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I just heard about a FB group for people wanting to leave academia, and joined, and started typing the below, and decided it would make a good blog post, so I moved over here instead...
I don't know if this is the right place for me or not, so I will give a little of my background, and you can tell me if I am just weird, or if there are others like me here...
Growing up I loved school, and didn't want a job. The adults I knew all complained about having to work, and it sounded terrible to do so. But school, that was fun, and I loved learning, so I wanted to be a student forever. No one in my family had attended college/university, but that was no reason not to enroll when I finished high school.
I then spent the next six years, enrolled at several different institutions, taking anything and everything that sounded interesting, with no intent to ever graduate, but my social life was not on campus, it was 100% focused on the medieval recreation society I had discovered in high school.
Then one of my friends from high school told me that he was pondering which graduate school offering him money he would accept. Wait, what? There is a way to be paid to be a student? (At that point I was working registration each semester to earn enough to pay my tuition at a state school, which was doable, and working as a live-in housekeeper for some friends, so I had a place to sleep and plenty of food, and life was good.) He explained that if one majors in a science that it is often possible to get paid to be a student by teaching labs. New goal!
So I picked a major (geology, not available at my then uni), and applied to a university in another state, got accepted, took out student loans, and moved. Kept doing the medieval thing, fell in love, spent the summer with him, and discovered that the state college across the street from his house also had geology available, so transferred and enjoyed the next three years it took to fulfill the requirements for that degree (since it was a small college the required classes were offered every other year), so I graduated after 10 years as a full time student with 365 of the required 175 quarter credits to graduate.
I got accepted into a Master's program and then enjoyed several years enjoying getting paid to be a student, and continuing to spend all of my free time doing the medieval thing. When my funding ran out, and I wasn't quite done with the thesis yet (and had completed way more than the required number of classes) I moved in with my parents for a bit as I finished up.
I finished the Master's in Geology around the same time the US Geological Survey was laying off everyone and their brother, too, so the rest of the geology job market was seriously flooded with experienced potential workers. However, I never really wanted a job, so I didn't bother competing with them. Instead I moved in with a friend in a tiny town that was desperate for substitute teachers, and required only a high school diploma, and spent the winter earning enough money for some travel, while working a random schedule, with the right to just not answer the phone if I didn't feel for working, and, of course, still doing the medieval thing.
A couple of years later I fell in love and moved to Australia, and my new partner was about to re-start his studies, with a new major. I didn't think it would be fair for him to be a student while I had to work, so I applied for a funded PhD position, and really loved my next five years as a student, with a medieval recreation hobby taking up the rest of my time.
I finished up just as my funding ran out, and, this time, actually applied for jobs, landing a postdoc position in Italy, which meant that my medieval hobby suddenly was happening in real castles. That job ended just around the time I fell in love, so I moved to northern Sweden, where the local uni had a geology post doc position that sounded fun. I got accepted, and enjoyed 1.5 years in a job that felt just like being a student doing research again. However the funding application to extend the contract to long enough to actually finish the project didn't come through, and I was loving where I was living too much to want to relocate.
But just then they needed someone to manage the new LA-ICP-MS lab, and I applied. Then they discovered that the other division that had been going to cover half the budget wouldn't do that after all, so suddenly the job was a half-time position. This sounded perfect to me, so I took it, and enjoyed a number of years doing a fun job, with lots of time left for my Medieval hobby, and gardening.
But I missed being a student, so when I saw an ad for a PhD position in Archaeology with enough funding to cover a half-time student who wanted to work half time, I contacted them, and wound up getting accepted to do a second PhD, as a long-distance student. This led to a really fun first seven months as a student, but then I found out that the geology department was having financial issues and considering outsourcing the lab to a private company, which had plenty of technicians, and wouldn't need me if that happened. Given that we had written my project proposal with the thought of doing analyses in the lab, this was worrisome, so I started doing as many as possible, without taking the time to process the data in-between. Eventually I got my official notice that the job would end, but as I had been with the uni for years, and my position was classes as "permanent", I had another ten months of work, which gave me a chance to do an awful lot of analyses, but no data processing.
But one must continue to eat, so I applied for a few other jobs, and landed a short term, half time contract as an archive assistant at the local museum, just in time for the pandemic (so while the rest of the world was working from home for the first time, I was going into the office regularly for the first time, since I had always worked from home if I didn't have a specific need to be in the lab).
For a variety of reasons I wound up taking a leave of absence from my studies, though I tried to make as much progress on the data processing while I wasn't enrolled as I could. Then I fell in love and moved again, to a tiny town, an hour from the nearest university, and I really don't want to live in a city again.
I hope that I will be able to turn the research I have already done towards a second PhD into a Master's degree and have it done, but I don't know what to do thereafter. What kinds of jobs exist that have the parts I love of being a student: self directed, work from home, interesting, task oriented in ways that are both challenging and well defined enough to be achievable, and still leaves plenty of time and energy for one's hobbies?
************
After typing all that, I re-wrote the final paragraph, and pasted only the blow to the group:
What kinds of jobs exist that have the aspects I love of being a student: self directed, work from home, interesting, contributing to the sum of knowledge (or other contribution to the betterment of the world would be fine), task oriented with goals that are both challenging yet well defined enough to be achievable, and still leaves plenty of time and energy for one's many hobbies?
I am new to the group, and don't know if this is the right place for me or not, so I thought I would just ask, and you can tell me if I am just weird and dreaming, or if there are others like me here, and they have found something that matches this description that they can recommend.
