今天，我将分享为什么我退出学术界成为企业家并开始成功的业务。

一年前，我做出了不可能的决定将我的工作作为一个英语赛道学术教授辞职。这不是因为我在我的位置不满意 - 我一直没有一年多。

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这不是因为我缺乏在纪律中合作的惊人机会，我以前坠入爱河。这不是因为我希望更加惊人的同事或更多来自学生的参与。这不是因为我部门的令人疏远的期望或缺乏支持，以完成任期期望。And it wasn’t so much for personal reasons either, as I had the unthinkable luck of landing a tenure-track job in the same city where my PhD husband found work he loved in the field of chemistry AND where my dissertation research took place AND where all of my immediate family lives.

如果你不熟悉学术就业市场：那种运气不会发生在高度专业化的大学职位。从我开始我的师父的计划，我对我来说印象深刻的：你没有得到任期轨道和family和伙伴雇用的金额是多少和an opportunity to continue your region-based research. You will most definitely have to choose from among those desires, and hey, if you have to live apart from your spouse for a couple years and keep applying to jobs until you hopefully land in the same place, that’s expected and worthwhile, so dial down your expectations from the start. Getting that call on December 12th, 2014 with my dream academic job offer was one of the happiest and most surreal moments of my life.

那么为什么我在地球上我退出了学术界并留下了如此完美和不可能的教授的职位？将我带到学术界和作为企业家和小企业主人的生活的力量让我惊讶和喜悦。The universe’s calling for me to become a writing consultant–one who works with clients outside of academia at that–resounded softly at first, with a few neat client projects, and then grew louder over time as my professional identity expanded beyond the walls of the classroom.

For those of us inside academia–whether life-long professors or new graduate students–we understand that what we do is not just a job. Our scholarship and disciplinary knowledge become increasingly part of our identity as professionals, community members and human beings. We believe strongly in what we do: in the value of analytic thinking, historical study, pedagogical insights, creativity and communication with other scholars. By the time I began work as an Assistant Professor of English, my professional identity was tightly bound to the disciplinary knowledge of the field of Rhetoric and Composition. I was my research. I was my writing. Taking a different path–like working constantly with people outside of my discipline, outside of the university–seemed not only impossible, but sacrilegious. For starters, I felt immense guilt about the personal sacrifices my new colleagues made in order to hire me–the campus visit dinners, the other amazing scholars they could have hired, the many other interviews they held before choosing me–and the impossibility of entering back into academia after choosing to leave, all made my decision to resign that much more complicated and heart-wrenching. On top of that, within academia, entering the corporate world is not so subtly deemed “selling out.”

在我有痛苦之前，我首先要摔跤，所有关于企业家精神和企业系统的纪律假设我都深深的内化。这是我倾口交流戒烟的关键部分：它已成为我专业身份的核心部分，以限制我的工作范围，将其工作的范围限制在那将受益于学生，而且因为我很幸运能够成为一个投资于社区参与当地社区的领域。然而，由于我的咨询业务继续增长，并且我与我努力的跨学科客户继续感谢我的努力，我的项目继续激动并挑战我，我开始质疑专业培训的学者是否可以在大学之外茁壮成长。

我们的纪律的见解可以更广泛地分享吗？通过我们的学术出版物，可以在我们自己的纪律吹动中深入了解有多少影响？我们如何全面研究对故事的力量，语言的社会构建，语法选择的影响，以及思想的组织都对从未听说过弗朗西斯培根或彼得肘部或贝尔钩的观众？超过8000万美国人每天早晨醒来，在私营部门工作。我们是一门纪律吗？我们的见解是否影响他们如何讲述组织的故事？他们如何表达他们的知识？他们如何合作和互相沟通？

我退出学术界并辞职的主要原因是因为我希望探讨大学超越大学的修辞和组成的纪律知识的价值。在咨询三年之后，除了教学和研究之外，我知道在私营，公共和非营利部门的私人，文档开发和组织讲故事中存在一种需要。我发现对我来说，将我们的专业知识翻译成作者和研究人员是我遇到的最具挑战性的，有益的工作。（如果你好奇地了解这份工作对我有什么看法，请查看我们的技术讲故事项目或者我们的工作美国退伍军人事务部。）

