Chris Blattman

Chris Blattman

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The cruel optimism of the ambitious professional career–An incredible essay on quitting

A career in academia or law or business or any other face-paced, race-to-the-top profession exhausts and exhilarates at the same time. Keguro Macharia is a Kenyan-born academic who has decided it’s time to get out of the fast lane.

He writes from the perspective of an outsider and a scholar, but the existential question will be familiar to many more:

I am leaving the United States, resigning from my job, and moving back to Kenya. As I have been trying to narrate this move to those who have known about it—over the past year—I have wondered about the partiality of the stories I was telling. They were not untrue; they were simply not what I really wanted to say, not what I permitted myself to say. In the most benign version, I have said that I cannot build a life here.

…Most often when I talk about building a life, I have meant something closer to saying that I cannot imagine—or desire—a life here. And this, it strikes me, is a much harder thing to confess. After all, the academy tells me what I should desire: tenure, full professorship. Indeed, the academy provides at least a 20-year plan: undergrad, grad (10 years); tenure track through tenure (5-7 years); and if one is on a fast train to somewhere, one can achieve full professor within 5-7 years of achieving tenure. All of these come with immense benefits, and because of immense luck, I have been in a position to benefit from what these might mean. Being located in a research institution provides privilege and access: from here, the gaze is always upwards. Were I more conceited, I would say that my momentum is steadily propelling me upwards in what might be very rewarding ways. Given this scenario, why quit?

I’m not sure this is “the life” I want to imagine. I worry about any life that can so readily be “imagined.” Where is the space for fantasy, for play, for the unexpected, for the surprising?

…We are trained to hang in, hang on, hang together. This, after all, is the lesson of graduate training. “It will get better,” we assure students who struggle to learn. We are so definite. Were we more honest, we would say, “it might get better,” “perhaps,” “maybe,” or, simply, “we don’t know.” Instead, we say, “there are no guarantees, but.” And that “but,” that barely uttered, barely hearable “but” carries so much weight. Everyone wants to hear the “but.” Everyone invested in the academy is always hearing the “but.” We are a community organized around “but.” Lauren Berlant calls this “cruel optimism.”

It is a superb essay–a must read. h/t @zunguzungu. Also, Macharia blogs and tweets.

His words bite. I remember a summer after my first year in grad school, working in rural Kenya alongside a cluster of ridiculously hardworking, intense academics whose names you would all recognize, thinking, “I do not want my life to be like this”.

Fast forward 10 years: I’m not sure if I was simply socialized by the PhD and my peers to change my preferences, or if I simply grew to love my work like a vocation, not a job. I think a little of both.

Either way, I am now the living caricature of what I once maligned. More days than not I love it. But the temptation of quitting–or at least crossing to the slow lane–never goes away. All I will say for now: not this year.

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  8. Thanks for posting this. Would love to read the full essay – can you provide a link to the full essay?

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