Vocational Guilt

I think about this quote from Emily Henry’s Happy Place a lot. 

Because it embodies exactly that kind of shame and fear of disappointment I embodied when I left my PhD credentials behind and started a new career writing on the internet.

If you want to trigger me (I mean is truly piss me off), you would ask the question ‘But you don’t really need a PhD to do what you are doing now?’

I could pretend for a second here that I am a full blown adult, and take a deep breathed pause to think of my rebuttal.

(first of all, about the AUDACITY of this question)

For context, I quit my biomedical engineering job one and a half years ago to pursue “something with writing”, as I described it to my then coworkers. It landed me in a place where mostly I write short form social media posts for companies and individuals, I interview and write highlights about researchers and I document the journey of becoming an introvert creator from a scientists with no online skills in this very newsletter you are reading now.

This should be my happy place. So why am I so triggered when sometime actually asked me that audacious question? Am I wasting everything I have worked towards in my life?

Vocational guilt is described as the shame of feeling like you're "wasting" your credentials by not using them in the expected way.

I can make up a lot of twisted stories about how academia (and industry) traumatized me so much that I never, ever want to suffer under bad management ever again and started my own solo business. Tough luck! But I bet it’s not the first time that you hear that “Entrepreneurship is a trauma response.”

Academia is paradoxically isolating: everyone's working on something different, so you're largely on your own when it comes to understanding and solving your problems. You either develop strong problem-solving skills fast, or you get crushed under the weight of the failures of your own making. All of this to say: I am not surprised that PhD’s can make for good entrepreneurs once they realize that they can live their potential permissionless.

It all comes back to this: My PhD is giving me the freedom of CHOICE. Having worked all the way from a graduate student with no self-confidence to a PhD student with a strong survival instinct and battle scars gave me the confidence that I can figure things out. And if this doesn’t work out? I have an academic title I can fall back to (and we academics really believe in our titles, degrees and certificates).

And as of today, one and a half years in, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Friend, Doc, lost academic: you don’t need to be doing something closely related to your qualification if that makes you unhappy.

A happy freelancer is better for this world than a miserable biomedical engineer.

Keep up the audacity,

Laura