A few years ago I left a tenured position and transitioned to industry. It was quite a mixed bag of feelings, including grief for a career that I had identified myself with. It’s very difficult not to identify ourselves with our jobs.
Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
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Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
#82This is from 10 years ago. I would be curious to know where they are now and how they feel now about this career decision and blog post.
Looking at the webpage, she is now active in the diversity & inclusion space, which is still booming. She gets an endorsement from Sumana Harihareshwara, who turned the DEI up to 11 in Wikiland.
The talks of the Women in Chemistry section at the recent American Chemical Society meeting included gems like "Metalloids and mentoring: Life at a PUI as the 'Other" and "Transgender chemistry graduate students navigating between trans and STEM identities".
All of that sounds nice until you start teaching in Alabama or get students from a reservation in New Mexico, then you see that what the DEI folks offer is completely useless when it comes to deprivation.
Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
#83This is from 10 years ago. I would be curious to know where they are now and how they feel now about this career decision and blog post.
Seems like they got into tech, like many people leaving science: https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa19/speaker-or-organize...
Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you wanted to become a doctor, say, and flunked out of school, how would you find another path to become a doctor; start again in another country? Sometimes the cost of failure is high.
Easy, just apply to a osteopathic medicine program.
I’m not sure that works in many places outside the US.
It’s viewed as alternative medicine here in New Zealand, in a similar ballpark to homeopathy, though perhaps a bit closer to conventional medicine.
Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
#85> We create meaning around the stress and soften transitions with rituals and rites of passage. I graduated into the height of the pandemic, so I never had a graduation ceremony. Instead, they played a shitty video presentation over Zoom and my parents cracked open a beer and watched it on TV. By the time I got invited back for a ceremony, I had already moved hundreds of miles away from my university. Obviously, I tu…
Having been bored to death at a relatives ceremony, I skipped mine and went straight to celebrating with friends at a sushi bar.
Grandma was a bit miffed. Rituals are what you make of them. :)
Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> just how serious should she... be taken? Very seriously indeed if you value higher education and research. Lot's of people do. Over a decade ago now, Ben Ginsberg wrote "Fall of the Faculty". Political scientists like Wendy Brown have picked apart not only the evidence, but done deep analytical work on the reasons for the disintegration of academia in the West. Even Peter Thiel (who I profoundly disagree with on al…
I think - no, I fear, fear is the right word - that there is much more than just academia disintegrating in the West. > Almost all human values have been expunged and replaced by a puppet show of performative theatrics, led by MBA educated impostors and career administrators. Not just academia. This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
Yes, over the past few decades, that sentence applies to every institution I can think of. Academia, government, business, religion, medicine... I don't know why administration has turned into such a plague, but it keeps absorbing larger shares of our money, power, and time to do less and less with more and more.
Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
#87> "You are formally invited to A WAKE for THE RESEARCH SCIENCE CAREER of FRANCES HOCUTT FRIDAY from 7 PM to MIDNIGHT" When I quit my PhD I had an Ungraduation Party! My wife made a cake and everyone sang Happy Ungraduation To You! It was sad and happy but overwhelmingly such a relief to get out
What went into your decision to drop out?
Good on you too not wrap your identity too much in a credential to allow yourself that decision and also having unconditional support from those close to you.
Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
#88> We create meaning around the stress and soften transitions with rituals and rites of passage. I graduated into the height of the pandemic, so I never had a graduation ceremony. Instead, they played a shitty video presentation over Zoom and my parents cracked open a beer and watched it on TV. By the time I got invited back for a ceremony, I had already moved hundreds of miles away from my university. Obviously, I tu…
I don't regret skipping college graduation and I barely remember high school graduation I do regret that I didn't join any clubs in college until my last semester, and that I didn't make the kind of friendships I wanted
^ listen to this person.
The ceremonies at the beginning and the end—not a big deal. The part that matters is what you do there.
I think the celebrations are more for the parents, really. We live our lives in the bulk, the area, the day-to-day. We experience others’ lives at boundary transitions, the perimeter, the ending ceremonies.
Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
#89> We create meaning around the stress and soften transitions with rituals and rites of passage. I graduated into the height of the pandemic, so I never had a graduation ceremony. Instead, they played a shitty video presentation over Zoom and my parents cracked open a beer and watched it on TV. By the time I got invited back for a ceremony, I had already moved hundreds of miles away from my university. Obviously, I tu…
These ceremonies are meaningful if you invest meaning into them.
For my college graduation, the dean did something small to make the ceremony more meaningful. He asked us all to stand up, look back to our family, and applaud them for supporting us all these years. For me, looking back at my parents and thanking them for all they've done for me was a beautiful moment. And it was a full-circle moment for our family, the culmination of a long journey of immigrating to the US, moving around in search of stability. We had moved to be able to buy a house and to get us good, affordable educations. Both of those dreams were fulfilled at that time.
I don't recall much else from that ceremony. Not the speakers, but a few of the interactions afterward with my fellow students and their families.
Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
#90Holding a wake for one’s career and inviting people strikes me ad incredibly narcissistic.
I don’t agree. It’s obviously not a “real” wake, just something for friends to hang out and show support. And switching careers often means moving to a different city, so it would be nice to say goodbye to friends who won’t be seen for years (or forever). I’ve been to a couple “deportation parties” for friends who couldn’t get their visas renewed, and it’s sort of the same thing. Mostly lighthearted but a slight somb…
Man, I could see that being somber! That seems like a great way to have a goodbye party.