The Decision Trap and Creativity

Every day we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make the right decisions.  Eat healthy, save money, say the right thing.  As women we face the unrealistic societal expectation expressed by my boss' favorite comedian of going to work, taking care of the kids, and then coming home to cook a great meal, and be multiorgasmic.  Life is a series of decisions, and the unrelenting pressure we place on ourselves to make the best ones.

At least most life decisions are easier
than  solving this glittery rubik's cube

Yet research indicates the human brain eventually suffers from decision fatigue. Making good decisions  is easier when you can make fewer of them.  That's why Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg where the same outfit every day.   To paraphrase Barack Obama you don't want to have to worry about what you are eating or wearing when you have so many other decisions to make.   Smart women can do this, too.

I don't wear the same outfit every day, but to the extent possible, I've tried to automate the things I don't care about, and focus my energy and attention on the things that do.  I want a cleaner house, but I don't actually want to clean it so I read Living a Simple Life and The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and got rid of stuff.   My husband and I live where we can walk downtown so we get our exercise without having to motivate ourselves to get off our couch to do boring mindless laps around a suburban block.   I want to write and be creative, but I realized some months ago most of my creativity was going into cooking and choosing what to wear each day rather than my writing, so I made some adjustments.  When my life seems most off track, I will make a list of my values and priorities, then make a list of how I actually spend my time:  there is nothing like comparing the two to see where an adjustment is needed.

Seeing the results of how you spend your time and the life you live contrasted with the life you actually want for yourself, and the ways you currently spend your time can make achieving your dreams seem impossible.  How did you end up here?  Why should things be any different?  Maybe this is who you really are.  All of these thoughts make the life you want seems so far away.  But the reality is that you can use the fact that life is a series of decisions to your advantage, too:

Terence J. Tollaksen wrote that his purpose became clearer once he began to recognize the “decision trap”: “This trap is an amazingly consistent phenomena whereby ‘big’ decisions turn out to have much less impact on a life as a whole than the myriad of small seemingly insignificant ones.”

You don't get where you want to be by making one big choice.  Life is made up of the smaller choices we make every day.  So don't sweat it if you aren't where you want to be.  Spend some time thinking about where you are, and what you want.  Then start spending time doing what you want, and look for the small decisions that can help you get there.  All these little decisions will make it so when you do have a big decision to make, you'll be ready.  And if you are still overwhelmed, just remember the 85% rule:  You don't have to be 100% certain, or even 100% ready. In fact, you probably never will be;  content yourself with being 85% certain, and when you get to 85% give yourself permission to act.

Should you Leave or Stick it Out?

Graduate school is an intensive experience of socilazation that involves breaking you down and rebuilding you into a scholar.  That process is painful, stressful and involved.  You will stretch in ways you never could have imagined, and will literally find that you will come to see the world in a different way.

Sometimes it can be difficult to sort out whether you are expericing a period of stress, or whether you really are burned out because this isn't the path for you. If you are reading this because you can't decide, here are some steps that may help you step back and analyze:

Where are you in the program?

If you have a major milestone like a thesis due, you just need to make sure that you will have the energy to get across the finish line.  You may also want to consider whether you are tired of graduate school beaucase of where you are in your program, or whether this really just isn't for you.

Talk to other graduate students.  Is it normal for people to feel this way around Comp exams/Coursework phase/insert other milestone here?  Depending on your program, there may be milestones when people tend to evaluate what they are doing and where they are going.

Sometimes we need more help in determining stress and burn out.  I can't recommend enough the use of a good therapist (which is often covered through your graduate student fees), or a good book like Finding Your Own North Star or the Artists Way.

The Best Advice on Graduate Schools is from those who Left

I work with a number of junior staff who are already thinking about graduate school.  Many are fresh off their B.A.s, most have great jobs that they will later regret leaving, but at 23 they all recognize that at some point in the next few years the will be going back to school.  I thank my lucky stars that I am done with my education and can ensconse myself deeper and deeper into my awesome job on a daily basis.  My co workers don't realize how good we have it, but I do and I am not leaving.

