Beyond the Ivory Tower

Goodbye, Ivory Tower

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines Ms. Mentor He's Hogging the Course I Want Should you wail to your colleagues, wait your turn, or find your own little piece of turf? Moving Up Managing From the Middle Five rules to help you as a midlevel administrator lead people over whom you have no real authority. Career News Colleges and the Financial Crisis Most institutions, both private and public, seem to be faring relatively well, even as they and the students they serve are tightening their belts. On Course EZ Bibliographies Do Web sites that format citations for students negate the need to teach them how to create a proper source list? Resource Salaries: Faculty | Administrative Presidential pay: Private | Public Financial resources: Salary and cost-of-living calculators Career resources: Academic | Nonacademic Library: Previous articles by topic | by date | by column Career Talk, Ms. Mentor, and more... Landing your first job On the tenure track Mid-career and on Administrative careers Nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s Talk about your career Blogs

By Jean Simon

I've finally done it. After dreaming about it for a few years, I resigned this summer from my tenured, associate professorship at Almost Metropolitan State University.

It's hard to say exactly what tipped the balance, what turned my fantasy into reality. It could be that I am simply burned out; I have nothing left to give at the office. I promised myself the day I received my Ph.D. that I would quit when it wasn't fun and fulfilling anymore. But when I'm being brutally honest, I have to admit that the only time I've ever been happy in academe was in graduate school, and maybe not even then.

No academic job has really worked for me. I am no good at politics. I am overly sensitive to criticism; occasional biting comments in my evaluations almost always overshadow the accolades.

I despise the student-as-customer mantra of the day. I loathe writing 11-page syllabi in the futile attempt to document learning outcomes as if it were possible to prepackage the essential alchemy of the classroom. At the beginning of any semester, I have no idea where my students' flights of fancy will take them, and trying to predict their ultimate intellectual direction before the rubber meets the road has always seemed a bit fraudulent and misleading.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a colleague a few years ago. We were leaving after a long day and met by happenstance in the parking lot. The topic got around to the innumerable meetings, reports, self-studies, external- and internal-evaluations, five-year strategic plans, and assorted other "objective" measures of success we foist upon ourselves. He said, "I think the price we pay to teach is getting too high." His statement was prophetic.

On a good day, I loved the classroom. I got into this business to teach. I was a natural at it. I enjoyed not knowing how my students were going to react to a work. I liked unseating their certainty by introducing them to concepts they would probably not encounter in the course of an average day at the office. Spending time on their writing, arming them with useful tools I knew would help them be successful (and earn more money than I ever could as a professor) was satisfying.

All of that is still true for me as I read through last semester's somewhat perplexing student evaluations: One person is upset about being forced to read (oh the horror!) texts by female authors. Another states unequivocally that students who work shouldn't be required to attend class or meet deadlines. Some love absolutely everything and rave about my teaching. Still others advocate for more books by indigenous women and less of the "straight white male" perspective. (Were they all in the same class?)

I read them with wonder and then remember that this set of evaluations, as always, highlights an inherent truth of teaching: You can't please all the people all the time. But every business depends on evaluation, and I didn't really resign because of that. I had other, more irksome issues.

For instance, one evening last semester, as I was driving home after teaching three classes and then meeting with students into the wee hours, I was amazed to hear Almost Metropolitan State's president proclaiming in his weekly radio address that, to keep up with the for-profit educational sector, professors needed to do a much better job of delivering product, not when it was "convenient," but whenever our "customers" (formerly known as students) demanded it.

My president had just announced to the community at large that I was lazy and doing a bad job. I was now going to have to keep up with the for-profit Joneses. Internet classes. Saturday classes. Satellite campus classes. Night classes. What we needed was enhanced customer service with a side of more publications, please. You see, Almost Metropolitan State is almost a research university and suffers from a transitional identity disorder.

I had to pull my car off the road to shout expletives and bang my fists on the dashboard. Although I didn't realize it at the time, my roadside meltdown was the beginning of the end of my academic career.

The contradictory, ever-changing administrative imperatives were too much. They had moved my cheese one time too many without consulting me. Overeducated, spoiled brat that I am, I move my own cheese, thank you very much. It's why I got my Ph.D. I like to be left alone to do my work.

Most days, I do a very good job. By nature, I don't take direction well, especially when it contradicts itself publicly every few days. Then again, my resignation could have been based on the fact that subsequent to said meltdown, Almost Metropolitan State had ignored policy, summarily canceled salary talks, made a big fuss about giving faculty and staff members a raise that was the lowest of all our state institutions, and then mailed out our contracts over a month late.

In truth, by the time all of that had happened, a sideways glance might have pushed me over the edge. My list of grievances was growing by the day, and my expiration date had long since passed.

That long month before my contract arrived gave me time to think. Time to ponder the whys and wherefores of my career. Time to wallow in my depression and realize how much I hate it, how unnatural a state it is for me. Time to recognize that every year, when I receive my contract, I have a choice: sign it, or not.

The day the contract arrived in the mail, I opened the envelope, took a quick look, and became violently ill. On some cellular level, my body knew and reacted before I had time to even think about how much I didn't want to sign that late, policy-ignoring contract, with its pittance of a raise that wouldn't get me much more than a pizza a month.

I didn't not sign that day (see, sometimes a double negative does make a positive). It took me time not to sign. The document sat on my desk, tempting me with financial security and the certainty of knowing what I would be doing this fall. I became more and more ill. I slept a lot.

I talked with my husband about the implications of cutting our combined income in half for a while. Ultimately, the questions underlying my decision came into focus. Could I survive a few more years of what was now obviously full-blown agony of spirit in the name of material comfort? Could I fake it? Could I make myself a mask convincing enough to fool everyone? Could I say yes when I was dying to shout no? Was there enough good red wine in the world?

There's no real mystery to this story. I end where I began, out of academe and in search of a new future. The answer to all the above was no. Even though there is a lot of good red wine in the world, I decided I couldn't drink myself into denial. I'm a cheap drunk with a weak stomach.

So, I sit here writing my postcard from the edge. The final version reads as follows:

Hi. I'm here, unemployed, figuring out what's next. I hope The Chronicle accepts this column, because I'm poorer than last month, but on my way to being happy and in control of my own cheese.