I went to grad school w/ a lot of tremendous peers who’ve remained in the profession, but what I think is even more impressive—and I hope it gives some folks hope about beyond the academy out there—is the number of people who’ve gone on to do amazing things beyond academia: a

*life beyond the academy
My cohort alone included @YoungJean_Lee & Julia Cho both playwrights (Julia’s also a TV writer). A couple of years ahead of me were folks like @annaleenewitz & federal public defender Kim Savo. A pal from a different department was @thehighsign.

And other writers like Asali Solomon & Sandra Lim were also in my cohort (I didn’t mention them above bc they currently also teach at universities). But the point being quite a few of us departed from the “traditional” career paths we were trained to take.

A couple of folks left before finishing (like Young Jean and Julia). Others finished & didn’t bother with the academic job market because even back then in the early 2000s, things seemed irrevocably dire & not worth surrendering one’s life to.

Yet others made a go of it, adjuncting and barely able to support/feed themselves in certain instances until it was no longer tenable & they felt they had nothing left to lose but to do some of the things they wanted to do.

I personally felt I didn’t have any other foptions after 7 years & 10s of thousands of $ in debt than to make a go of it. In the end I got lucky. By “luck” I mean I managed to get into an elite grad program that offered me pathways to success that simply aren’t open to others.

I guess the point of all this is to reinforce what I say to my graduate students all the time: it’s as important to honor what you truly want to do in the world & to see your work as part of the world, than to submit fully to what the institution demands.

There are, simply put, no guarantees. You needn’t capitulate to the the cruel optimism of the institution. Learn what you can, grow in the company of your interlocutors, be open to new methods & ideas, and remember you have nothing left to lose bc there is truly so little to gain

As Dr. Wendy Rhoades once opined on Billions, in academia “everything's a big fucking deal because the stakes are so small.”