Even though I quit my graduate program, I understand and even endorse them furthering their education because I recognize that my M.A. will secure me a higher salary and provided me with important skills.  But I do have some advice that I wish someone had told me before I applied to schools.

1) Don't just research schools and departments--research the discipline you think you want to go into.  Think you like urban planning?  Look up some course syllabai online and look at what they cover.  Most importantly, pull some journal articles from the major journals of the field and READ THE ARTICLES.  Had I done this, I never would have applied to my program because I would have realized what I only learned later:  that in addition to seeming to speak in tongues, the scholars in my discipline held epistemological and ontological orientations that I did not share.  Instead, I realized in my first semester of graduate school that I had made a huge mistake, but still suffered through four years of conferences,  colloquiums, courses and publications that made me want to scratch my eyes out.

2) Realize that you will pay with either loans or your soul.  If you don't want to pay for graduate school and go into debt, get accepted to a top Ph.D. program that will pay you through a research assistantship or a teaching assistanship.  You will live in poverty, but you will not graduate in debt unless you chose to live in an expensive city.  You will however have a program that is intense, works you to the bone, and likely focuses exclusively on theory, grinding out publications, and becoming a professor.  This is fine if these are your interests and goals, but if like me you envision an applied future, you will pay with your soul.

Or, you can find a fun and interesting terminal M.A. program and actually have fun in graduate school.  You will have debt, and you need to be careful that your program will actually lead to a job and give you the skills you need to do that job.  While a Ph. D. is designed to train you as a professor, most terminal M.A.'s are designed to make $$$$$$ for the University.  The aren't always very rigorous, and the may be expensive overblown post undergraduate experiences that don't actually lead anywhere but student loan land.  And graduating with high debt loads does impact what kinds of jobs you take when you graduate. You may have fun doing your M.A., but it is not so fun having to go work in some miserable but decent paying job for five years in order to get out of that debt.

3) Recognize that where you go to school geographically is likely where your best job prospects will be located.  Especially if your degree program provides internship experience, the community you attend school in is likely to be the place you have the most references, introductions, and networking opportunities.  If you go to law school in Chicago, you will likely work in a law school in Chicago for your internships.  Your professors will have contacts with, you guessed it, Chicago law firms. Now with law many large firms have offices throughout the country.  This is not so common when your professional degree is in museum studies, or Chinese antiquities.  Likewise if you want to do a professional degree in an area with distinct geographic centers, like public policy, you should probably attend a school with a campus in your State Capitol or D.C. You need to go to where the jobs are, and that may mean going to school in the city you want to end up in.

4)  Go to the best program in your field that you can get into.  The reality is that success is in large part who you know and what resources you have access to, not your merits.  It sucks, but the sooner you learn this about life the better.  Going to Harvard helps you not just because you are surrounded by smart people, but because smart people know that being around other competitive smart people pays off.  Who your network of professors are, who can write you letters or recommendation, or refer you to employers matters.  Some of the kids in your classes can be dumber than your friend at another school, but the friendships and connections they forge with their classmates will be more valuable to them than the content of their classes. Everything is about who you know, and you should know that the best and brightest are likely to be attracted to the best programs.

5) Get work exerience.  In your field.  That let's you know what kind of work you want to do.  You really should be able to make the argument in your applications that you love and work in SUBJECT X, and want to do XYZ with it, but realize that to take your career to the next level you NEED to get the training and expertise that a degree in ABC gives you.  Or in the case of a Ph.D. your work and applied experience in SUBJECT X has led you to a point you want to study it.  You need this experience to make sure you know that the investment in your education is worth it, but it is also the secret key to getting into the best programs. You need a narrative about you and your path in life, and in order for it to be convincing you need to show you have taken the first few steps and are already well down the path.    You also need it so that when you have your degree you are not that simultaneously overeducated underqualified person who cannot get hired.

