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I have explained my reasons for leaving the program so many times the explanation is becoming somewhat rote.
The response from faculty is oddly supportive. Like the grad students, they say they will miss me, but would they miss me any less if I were graduating? I suppose in their line of work they see many students who really ought not to be in the program, but who are either (a) worried that leaving the program = failure or (b) simply do not know that there are valid (and perhaps better for them) alternatives to academic life. They may also know the pain I feel about leaving, since the chances are pretty good they have known and liked other people who have suffered as I have.
A professor I spoke with the other day told me that being a professor is the greatest job in the world for him. He quickly followed the statement with the observation that any kind of work can be the greatest job in the world if you enjoy it. Academic life sounded good on paper to me: intellectual freedom and props (and a stable income) for investigating what you think is worthwhile. I envy professors and grad students for whom the decision to stay comes easily. I myself had underestimated the isolation I would feel.
The isolation problem can be somewhat ameliorated by the presence of a mentor. I made the mistake of entering the program without one, and on the promise that a constitutional expert would be quickly hired.* A new constitutional law person has been hired for the fall, but her arrival is too late for me to establish much of a relationship with her.
I do not know nor does it matter at this point whether it is my nature or in the environment in which I find myself that makes me such an unhappy camper. The facts on the ground speak for themself. There is certainly a part of me that thrives on academic life. But I simply cannot dedicate enough of myself to its real enterprise, that of research.
* Some of the people who made this promise amended it retroactively: "We never promised you a Professor A clone" meant that professors completely outside A's field could somehow count. Other professors simply (and to my mind rightly) apologized.
Posted by Underblog at May 27, 2005 6:19 AM
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