I’ve sat with and struggled with this in equal measure all week. I don’t talk much anymore about my academic or failed academic life. But this week was 8 years since I got the official ‘pass’ letter for my PhD and frankly, I can’t help feeling a little sad about it.
It’s ironic, really that on Saturday, someone from PhD land popped into my head and I realised, while I used to really care what they were up to and the perception they were doing better than me, I hadn’t thought about them in ages. It was a lovely revelation about how while some things feel like the biggest thing in the world at the time, the biggest competition, the most judgment or whatever, actually, in the scheme of things, it’s not that important. Eventually, you’ll move on and not care.
It’s actually a thing I’ve been employing in recent years, particularly about jobs, opportunities, or even other people. It’s the ‘Will I care in five years’ test. So will I care in five years if I don’t get x job, or take x opportunity? Will I look back in five years and think, ‘damn, that really impacted me,’ or in five years, will I have forgotten? Similarly, with people, will I care in five years what they think? Will they be in my life in five years? Will I care about that? Usually, often, the answer is ‘probably not’ to all of them.
So eight years on from my Ph.D. how do I feel?
Disappointed in myself. A failure. Feeling judged still for that failing. Wondering how much of a waste it all was. Wondering what might have been.
Does that mean I’m not proud of what else I’ve done? That I haven’t done cool things against the odds. That I do good work on my own terms. Have cool opportunities. Am able to carve out a different approach to work and life. That my work is still valid.
I’m a firm believer in ‘both things can be true.’
In some ways, it all fades a bit; you stop caring about that person who you once cared about. Or you think less and less about the alternative life. But in other ways, it’s more pronounced: you feel more the loss of the thing you will never be now, you feel the sting of judgment for that, the wasted time, all those things.
I think part of it is that some people will never separate you from that, from what you did or more accurately, didn’t do. It happens rarely, but someone sent me an academic job the other week, and it was like a kick to the stomach. They meant well, but the reminder I could never do that was stark; the reminder of failure was stark.
I’ve spoken before, too, about how the strikes have been hard to watch. The being torn between supporting friends, the reasoning behind the strikes, and a bitterness that people earning twice what I do were striking for more money. I’ll never financially ‘catch up’ now to where I might have been. And it’s not about the money, but for a working-class girl like me, there was a time when academia was a dream of a decent salary, a way to support my mum and me. Instead, I’ve spent eight years on just above minimum wage. In doing my Ph.D. I actually set back my earning ability by a decade or more. I’m struggling to get back to even where I was pre-PhD salary-wise. And the strikes have had the unfortunate effect of a ‘this is what you could have won’ feeling to them. I’ve never been money driven, but in this society (in this economy especially) it’s something you can’t help but be aware of. I feel like I’m still at graduate-level earnings-wise in my late 30s and that’s depressing. I haven’t been able to, still can’t, do all the things that are ‘normal’ for my age, and that’s depressing.
Post-PhD the career clock resets to zero for a lot of us. Less so for those able to slot into the industry in other sectors. But for arts and humanities, we do end up often starting at the bottom. Again throw in this economy, ten years of Tory rule that started when I was mid-Ph.D. and a pandemic it’s not exactly been smooth sailing.
I recently did a sort of maths on it. When I factor in the nearly five years of PhD-ing all told, as well as a PGCE the year before that, we’ve got six years of additional education out of the loop. Mix in the two years of the pandemic too, where I struggled to find a job; that’s eight years of totally lost time. Mix into that as I say, the years of trying to ‘academic’ (I think I have two of those), then the time trying to find something, anything to begin again…it’s no wonder I feel like I haven’t got anywhere in eight years.
Of course, it makes sense when you break it down. But when you’re in your late 30s and still making somewhat a mess of life and career (because you lose your life to that too, more on that later), nobody on the outside sees that. They just see, ‘Oh, she’s back in a customer service job again’ (PSA, nothing wrong with that). Or ‘Wow is she still on fixed-term contracts’ ‘What she’s changed jobs again’ rinse, repeat, etc. Nobody sees all the soul searching, frantic applying, and struggles behind all that. Nobody sees the rejections for being ‘over qualified’ and the rejections for being ‘under qualified’ for not having a very specific on-the-job experience.
Nobody sees the frustrations, the heartbreak, and exhaustion. But also they don’t see the mourning for the life you thought you were going into versus what you got.
Some people make the decision clean and clear that they’re done with academia and don’t look back. I’d venture most of us aren’t like that, though. Most of us know in our heart, or soul that we’re not going to ‘make it’ or, for whatever reason, it isn’t practical to make it happen. And slowly, we have to let go of that dream.
But also eight years on I wonder, was it a dream, or was it another thing I was supposed to do?
