Self-Compassionate Professor

Dr. Jillian Powers explains that we do not have to leave our academic identities behind when we leave our academic jobs. Jillian describes how she has been able to hold on to and adapt her academic identity even after transitioning from an academic career to a career in industry. She now integrates, into her business anthropology work, the things about academia she loves. Interestingly, she has even refused to create a résumé and still uses a CV. 

Mark Herschberg shows us how developing new skills—even a tiny bit—can affect one’s impact in a big way. Drawing on his book, The Career Tool Kit, Mark shows us why it is important to recognize our weaknesses, how to develop them, and how to turn them into skills. Similarly, he also shows us how to increase our organizational impact: a process that requires people to open to new ways of doing things and work through challenges collectively.   

Dr. Karen Laurence calls out issues associated with academic isolation—issues academics rarely discuss, but feelings academics know deeply. She describes how her sense of home where she felt connected to close family and friends grounded her during an often intense and competitive graduate school experience. And when she eventually left home and those close connections, she became increasingly attached to her academic identity, which resulted in greater stress, anxiety, and a painful sense of isolation. She speaks also about the difficult road back home. In the end, she urges others who may feel unhappy in their academic careers to contemplate life and career possibilities beyond academia. 

As my first repeat guest, Dr. Margie Serrato and I start by talking about how her experience in academia is only a small part of her story. This insight leads us to a bigger conversation about how we, as academics, actively arrest our own development because we are afraid of what others might think. Margie urges us to expand our beliefs about what is acceptable, dismiss our inner judgments so that we can curiously explore new personal and career possibilities, and get to know ourselves honestly and deeply.   

Dr. Brian Witkowski urges us to think more flexibly about career, explaining how once you understand what you deeply care about, you can then translate your passion into a business model that allows you to do exactly the kind of work you want to do and earn a good living doing it. Brian emphasizes the need for academics to think about their work in new and different ways and shows us that we do not have to think of our careers in rigid and one-dimensional ways. Find Brian Witkowski on LinkedIn at the Lucrative Artist. 

Dr. Caitlin Faas tells a fascinating story about how she finally found peace in her job as a tenured professor--a job that once felt stifling. That peace opened up new opportunities for Caitlin. And eventually, she was able to walk away from her academic job with grace and ease. In this episode, Caitlin demonstrates how she has been able to talk herself through difficult life and career challenges as well as how she's able to facilitate that process for her clients. More than anything else, Caitlin describes the power of presence as we navigate both the good and the bad times. 

Dr. Emily Benson will leave behind her academic career in May/June of this year and begin working full-time in her growing career coaching business. In this episode she explains how her coaching business began, how she finally knew it was time to resign from her faculty position, the challenges of working in academia when you are a creative person, how she plans to say goodbye to academia in a healthy way, and the challenges of mid-career transition. Emily and I also chat about how, as HSPs (Highly Sensitive Persons), we crave meaningful work. We also discuss the importance of listening to our bodies. 

Dr. Sara Branch tells an open and honest story about reaching burnout as a tenure-track faculty member, including the challenges she faced in navigating intense mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion as well as depression. Sara describes having lost herself at that time. But Sara's life changed dramatically in 2018 when she left academia and found herself again. The joy and freedom she now feels is tangible in her voice during this conversation. She urges listeners to think about their values and decide whether or not their personality is a good fit for academia. 

Dr. Alissa Ackerman describes the healing power of finding her own personal voice within her academic work—a change that facilitated deeper connections to her research, her students, and herself. Having built deeper connections, Alissa found herself better positioned  to offer healing to a wider public audience and ultimately, able to create much greater healing impact in the world than she was able to do with her standard academic voice. She imparts that wisdom to listeners, asking them to get really still about what they want to do, notice whether or not their goals are congruent with the space they find themselves in, and accept responsibility to make necessary changes.