A common question posed to PhD students from friends and family is, “What will you do after?” But many students are too focused on the PhD itself and have not yet had a chance to sufficiently think about post-PhD life. This book is a collection of 22 interviews with those have completed a PhD and then are now in an academic position or another career path. In either case, they have all been successful and have a multitude of insights to share with those who are interested in considering a variety of careers. Academic careers share many commonalities with many non-academic careers, with skills learned within academia being valuable in other career paths as well. Nearly all the individuals interviewed here have been on the job market recently and understand today's job climate. No other book on the market includes the diversity of perspectives presented here. In particular, the focus on psychology and neuroscience draws from a variety of individuals that have similar training but have nonetheless taken divergent paths.

Academia versus the World Outside lays out the givens of the knowledge industry located within the ivory tower, colleges and universities. It then moves outside academia to consider this restricted world the way most people see it. The contrast between these two views of academia explains and is at the basis of the left–right animosity of our day. The knowledge industry, a creation of the post-Enlightenment modern age along with other industrial and post-industrial enterprises, is based on creating and adding to a store of knowledge as its own end. This makes academia alien to the more random and personal nature of knowledge acquisition in our everyday lives, as indeed every industry is alien to everyday life in the modern age. Yet most academics are so immersed in the peculiar project they have chosen as their life’s work that they are either unaware of or unsympathetic to the fact that people outside live very different lives with very different presuppositions. Most non-academics, for their part, find academia strange, and for very good reason. Academia versus the World Outside makes this contrast and conflict clear from both directions. This book is aimed primarily at academics, most of whom so take for granted the givens of what they do that they fail to understand why the vast majority of people outside find academia alien. This has led to an increasingly hostile and utterly predictable left–right political conflict, academia tending increasingly left and the world outside increasingly right. The goal of this book is to reduce the tension between both sides: if read by non-academics, this book may help these understand the givens of a world as strange to everyday life as any other specialized industry in the modern age.

A guide for grad students and academics who want to find fulfilling careers outside higher education. With the academic job market in crisis, 'Leaving Academia' helps grad students and academics in any scholarly field find satisfying careers beyond higher education. The book offers invaluable advice to visiting and adjunct instructors ready to seek new opportunities, to scholars caught in "tenure-trap" jobs, to grad students interested in nonacademic work, and to committed academics who want to support their students and contingent colleagues more effectively. Providing clear, concrete ways to move forward at each stage of your career change, even when the going gets tough, 'Leaving Academia' is both realistic and hopeful.

For too long graduate school was viewed solely as a pipeline to teaching positions at colleges and universities. As MAs and PhDs proliferate and opportunities in the academy narrow, this timely book reminds us that the academy is only one of many venues for satisfying and successful scholarly endeavor. The contributors to Independent Scholars Meet the World represent a spectrum of graduate school experiences, from leaving midprogram to completing an MA or PhD. They include those who sought nontraditional paths and others who started in the familiar professorial direction only to change course. Ultimately, they are independent scholars—contributing to their fields but working outside the academy. Their stories illustrate the variety of options that exist beyond the university setting, from museum education and high school teaching to newer professions like podcasting and creating historical coloring books. These scholars impart advice about encountering difficulties, overcoming challenges, and learning to adapt to changing circumstances. All have something to share that the graduating scholar and those who guide them ought to hear about—cultivating networks; viewing departure from familiar terrain as an option, not a failure; and understanding the real value that an independent scholar brings to any number of situations. Perhaps the most important lesson this book offers is for those steeped in the belief that the only “right” way to be a scholar is as a tenured professor, and how, therefore, to embrace the label independent scholar The contributors to Independent Scholars Meet the World offer the advice and encouragement they wish they’d received when heading into uncharted postgraduate territory. They demonstrate that success awaits the determined and resourceful scholar pursuing a different path towards “expanded-ac.”

In his bestselling book Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford explored the ethical and practical importance of manual competence, as expressed through mastery of our physical environment. In his brilliant follow-up, The World Beyond Your Head, Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind. We often complain about our fractured mental lives and feel beset by outside forces that destroy our focus and disrupt our peace of mind. Any defense against this, Crawford argues, requires that we reckon with the way attention sculpts the self. Crawford investigates the intense focus of ice hockey players and short-order chefs, the quasi-autistic behavior of gambling addicts, the familiar hassles of daily life, and the deep, slow craft of building pipe organs. He shows that our current crisis of attention is only superficially the result of digital technology, and becomes more comprehensible when understood as the coming to fruition of certain assumptions at the root of Western culture that are profoundly at odds with human nature. The World Beyond Your Head makes sense of an astonishing array of common experience, from the frustrations of airport security to the rise of the hipster. With implications for the way we raise our children, the design of public spaces, and democracy itself, this is a book of urgent relevance to contemporary life.

Graduate schools churn out tens of thousands of Ph.D.’s and M.A.’s every year. Half of all college courses are taught by adjunct faculty. The chances of an academic landing a tenure-track job seem only to shrink as student loan and credit card debts grow. What’s a frustrated would-be scholar to do? Can he really leave academia? Can a non-academic job really be rewarding—and will anyone want to hire a grad-school refugee? With “So What Are You Going to Do with That?” Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius—Ph.D.’s themselves—answer all those questions with a resounding “Yes!” A witty, accessible guide full of concrete advice for anyone contemplating the jump from scholarship to the outside world, “So What Are You Going to Do with That?” covers topics ranging from career counseling to interview etiquette to translating skills learned in the academy into terms an employer can understand and appreciate. Packed with examples and stories from real people who have successfully made this daunting—but potentially rewarding— transition, and written with a deep understanding of both the joys and difficulties of the academic life, this fully revised and up-to-date edition will be indispensable for any graduate student or professor who has ever glanced at her CV, flipped through the want ads, and wondered, “What if?” “I will absolutely be recommending this book to our graduate students exploring their career options—I’d love to see it on the coffee tables in department lounges!”—Robin B. Wagner, former associate director for graduate career services, University of Chicago