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liminal space

Leaving Academia, Part 3

industry network photoIn 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

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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

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Leaving academia is hard and difficult. In this new short series on “Leaving the Academy”, 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. 

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.”

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.

 

Encountering God in the Liminality of Graduate School, Part 2

In the first part of a two-part reflection, Scott Santibanez shared some theological reflections on the liminal space of graduate school. In Part 2, he shares some of his own story. 

It was 1991, during the summer between my first and second years of medical school. I was in the basement of a Christian clinic in Times Square. The clinic provided free medical care for homeless people in New York City. I was filling up a tub with warm soapy water so one of our homeless clients could soak his feet. And I loved doing it.

In those days, we had very little clinical exposure prior to our third year. Consequently, when I began volunteering at the clinic, there was scant medical expertise that I could offer. I knew a few basic things like how to check blood pressures, and some first aid. But a lot of what I did involved doing the laundry, making copies, and sitting and listening to people. Several of our clients were HIV positive. It was early in the AIDS epidemic, before we had effective treatments. At the time, being HIV positive was seen as a death sentence that often caused people to become stigmatized and estranged from their families, friends and society. Coming to know and care about these individuals had a profound effect on my faith, my life and my career. Here are a few spiritual lessons that I learned:

1. Pray.

Have honest conversations with God. I prayed frequently before I began and while I worked at the clinic. If you are struggling through your own period of training and preparation, ask God for direction about what you should do with your life. You may be someone to whom prayer comes easily, or you could find it a challenge. You might even be uncertain if God really exists. Pray anyway. Your prayers do not have to be eloquent or theologically sophisticated. They do need to be honest, heartfelt, and open.

2. Take risks.

Find something that God has given you a passion for and do it. Get involved. You won’t necessarily get paid or receive class credit. Ask yourself whether you are there because you want to be there. For me, this meant a homeless clinic providing care for homeless people with AIDS. For you it could be something else entirely.

There are times when God calls us to go out of our way to choose unexpected paths. He sometimes challenges us to do uncomfortable things or to care for people whom others want to avoid. We must be willing to be disturbed by situations that may at first seem alien and even threatening.

Your choices will not always make sense to others. It could mean turning down a high-profile internship or an opportunity to work in a prestigious lab to volunteer at a place that no one has ever heard of.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes along the way. You may decide to volunteer somewhere, only to discover that it is not a good fit for you. This is okay. Don’t lose hope. Carrying anger over something you tried which did not work out only hurts you. Forgiveness allows you to move on and take that life experience with you where it can inform, but not control your future.

3. Listen to People.

Get as close to the ground level as possible. Get to know the people who are affected by your field. If you are studying neuroscience, this might mean volunteering to help out seniors who suffer from dementia. If your field is nutrition, you could try delivering meals to shut ins. For those studying music, art or literature, it could involve helping everyday people to visit concerts, museums or libraries. You don’t need to be an expert to serve others. Some days, the most I could do was to fill up a tub with warm soapy water so people could soak their feet. It can be a powerful expression of faith and a catalyst for growth when a person does not have much of something but is willing to trust God with what little he or she has.

While I did not yet have much to offer in terms of professional expertise, one thing I did have was the opportunity to listen. In addition to just getting to know people as human beings, listening can give you fresh insights into your field, an appreciation of how your long-term efforts will benefit others, and motivation to keep studying. Having now been a physician for over two decades, I sometimes feel pressure to move patients in and out quickly to keep my clinic on schedule. I find myself wishing I could just sit and talk with people like I did in those early days.

God will sometimes give us teachers in unexpected places–people who don’t meet our idea of a mentor, who are not experts by academic standards, but who can still teach us. In 1991, I met a friend who challenged me to expand my thinking about many things. Raised in the streets of New York, exposed to drug use, crime, prison, homelessness, and finally HIV infection, he had come to know the life-changing nature of God and was working as an AIDS counselor in our clinic. He taught me a lot about treating people with dignity, and a lot about life.

Conclusion

Liminal space can be a sacred, powerful place, where God transforms us. However, following Christ will not always be safe. We may approach God with practical questions about our majors, our careers, and how we’re going to get through the next 5 years. God may respond with deeper questions–ones that challenge not only our careers, but our very core, the essence of who we are, and who we will be for eternity. It is like what the dean of my seminary once said: “Follow Christ . . . if you dare.”

