I have been wanting to write this post for a while, as it deals with what I think is one of the most important lessons I've learned–both personally and professionally–in my career. Alas, I've never felt like I knew how to write it properly. The post, as readers will see, is on resisting professional bitterness and resentment. I will be honest: I've been afraid to write this post. I've been afraid to write it because I don't want to come off as preachy, or self-congratulatory, or as engaging in hasty generalizations based on one case, or as implicitly singling anyone out for criticism. While these are very real dangers–and I hope the post that follows avoids them–I want to be clear here at the outset: none of these things are my intent. My only intent in writing this post is to share a set of experiences that I personally found important, and which I hope someone going through a difficult time in their career might find helpful.
As I have explained on several occasions, my early career–both in grad school and beyond–did not go the way I expected. Things started out well enough. I initially loved grad school, did well, and naively thought I would finish the PhD and get an academic job in no time. Then, however, life and luck intervened. Then I got frustrated, losing my love for philosophy. The further I got along in grad school, the more disillusioned I became. The profession seemed very different than the one I had hoped for. I had hoped for a "life of the mind", and of course for a tenure-track job. What I felt like I got instead was a life of competitiveness, careerism, obsession with program and journal rankings–and then, later on, a miserable better half of a decade floundering on the job-market, replete with constant anxiety, frustration, and a long bout with debilitating insomnia (thankfully finally well-treated).
Anyway, during a few years in grad school, I handled all of this rather poorly. Although I didn't really realize it at the time, my frustration–which in turn became bitterness and resentment–really showed. I felt like the discipline was a hostile place…so I became hostile myself: I became competitive and dismissive in seminars, talks, and conversations, and over time progressively separated myself from the members of my department. At one point after comprehensive examinations, while I was supposed to be putting a dissertation proposal, I kid you not: I spent about a year and a half straight doing little more than playing video games and hanging out with my bandmates playing music. While I'm not proud of it, I also know I wasn't alone: I've known more than a few grad students who did something similar, isolating themselves from their department out of insecurity, frustration, and so on, turning to other hobbies instead.
Unsurprisingly, none of this was very good for my career. I had become a bitter, resentful person. I had felt like academic philosophy had "sold me a lie." So I became hostile to it in return. Yet all this really did was push people–faculty, grad students, etc.–away from me. At one point, I was this close to failing out of grad school. Since I had basically no skills for jobs outside of philosophy, I had no idea what to do. I was at the "end of my rope." So I did what anyone at the end of their rope should do: I reevaluated things. Above all, I reevaluated myself. "What if I'm the problem?", I thought. Indeed, it occurred to me that I had become the very kind of person that makes philosophy a worse profession to work in, not better. So, as a shot in the dark, I tried something new: to put my bitterness and resentment aside. I sought to mend fences with those around me, to give philosophy another shot–this time without fixating on how competitive, unfair, or unjust the profession may or may not be, and instead just trying to enjoy doing philosophy and being a better member of my department.
What happened next was astounding–and, in my life at least, perhaps the most important lesson I've ever learned. The moment I set my bitterness and resentment aside, everything changed. It all happened in a startlingly sudden manner. I not only stopped seeing others (faculty, grad students, etc.) as hostile "opponents" to grapple with; they stopped being those things. I learned, in other words, that my bitterness and resentment had become something of a self-fulfilling prophesy: the discipline had been a terrible place for me–a place of hostile people–in large part because of how I saw them. The moment I began to put my bitterness and hostility aside, allies started coming out of the woodwork left and right. People who I felt like never mentored me well began to mentor me. And, just like that, things got better. It was, to be frank, a rather earth-shattering experience. Sure, there are many problematic things in the discipline. But what I learned in that instant was that, by fixating on those things, I had created my own greatest obstacle. I had been making the profession a bad place for myself, and I learned it didn't have to be that way: I could make it a better place by setting all of that negativity aside. While the years that followed–particularly my many years on the job-market–were by no means easy (I had dug quite a hole for myself!), at the end of the day I truly believe my career turned on this: had I remained bitterness and resentful, I would have dug my hole deeper and deeper, and eventually would have pushed myself right out of the profession.
Again, I share this story not to self-congratulate, or to imply that I am "better" than anyone else or a good person for that matter. On the contrary, in many ways the story is deeply embarrassing. I made a lot of very bad decisions early in my career. I once had someone close to me tell me after the fact, "You used to be so unhappy. Everyone knew it. It seeped out of every pore of your being." It's not easy to share that this is who I was. And I am by no means a perfect human being today. Like everyone, I continue to have my own unique personality and character flaws–flaws that continually frustrate me, as well (I am sure) others. Like any human being, I get frustrated and upset, have stupid insecurities that reflect poorly on me, and so on. And yes, there are still things about the profession that bug me deeply–unfair things that I think should very much bug other people too. I shared this post not to convey anything particularly good about myself, or to paint an artificially rosy view of the profession. I share it only in the hope that it might speak to someone, helping them to see that whatever hole of bitterness or resentment they may find themselves in, it need not be inevitable or irreversible–and that there may be another, better way worth giving a shot. I hope the post is taken this way, and hope it speaks to at least some of you in a way that is helpful.
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