[Mid-Career Series] What Does “Mid-Career Academic” Mean? (Re-Release EP 63)

Mid-career is the longest stretch of the academic journey, often 15 to 20 years, and while it brings stability and experience, it can also feel like uncharted territory. Many academics discover that the freedoms they imagined post-promotion are replaced with heavier workloads, shifting priorities, and the lingering question of what’s next.

In this first episode, I lay the groundwork for what mid-career really looks like and why it matters. I’ll talk about the gap between expectation and reality, the identity shifts that happen when the tenure track drive fades, and the surprising ways burnout shows up even after achieving major milestones. 

Most importantly, I’ll introduce how to think about mid-career not as a plateau, but as a phase filled with opportunities to realign, reset, and build skills that sustain your academic life for the long haul.

Tune in to start reframing mid-career on your own terms and hear sneak peeks of the insights and stories I will share throughout this series.

The Long Arc of Mid-Career

Mid-career is not a short transition, it can stretch over decades. In the North American system, the associate professor stage often lasts 15–20 years, and many faculty find themselves “stuck” there without a clear path forward. Even in other systems, where the titles differ, the mid-career phase carries similar challenges.

This prolonged stage can leave scholars with a sense of stagnation or missed opportunity. The urgency that propelled you through the tenure track often fades, and without clear milestones, many academics simply continue on without reevaluating what they truly want from their careers. 

This series reframes mid-career not as a plateau, but as a space for new growth, one where you can reimagine your trajectory, set new benchmarks, and create meaningful change in your field.

Identity Shifts and Burnout

For many scholars, achieving tenure or permanency feels like crossing the finish line. Yet, what follows is often exhaustion rather than freedom. The relentless push toward tenure can leave faculty burned out, and when the promised freedoms don’t materialize, when workloads remain heavy and responsibilities increase, disappointment sets in.

This identity shift is real: moving from proving yourself as early-career to sustaining momentum as mid-career requires different skills and a new mindset. Scholars often feel pulled between service obligations, mentoring, and the desire to advance their own research and writing. This tension creates frustration, but it also creates an opportunity to redefine what academic life can look like post-tenure. By shifting perspective, academics can move from feeling overextended to designing a career with clearer boundaries and greater alignment with their passions.

Building Skills for the Next Stage

Thriving at mid-career requires more than producing papers and chasing grants. It calls for building new meta-skills: project management, time leadership, team-building, and a refined approach to writing and publishing. Academics who invest in these areas not only rediscover focus, but also position themselves for long-term impact and satisfaction.

This is where intentional support matters. Whether you’re seeking promotion, pursuing new leadership roles, or simply looking to reclaim joy in your academic work, mid-career is the perfect moment to invest in yourself.

“A characteristic of the mid-career is feeling a little disappointed, a little resentful about what’s happening and how it’s not as different as you want it to be in terms of workload and stress and the ability to say no.”

“What’s unacceptable is languishing at the associate level and continuing to feel as stressed out and as unhappy about many of your day-to-day duties as you did in your early career. What you want to do mid-career is envision what that next career step is and then figure out how you’re going to make that happen. That next career step doesn’t necessarily have to be a promotion or a rank change. It can be whatever is going to make your career feel more legacy building. 

We’re receiving applications for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®. Check out the program details and start your application process here.

CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION:

1. Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Apply here!
2. Cathy’s book, Making Time to Write: How to Resist the Patriarchy and Take Control of Your Academic Career Through Writing is available in print! Learn how to build your career around your writing practice while shattering the myths of writing every day, accountability, and motivation, doing mindset work that’s going to reshape your writing,and changing academic culture one womxn and nonbinary professor at a time. Get your print copy today or order it for a friend here!
3. If you would like to hear more from Cathy for free, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter, In the Pipeline, at scholarsvoice.org. It’s a newsletter that she personally writes that goes out once a week with writing and publication tips, strategies, inspiration, book reviews and more.

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