Who gets to think about purpose?

The role of privilege in life transitions

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

If the wind is at your back

And you never turn around

You may never know the wind is there

You may never hear the sound

–John Gorka

I grew up in a logging and mining town in rural Montana, and I can’t recall ever hearing about someone quitting their job. The main reason people I knew found themselves looking for work was because they had been laid off. Several family members who once were loggers have spent months away from home working as oil roughnecks in North Dakota or as far away as New Mexico or Alaska. And they’ve been glad for the work.

This is part of what comes to mind when I think to check my privilege. No one I grew up with used the term “resign.” In my family, you finished what you started. If you didn’t, you had chosen to quit. That way of thinking is hard to shake. And I can’t write about my own career transition without imagining someone from my hometown giving me side eye. What are you complaining about?

But checking my privilege is more than that. As DeEtta Jones explains, it’s useful to reflect on the structures and cultural attitudes that benefit us even without our knowledge. Whether it’s Peggy McIntosh’s Invisible Knapsack, this thought experiment by Ijeoma Oluo, or a song like John Gorka’s “Ignorance and Privilege,” we can all try to see beyond our bubbles. One pattern that has troubled me as I’ve perused the literature on burnout is that intentional career change seems to be the ultimate marker of privilege. 

Consider this eye-popping stat from “On the Verge of Burnout,” a 2020 study of faculty well-being: 35 percent of the faculty surveyed said they had considered leaving higher education entirely. That figure rises to 55 percent if it includes those considering early retirement. The same study notes that those most impacted by higher workloads, disrupted childcare, and other causes of burnout are women. Intersectional factors, such as race, sexual orientation, and disability intensify stress and financial precarity. Which means that those who have the best reasons for leaving academia (or any demanding career) are often those least equipped to make the change.

Nearly everyone I’ve interviewed about leaving academia has relied on a partner’s income through the transition. Kelly J. Baker acknowledges this privilege in Grace Period (2017), her chronicle of leaving higher education. Jonathan Malesic, author of The End of Burnout (2022), might not have resigned a tenured faculty position in Pennsylvania if he could not have followed his wife’s career to Texas. Certainly I’d never have considered resigning if my wife’s business had not been doing well, and I’m sure some of my colleagues were thinking Wish I had that option. 

It’s one thing to change jobs when you’ve already landed the next one. I’m talking about leaping into the unknown without employment. Opportunity favors those with more professional connections, more resources for services like therapy or life coaching, and the luxury of time without financial stress to really think through next steps. On all of these fronts I count myself privileged.

But money isn’t always the first obstacle to contemplating a career move. I was a first-generation college student and paid my way through school with a mix of federal grants and loans, scholarships, and summer employment. My professors largely looked like me, never discriminated against me because of my social class, may have favored me because of my gender, and mostly shared my default setting of heteronormativity. Nonetheless, landing a tenure-track job and earning the full rank of Professor felt like a life that I’d claimed against the odds. No one else in my family could say they’d done the same. It was hard to give that up.

How much harder would it be for someone who earned tenure by overcoming systemic racism or homophobia to decide to give that privilege back? For a woman who had endured sexist remarks in every batch of student evaluations and more demands than her male colleagues for unpaid labor? For someone struggling with a disability who had fought ableism in their institution and felt a responsibility to advocate for others? 

Tenure is privilege. A lifetime contract. For people with historically marginalized identities, tenure signifies membership in the very institutions that once excluded them. Now I fear that tenure could work to the opposite effect by trapping people in oppressive circumstances. Not merely because they can’t afford the financial risk of leaving, but also because the job can be a symbol of progress in inclusivity. A point of pride. As William Pannapacker notes, institutions often exploit the idealism that draws faculty to higher education. 

My own sense of purpose as a professor drew heavily from my background. I liked working with first-generation students, especially those from rural areas, because I could reach them. One of my chief rewards was tracking their transformation from awkward first-year students to confident seniors. Resigning my job felt like abandoning them. I can’t imagine how much more difficult it might be for a colleague who represents diversity that was absent from their own college experience. BIPOC faculty bear heavier advising loads and feel more pressure to contribute to invisible labor, such as serving on an inclusivity committee or supporting student activism after hours. Yet resigning a job also means giving up a seat at the table where policy changes happen. 

How do you know when a job’s tradeoffs outpace its benefits? Many contingent faculty gamble on institutional affiliation being worth lousy pay, because it might help land a full-time job in the future. As The New York Times recently reported, adjuncts are sometimes denied financial compensation altogether. Even tenured faculty begin to wonder, after years of nothing but cost of living adjustments, how financially privileged they really are. 

No matter how much any of us might say that we care about purpose more than money, compensation is a form of respect. When pay feels disrespectful, it erodes purpose. A colleague who has taught for twenty years at a private university told me recently, “I’m in my 50s, and I make what some of my students will make their first year out of college.” That reality is even more galling for faculty who feel that they can’t turn down unpaid labor without being penalized during tenure and promotion decisions, but also know that service counts for less than publication in those formal reviews. 

I’ll never forget an email many years ago from a female colleague who served with me on a major committee. She had also accepted appointments to two other smaller bodies that we called councils. We were trying to divide up committee work in a group thread, and two male colleagues demurred, exercising the privilege of knowing they would not suffer reprisals for saying no. My colleague and I were assigned extra work by process of elimination, and she retorted in the email thread, “I can’t believe I’m being paid less to be more effective!” Her words capture the injustice that many feel after conquering inequity for a seat at the table, only to discover more of the same in inequitable workload and compensation. 

That some of us are beginning to weigh these realities against other priorities, such as our children’s wellbeing or our own happiness, ought to be cause for celebration. But I’m mindful of the work I left behind, since I know someone else will have to do it. Will the person who fills my old seat really have a chance to ask themselves, as a life coach might, how well their values line up with their work? Or will the demands of the job, combined with the pressures of representation and financial precarity, silence the question altogether? If those who get to think about purpose – really think about it – are those who already have the privilege of saying no and the safety net to follow through, then unpacking the Invisible Knapsack reveals how little has truly changed. 

Photo by Joana Abreu on Unsplash