, reasoning, and learning that would be valuable in non-academic domains. I could more joyfully and confidently, as Paul exhorts in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “give thanks for all circumstances.†I still struggle with knowing and believing that my graduate experience was not wasted even though I do not have an academic career. But I am encouraged by people in the Bible whose early career training proved useful in unexpected domains, like David whose shepherding experience prepared him to defeat Goliath, or how Paul’s rabbinic training gave him the intellectual credentials to engaged the learned elite. And I am humbled and reassured that our sovereign and loving God has a purpose for how I can serve Him with the skills I gained as a graduate student in new domains outside the academy.
If a pivot out of academy is a reality, or even a possibility, I encourage you to think about what you are passionate about and what you are good at. I hope and pray that in thinking about and praying through these questions, you too will gain insights into the types of non-academic careers you would find meaningful and be more thankful for God’s faithfulness. I don’t know what insights you may arrive at, but I am confident that God can and will use the passions, skills, and expertise gained in graduate school in the new careers He is leading you into.
Image courtesy of MarcoPomella at Pixabay.com
Leaving Academia, Part 1
Leaving academia is hard and difficult. In this new short series on “Leaving the Academyâ€, I hope my experiences will encourage you as you explore and wrestle with God’s calling for your life as you transition to a perhaps unplanned non-academic career. Editor’s note: For more of Josh Wu’s work for ESN, see this link.Â
For the better part of a decade, my life ambition was to become a professor. I was confident that hard work and a few providential breaks would land me a tenure-track political science professor position. I believed that God had called me to a life in the academy, to be a witness pointing peers and students to Christ. Like Paul on Mars Hill in Athens, I dreamt of being a learned scholar and teacher who integrated my faith with scholarly passions and practice.
However, eight years after I started my graduate studies, my academic career was over.
I felt lost. I had never given serious thought or consideration to a non-academic career. I had always thought that going to industry or the private sector was at best “selling out†and at worse, a sign of intellectual failing. I was bitter as people seemingly less qualified than me from less highly ranked departments were hired for positions I applied for. I wondered if I had wasted so many years of my life. I worried how I would provide for my family, especially with a baby on the way. I was embarrassed and humbled, knowing that I would never feature on my department’s list of notable recent placements. And I was disappointed, confused, and even angry at God.
Now nearly two years removed, I am starting to understand why God allowed and brought me through such a trying period and tumultous exit from the academic world. And I am thankful for how these trying times led me to know myself more and dispelled my misplaced expectations of God.
I realize I had unconsciously made a quid pro quo bargain with God. I would serve Him while in graduate school with the unrealistic and ungrounded expectation that God would provide me with a tenure track job, because He owned me something. I elevated my intellectual life and potential academic career to be core to my identity. I had made the pursuit of a tenure-track position an ultimate good, an idol and false hope I had staked my life upon.
I also realize I had too narrowly construed God’s calling and purpose for my life. By coming to believe that being a professor was the only way I could serve God’s Kingdom, surely I could expect God to ensure an academic career for me. I was trying to back God into a corner, to bend Him to my will and force Him to make good on His end of the “bargain.â€
I am glad and relieved God did not “give in†to my foolhardy expectations. Had I landed a tenure-track position out of graduate school, I would have probably been too prideful, too trusting in my own accomplishments, and too sure of my ill-defined ambitions.
But God is faithful and gracious. When he brings us through trials, he does not abandon us to hopelessness, doubt, and uncertainty. When all of my academic teaching options were exhasuted, God remained faithful and helped me find other potential career opportunities I had never thought of. In a whirlwind few months after being rejected at the last academic position where I applied and starting to apply to non-academic jobs, I would end up starting a new job in market research two days after my PhD commencement.
If you are transitioning out of academia, either by choice or by the lack of viable jobs, take heart in the promises of God. As Paul declares in Philippians 1:6, we are to be “confident that He who began a good work [in us] will carry it on to completion.†I encourage you to think and consider how your experiences and accrued skills can be used to pursue the welfare of those around you and serve God in non-academic settings. The character molding and ambition defining work God is doing in you is not done. He will bring it to fruition, perhaps in ways you did not expect or even initially want.
While it can be sad, depressing, and humbling, leaving academia is not the end of the world. And if you are making the same exit from academia I did, my hope and prayer is that you too will gain new insights into the motivations of your ambitions, your understanding of God’s calling for your life, and your confidence in our loving and sovereign God.
Processing your PhD: on next-ness
What’s it actually like when you finally finish a PhD? Recent PhD grad Will Mari wraps up his series on life after graduate school, Processing Your PhD. See posts on finishing here, teaching here, and further thoughts on being done here.Â
I’m sitting in my office on a quiet, mid-summer afternoon, and my campus is silent.
Sure, I hear the clunk-clunk of apples rolling off the roof above my office (outside an ancient tree stands vigil, and is raining forth its bounty early). We have a few summer camps going on, and so you’ll hear a kid’s laugh or a counselor’s shouts every now and again, or the maintenance folks going about their mowing. The desktop hums.
But otherwise, there are no students, few other people and a general sense that this little academic universe remains paused for more than another month.
It’s great.
As many of my older and more established colleagues can attest, especially at teaching-oriented colleges and universities, summer is prime time for personal projects, reading, research, getting ahead on course preparation, and even—gasp!—taking vacation.
As a young faculty person, with all the anxieties that are part of that identity, that quiet does tend to bring in some of its own challenges, however. It might even go to waste, slipping away into the voracious demands of the calendar. There’s a refrain of next-ness, for lack of a better phrase. What’s next, indeed?
There are always papers to publish (or at least revise), articles and books to read, classes to create, emails to send and answer, chores to tackle and errands to run. Much of that is good, and necessary, and for certain seasons, cannot be avoided. I wish I could forestall all pressing deadlines and savor the stillness for weeks to come, but I can’t, not always.
Actually, there really should be a healthy amount of next-ness, especially while pursuing one’s vocation. Like gravity, it should tug you forward, and push you gently, to pursue excellence for the sake of your students, your faith, your field and yourself.
But there is also what I’d call over-next-ness, of fearing the Things to Always Do Next. That’s bad. At worst, it’s an addiction, and not the caffeinated kind.
To fight this tendency, it is good to dwell on the value of rest, a dear colleague and friend recently told me, for “in quietness and confidence shall be your strength†(Isaiah 30:15).
And yet here I must confess immediately that exhortations to rest (not in this case from my friend) fall like mist in the mountains. Refreshing, pretty, but insubstantial, and not as important as the crashing storms of blowing snow that are much more exciting and draining—resting is great, if you can get it.
Where does this response come from?
We’ve been trained for years to prove ourselves, our scholarship, and thus our worth. Even now, it stings to find that a reviewer doesn’t like an article, or a conference doesn’t like a paper, or a student doesn’t like a class. The over-next-ness of the PhD process doesn’t wear off easily, or come naturally. You don’t just coast to a stop, hang up your cleats, and go home.
But you need to force yourself to, sometimes. If only for an evening or a weekend: for there will always be more work. You just need to eat it in more regular portions, like healthy people do. That’s hard, and for me this will remain a continual discipline, and even an area of discomfort, for years to come. Learning contentment and calibrating next-ness to a sustainable level will take time. But I don’t have to like it for it to be good.
It begins now, before the semester starts, after it ends, in the middle of it. It must be remembered when accolades arrive, or when criticisms crater around you. Your value as a person and as Christian endures when teaching is fun, and when it isn’t, when you’re published, and when you’re not.
Thanks for processing your PhD with me. It’s helped me think through the meaning of mine.
Image courtesy of PublicDomainPictures at Pixabay.com