Discussions of the structural underpinnings of workplace dissatisfaction in academe are important and necessary, yet offer thin gruel for people hungry for immediate, practical career guidance. And changing the institution or the job itself may feel unlikely or downright impossible. The issue is: You feel stuck, unable to advance or grow. And as plenty of former academics can attest, such as this professor does, the grass is not always greener outside of higher education. And certainly, institutions could do more to help their people articulate what professional growth looks like in a particular career arc, and support them in moving forward.īut for any number of reasons - financial, family, field - you might be unable to quit your job or leave academe. Higher education has always been a daunting place to work, especially for people who are untenured, who work in staff roles, or who come from underrepresented or less-privileged backgrounds. When you hit that wall, careerwise, your immediate instinct is to blame the position - or the institution that created it - as the source of the problem. Conversely, I’ve been surprised to hear people in positions that seemed glamorous and enviable - at least to me - confess that they felt at a stalemate. Early in my administrative career, I was happily ensconced in a position only to have a well-meaning mentor suggest that it was a dead end and that I should consider changing jobs. It’s hard to answer those questions because what constitutes a “dead-end job” is highly subjective. How do you know you’re in a dead-end job? And if you could ascertain that, is the solution necessarily to find a new position?
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