As I approached my 40th birthday, I joked to friends and colleagues that I was laying the groundwork for an impending midlife crisis. At 39, I felt I was doing really well for myself: I was a tenured associate professor of media studies at a rising research university in a booming city. I had published five well-regarded books with university presses and had completed three more. My courses were popular and drew strong evaluations from students. My administrative duties were relatively light and, for the most part, meaningful. I was happily married and adored my son. Crisis? What crisis?
Joking about it, of course, probably brought it on.
When I turned 40, career changes derailed my sense of contentment. First, the academic unit in which I had spent my entire career was to be united with several others, and the future of my discipline at the university appeared in jeopardy.
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Midway through the year my faculty appointment was transferred to another department, where I would begin the process of reinventing myself in my job. Then I was promoted to full professor. What should have provided a sense of personal accomplishment made me question what I had done to arrive at this point in my life. How had I become a full professor in a discipline from which I had actually flunked out 20 years ago? More important, what was I supposed to do now?
Taking my midlife crisis seriously, I thought for a long time about what I wanted to do next. Faced with another quarter century in academe, five options seemed open to me. Did I want to become the best possible teacher I could be? Did I want to become the leading scholar in my research subfield? Did I want to pursue a career in administration and try to improve the place where I worked? Did I want to communicate research beyond the ivory tower by writing for nonscholarly venues? Did I simply want to “phone in” my job for the next two decades and spend more time playing the banjo?
Coming to terms with what I wanted to do required being honest with myself about the person I am and the person I want to be. In the end, because I enjoy so many aspects of my job, I found that it was as much a process of ruling out options as making an affirmative decision to move in one single direction. Like so many academics, I realized that I greatly enjoyed teaching bright and committed young people, but that teaching was not the primary reason I had entered this profession. I wanted to create new knowledge, not simply pass on what is already known.
I also recognized that I while I can teach well, the path to becoming a world-class teacher would take me down pedagogical roads that I was not enthusiastic about following. When I listen to my teaching-focused colleagues, I don’t hear messages that resonate deeply within me, and I am old-fashioned enough that I seem to be naturally suspicious of many of the advancements in contemporary pedagogy that are of such interest to my peers.
The dream of scholarly superstardom was put to bed next. I have been very fortunate to work with excellent editors at university presses who have believed in my work, and I am grateful to have been favored with research grants and opportunities that mean my scholarship is respected by my peers.
Yet at the same time, the arrival of my newest books kindled little joy in my heart. Moreover, the current shifts in the landscape of academic publishing have made the likelihood of diminishing returns all the more present. I take great pride in contributing to my research area, but I no longer have any desire to try to lead it.
The idea of moving into a life in administration is one that I seriously considered for some time. It was clear to me that one source of my current crisis was the nagging feeling that things weren’t being done right where I worked; which is to say, they weren’t being done the way that I would do them. Naturally, I wondered if I could change that.
In the end, it didn’t much matter. It became clear to me that my vision for reform was not one widely shared by my colleagues, and that would keep me out of any position that I might find rewarding. I am grateful that that was pointed out before I embarked on a path that would have only frustrated me. Not to mention my colleagues.
Having ruled out the three most important roles of academic life, I wondered if I could remain content as an academic? Surely I couldn’t just mark time and collect a paycheck for the remainder of my career. While the idea of simply giving up might sound appealing to some, I’m the type of person who, when on vacation, becomes restless about getting back to the office.
I swear I’m not a workaholic. I have plenty of hobbies and interests, but I also realize that my hobbies are another way of ensuring that I always have a project, or six, on the go. A life of ease wrapped around a phoned-in teaching effort might be enough to keep me tenured, but it wouldn’t have made me happy. At the same time, I began to realize that, some day, I wouldn’t be teaching at all anymore: What will I do when I retire? What would I do with my life if I won the lottery and didn’t have to work?
That led me to the moment of clarity I had been searching for: I woke up to the fact that achieving tenure and promotion are like winning the lottery. With the odds against landing a tenure-track job in the humanities growing longer every year, I had hit the proverbial jackpot and been granted an opportunity that very few people have: the freedom to pursue my own interests on my own terms. Within the constraints of my job obligations, I could do whatever I wanted with my life.
It was then that it became clear that what I wanted to do was write without footnotes. For more than a decade I’ve written magazine criticism that has counted little toward my professional goals but has given me great personal satisfaction. I’ve blogged and scribbled and enjoyed it in ways that are quite different from the satisfaction I find in my monographs and journal articles. So I’ve decided to do more of the kind of writing I enjoy the most.
I’ve begun writing for magazines that my neighbors subscribe to. I’ve begun writing a novel that I think my parents would read. I recognize that there is a great likelihood that I will fail as a novelist, or at least fail to meet my goals. I’ve also realized that I’m fine with that, because the process of writing in a new way has already opened up new ways of thinking for me.
For the first time since writing my dissertation, I am working on a project that I think about night and day, and long to return to when I am away from it.
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What’s more, that sense of freedom from the peer-review rat race has strengthened my commitment to the values of inquiry-based scholarship and teaching. Without the past 10 years of research and teaching, I don’t believe I would have had the confidence to pursue a different type of writing. The research skills that I have developed are certainly coming in handy as I craft a historically situated novel. I’m excited to bring my new writing experiences into the classroom, and I now have ideas for an array of new courses that will keep me interested in teaching for years to come. Finally, I’m excited about scholarly writing in a way I haven’t been for a long time. Instead of turning into stereotypically embittered deadwood, I feel like a new hire eager to prove myself all over again, but with a lot more self-confidence—and job security.
There’s a lot about faculty life that can wear down body and soul over the years. Before succumbing to the feeling that you can never be happy in academe, I would encourage all midcareer academics to take stock of their lives and their work by asking two questions: What would I be doing right now if I could do anything at all? And how much of that could I do right now and still be great at my job?
