Ep 3:7 Quagmire of Failure

The Professor Is In

Part three in our three-part series about getting Unstuck. So much of the academic experience is about feelings of failure. It’s central to normally functioning academia (in the sense of job, grant and article rejections), but it’s far more relevant nowadays to the effort to leave the academy. Not getting the coveted job is still widely considered a “failure” and academics who have their identity wrapped up in academic achievement so easily take on the identity of “failure” – as in, I’M a failure – in the face of not getting an academic job, and deciding to depart for other career directions. How are you stuck in the quagmire by attaching narratives of the past – like bungie cords pulling you backward – and how do you break free? Kel and Karen offer some methods to move beyond these quagmire of failure feelings: 1) Spend time with your grief, and 2) stop expecting an apology (because the university will never give you one). As you do this, you learn to just pause, sit, stop striving, process your feelings of fear, rage, bitterness, and grief, identify the story you’re attached to, recognize where firm ground actually lies, and crawl forward one tiny step.

*Like the new Art of Leaving program, which starts this month! And the Professor Is Out private FB group.)

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