6) You need to work your ass off.  Even if you want to be a professor and crawl into the nearest ivory tower and never come out again, you better keep a foot in the types of organizations you want to study or potentially have as a back up career.  Tenure track positions these days require applying for  securing grant funding, and service, and community involvement.  The connections you maintain to the outside world will either be your life line if things don't work out, or what sets you apart as a junior faculty fighting for the limited pool of funding and jobs.

7) Understand the term opportunity cost.  Even if your grad school is paid for, if it is not moving you forward in life it is keeping you from doing other things. Delaying those other things (relationships, kids, contributing to retirement, being happy ) can set you back in life.  So be 85% sure this is the path for you, and make sure you have thought about where you want your life to be five years from now.

We all know what they say about advice: everyone loves to give it but no one wants to take it.   But hind sight is also 20/20, and for what it is worth this is what I wish someone would have told me.

Checking in with What You Want

You made it.  Life is great: you have friends and a social life, your self-worth is intact, and maybe you even landed that holy grail of a job that both fullfills and adequately compensates you.  

Now what? 

Life is about more than showing up between the hours of 9 to 5pm, and if you find you have satisfied your minimum requirements of food, shelter, and the basics, you will invariably find yourself asking "What do I really want?"  Even if you have the PERFECT job, you will probably still be asking this question eventually because you are not your job.  See midlife crisis.

This might be a disconcerting feeling: As a graduate student there were times when all you wanted was a way to pay the rent, be happy, and live where you wanted.  Once you checked that off the list the last thing you wanted was more rumination about what came next.  But now that you are out, employed, happy--what do you really want?  Five years from now, where do you see your life? 

I've recently found myself wondering what I actually want in life.  Sure, I love my work, and my family life is pretty good right now.  Six months ago I would have thought myself ungrateful for starting to think about what comes next, but here I am  wondering, "Who I am beyond my job?"  

The reality is that as former graduate students we excel at this type of introspective navel gazing.  The good news is that we are well equipped once we do figure it out what we want to start pursuing it.  Maybe you want to write, or start a graduate student coaching business, or create a comic.  Either way, you know how to get started on side projects and make it happen. Afterall, you were a graduate student. 

You Need an Insider: Finding a YOU Champion

No one wants to hear it, but there is a secret to getting a job in today's tough market.  I'm talking about a good job, you know, one you would actually want.  One that may or may not involve a career transition.  You need a YOU champion.

A YOU champion is someone who cares about YOU and wants to see YOU succeed.  Someone who works at the company you want to get hired at, or knows the inside scoop of their search. Someone the hiring team knows and trusts to make recommendations.  Someone who can give you honest feedback about how to tailor your interview, your resume, and respond mid-search to any doubts or changing directions.

And the  real secret is that when you fnd a real YOU champion, it will be because they believe that your success is tied to their success.  Think about that for a minute.  How does your success become their success?   Getting someone to care about you stems from a number of scenerios: It can be because of the mentor mentee relationship you developed; it could be that they want to work with you and see you as an asset or an ally; it could be they want you hired to preserve their contact and relationships with the company they are seeking to place you at; you may have helped them get hired in the past.

That last point is really important.  You don't have to be in upper management before you can start helping people find a job.  Even the lowliest interns at an organization have more of inside scoop on hiring decisions than the random monster.com or craigslist.or applicant.  When you find out about jobs, make a call or send a targeted email to people you think would be good--like really good.   Make a call to the person hiring , or pass along an email with a name, contact info and a brief referral to help them with their search.  Not only do you help the person you refer, but you may find that the employer comes back to you in the future.  I helped a friend find a job when someone recruited me. I passed on my friend's contact info, and told her what to emphasize in the interview and her resume.  Then I pitched the employer that she fit the criteria that had been spelled out when they were intervieiwng me.  I debriefed with her after the interview, and helped her strategize her thank you letter.  She was a great candidate, made me look good, and got the job.

