What my clients taught me this week about leaving academia

Dear Reader, The hardest part of leaving academia isn’t the job search itself. Yep. It’s the years of conditioning that make brilliant, passionate people feel like failures long after they’ve left. You can get out on paper—land a good job, even one y...

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Sep 04, 2025
“Do you do any intellectual work at all anymore?”

Dear Reader, On Saturday, I went to a small party with people I’ve known casually for years but rarely see. When we all first met, I was doing my PhD in history. Fast forward 15+ years: One of us is a tenured professor, and almost all of the other fo...

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Aug 13, 2025
What to do after breaking up with academia

Dear Reader, If you’re letting go of academia as the guiding framework for your life and career, welcome. What do I mean? Well, education is good! Critical thinking is essential! Research is awesome. Writing for others is a gift to the world. What's...

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Aug 11, 2025
Still love your students? You can leave anyway

Dear Reader, I want to talk about something that comes up all the time in my work. Quick reminder! Today I’m hosting a live tour of my PhD Career Clarity Program at 1:00pm Eastern / 10:00am Pacific / 6:00pm UK. Sign up for the tour Consider the follo...

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Aug 07, 2025
Your PhD dissertation can help you get a job

Interview with Jen Harrison, dissertation coach and owner of Read.Write.Perfect. I met Jen Harrison a few weeks ago and we had a great conversation about the challenges dissertators face. One of the topics that came up was how folks can better levera...

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Dec 12, 2022
What are informational interviews?

Thanks to my friend Jennifer van Alstyne for this fun conversation about informational interviews, why to do them, and how they can supercharge a PhD job search. Read the full interview on Jennifer’s website (“What Are Informational Interviews? With...

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Sep 26, 2022
Want to apply to industry jobs for PhDs? Read this.

Recently, I was reading advice about how to apply for industry jobs for PhDs. It got me curious about how folks were defining “industry” in this context. I had a sense in my mind that “industry” referred mainly to STEM PhDs working in research roles...

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Aug 25, 2022
Are you a sellout if you leave academia after your PhD?

Guess who is the featured guess for the launch of season 4 of the Papa PhD podcast? Yup, that would be me. I’m episode 190. (It’s about time, eh! 🤣) Thanks to David Mendes from Papa PhD for hosting me on his channel(s). We talked about my career jou...

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Aug 01, 2022
Network as an introvert without doing anything icky

Are you an introvert? If so, you’ve probably wondered how you can network as an introvert without doing anything icky. A lot of PhDs identify as introverts. I do! I am definitely introverted. Introversion can be a strength in an academic environment,...

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Jul 11, 2022