Readers of Current will know Nadya Williams as our book review editor and lead blogger at The Arena. But she also spent the last fifteen years (following her Ph.D at Princeton) teaching ancient history at the University of West Georgia. In a moving piece today at The Anxious Bench, Nadya talks about why she is “walking away from academia.”
Here is a taste:
In July, I am walking away from a career that I have had for the past fifteen years. I am doing so willingly. After all, I am a tenured full professor. But to be a Christian and a humanities professor at my secular state university has become a call to suffer over the past two years. And words cannot describe just how burned out I am with online teaching–the main kind of teaching I have been doing for almost a decade now. There is no doubt, therefore, that my decision is the best one for me and my family at this point. As I told a friend recently, I am replaceable at work. I am not replaceable at home. Still, making this leap of faith—and that is what this feels like!—takes an emotional toll. Irreversible decisions are the most painful of all, especially when they involve issues of identity.
Arguably, few professions are as identity-engulfing as academia. This may be, at least in part, because of the significant time investment involved to get into this career. I spent a total of nine years combined acquiring first my BA and then the Ph.D. Even if I live to age ninety, this time of schooling will still constitute ten percent of my lifespan. And then there was the time, effort, and sheer luck that is involved nowadays in finding that unicorn of unicorns–a tenure-track position. The more we invest into something, the harder it is to walk away from it. And yet, as a number of articles over the past couple of years have noted, the “Great Resignation” has reached even academia now.
A number of recent studies have focused on analyzing the reasons for this trend that has now gained traction even among tenured faculty like me. But I am more interested in how this trend reflects the intricate puzzle of work, calling, and identity. It was comforting for me to realize that while I am leaving this particular job, my vocation remains the same.
I have come to realize that my calling is to love people and ideas. In this order. Of course, loving ideas means knowing how to love well the people who hold these ideas, because ideas (and books that grow out of these ideas) do not exist in a vacuum. This calling has manifested itself in my life so far in such tasks in different spheres as teaching undergraduate and graduate students for the past fifteen years, homeschooling my own children, writing increasingly more myself, and encouraging in various small ways the wonderful scholars and writers whose work I appreciate.
A God-honoring calling should be rooted in relationships, not in our career. We are called to these relationships, and they challenge us in this individualistic society of ours by not allowing us to wallow in selfishness or self-pity when things at work don’t go well. And so, I know that as I walk away from my academic career, I am still called to be a wife, mother, and friend to (hopefully) many. Most of all, I am grateful for the calling that I first felt almost twelve years ago as a daughter of God. And so, I am eager to continue to cultivate these relationships and serve other people in ways that draw on the gifts God has given me.
Will a new career materialize at some point? Perhaps. God can open and close doors, and both of these processes can be so much more spectacular than anything we could plan, if we were sole authors in the dramatic script of our lives. In particular, I am grateful for the doors that God has opened for me to write over the past two years. My first book will come out this fall. My second book is under contract and will be complete by this summer’s end. I have been grateful for the opportunity to write shorter essays and articles for a variety of outlets. And I cherish the intellectual labor I get to do at Current, where I am book review editor and also run the Arena blog.
But this writing, just like my soon-to-end career as a college professor, does not define me. It is merely another manifestation of my larger calling to care for people, to meet them where they are physically and spiritually, and to use my knowledge of the ancient world to speak something useful into this confusing present.
Read the entire piece here.
I resonate with many, if not all, of Nadya’s thoughts in this piece because I am also wondering if college teaching is still part of my vocation. I recently received my course evaluations from the Spring 2023 semester. My quantitative scores were good, but the qualitative comments from students suggested that I am not really connecting with my students, especially my younger students. I am by nature an intellectually curious person and I have always had a great passion to share what I have learned with others. This means that sometimes I talk when I should be listening. At 57 I have never felt more confident in my command of the historical material I teach. At the same time, I haver never felt more distant and detached from the students in my classes. It is hard to find students (although they are certainly out there) who share my love of history, humanities, the liberal arts, cultural engagement, etc.
Nadya’s piece today made me think more deeply about what I am called to do in the final years of my journey. I am on sabbatical during the 2023-2024 academic year. I am grateful to the administration of Messiah University for granting me time off to write. But I will also spend some of my sabbatical thinking about whether it might be time to let a younger historian–someone better suited to reach this generation of students–take my place.
Your personal reflection reminds me of William James’s confession, when he retired from Harvard and teaching in 1907, about what a relief it was to no longer have to try to interest young men in philosophy. It is fatiguing, to be sure, the rewards (in terms of inspiring others–and seeing it) are typically rare (though among James’s students were Theodore Roosevelt, George Santayana, W. E. B. Du Bois, G. Stanley Hall, Ralph Barton Perry, Gertrude Stein, Horace Kallen, Morris Raphael Cohen, Walter Lippmann, Alain Locke, and C. I. Lewis!) There are often long dry patches that can convince one it is futile, or that one’s own usefulness has been exhausted, and that it’s time to move on. I do believe, however, that students need the varying perspectives that come with exposure to a diverse facuty, age very much included.
John, stick around. The profound questions surrounding AI and when we professors can tell that real learning has taken place (in ourselves as well as in our students) will likely mean new educational models.
One such may well be a “teacher and disciples” experience where a small group of students (think “12”) spend immersive face-time with the instructor during a semester (with suitable administrative guardrails of course). They work on a project together. And it will be marvelous in the telling.
So during your sabbatical formulate a pilot and make it happen when you return, and not just for graduate students. You will not just read history, you will make some!
First, every blessing to you, Dr Williams, for this new chapter of your life. The bio at the end of your article is apt and impressive, but it would have been more than enough and quite wonderful in its own way if it had just said: “Nadya Williams is Nadya Williams.”
As to you, Dr Fea, I would, of course, not presume to know what is the best path for you to take in the years ahead. I do, however, want to remind you that the immediate reactions of students are not the best indicator even of their own experience. Many students come to value a course and see its remarkable worth only years after they have been graduated. When it comes to public lectures on campus, I often tell my students that if they go “your future self will thank you.” I know you don’t know who Mark Noll is, but just go and someday you will boast that you heard the great Dr Noll give a lecture. Someday some students from the academic year 2022-23 will boast that they were taught by Dr John Fea – and others that they were taught by Dr Nadya Williams.
Tim, thank you for your wisdom and kindness! We all continue to benefit from your sage counsel and encouragement.