When I applied for my current job, I was same employer came to me directly.  However, it was my friend who had gotten hired at the other office who kept me updated about where they were in the process, when I should contact them again, and what startegies would work best.  My friend who I had helped less than a year before is directly responsible getting me my offer.  Yes, I was a qualified candidate.  So were a lot of other people who applied.  I had the benefit of several people who had come to see that their success was tied to me: my friend who helped me with my application, and the ultimate hiring team who knew what it was like to work with me due to our board service and volunteer work together.  You still need to be the champion of YOU, but you also need to find someone else who can champion, YOU too.

And once you get that job don't think your work is done.  I'm currently a YOU champion for another friend who would be a fantastic asset to the company he is waiting to hear from.

What Role Should Advisers Play in Leaving?

I stumbled across this great article about advising grad students who won't finish.  In it, Cassuto (2010) argues that faculty should do a better job talking to students about the possibility that they might not want to finish.  The academy needs to make clear to students that leaving is an option, and one that shouldn't be shameful. He writes:

"Not every graduate student will finish a dissertation. We know that truth to be self-evident. Nor should every graduate student finish. Some would be better off doing other things with their lives. Others simply can't complete the project."

My adviser and I have never discussed my leaving as a real possibility. I told her last spring that I was offered a job, and decided to turn it down, but only after I spent weeks interviewing, discussing details, and ruminating over my options.  As I've posted, I have had several breakdowns in which I openly question whether I should stay.  Despite all of this talk, we've never had a conversation about whether I should.

I'm not sure such a conversation would be helpful.  A relationship with an adviser is by definition unequal in power.  Graduate students are already insecure in their role as an apprentice, it would be hard to take discussions of leaving as anything other than an adviser signalling that they no longer believe in their student.  When I first was admitted to my department, the graduate adviser challenged me after a long admit weekend on whether I should even come to the program. I can't recall the exact language he used, but it was shocking at the time when he said he didn't see me here, and had a hard time seeing how I fit.  The fact that he questioned whether I even wanted this might have been prescient, but I wasn't ready to hear it.  It made me work harder, to prove him wrong.

Instead, the emphasis needs to be on what graduate students hope to get out of life, and whether graduate school and the Ph.D. will move them toward that.  This is what Cassuto (2010) means when he suggests advising the student and not just the dissertation.  We all need to do a better job trying to see the big picture.

Should I Quit Grad School?

"Should I quit grad school?"  I can't count the number of times I have typed that phrase into Google, hoping for an answer that deep down I already knew.  "Quitting grad school," "Should I stay," and "I hate grad school" were searched so many times, that I often found myself reading sites and comment threads only to realize that I was rediscovering them. Years later.  My desire to leave, and my search for justification, validation, and some company in my misery was that bad.

They say insanity is doing the same thing, but expecting a different result.  It does seem a little crazy to be constantly searching and researching the same damn thing, but that is part of the process of leaving.  If you have found this post because you are a frustrated graduate student unhappy in your program, and uncertain in your future, know that you are not alone.  Know also that as you sort through everything you are going through, you are very likely to meet yourself again and again.

And that is ok.  Deciding to leave or to stay is a big thing.  The process takes time.  Be gentle with yourself, and realize that whether you stay or go, there you are.  You deserve to be happy, and you need to do what is best for you, and not anyone else.    

How to Get a Job Out of Grad School

My entire graduate school career has been oriented toward keeping the back door open. Deep down I secretly knew that the odds of my putting up with this shit finishing were pretty minimal.  This was evident from a number of choices I made as I consciously straddled the world of academia and the outside world:

