4.17 Why I left academia (it may not be what you think)

We hear so much about people leaving academia at the moment and it’s easy to make assumptions about people’s reasoning. I realised when talking with a one-to-one client that my story is not necessarily a typical one, but it could be one that it is interesting for people to hear. So, in today’s episode, I share my reasoning for leaving academia. I don’t do so in an attempt to encourage others to do the same, and while telling my story, I recognise many privileges that led me to have the career that I have had. Instead I simply wanted to share my experience with you all.

If you liked this episode, you should check out “how I finished my PhD in just over two years (and why I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it)”. 

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

[00:00:00] and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. So today's episode is a little bit of a change in direction from the last few episodes because this is going to be more about me rather than kind of hints and tips necessarily. And I hope in doing that partly you'll just get to know me a little bit more, but much more importantly, you'll get a bit of an insight and a viewpoint on academia and my journey in academia and how it might relate to yours, and this kind of came about based on a conversation that I was having with a one-to-one client, somebody I've worked with for a really, really long time. And I can't remember what we were talking about, but it came up about me leaving academia and she had made an assumption, understandably, that I had got fed up of academia. I had stopped enjoying academia and that that was why I'd left. 'cause that's why most people leave, right? We hear about the great resignation and all that stuff, and when I [00:01:00] explained to her why I actually did leave academia, she was firstly surprised and secondly found it quite motivating and inspiring. So I thought I would share it with you guys too.

Now that makes it sound like it's going to be a exclusively positive story. It's not an exclusively positive story, but it's possibly not the one that you are expecting based on most people who leave academia at the stage I did. So let's backtrack slightly.

Just for those of you who haven't been around for quite so long. Give you a bit of context. I was an academic for 20 something years. I was a very unusual case who went to university to do my undergraduate degree and stayed in the same place until I was full professor. So I did my PhD, my postdocs, and all of my academic career in the same institution here in the uk, which is really, really unusual. It's not necessarily something that I super recommend, [00:02:00] but it's also not something that I would recommend against particularly. It was sort of a combination of opportunities and circumstances that led to that.

If you wanna hear more about the beginnings of my academic career and how and why I did my PhD quite fast, um, I have an episode about that. Again, might not be quite what you expect because that is definitely not something that I would necessarily recommend but you can check that out.

So I was in the same place for the whole of this time, and about five years before I actually left, I had decided that I was going to leave at some point. Essentially I decided that I didn't want to retire as an academic. You know, at this stage, what would it be, I would've been about 40, I guess something like that, early forties. And I decided, you know what? I don't want to do this for another 25 years for reasons I'm gonna share. And that was when a [00:03:00] sort of vague exit plan started mulling in my mind, most of which was limited by the fact that I was living on my own at that stage and we need to be able to support myself. And whilst professorial salaries aren't amazing, they are okay and certainly do very well if you are living on your own. So I'd got this sort of vague plan that I wanted to leave, and then a combination of events meant that it actually happened.

But the reason I didn't want to stay was not the so-called toxic environment in academia. It was not the pressure. It was not even particularly the workload, although the workload did annoy me more than anything. I did get overwhelmed at times, but not in a sort of burnout way, just in a, I'm knackered and this is annoying me kind of a way.

So did those things contribute a bit? Yes. Were they the reason I left? No. [00:04:00] Absolutely not. I found myself in a portion of academia that I actually still love in terms of the people and the culture and the climate. I don't think you can do much better than sport and exercise sciences. They are the most remarkably normal people. They are, yeah. There's some people who are like very ambitious or whatever, but generally they were lovely. And then you threw in that I was working closely with physios who were just the most gorgeous people and a bunch of educationalists also lovely. Um, did have some medics. Some of the medics were more of a challenge, but many of the ones I worked with were absolutely glorious. And then you also add to the mix the fact that for the last 15 years of my career, I was teaching focused and so I was mixing in the teaching focused world as well. And I have to say teaching focused academics are some of my favorite people love them. Uh, genuine people who are really [00:05:00] interested in student development and in doing the right thing by their students and are just generally lovely.

I was surrounded all the time by people I genuinely really liked. Now, were there some people that I wanted to boot over the garden fence because they would never fill in the forms properly that I needed them to do that I didn't care about either, but they needed to happen. Yes, absolutely. There were people, but there really were very few people that if I got stuck sitting next to 'em at the Christmas dinner, I would be sad.