I am in academia because I have always loved being a scholar, and I love research, but I don't want to teach.
I don't know if this is the right place for me or not, so I will give a little of my background, and you can tell me if I am just weird, or if there are others like me here...
Growing up I loved school, and didn't want a job. The adults I knew all complained about having to work, and it sounded terrible to do so. But school, that was fun, and I loved learning, so I wanted to be a student forever. No one in my family had attended college/university, but that was no reason not to enroll when I finished high school.
I then spent the next six years, enrolled at several different institutions, taking anything and everything that sounded interesting, with no intent to ever graduate, but my social life was not on campus, it was 100% focused on the medieval recreation society I had discovered in high school.
Then one of my friends from high school told me that he was pondering which graduate school offering him money he would accept. Wait, what? There is a way to be paid to be a student? (At that point I was working registration each semester to earn enough to pay my tuition at a state school, which was doable, and working as a live-in housekeeper for some friends, so I had a place to sleep and plenty of food, and life was good.) He explained that if one majors in a science that it is often possible to get paid to be a student by teaching labs. New goal!
So I picked a major (geology, not available at my then uni), and applied to a university in another state, got accepted, took out student loans, and moved. Kept doing the medieval thing, fell in love, spent the summer with him, and discovered that the state college across the street from his house also had geology available, so transferred and enjoyed the next three years it took to fulfill the requirements for that degree (since it was a small college the required classes were offered every other year), so I graduated after 10 years as a full time student with 365 of the required 175 quarter credits to graduate.
I got accepted into a Master's program and then enjoyed several years enjoying getting paid to be a student, and continuing to spend all of my free time doing the medieval thing. When my funding ran out, and I wasn't quite done with the thesis yet (and had completed way more than the required number of classes) I moved in with my parents for a bit as I finished up.
I finished the Master's in Geology around the same time the US Geological Survey was laying off everyone and their brother, too, so the rest of the geology job market was seriously flooded with experienced potential workers. However, I never really wanted a job, so I didn't bother competing with them. Instead I moved in with a friend in a tiny town that was desperate for substitute teachers, and required only a high school diploma, and spent the winter earning enough money for some travel, while working a random schedule, with the right to just not answer the phone if I didn't feel for working, and, of course, still doing the medieval thing.
A couple of years later I fell in love and moved to Australia, and my new partner was about to re-start his studies, with a new major. I didn't think it would be fair for him to be a student while I had to work, so I applied for a funded PhD position, and really loved my next five years as a student, with a medieval recreation hobby taking up the rest of my time.
I finished up just as my funding ran out, and, this time, actually applied for jobs, landing a postdoc position in Italy, which meant that my medieval hobby suddenly was happening in real castles. That job ended just around the time I fell in love, so I moved to northern Sweden, where the local uni had a geology post doc position that sounded fun. I got accepted, and enjoyed 1.5 years in a job that felt just like being a student doing research again. However the funding application to extend the contract to long enough to actually finish the project didn't come through, and I was loving where I was living too much to want to relocate.
But just then they needed someone to manage the new LA-ICP-MS lab, and I applied. Then they discovered that the other division that had been going to cover half the budget wouldn't do that after all, so suddenly the job was a half-time position. This sounded perfect to me, so I took it, and enjoyed a number of years doing a fun job, with lots of time left for my Medieval hobby, and gardening.
But I missed being a student, so when I saw an ad for a PhD position in Archaeology with enough funding to cover a half-time student who wanted to work half time, I contacted them, and wound up getting accepted to do a second PhD, as a long-distance student. This led to a really fun first seven months as a student, but then I found out that the geology department was having financial issues and considering outsourcing the lab to a private company, which had plenty of technicians, and wouldn't need me if that happened. Given that we had written my project proposal with the thought of doing analyses in the lab, this was worrisome, so I started doing as many as possible, without taking the time to process the data in-between. Eventually I got my official notice that the job would end, but as I had been with the uni for years, and my position was classes as "permanent", I had another ten months of work, which gave me a chance to do an awful lot of analyses, but no data processing.
But one must continue to eat, so I applied for a few other jobs, and landed a short term, half time contract as an archive assistant at the local museum, just in time for the pandemic (so while the rest of the world was working from home for the first time, I was going into the office regularly for the first time, since I had always worked from home if I didn't have a specific need to be in the lab).
For a variety of reasons I wound up taking a leave of absence from my studies, though I tried to make as much progress on the data processing while I wasn't enrolled as I could. Then I fell in love and moved again, to a tiny town, an hour from the nearest university, and I really don't want to live in a city again.
I hope that I will be able to turn the research I have already done towards a second PhD into a Master's degree and have it done, but I don't know what to do thereafter. What kinds of jobs exist that have the parts I love of being a student: self directed, work from home, interesting, task oriented in ways that are both challenging and well defined enough to be achievable, and still leaves plenty of time and energy for one's hobbies?
************
After typing all that, I re-wrote the final paragraph, and pasted only the blow to the group:
What kinds of jobs exist that have the aspects I love of being a student: self directed, work from home, interesting, contributing to the sum of knowledge (or other contribution to the betterment of the world would be fine), task oriented with goals that are both challenging yet well defined enough to be achievable, and still leaves plenty of time and energy for one's many hobbies?
I am new to the group, and don't know if this is the right place for me or not, so I thought I would just ask, and you can tell me if I am just weird and dreaming, or if there are others like me here, and they have found something that matches this description that they can recommend.
I am in academia because I have always loved being a scholar, and I love research, but I don't want to teach.