How do I tell my adviser I no longer want what he wants for me?
admin October 19th, 2007
After much angst, self reflection, book reading, internet surfing, and conversations with my husband, I am pretty sure that science writing is the way I want to go. I entered graduate school with the goal of becoming a tenure track professor at a large research university, a goal enthusiastically supported by my advisers. They continue to have this goal for me, although they warn that my publication list will need to be bulked up if I ever really want a good job.
This is something that I am well aware of, and something that used to make me question my worth as a researcher, but now I just can’t seem to get too upset about it. I am taking my lack of hysteria as another indication that my goals might have changed. My advisers want me to try for a postdoc with another big name research star, thinking that I will gain another valuable contact, and also that this star lab will help me boost my publication record. They probably also feel that such a place might motivate me to work more. What they don’t know about my low publication list is that it reflects many months of desperate self-doubt and depression, followed by an increasing understanding that I really don’t want to do this anymore.
The thing is that if I really wanted to, I could probably do exactly what they say and end up “successful” with a tenure track job at one of the top universities. Though my number of publications might be small compared to the people here, they have won awards, and I have a few things in the pipeline right now that should yield very good results before I leave. I continue to look through postings, and I have found what would a few years ago have been very exciting advertisements, but I just cannot get myself to apply. First of all, that publication list would probably put me out of the running, but even if I were to get a fellowship, I have serious doubts that I would accept it.
So now what I need to do is to tell my advisers that the path I started on when I first came here is no longer the one I think that I am on now. I need to tell them that their time and energy trying to guide me to what they thought I wanted will not be used in the way they thought. There is a recent article in The Chronicle in which a professor describes students who change their career goals as dishonest and a waste of time. Like many of the posters in the forum there, I think this woman has a severe misunderstanding of her role as adviser, and needs to consider that her students are adults, that people change, and that tenure at an R1 university is not the only way to claim success. Still, I feel like I will be a disappointment to my advisers who had such high hopes for me in academia, and who were so personally invested and excited about my future career.
One of my advisers, when I had thought that I wanted to go into business told me “gold will shine brightly no matter what it is fashioned into” which I took as a great compliment. I hope he still feels this way. I think that he will be supportive of my choice, but deep down I know that he wants all his students to go on to be professors, and it is those with these goals that he cares for the most. I am worried that when I tell him my new goals, I will meet with some kind of subconscious bias on his part, and I will not receive as much advice, consideration, and help with my graduation plans. Not that I really get that much advice anyway, but I sure do cherish what I get.
My other adviser is usually a little easier to talk to, but he has been on the warpath recently about my publication record. It is as though he stuck his head up, realized that I was to graduate soon, and completely freaked out. There is little I can do about this in the time I have left here other than to finish up the projects I am working on and publish them. Several I think are very good, but he is not impressed and so constantly reminds me of upcoming due dates for which I lack data. I have already lost sleep on this so his pressure really isn’t helping. As far as my long term goals, I breeched the subject of science writing with him recently, and he told me, “Well that doesn’t sound like much fun.” I am ashamed to say that I completely folded and didn’t say much more about it. Later I emailed him something relevant, and he wrote back a disparaging “What is it about estrogen that is attracted to this?” I am hoping he meant it as humorous.
I wrote back that although by nature I tend not to align well with other women, I was guessing that there are several both nature and nurture reasons why women may be attracted to these opportunities. I wrote that I would guess that there are a number of women who have received advanced degrees looking to do something else and see this as a good opportunity. I told him that according to the statistics I read, women in science continue to leave academia for many reasons, and they have to go somewhere. Choices are industry, marketing and sales, teaching at a lower level, policy, patenting, and writing. Since industry poses many of the obstacles and downsides that academia does (and by these I mean both those that only affect women, and those that affect all professors), there are fewer women in industry compared to other disciplines, but the disparity isn’t as large. Plus, with writing, there is the opportunity to freelance, and is not geographically restrictive, i.e. good for children.
Personally, I told him that it looked to me that I would be my own boss, could learn about new things constantly, get to meet interesting people, get to be creative on a daily basis, and could use it as a springboard to many other opportunities. I would not have to worry about moving all over the place, and wouldn’t stress about tenure or grants. I’d get to think about science all day and I would get to write. Since these are many of the things that also attracted me to academia, it seems natural that when I am sick of the lab, it looks pretty tempting.
Does this seem to you like someone who “just can’t cut it” in academia, or someone who is just looking for something easier so that she doesn’t need to work so hard? I have thought and thought about this issue, but I worry that these are the conclusions my advisers will come to when I tell them.
I long to “come out” to my advisers, since I value honesty, am awful at lying, and figure that they are there to help me whatever choice I make, but I also fear what may happen if I tell them what I want. I need to graduate and I would like to have some support in the next year to help me do that. I have seen what has happened to students who lost the respect of my advisers, and it is not pretty. I do not want to be this student. I need glowing letters of recommendation from both of them. It is just that I need to figure out how to mask the fact that they are for science writing, not R1 fellowships I am applying for.
So, I just don’t know what to do. I think about these things every. single. day. Science writing is the only thing that I have been able to get excited about since I starting thinking about what I want to do. I get animated and happy when I think about it. Here in the office or the lab, I feel bored and helpless. I have to force myself into the lab to get something real accomplished every day. I am hoping that maybe soon I will get pregnant, and I will be able to use this as an excuse to “slow down” my science career. At any rate, I need to tell them. I’m just not sure how.