Before thinking about leaving academia, it's important to think about what it means for you. This post outlines the importance of getting your head in the right frame of mind before embarking on a career in industry.

Before we discuss whether you should or how to leave academia after your PhD, it’s vital that we think about our mindset and what it means to leave academia in the context of your self-identity. Often we create a sense of identify around what we do for work and that makes us feel good about ourselves. You might see yourself as a ‘scientist’, a ‘researcher’ or an ‘expert’ in your respective field – and this is a good thing as it gives you confidence and fuels your ambition to succeed and continue doing what you’ve been doing. This is also likely to be domain specific and centred around the field of study.

So when we then decide to not continue using your PhD as we initially planned, you find yourself asking ‘who am I now?’, ‘what did I do my PhD for?’, and ‘uh oh, now I have to stay in academia forever’. This is daunting, stressful, knocks your self-confidence and essentially makes it impossible to think about what to do next and how to go about it.

Instead, try to think about why you want to leave and focus on the negatives of academia and the life after your PhD if you stay. This could be the work hours, the lack of guaranteed employment, the relatively low pay for your skill set or maybe now you just dislike your field of study. It sounds easy when you put it like this, but it’s a really difficult question to grapple with. However, the longer you spend thinking about it and reflecting on your life values you’re likely to reach an outcome. For example, and when you’re truly honest with yourself – you may not want the awful work hours, poor work life balance, capped pay or possibly the fewer opportunities you may have when deciding where to live after your PhD.

After identifying why you want to leave, understand that it’s okay to feel this way. A lot of PhD students feel ‘guilty’ or ‘ashamed’ from leaving research or academia in general. A lot of this comes from this strange dichotomy of academia being ‘good’ and industry (aka anything else) being ‘evil’. This is also why talking about leaving academia is such a taboo subject. It doesn’t make sense to see the world in this polarised way – there are good and bad people or companies in every industry.

We all know that there are people in academia and science whose moral compass has gone astray. Maybe you aren’t doing a PhD in science or STEM, but professional academics still plagiarise, lie about their results from time to time, or even manipulate their data – a term that is more commonly known as ‘p-hacking’ (see Head et al., 2015 for more detail). This all stems from this intense pressure to publish results that are significant, otherwise you could ‘perish’. Equally, there are people in industry that are set out on making the world a better place. So, when thinking about who you are as person – you can still be ‘good’ and ‘do good’ outside of academia. So now what?

Start thinking about who you are now as a person. You’re no longer that ‘scientist’ or ‘researcher’ or ‘expert in archaeology’ or whatever your PhD means to you. Instead, you’re an individual with a PhD. You are not the PhD. It’s easy for us to type this and explain this after the fact, but in reality, it can take weeks or even months to fully digest this and integrate into your new understanding of who you are and sense of self. Be kind to yourself and give yourself space to accept that you made the career decisions based on a specific goal. It just happens that the goal you once set out to achieve has changed and looks different now. And that’s okay.

Besides, on a personal level this is way better for your development as a person, as it gives you more layers and makes you more interesting. Nobody likes talking to that person at a party who’s been working in insurance for 20-35 years. The same is true for working at a university in a specific niche field that 90% of the world haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. When you think about achieving goals and being successful in any career it often looks like this anyway:

In simple terms, success, including your career is not linear. Sometimes you have to take one step backwards (although it’s probably not the best analogy to phrase a PhD/changing career as a step backwards) in order to move two steps forwards.

In short, deciding to leave academia, finish your PhD, and move on is not easy and can lead to a loss in sense of self and create strong internal conflict. Take time to digest and internalise this – even if you stay in academia, there are a lot of psychological benefits to see yourself as someone who does research, as opposed to someone who is a researcher. Once doing so, you can think about your next move objectively, without guilt, or any other negative thoughts that might be holding you back.