FS on leaving Academia
Regardless,
I am going to hold up my ‘writer’ card and write, just because.
The reason this will be a personal rather than academic or generally
‘serious’ essay is that I’m still figuring stuff out. I’m a
new member to the outside world, and by outside world I mean the vast
expanse of space and noise outside of Academia. I’ve been a part of
Academia for the past 10 years of my life, as a student, and I didn’t
exactly plan towards an academic career or any kind of viable future
inside the institution.
*
Now
that the context is different, and the structure is gone. I write and
feel guilty for writing, for wanting to write. It doesn’t feel
serious any more, doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. The
mindset has switched from ‘I am allowed – required – to do
this’ to ‘Do I still belong here?’ Writing needs work even when
no writing is being done, and a lot of this work is creating
motivation, making the creative process feel like a valid way to
spend a day, a life. So what I’m trying to figure out now is how to
ward off the voice inside that says, ‘Do something better with your
time’ or ‘There is no point to this’.
*
My
official leave from Academia happened very recently, with very little
fanfare: my
student card simply stopped working and I was asked by email to fork
over some money for the privilege to attend my own graduation. Like
that's ever going to happen. The weird thing about it is that I
thought it would be very different, and by that I mean I thought it
would feel
very
different.
*
It
shouldn’t be that difficult to keep the routine going, the one I
established while finishing my MFA project. Yet for some reason,
writing inside an academic framework and writing in the ‘real
world’ are two different beasts. The academic structure gives you
goals, focal points, a whole system by which to evaluate your work;
it gives you (more or less involved) supervisors, a peer group,
sometimes even a place to work. You work has a context, a set of
rules to follow, and a guaranteed audience.
*
I
know that self-motivation and self-imposed deadlines are a thing, a
thing many functioning adults do on a daily basis – I know about
project management, whatever. The problem is that they’ve never
been a reality, until now. Being outside of Academia is a vast field
of decisions waiting to be made, decisions which need to be made by
me rather than by anyone else; and the criteria are unclear. Inside
Academia, you are a student, and then you work towards becoming an
academic, I suppose. There are a limited number of roles, especially
if what you want to do and be paid to do is write.
*
This
is becoming about appearance, about seeming
serious and grown-up. And about how quickly time passes when you are
someone like me who takes a while to make decisions for herself.
*
Outside
of Academia, things are a little different. First of all, the
existential dread of ‘what am I even writing for’
is harder to ignore. You’re not writing for your supervisor, for a
mark, because it’s part of your degree.
*
I
started my Masters in Creative Writing in 2013, then moved on to an
MFA in 2014, and it took me about two and a half years to start
taking writing seriously, giving priority to my own writing process.
Because this ‘maturing’, shall we say, took place within
Academia, I now find myself lost outside of it.
*
Outside
of Academia, you can potentially be anything, and that’s a lot to
consider. Writing becomes vague, more self-conscious of its
vagueness. You become more aware of not having anything to say,
which wasn’t so much of an issue when you were still a student.
*
Sure,
I've honed some of my skills by staying in Academia for so long, I've
given myself time to figure out what I wanted to do, and, yes, I've
in some sense accepted my own slow growth. But I've also protected
myself from the chaotic vastness and confusion of the so-called "Real
World", another institution, really, or cluster of institutions
that lie outside of the academic fortress.
*
Outside
of Academia is vaster and more confusing, but not all that different.
I can still be rejected or ignored or made to feel inadequate, it's
just that the criteria by which others can do so are less clearly
defined – if anything, compared to Academia, there are more of
those criteria for me to contend with.
*
During
my 10 years, I did the most frowned-upon thing: I lived my student
life as a full-time thing. By that, I don’t mean that my studies
were always full-time, but rather that I didn’t supplement by
getting a job or gaining experience (padding my portfolio, so to
speak) outside of my studies, or even tried to gain experience
working (teaching) at university. I was simply a student for 10
years, first in Philosophy, then in Creative Writing, and that’s
it.
*
What
I want to say to myself is this:
You've
left Academia. That’s okay. You’ve chosen not to be an academic.
That’s okay too. You want to write. This is not a crime.
*
I
suppose the main problem is that, out here, writing feels more
frivolous than it did during my degree. Coming from Philosophy, it
took me a while to accept that writing could be a legitimate field of
study, something to be learned and practised in a structured course.
When I started accepting it, the writing itself became easier: I
learned to immerse myself in writing as my ‘work’, something I
was allowed to spend my time doing because I was doing it in the
context of a degree – it was legitimate for me to sit around and
think about writing because this was what I was supposed to be doing,
this was what I was supposed to be learning, and, ultimately, what I
would be marked on when I handed in my portfolio.
*
Oh
look, it’s everyone’s favourite:
a personal essay.
*
In
choosing writing over the continuation of my student life I feel like
I've escaped something that wouldn't have made me happy; at the same
time I also worry that I've chosen the less admirable route, the one
less likely to lead to success. Leaving feels like a failure (it's
not that I'd been working particularly hard towards an academic
career, I just always sort of assumed I'd end up in one), and I worry
about what not wanting
Academia
more, not working harder at it, says about me. What it means is, I
chose writing instead, which seems so frivolous a choice, especially
given I don’t work at being a successful part of the industry.
*
The
problem is that I can't yet tell what will come of my decision.
During the last months of my MFA, I did all I could to avoid the fear
of what would come next. I told myself repeatedly I was doing the
right thing, that I was giving myself and my writing a chance. I
tried to convince myself that my writing would flourish outside of
Academia, and so would I. I would be freed of a system of evaluation;
my self-worth would no longer be rooted in praise and acceptance; my
reading lists would be my own.
*
Without
the assignments and deadlines, I'm not longer sure what it is I'm
writing for,
so I suppose it may as well be for myself. This won't keep me safe
from rejection, of course, nor from criticism. The people who will do
so will probably often be a lot less well-meaning, equipped with a
lot less pedagogical training, and generally more confusing in their
tastes than my professors used to be. Their feedback might be cryptic
or it might relate to themselves much more than to my output. I might
just be dismissed offhand.
*
It's
something to grow into, I guess.
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