I really loved the people I worked with. I adored my students. The students were wonderful even when they were being a pain in the bum. They were just enthusiastic, nice kids, and I really enjoyed all the time I spent with them. Um, I even... by the time I had sort of carved my niche in teaching focused work, and maybe I'll do a podcast another day about my transition from research oriented career to a teaching focused career and why I did it [00:06:00] and how I navigated it. I'll do that another day. But certainly by that stage I had found a kind of area that I cared a lot about, that I was pretty good at doing and that I was actually quite well recognized for, you know, people were asking my advice, I was getting like awards and recognitions and all that kind of stuff, and things were good.

Okay. The one time where I would say things were not good was during the 2020, the pandemic. That was pretty horrendous, but I think that was very unique to this particular situation. Did it flag some of the things I like less about academia? Yes, potentially. But mostly I see that as a kind of a blip on and otherwise very lovely career now.

Does that mean I don't think academia's a toxic environment? No, absolutely not. I think there's a huge amount of pressure. I think there is a huge amount of unnecessary [00:07:00] workload. I think there is a huge amount of trying to ring every last drop outta somebody. But I genuinely didn't come across very many people that I actively disliked and I actively thought were badly intending in their interactions. Does that mean I agreed with everyone in management? No, absolutely not. I think management, senior management made a whole bunch of good decisions and a whole bunch of really stupid decisions, unreasonable decisions, and so on. And when I was quite junior, I would get quite cross about that. As I got more senior, I understood more of the nuances and I understood more of the pressures, and I could see more how it came about and why they were doing the things they were doing. Even when I didn't necessarily agree with them, I could see how it happened.

I also, as I got more senior and more insightful, I [00:08:00] would say more reflective. I also saw the extent to which most of the time when people weren't behaving the way I thought they should be behaving or other people thought they should be behaving, it was because of the stress and pressure they were under rather than them being intrinsically nasty people.

Now there are some things I want to clarify here. I was very privileged in a number of ways. I kind of fitted in, I think it's fair to say. There were times when I didn't, when I was more teaching oriented and some of the research intensive people, um, would judge me for that, for example. But I did my PhD in a very, very supportive research group. I was very well protected through the early stages of my career. And so sort of got through that vulnerable bit with really, really good people around me. Now, there were some bits that got a bit complicated. Well, that's a story for not on a podcast, but on the whole, I was very well protected in ways that certainly I [00:09:00] don't see all of the PhD students in my membership, for example, and for many of you don't necessarily see being protected. But for me it was a good career and it was a career that I got an awful lot of opportunities out of, that I got an awful lot of happiness out of, and an awful lot of friends out of. And to be honest, I look back with pride and celebration, so you might be asking, okay, then why did you leave? And it's a valid question.

The main reason I left was because I didn't want what was next. So by this stage I achieved full professor during the pandemic in 2020. And then after that I was head of education for my school, so I was overseeing all of the academic programs and I was on a track to sort of senior teaching leadership roles. You know, it probably would've been director of education for the college, next [00:10:00] maybe deputy provost, chancellor, education for the university, things like that. Okay. And you know, I knew the people that did those roles. I think, you know, I'm not saying I was a shoe-in, but there was certainly an expectation that I would apply for those things if they were to come up. And I increasingly realized I didn't want them. I might have been good at them in some ways, but I didn't want them, and that might sound strange, right? That's how you have wide influence, right? By affecting policy and instigating widespread change across an institution is how you have really big impact.

And I was really interested in impact across the whole university. I've never been somebody who sits neat and tight in one discipline. I've always been interested in working across disciplines and across different areas of the university, and it certainly would've been a huge [00:11:00] promotion. It certainly would have been big increases in salary and all that sort of stuff. Right? And I knew a lot of the senior leadership team, so I'm sure it would've been a transition, but they were broadly good people and I was, you know, I was largely excited about, about working with them. So why did I decide that I didn't want to go that way? I didn't want to wait for those roles to come up and to apply for them.

Well, it was two things really. One was about what I wanted to be doing, and two was about what I was good at. Because one of the things that I don't think I realized early enough, and I want all of you guys to realize much earlier than I did, is that you really have to understand yourself. You really have to understand not only what influence you want to have in the world, but also what you enjoy doing the most, what you want to spend time doing, and where your strengths are best spent. Okay. I spent a lot of time trying to [00:12:00] fix my faults instead of deciding where my strengths were best spent. And what I realized as I got further up through the tree was, whilst I had lots of good ideas about how things should be done, I was not a good people manager.

