Today I bought this book: Moving On: Essays on the Aftermath of Leaving Academia. A while ago, I saw the call to submit, but didn’t. I thought maybe I should, but I don’t know if I have anything meaningful to say. I don’t even know if I’ll manage to read the book, but bought it more out of solidarity, because here is my confession: I am still horribly ashamed that I left academia.
It doesn’t matter that I was ill-suited for a job as a professor or that I never really committed to being an academic. It doesn’t matter that I wrote papers and went to conferences, the entire time the inside of my palms cut to ribbons from digging my nails in so deep to keep from screaming. It doesn’t matter that all I really enjoyed about academia was having license to work quietly by myself and learn things, something that I can do now as a writer without all the additional stress of being in a university setting.
What does matter is that I hate the way people look at me when I say I have a PhD but no, I’m not working at the university in town. What matters is that I hate the way some of the other child-free academics talked down to me because if my husband has a PhD and I have a kid, then I couldn’t possibly be anything more than a child-minder. What matters is that I feel like I let my gender down because I was a woman in STEM and I quit and now my husband is the primary breadwinner, although the $100 I made from writing last year did cover the cost of two tanks of gas.
I made a mistake. I admitted it. I got out before I made more mistakes. And having a Phd in Mathematics is a pretty good fall-back option.
Still, why do I feel so ashamed about walking away from the academy?
I’ll let you all know if I ever manage to steel myself up to read the book.