That’s not to say that at the time I did really want it, I just didn’t have it in me to carry on. The purely practical and uncomfortable financial truth too is that without a partner to support you or family money, it’s incredibly difficult to forge an academic career. You have to be able to exist on an unstable income, and potentially jump from institution to institution year after year. You have to be able to live financially with that instability (which, if you have another solid household income, is easier). And you have to mentally be able to do it. Personally, my PhD broke me financially and mentally, and it wasn’t possible. I did a bit of it for a while, but I couldn’t carry on after two years. And now, what six years later all I hear still is ‘you didn’t want it enough.’
It’s also worth noting that I was doing all this with undiagnosed ADHD and autism. I’d gone through the incredibly traumatic PhD experience that left me feeling like I couldn’t do anything, probably suffering autistic burnout too but also having to find a way to support myself financially immediately after…good strategic decisions were not made.
Throw in too the working class first-generation element too. I didn’t know how to lay the groundwork of getting that academic career, but years on I realise there are all these semi-secret things other people know how to do. I was at best winging it, at worst just trying to survive. Equally, when we talk about transferring to alt-ac careers or other careers, we’re talking about middle-class folks who come from professional backgrounds and understand how these things work. We’re not talking about working-class neurodiverse kids who stupidly think that applying for jobs will eventually get you on a career track…while all the secret unspoken stuff gives everyone a leg up.
So in failing to do it ‘right’ when you didn’t know the code, you end up feeling like you just weren’t good enough, didn’t want it enough.
And you know what, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I knew I wasn’t good enough too. But I’m still allowed to mourn the life I thought I was working so hard towards. I’m still allowed to be angry that far more mediocre people than I do succeed for various reasons.
The thing is, I know, too, I probably have a better life, do better, more interesting work because of it, but it’s hard to escape that academic judgment.
I’ve ended friendships over it, I fear others might still end over it constantly (the ended ones were no loss, the feared ones would be). Because there’s something about being inside the ivory tower that leads people to believe nobody else is quite as important, quite as busy as they are. No matter what I do, I’ll always be slightly lesser in even my friend’s eyes because they are inside and I am not. And that’s hard to sit with day after day. I’ve been made to feel small and stupid for being on the outside, for being a failed academic. I feel not good enough still because of the way those inside talk about those of us outside.
But it’s also about me, and how I feel about those choices and those choices that weren’t choices. The disappointment I feel to have put so many years of my life, to lose so much of my life to something and have it not work out the way I wanted it to.
Because I did lose a chunk of life- most of my twenties and a good chunk of my thirties to it. Because I do have to work harder than other people (thanks to neurodiversity). So between doing the Ph.D. and trying to claw my way out of I I feel like I lost a decade of my life. I wasn’t socialising, didn’t have hobbies, only had what I did. Between working on the PhD and working to fund the PhD, I did nothing else for five years. Following that, the constant instability of life made me not really make friends, stopped me from having hobbies, and the financial strain meant everything was a bit limited. It’s truly only in the last year or so (thanks to little pandemics, too) I feel like I have something resembling a life. And we don’t talk about all that we lose as well. Not often enough.
And it’s that which makes me say ‘enough now enough’ (yes, I do say that in the voice of your man in Love, Actually, so sue me). It’s that which tells me failing was worth it. Even if it’s taken me eight years to sort of get there. Because now that I have something of a life, I have that freedom (Except when I’m accidentally writing three books at once), I wouldn’t give it back. People inside academia judge my job as ‘too easy,’ well firstly, I say, please feel free to wrangle community groups as I do, but second I say, sure maybe; but I log off work at 4.30 and don’t think about it on weekends. The work I choose to do in the evenings and weekends is my choice, I could, you know, not. And also I’d say, what’s wrong with easy? What’s wrong with a job that’s just a job, not your whole identity?
I often feel judged for that, the idea that my job isn’t ‘good enough’ because it’s not my whole identity like academia would have been. But increasingly, I’m on the side of the Gen Z quiet quitters, the TikTok easy job girlies, and the phrase ‘There is no dream job because I don’t dream of labour.’ I have dreams for things I want to create, but I don’t dream of capitalist enterprise. Maybe too, it’s the working class in my; a job is an exchange of labour for the means to support myself. My ‘work’ is now all the rest.
None of this means I don’t feel the absence, the regret, the shoulda woulda coulda of a life that might have been. That eight years on, I don’t sometimes wish things could have worked out differently. But once again both things can be true. I’m proud of what I’ve done and where I’m going, but also feel the loss of what might have been. I can feel anger for that, too, as well as sorrow and relief.
I adore this piece. I left a prestigious and difficult university degree in my twenties due to severe depression so I understand the feeling of lost time, regret and lower financial means in the present as a consequence. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Feeling a lot of this right now! Thank you for sharing.