Okay. Now some of you might be surprised by that, I get on with people, right? My saving grace was that people liked me. People generally knew that I was well intended and liked me personally. However, that doesn't make you a good people manager. I was not good at letting people kind of have their heads, so like, you know, give them an idea or give them a project to do and let them do it the way they want to do it.

I have my ideas about how I want things to be done, and I'm not necessarily good at letting other people crack on and do it their own way. Is that a failing? Yeah, probably. Does it mean that, it made those things difficult? Yeah, probably. But it is a useful thing to recognize and don't get me wrong, right?

I did all the leadership training and all those things, but when I got stressed, when I [00:13:00] felt under pressure, my general tendencies came back, and so I wasn't necessarily very good at letting other people do things their way. I also wasn't necessarily very good at doing all the kind of behind the scenes, collaborative discussions, stuff that enabled people to come along with me when I did have a new idea, I could sort of see it. I could see how obvious it was, and I could see that it was clearly the right thing to do, and so I couldn't understand why people needed a bit longer to sort of come round to it or to get past some of their objections and all that sort of thing.

I was also somebody who was quite comfortable with big change, who was quite excited by big change, and I didn't necessarily under stand, people who would prefer things to stay as they are, even if it's not quite as good or whatever, just because it feels comfortable. My brain doesn't work that way and I wasn't always very good at, recognizing that other people were [00:14:00] feeling like that.

I'm also somebody who can do a lot of work at the last minute, so I was also not very good at seeing out into the future to give people lots of notice for when we were gonna get things done. And I realized that the further I would go through my career, the more I would be managing others, the more I would be allowing other people to implement their views on things and just kind of guiding strategically or whatever, the more I would be having to sort of win hearts and minds, et cetera, et cetera and the more I realized that it wasn't really what I was great at and then I realized that actually the more I did that stuff, the less I was doing the things that I feel that I'm good at. The one-to-one conversations with people, the running small group sessions, the doing interesting keynotes, coming up with innovative new ways of explaining new ideas and that sort of thing.

I'm good at that stuff and the [00:15:00] more I was doing teaching leadership, the less I was actually doing the stuff that I loved and that was genuinely 90% of the reason I left, I didn't want the things that were ahead of me. And I'm not someone who can tread water in circles. 'cause you could say, you know what? It's fine. Do some school level admin roles. You don't have to go for that ones. Maybe they'll try and talk you into it. Perhaps you do a few years of it, tolerate it, whatever. If I don't have something to work towards, I get really bored and grumpy. It's no surprise that these thoughts all accelerated a bit after I got my professorship 'cause I'd been wanting that for a long time. I'd been working hard for it and things and then we went into pandemic and that was a whole thing. So we survived that and then it was after that. It was a bit like there's nothing I'm striving for now. I could, I, you know, there's plenty of teaching related research I can still do.

There's plenty of stuff I want to implement and things to [00:16:00] improve our programs, look after the students and all that stuff, but it's all going round again stuff. It's, here's another academic, yeah, here's Freshers, here's this, here's that. And I loved so much of it, but I can't tread water and stay in the same place.

So for me, I didn't leave because I hated the environment. I didn't leave because it became intolerable or because I was bored of being burnt out or any of those things. I never did burn out. I was pretty overwhelmed at times, but it was that the positives were no longer sufficient for me. The striving, the thing I wanted to get to next was no longer there for me, and then the workload didn't feel worth it, and I think this is a really, really important thing to recognize is workload is not an absolute measure of this is enough, this is too much, this is not enough. Workload has to be proportionate to [00:17:00] how much you care about the other end of it. Now, does that mean we should have unlimited workloads? Obviously not, but I got annoyed by the workload. I got tired and stressed out when I had to stay too late and things like that.

But when I was working towards something I believed in and that something I mostly enjoyed and was surrounded by nice people, I could cope with the workload just fine. If I had really wanted those jobs, really believed that I was gonna be great and would be able to do them in a really, really good way, and that I would enjoy that process, then absolutely I would've carried on with the workload.

It was fine. It. It was fine. I was healthy. I was able to do it. Perhaps if my health had changed, that would be different. I realize, again, I'm speaking from a position of privilege, but genuinely my experience was it was a load of work, but it was really cool. So I left academia 90% because I felt like I'd finished it.

