What do you mean you don’t have a Plan B?
Diane Caldwell “What’s your ‘ Plan B?’” When do you stop pursuing ‘Plan A’ and turn to identifying options for your ‘Plan B’? Or is it too late to develop an appealing and viable ‘Plan B’? Our everyday reference to ‘Plan A’ for academia and ‘Plan B’ for the other, often less well-known world, is so natural that we hardly notice. But what are the implications of this binary way of thinking and conversation? And what do these mean if you think of yourself, or consider others to view you as, having invested in the first stages of an academic career? There can be many and varied reasons why you might consider ‘leaving academia’. Common rational reasons: you can’t uproot your life to meet the dictates of the job market; the intensity of the competition is too great; there are no reasonable professional development opportunities etc. In some of these cases, you may have an accompanying disenchantment with the subject or a desire (at least p...