Deciding to Leave Higher Ed: Strategies for Career Discernment

Today the next installment in “Outside Higher Ed” appears in Inside Higher Ed, focusing on career discernment:

As the title promises, this piece shares seven steps for career discernment. These include:

1. Talking with confidants.
2. Making lists, and writing to learn.
3. Pairing downside with upside risks.
4. Finding my “strong yes.”
5. Taking steps toward a new career.
6. Seeking a reality check.
7. Processing grief and other emotions.

For each, I describe how the strategy played a role in my decision to leave academia, a discernment process that stretched over multiple years.

Whether or not you’ve been following along as I’ve shared my decision to transition into public writing and entrepreneurship, I hope this piece offers useful discernment practices.

Through career discernment, I continue to learn the importance of slowing down, listening to embodied wisdom, and building emotional literacies. Decision-making involves more than well-reasoned answers, and it holds potential for healing when prioritizing commitments and alignment with our better/best selves.

I continue to wish for personal and collective healing and believe our working lives play a role in this process. How might our careers—and ongoing career discernment—contribute to grieving and growing? To greater acknowledgement of both/and? To the willingness to tread alternative paths?

—
This post is written by Beth Godbee for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For more posts like this one, you might try “Announcing ‘Outside Higher Ed’ in Inside Higher Ed,” “In the Midst of Big Changes,” or “Listening for/to the ‘Strong YES.’” You might also like the e-course “Career Discernment for Academics: Aligning Career with Commitments.”

If you appreciate this site, if you connect with the storytelling, or if you use any of the recipes or resources, consider making a one-time or sustaining donation and liking this blog on FB. Thanks!