[Should I Quit Academia Series] Higher Ed Is In Crisis – It’s Time To Make Your Move [Re-Release EP 56]

As a scholar, you can break free from the constraints and burnout cycle, redefine your academic mission, and focus on the creation of knowledge rather than institutional requirements. I encourage you to reflect on your values and focus on developing systems that align with the direction you want your academic career to take. If you feel like you are constantly being shouldered with more tasks and are tired of feeling overworked and overwhelmed, this episode is for you. 

Upsides to Remaking Your Academic Identity

Remaking your academic identity presents several key advantages. First, it empowers you to detach your sense of purpose from the institution you work for, emphasizing your scholarly mission instead of merely fulfilling institutional requirements. It’s liberating to realize that your career isn’t bound to one university or set of institutional requirements, and you can find—or create—new containers for your work. Moreover, by prioritizing your creation of knowledge over traditional milestones like tenure or promotion, you’re free to build a career that is authentic to your values and purpose.

Overcoming Doubts About Remaking Your Career

Many professors struggle with self-doubt. The ingrained culture of scarcity in academia—fueled by the belief that time, energy, and resources are always limited—can be debilitating. But you are allowed to believe in yourself and your work. It’s essential to recognize that the system designed by and for a select few doesn’t have to dictate your path. By embracing self-belief, you can start building a fulfilling and sustainable career, no matter what the broader institutional landscape looks like.

Take Action: Reflecting on Values and Improving Systems

Reflecting on your values and implementing the right systems are key to making this transformation possible. Begin by defining your values—what you want your academic career to look like and how you want to impact the world with your scholarly work. Once you’ve identified these, focus on creating systems that support them. This means developing time management, writing, and pipeline systems that align with your mission-driven approach to academia. With the right mindset and structure in place, you’ll be empowered to build a career that reflects your academic mission, free from the traditional constraints of academia.

“The dark side of fast capitalism and the fast capitalist university is that it exploits contingent faculty and graduate students, squeezes faculty into more and more teaching and service and more and more unpaid admin and more and more minutiae. That whole thing has been gathering steam before the pandemic and was accelerated after the pandemic.”

“The purpose of your scholarly work is to create something that has not existed before. What you are doing as an academic is in its essence, an act of creation, the making of knowledge that will change the world. This work is not about how many classes you teach or which committees you serve on. It’s not about getting your email inbox to zero or checking the undefined boxes to tenure or the nebulous journey to full professor. All of that is in service to the larger mission – the creation of something new. That is what your career is about.”

We’ve opened the waitlist for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®. Check out the program details and get on the waitlist 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. Get on the waitlist 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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