[00:18:00] I'd done all the things I wanted to do. I don't wanna say ticked all the boxes, 'cause that sounds a bit kind of arbitrary, but, I'd achieved all my goals. I'd treat, you know, I wasn't somebody who grew up dreaming of a career in academia. I didn't even know that really existed until I was offered a PhD. But once I knew what academia was, I've done all the things that I wanted to do. And so then it was time to do something different.

The 10% is that I had personal reasons to move back home to where I grew up , and. You can't really, there's nowhere where I live where you can teach what I used to teach. I was a sport scientist. I'm near one of the greatest universities in the world at home, Cambridge, but they don't have sport science. So it wasn't something that I could definitely carry on if I came back here and I certainly wasn't gonna commute for it. So that was the kind of 10%, but the vast majority was a sense that I had completed it. I'd done all the things I wanted to do, and then I was so [00:19:00] excited. Where it all became reality was two things. One where I got a gorgeous husband who would ensure that I could still eat while I was making my business start running and two, I came up with the business plan.

I knew I wasn't gonna leave just to do anything. But I came up with the idea of the PhD Life coach membership specifically, and from there it was just, this is what I wanna do. This is all the bits of academia I adore. This is everything I like doing. I think there's a huge need for it. I can see the benefit that it would have, and I can do it. I will be good at it, and I don't need to lead a big team to do it.

So some of you might be wondering, you know, will I ever get to a stage where the PhD life coach membership will have, um, you know, other coaches And I'll take a step back in a more leadership position. We might have guest coaches, keep a little eye out next year just 'cause [00:20:00] I think it's good to have more voices in there rather than it all being the Vicki Wright Show, but. I do not wanna take a step back. I want to be hands-on in the membership, talking to my students, knowing my students, coaching them, supporting them, and being there with them the whole way through.

I wanna be producing these podcasts. I wanna be speaking to you guys. I wanna be writing your emails. I wanna be coaching you. I want to be with you guys all the time, whether you're a PhD student all the way through to full professor, because I think we all struggle with the same things.

Now, once I've got enough people, if I can employ people who will do the behind the scenes stuff that I don't have to do anymore, happy days, I would love that. Somebody to do my invoices and all those things. Beautiful, perfect. But I wanna be hands on with all of this stuff. And so that's why I wanted to tell you this story because I think actually some people who are, especially in the early stages of their career, you hear so many horror stories about academia. And I do [00:21:00] not doubt for a second that those are true and that those are people's experiences. And I certainly saw elements of that throughout my career. But I think it's also important to hear the other bits.

I think it's important to hear that it can be amazing. You have to remember I came into it at a different time, but even my last few years were still amazing. And I want you to know that you can choose to leave something that's really good. You do not have to stay doing something until you absolutely hate it. You can do something, love it, and then leave. That's all fine too.

You can do whatever you want to do, and I think we need to be told that a little bit more often. Now, does that mean academics? Listen as I speak, does that mean I'm recommending you leave academia and become a coach? No, I'm really not. I would actually say that for 95% of people that would not be the decision you think it is.

I [00:22:00] really mean that. I think it's often seen as an easy get out. It is far from an easy get out. If anyone wants to talk about it, you can let me know, but that's not what I'm saying. What I want to say is that you can make any decision you want to make for whatever reasons you want. I thought people were gonna think I was stupid.

I thought people were gonna be like, whatcha doing? You're a professor. You've got such a secure job, you've got an amazing pension. You are gonna do these great things. We thought you were gonna be pro vice chancellor, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I thought people were gonna say that stuff. Some of them said that stuff.

Most of them said, congratulations, you got out. Which probably says more about them than it does about me. But you can choose these things for any reason you want to. If you want a positive experience in academia, you can choose to have one, and you can choose to think about it in the ways you want to think about it.

Put yourself in the places that you want to put yourself in and achieve all the things that you want to achieve. And when you feel like you've had enough, [00:23:00] you can use your skills elsewhere. There are so many options and so many ways that you can do this. I really hope that was a useful insight and helps you understand a little bit more about me.

Please feel free to ask questions if you're on my newsletter, you can always just reply to that and I will try and get back to you as quickly as I can. I hope that was a interesting different sort of story for this week. So thank you all for listening, and I'll see you next week.