Forget the tenure track and choose a topic you really like. Better to end up in a small college than doing what others do.
Economics Job Market Rumors » General Job Market Discussion
crisis in the middle of a tenure track
(29 posts)-
Posted 9 months ago #
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I have a feeling that your dissatisfaction arises from your personal life rather than your professional life (though I might be wrong). If so is the case, I urge you to go out more often, at least during weekends and try to enter into a long-term relationship. If you are already in a relationship, please take steps to improve upon it. And, last but not the least, remember some persons who positively influenced you at some part of your life and if they are still accessible go back and talk to them.
Believe me, I have been in your position and I wish someone had told me those things. I figured out on my own but it was too late and I had to start over.
All the best.
Posted 9 months ago # -
I think you should do everything you can to try and get tenure. Once you get tenure, your options expand a lot - including leaving academia for good. But you're very close - four top field publication is so great man. You can leverage that eventually.
But in the meantime, I think you should see someone - a counselor. Ask around to people who you trust, and get some recommendations for a good counselor. It's possible the things making you unhappy are not your job. Rather, it may be that your job is not meant to make you happy, and you're realizing it cannot make you happy, only because you're seeing what life is like even if you're successful as an academic.
Have you read Thomas Keating's "An Invitation to Love"? I'd recommend it. I'd also recommend Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet." Both of them have been very important books for me in my own self-understanding.
Posted 9 months ago # -
As someone who doesn't need medication but suggested looking at other schools: The others have a point.
Grad school can be very destructive to your self esteem. It's possible you have yet to recover from that and would benefit just from talking to someone. I know people who are well-known editors who have nursed such wounds for 20+ years. Why live a life like that? You should find someone to talk to who will help you feel more excited about your work and about life.
Posted 9 months ago # -
Does the someone just give you an illusion?
Posted 9 months ago # -
Just like religion just gives you an illusion that someone has set up the absolute moral rules and gives you support and test all the time.
Posted 9 months ago # -
Believe me, I have been in your position and I wish someone had told me those things. I figured out on my own but it was too late and I had to start over.
--Not the OP, but may I ask what do you mean by "start over"? Are you no longer in the academia?
Posted 9 months ago # -
Good luck, OP!
Posted 9 months ago # -
Try changing fields. Don't write what you are "supposed" to write, write what you find compelling. Give yourself permission to dump whatever you're working on (at least for a while) and start reading in fields disparate from your own. Read growth, labor, whatever...and find something that sparks your interest again. And take vitamin B6.
Posted 9 months ago # -
Believe me, I have been in your position and I wish someone had told me those things. I figured out on my own but it was too late and I had to start over.
--Not the OP, but may I ask what do you mean by "start over"? Are you no longer in the academia?
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Yes I am still in academia and also quite successful in consulting gigs. But, during that difficult part of my life I had to go through the process of getting tenure again and wasted (or may be not) 6 years of my life.
Posted 9 months ago #