Podcast #2: Lisa Munro: Academic Writing, and Life After the Ph.D.

TRANSCRIPT:
Eric Hermann [EH]: Welcome to Publish Not Perish: Rules of the Road for Academic Writers.

I’m happy to be joined today by Lisa Munro. Lisa is a writer and the founder of Merida Collective Writing Project, which provides academic editing, coaching, and online writing classes. Merida also holds writer retreats in exotic locations—more about that in a minute!

Lisa earned her Ph.D. in Latin American History from the University of Arizona in 2015. And for the last couple of years she’s been making the transition from full-time academia to running her own business.

How’s it going, Lisa?

Lisa Munro [LM]: I’m really well. Thanks so much for having me.

EH: In your blog posts, which I’ve really been enjoying, you’ve been very honest about the struggles you’ve gone through in academia—particularly with regards to the difficulty of finding an academic job. This is refreshing to many people, as so many of us are going through the same struggles. Can you talk a little bit about your experience and what life’s been like since finishing your Ph.D. in 2015?

LM: Sure, absolutely. I think right now the research shows that the academic job market isn’t improving. When I was on the academic job market in 2014 and 2015, people used to tell me, “oh you should keep trying. You should keep going keep sending out applications.” But I think the research has been showing that those jobs just aren’t there anymore. You can spend a whole lot of time and money trying to get an academic job, but the reality is that you probably will not, which is sad for a lot of people.

So, I think a lot of people right now who are getting PhDs, particularly in the humanities, are going to have to start doing something different. They’re going to have to start looking for non-academic jobs. If you look at the research on where most people who get PhDs and up, a lot of people end up in non-academic fields. And the stories of people who have gotten those types of jobs are often really helpful.

Leaving academia seems really difficult, but a lot of people end up in really good situations. There is definitely life after academia.

EH: One of things you help people with in your business is making the transition from academia to a new career. What sort of emotions to people tend to have as they are making this transition? And how can they help themselves to move forward more successfully?

LM: people really struggle with this. I’ve said it on my blog before: If you’re leaving academia, and if you’ve been through graduate school for 7 or 10 years, and if you thought getting an academic job was going to be the end result, and if you did everything right but didn’t get that job, it feels like the worst breakup of your life. It’s awful. It really does have so many emotions attached to it. There’s a lot of grief involved. There are those recognizable five stages of grief. There is a lot of shame, feelings of failure and regret.

Some people think, “oh my God I should have done these things. I should have tried harder.” So I always tell people one of the things you have to be prepared for is that feeling of total identity loss. You lost a huge part of yourself and your identity and it’s normal to feel lost and a little bit crazy for a couple of years. It’s normal to feel like you’re just wandering in the wilderness. It’s okay to be really sad about this.

Also, I think people can really help themselves by reaching out to other people and building a community of people who are also on these alternative tracks. We’re really stronger people together in a community, and I think it helps to have that support when you’re figuring out your next step.

EH: You’ve made this transition yourself last year when you made a decision to seize control of your career and life. You said that previously your goal was mainly to cope, but now you’re focused on thriving. What did you mean by that?

LM: Yeah, my transition out of academia has been one of having a couple of day jobs. It hasn’t been totally straightforward. It didn’t lead directly from academia into self-employment, and there were a couple steps in between. There was a day job I worked that I wasn’t very happy with because it didn’t feel really congruent with who I was and what I wanted to be doing in life. When you’re working a day job you need the money and it’s just something you have to do while you’re trying to figure out your next step.

But I got to a point where I thought, wait, what if I could do something different. what if life could feel better? What if life could feel inspired? What if life could feel exciting? What if life could feel engaged and creative? My present job wasn’t supplying me with those things and that’s why I felt like I wasn’t thriving, but just coping with this job. So, part of that change was thinking about how things could be different, getting very clear on what I wanted to do, and then taking real, concrete, actionable steps towards something new.

Every year I choose a focus word to direct my energies, and this year it was “thrive.” I’m done with just coping, and dealing with things in my life and feeling kind of bad about them. I really want to be thriving. I want to be joyful in the morning. I really want to be engaged as I can and like I’m really living my best possible life. And I gauge all my decisions against that.

EH: In the last six months or so you’ve made a major career leap. You officially embraced your “side gig” and decided to make it a full-time business. Tell us about that decision. What are you doing in your new business?

LM: So, the side gig really started in 2015 with academic editing. I was always that person in graduate school where everyone wanted me to read their papers to give feedback, and I always liked to write, so I thought maybe I can help people with this. I still do academic editing, and I enjoy it, but I thought in my new business, how big could I make it? What’s the maximum expression of my dream? What is this business really going to do? Well, I decided it’s going to do a couple of different things.

First, it’s still very much focused on helping writers, so it’s going to be incorporating writer retreats, online classes, and other things to help writers. Second, I wanted to make use of my knowledge of Latin America to help people do a little more critical thinking in their own lives. So I’m planning an experiential, educational trip around Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula to talk with people about the history of archaeology, which has been a big part of my academic research.