For me, liminality meant God leading me to a lifelong interest in the AIDS epidemic that eventually took the lives of friends I met in the summer of 1991. I discovered that for me, persevering through the many years of education and training was worth it. Graduate school can be a time when you reflect upon and begin to answer your own unique questions. Your parents, professors, pastors, and friends cannot answer these questions for you. With God’s help, each person must find the answers to these questions for him or herself. The choices may not come easily. God may lead you to select a different life path than you had originally planned, or bring you full circle so that you decide to continue with your chosen field, but with a renewed perspective. There is a risk that others may not understand your motives and your decisions. In the end, however, the struggle will be worth it. God is faithful to help you find your way and make it through.

Encountering God in the Liminality of Graduate School, Part 1

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Photo by boskizzi

I once had a seminary professor who liked to talk about something he called liminality. The term comes from the Latin word limens, which means “threshold.” Liminal space is a place of transition, of waiting and not knowing. People who are in liminal space exist in the threshold between their previous life and a new one. “It is the doorway or portal between statuses,” anthropologist Jack David Eller writes, “the road that links the origin and destination.”[1]

With its years of training and preparation, graduate school can be a kind of extended, self-imposed liminality. One is no longer an undergraduate, but not yet a professional. Liminal existence can be discouraging. Waking up each day without an end in sight can lead to frustration and even shame. You see friends moving on– you feel that your gifts could be put to use in the real world, but you feel trapped in academia. Perhaps you overanalyze whether the many years of education and training are worth it. Would you be better off choosing another career and life path? And if you do continue on your present course, how do you find the strength to persevere? If you struggle with this process, trust God to help you find your way and make it through.

Liminality, while difficult, is not necessarily a bad thing. It can also be a place of transformation. “In a way, the liminal condition is a lowly one,” Eller continues. “In another way, though, it is a sacred condition—special, powerful, and perhaps dangerous.”[2] “This is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, Theologian Richard Rohr says, “and a bigger world is revealed.”[3]

Many people in the Bible encountered God when they had left behind one life but not yet moved on to the next. Here are a few examples:

  • Jacob was no longer part of his childhood family, but he did not yet have a family of his own. While fleeing from his brother Esau, he dreamt of a stairway reaching to heaven and cried out “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” (Genesis 28:16b NRSV).
  • When Hagar had been cast out of Abraham’s household, she too encountered God and exclaimed, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?” (Genesis 16:13b)
  • David struggled when he was no longer Israel’s military leader but not yet its king. When King Saul became jealous and wanted to kill him, David wrote: “In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.” (Psalm 18:6)

In each of these biblical accounts, an outsider encountered God in a liminal place of waiting and seeming abandonment. Perhaps the liminality of graduate school leaves you feeling similarly lost at times. How does one find God in the liminality? One way to start is just being open to God’s wisdom to guide your steps. Along the way, you may discover that God has greater plans for you than you could have imagined—beyond just finishing your dissertation or getting your degree. One of my seminary professors put it this way:

It is more than what you know, what and where you have studied, and what skills you’ve developed. Ministry (doing) flows out of being. Deeper humility also results from finding one’s identity in Christ. Crosscultural servanthood arises out of your very identity in Christ, not your academic training or professional skills.[4]

As an infectious disease physician who completed many years of education and training, I have found myself in that liminal place more than once. My own life choices were influenced by my interactions with God and my life experiences as a medical student in the early 1990s, when I was no longer an undergraduate but not yet a physician. In the next post, I will share some of these experiences.

In Part 2, Scott Santibanez shares some of his own story.

Notes

[1] Eller, Jack David. Introducing Anthropology of Religion: Culture to the Ultimate. New York ; London: Routledge, 2007. Accessed 28 April 2017 at: http://www.antropologias.org/files/downloads/2010/08/ELLERJ.D._Introducing-Anthropology-of-religion.pdf

[2] Eller, Introducing Anthropology of Religion, 127.

[3] Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation. “Transformation: Week 2 Liminal Space,” Thursday, July 7, 2016. Accessed 28 April 2017 at: http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Richard-Rohr-s-Meditation–Liminal-Space.html?soid=1103098668616&aid=jd48qU30R0U

[4] Stephen Hoke and William David Taylor, eds., Global Mission Handbook: A Guide for Crosscultural Service (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2009), 40.