• I kept my individual health insurance through my M.A., even though it cost me a chunk of change in case I left to go back to self-employment.  This was particularly important since at the time the economy was so bad that good jobs with insurance were hard to come by.  It was only when they jacked my rate, and I knew (ha!) I was staying that I gave up my insurance for my department issued health plan.
• I worked the entirety of my graduate school career.  The reality is that I have never had less than two jobs: either some consulting work I retained from before I went back,  a part time super flexible job I picked up before I went back to school doing grant writing, and occasional paid research assistant positions, fellowships, etc.  This is all in addition to my working as a teaching assistant 20 hours per week, making normative progress on the insane time table mandated by my department, and doing research and course work. While it made me something of a crazy person, between all these jobs, I essentially doubled my yearly salary as a grad student, didn't take any loans, and got great additions for my C.V.  For JC of From Graduate School to Happiness, a part time job simply became the first post academic job.
• For me service meant work outside the department, as well as within it.  This is important since your department will likely completely discount outside service, when in reality it is your golden escape hatch.  While I have served on various volunteer committees and positions at the University in case I wanted to pursue an academic job (again, ha!), I made sure a lot of my volunteer time and energy went into work that would be relevant outside of academia.  Particularly, I looked for volunteer opportunities that would translate to contacts in fields I wanted to work in, and filled holes in my resume.  I actually pulled job postings for the types of positions I thought I wanted after I finished the Ph.D. so I could prepare to be a good candidate.  In fact, enough people knew about my background that last spring I was actually recruited to a job that I turned down (but told them I might accept after I went ABD) which I am now reapplying to.
• I kept my resume current, and added new details as they developed. Writing a resume from scratch is excruciating   I know because as an undergraduate who hadn't kept good track of my volunteer work, and didn't have any sense of what gaps on my resume I still needed to address, I ended up listing course work and saying things like "I'm an outgoing person who likes to talk to people."  I cringe typing that.  Not only did I really do that, but I have received resumes from other people who have done that.  It happens--but one way to avoid it is to create your resume as you go and check postings so you can give yourself the time to get the relevant experience you need, even if it is as a volunteer.  Plus, as every teaching assistant stresses to their charges, you must write in drafts and time gives you the perspective to organize your resume so you can fully leverage your experiences in ways that make you stand out to employers. 

Now that I am planning on leaving, these things make my job hunt much easier. I haven't yet gotten my first job on the outside, but I do have four really good leads that are in my interest area and would be great fits.

And not a single one requires an M.A. or a Ph.D.

A lot of this probably sounds really annoying.  "Great," you are thinking, "lucky you having the foresight and the ability to spend all this time preparing."  The reality is that most of us who leave spend months if not years preparing to exit. The nagging doubt in our mind grows to a voice we cannot ignore, which eventually turns into racking sobs, which finally gives way to sighs of relief (and maybe even shrieks of terror because let's be honest, leaving graduate school is hard). If you found this post because you aren't sure about your program, start preparing now.  Even if you finish and decide to go for a tenure track job, these strategies will make you a more interesting person more likely to get access to community sample.

If you are one of the unfortunate many who has been cut loose from funding by your department and are now scrambling to fend for yourself, start working on your resume and think about how to frame those volunteer experiences.  Pull some job listings and see where the gaps are in your experience, and even if you have to take a job for now that isn't that great, at least devise a strategy regarding how to get the experience you need for the career you want.

On Leaving Academia--or Getting Out While You Still Can

I've spent the last several months reading and rereading leaving academia blogs. In fact, I have been lurking in comment threads, escaping into the fantasy world of leaving, and mentally and emotionally checking out of my life.  This is my coming out post.  I think I am finally ready to leave.   But I didn't get here overnight.

First, there was this classic piece from Professor is in. It IS ok to quit, and graduate school is a psychological prison of our own making:

"It is ok to decide that’s not what you want.  It is ok to make another choice.  There is life outside of academia.  But academia is a kind of cult, and deviation from the normative values of the group is not permitted or accepted within its walls.  You will be judged harshly by others and, to the extent you’ve been properly socialized into the cult during graduate school, by your own inner voices.  Making the decision to leave involves confronting that judgment, working through it, and coming out the other side.  It is long and hard and involves confronting profound shame.  I went through this.  I know."

Of course, Leaving Academia (with its promise of "From Grad School to Happiness") served as my guiding light for months.  During dark days and nights, I would read and reread the posts and comments, emboldened by the idea that there is employment, a life, and a future out there. I admit to sitting in a huge lecture hall as a TA (in the back dark corner so students couldn't see my screen), reading blog posts about getting out.   JC has been like the graduate student mentor and friend who wants you to know that it will be ok.

