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Why did I leave academia? It& #39;s complex. It& #39;s 100% related to the culture of academia that I felt I couldn& #39;t stay. So here& #39;s a thread on why, particularly as a woman, with depression, I had to leave, despite having a good track record and designs on being a prof one day. 1/
The precarity of contracts. Honestly, the rolling from one contract to the next was crushing. Not knowing if I& #39;d be jobless in a few months was too much. Combine that with my anxiety, and it was debilitating. I& #39;ve since got a permanent job in industry. 2/
The culture of overwork. Feeling like I had to be constantly "on" all the time, and if I wasn& #39;t it was valuable time I could have been working on a paper to get ahead. Again with my depression (and quite frankly anyone else with or without depression) burnout was not my friend.3/
Moving across the world for a "good" CV. I didn& #39;t want to move to get postdocs to make my CV competitive. I couldn& #39;t think of anything worse than uprooting my life away from my support networks. My partner had a permanent job, and that took priority. 4/
The pay. Industry pays much better. It meant I could actually buy a house and have the stability of being in one location. I can now actually afford things like therapy and self-care to help me be well. 5/
Family in the future. Maybe I& #39;ll have family one day, maybe I won& #39;t. But the culture of overwork did not feel conducive to having a family. I now have more time and benefits being in industry. 6/
Not seeing visible role models. I couldn& #39;t see visible women role models at my institution that "had it all". It made me think there was no way for me to have it all either. 7/
Opportunities to teach. I love teaching, but because of TEF the opportunities for ECRs to teach was so small because of fear of poor student feedback that ECRs really didn& #39;t have much option to teach. 8/