我不干了学术界的第二个原因是因为我wanted to creatively build my own economic future in a way that is not possible under the auspices of employment–whether by a university or an organization, corporate or otherwise. As I commuted home from my university during my last days as a professor, I frequently thought of Robert Frost’s now almost-trite poem,“没有采取的道路”：

“我会用叹息态说

在某个时候和年龄段：

两条道路在木头上分歧，我 -

我花了不少旅行的人，

这使得所有的差异。“

下降一个欠绘的道路要求未知的独特激情和饥饿。看三，五，十五年作为一名教授，这条路似乎是非常可预测的。是的，学术洞察力和出版物和合作都会追求，都是令人兴奋和未知的，但是工作的本质我将表演 - 教学大学生，写作学术出版物，管理书面课程 - 对我来说非常可预测。虽然我知道这是禁忌在学术界谈论资金，但我觉得大学教学的经济效益同样限制。我知道未来十年的每年可能会在50-60克之间进行，除非我从事行政工作，我很兴奋，并制作几千。理解这种薪水是一种令人难以置信的祝福，特别是当如此多的MA和博士学位在远远时期都是颠覆的，远远少的福利，我很激动我的收入和其他人收入的收入和其他人的收入令人兴奋有一天雇用。（更新！自写这篇文章以来，我已经雇用了四个全职写作顾问。了解更多关于我的Powerhouse团队的专业作家！）

虽然企业家精神肯定是令人羞化和不太可预测的经济上，但到目前为止，我的咨询经验教会了我，额外的创造力，额外的承诺和出色的表现可能导致立即和高度有益的金融成果 - 最终影响我如何度过我的时间，我可以通过亲自的社区工作，并成为雇主自己。让窗户进入创建咨询业务的潜在财务和社会影响，最终给了我所需的信心，我需要做出难以决定离开学术界的难以决定。这是一年的内部摔跤和与我最近的知己谈话。(Having two babies within two years also contributed to my decision, since flexibility in time and the ability to work from home felt even more important to me as a new mom. If you’d like to hear more about motherhood and work, watch my video on用新生儿运行一家小企业。）

如果您还有深刻的愿望来翻译外部受众的纪律解知识，使广泛的影响和建立一个独特的经济结构，通过它来提供您的专业知识，开展业务可能是对您的正确决定。Independent consulting is often a great first step–or even a rewarding add-on to your academic career (so long as you work within your university’s restrictions and put your students first)–as it allows you to gain experience articulating the value of what you can provide as an expert writer before taking the leap to working it full-time. I worked as an independent consultant (aka sole proprietor) for three years before deciding to become an LLC and build a company that could create jobs for other amazing writers.

What I’ve found is that, despite the lack of scholarly articles on the topic of consulting and the palpable tensions around corporate work within academic circles, there are many scholars out there who are taking “alt-ac” (alternative academic) paths and becoming entrepreneurs or small business owners. Because the work of building a business is new to most of us trained in the Humanities (and not in MBA programs), I’d like to conclude by sharing some of my favorite PhD entrepreneurs who are running successful consulting businesses. Get inspired by these creative academics or former academics who are making waves in the corporate, government and non-profit sectors:

其他鼓舞人心的学者变成了顾问/小企业主人

If you liked this article and want to know more about becoming a writing consultant or starting your own small business, you should definitely加入我们的社区！！我们分享有关企业家精神，思想领导，公共知识分子主义的咨询和文章。加入我们的社区（免费！），您将成为第一个听到新思想，文章，课程，Thinktanks和研讨会的人。对于我来说，我们追求Alt-AC职业生涯的那些令人难以置信的是，我们可以共同努力，以与我们的学科价值一致的方式表达并传播我们的知识。随着Daveena Tawber挑战我们，不仅让我们不仅追求学术界的替代品，而且还扩大了我们对成功的定义。

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