EH: And you gave yourself a very interesting job title: Director of Creative Cultural Inquiry and Critical Thinking Experiences. How did you come up with that title?

LM: So, the way the job title came about was that I was thinking about how to define who I am in this new business. Am I founder or president or CEO? None of those titles really seem to fit. And I thought, if I had the job title I really truly wanted in life what would that be? I decided I would want to be in charge of creating programs and experiences for people that were about understanding other cultures in other places while also promoting critical thinking. I joke, though, I’m going to have to shorten it for my business cards.

EH: Many people coming out of Ph.D. programs are rightfully worried about finding an academic job. They’re thinking, what else can I do with this degree? But it sounds like in your case, your academic experience really prepared for this next business and next career.

LM: Yeah, I felt for a long time like I was sitting in this weird Venn diagram or middle space. I was too academic for non academics and too non-academic for academics. I felt like I was kind of neither here nor there, neither fish nor fowl, and I thought, what a strange place to be!

But I started to think about my non-academic experiences, of which I have many. I was a Peace Corps volunteer, I worked in bilingual Medical Offices I went to Puerto Rico on a disaster mental health mission after hurricane Maria. So I’ve done a lot of different things in my life. Combining those with the academic work, which was more critical and analytical, I realized that I actually have a unique combination of skills. And so my business is the maximum expression of the middle part of that Venn diagram.

EH: I know you have a women’s writing retreat planned for July in Mexico. Tell us a little bit about this event, and your vision behind it.

LM: Well, I have a long relationship with Mexico. I finished my PhD in Mexico and I lived in Guatemala for a long time, so Mesoamerica is kind of my part of the world. I thought, maybe it would be fun to have a bunch of people come together to hang out and get some writing done in a community.

I think it’s really key to have community support while you’re writing because a lot of writing disfunction comes from the fact that people get lonely when they write, and they start to feel isolated. It’s just you and whatever you’re writing and the blinking cursor, and there’s a lot of pressure. Writing with other people is surprisingly powerful. It really does help people break through mental blocks.

So I thought, wouldn’t it be great to bring people to this part of the world that I really love and help them work on their writing here. I think travel is a really great way to see things a bit differently, and to have a new experience of life and a change in perspective.

EH: Why is the retreat for women specifically?

LM: This is the first retreat I’m hosting and I wanted it to be really small, so that was one consideration. But the other thing is that I’ve seen so many talented women academics struggle to feel good about their writing and to get published. So I wanted to build people up, to help people who are not feeling so confident about their writing, and I want them to write in ways that are engaged and confident and productive. And that issue seems to apply especially to women scholars and others who are not as well represented in the academy.

EH: You talk a lot about goal-setting in your blog. What are some of your personal and business goals for the coming year?

LM: My big personal goal is that I’m working on a book about the emotional challenges of the writing process. One of the things I talk a lot about on my blog is how emotions like shame really trip us up as writers, and how a lot of our writing disfunction comes from shame—that feeling that we’re not good enough to be doing this. And, of course, that’s not true. But it’s the story we tell ourselves. So I’m writing a book that’s partly about that, and partly about the role that’s emotions such as fear and imposter syndrome and procrastination hang us up as writers, and how we can cope with those things through connection and self-compassion in order to get to a more joyful place with our writing.

And then the business goals are to do more writing retreats and writing events. I’m planning a mastermind group for writers, a small group of people who are devoted to helping each other solve writing problems. And then I’m launching some writing coaching as well.

EH: Are these writing groups limited to academic writers?

LM: Right now I’m just focusing on because that’s where I come from, but I’m also working on non-academic projects. I have a couple of novels that I can’t seem to get done, so I’d like to have a really smart interdisciplinary group, or a group of academic and academic writers, who I can learn from each other and help each other to reach their goals.

EH: For academics out there who’ve gotten their Ph.D. but are maybe struggling in the job market, and having a rough time, what advice would you give them?

LM: I think one of the most important things you can do is to reframe your story. A lot of us when we didn’t get our jobs told our PhD stories as stories of failure, because it really felt that way. We felt like we had failed in the system when in fact it was the system that had failed us. One of the most important things we can do is to learn to tell our PhD story in a different way, in a way that empowers you, that really honors your academic experience. Then it also becomes a new narrative of rebirth and success. Eventually you’re going to get to a point where you’re telling your PhD story and it’s part of a broader story. That does sometimes take a long time unfortunately. Most people I know who have come out of academia say that it probably takes three years or so to create that new narrative.

Another thing that is critical is networking. If you’re an academic person and you have decided or feel like you have to leave academia, then networking is absolutely key. Network with non-academic people. Network with small business people. Network with government people. Network with people in your city, and with people in other places. Network your heart out because that’s the thing that’s really going to move you forward and open up a whole new set of possibilities.

EH: Lisa, where can people go to contact you, and to find out more about your writing retreats and other events?

LM: people can go to my website at lisamunro.net. And I’m always on Twitter, which is @llmunro.

EH: Lisa, it’s been great talking with you. Thanks for taking the time to come on the show.

LM: Thank you, I really appreciate your time today!