JC also introduced me to mama nervosa, which spoke to a whole other dynamic of my wanting to leave: my desire to start a family and move on to having a life.  I struggled with whether graduate school would be a more forgiving place to get pregnant and have my first child, but the reality of graduate school as a parent on TOP of the experiences of these ladies in dealing with an unrealistic job market, low pay for adjuncts and TAs, getting through comps, and the bullshit suckiness of graduate school has been illuminating beyond words.

During fantasy escapades through blog land, I luckily stumbled across Plan B Nation's recommendations for advice books and quickly snapped up Martha Beck's Finding Your Own North Star.  This book speaks to me in a way that no book has in a long time:  her concept of the essential self and the social self has helped me strip away the bullshit I routinely fed my therapist and myself to get clarity on what it is I really want.  I hate teaching, hate grading papers, hate writing papers, hate sitting alone and isolated in front of a computer, and hate going to lectures, and academic conferences (where great titles hide horrific and unwatchable panels).  I realized that getting the PhD and walking away to a non academic job would essentially assure me of having to write papers, and sit alone in front of a computer, when I could quit now and do something else.  Why was I staying again?

In my moments of rage, I found Penelope Trunk's hilarious and brutal take down of graduate school, which lifted my spirits and helped me feel ok about walking away from a program even though it is paid.  As she points out, the lost opportunity costs, and lack of benefit to staying are just too much.

So where does this leave me?  I feel like after several false starts (I even interviewed for a job and almost left  last spring), the reality of my situation is apparent.  There is no longer any rational for staying beyond fear and ego, a fact that I admitted for the first time a week ago.

I'm terrified of getting a job and worried I won't like my options. I am also terrified I will not get a job and be stuck here writing my comps next semester.  Now that I have decided to leave, I resent all the more every paper I have to grade, while still meeting with my committee about exams I hope never to take. I don't want to tell my adviser in case I can't get a job, but need to get the word out I am looking.

But mostly, like an addict, my deep-seated fear is that I won't and can't change: that I will stay, and still be here even though I know it is the wrong thing for me.  Now that I have started down this path, I hope I am brave enough to continue.

photo credit: temporalata

Dreams of My Future

A few weeks ago  I woke up from a strange dream:  I have been logging into student health lately to follow up on my physical, and in my dream our former Department Chair contacted me to say that he had received a notification from the system that I had dropped out of the program. Everything was fine, I should just turn in my key.  

Apparently I had pressed the wrong button, and inadvertently unenrolled from graduate school.  I couldn't believe such a snafu had occurred, and explained to him, “No no, I’m not dropping out.  I must have hit the wrong button.” He  didn’t try to argue with me, and didn’t even feel we needed to have a discussion.  Just like that, he alerted me that the system had informed him of my decision and by clicking a button by mistake, notice was considered given. 

In my dream I kept explaining to him it wasn’t intentional, that I had just accidently pressed the wrong button.  I was neither relieved nor upset, just surprised at the kafka-esque notion that a button pressed by accident and without any intention on a seemingly unrelated website had been interpreted as my leaving.  Leaving seems like such a big, hard, challenging and dangerous taboo prospect: this was anti climactic to say the least. 

Why Permanent Head Damage?

When I was but a a wee one, sitting in an undergraduate intro course that I somehow ended up taking my senior year of college, a very wise Professor launched into "the talk."  This wasn't about the birds and the bees, or even the gentle conversation with struggling students about switching their major to something easier.  No, this was the graduate school talk.

"Take a good, hard look," my Professor warned, "at what graduate students coming out of your intended program look like, because graduate school is all about breaking you down and molding you into someone new.  You want to make certain that you want to be the sort of person that comes out on the other side."

Graduate school, he intoned, was a process of production. It did something to you, trained you to think a certain way, broke you down and built you back up.  And as a graduate student you needed to be intentional about that.