I’ve come up on and passed my first anniversary of leaving my career in academia.
On May 16th, 2023, I submitted grades for the final time.
I started teaching college courses in the fall semester of 2008, when I began my Master’s program. I had one semester where I was tutoring and did not have grades to record, but aside from that semester, I spent 15 years (30 semesters, plus the summers I taught) finishing up my semester in an exhausted push to complete all the tasks and then curling up with a stack of books or a backlog of shows to binge watch. Sometimes, I had a couple weeks “off” (if I was teaching summer session or taking a summer class), and sometimes I had several weeks “off” if there were no classes for me to teach, and no classes for me to take.
Most things I wanted to do, like visiting family and friends, taking a trip, or research and writing, had to happen in between semesters because I felt too overwhelmed during the semester to get away. I know some people are able to successfully manage work/life balance in academia, but it’s not something I could manage. That’s not the point of this post, though.
My time is so different, now.
I felt extreme relief and elation when I left what I thought was going to be my career—when I left what I thought was going to be my life—but I worried about the breakdown I assumed was inevitable.
The breakdown never really came. Existential crisis is a normal state of being for me, and I felt optimistic and hopeful about the new form my life could take.
Yet these things are not this simple, and grief is tidal. Waves of grief and joy and periods of calm seas became my life. Once, in expressing some of that grief, the response was, “Well then you need to go back and get another academic job.”
It’s not either/or.
It’s both/and.
I can feel grief, while also knowing I made the correct choice for myself. I can feel a little out of pace while figuring out the new rhythms of my life, and while I imagine what my new path will be.
I love my current life. I miss aspects of my past life.
I’m pulled between joy and grief, between confidence and insecurity, between calm and triggered, between hope and despair, between satisfaction and shame. Sometimes, I feel all of these emotions within seconds. Sometimes, one dominates for longer periods of time.
It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.
Again and again and again.
Ink and Vein 