In February, a big change arrived. My wife, who had been working as a research scientist at the University, had been asked to apply for a job at a major ag biotech company.  Word got out about it, and that led to another invitation to apply at another company. Both applications led to interviews. When she got the offer for a job in North Carolina, 1250 miles away, we had to do some serious thinking. If we didn’t want to live apart, one of us had to make a change. Our first plan was to see if the job offer would create an opportunity for a faculty job for her in Lincoln, either immediately, or within a few months. Our secondary plan was to live apart temporarily until she could come back to Lincoln. After all, I had tenure, and it would be crazy to give that up.

As the weeks went by, I kept thinking about it. Was it so crazy to give up tenure? Why was the thought so scary? Most people don’t have tenure in their jobs, and they get by just fine. As I thought more about it, I began to see that it was fear holding me back. Tenure had become golden handcuffs. I decided that I did not want to live in a place of fear. I decided that I would break the handcuffs and go to North Carolina with my wife.

My lack of active grants actually worked out for the best in this situation, as I didn’t have commitments to graduate students, postdocs, or funding agencies. For my teaching duties, there were other qualified instructors waiting in the wings, and I helped facilitate them taking over my classes. I could leave with minimal disruption.

To be honest, it wasn’t exactly a clean break. My wife didn’t want me to outright quit my professor job, and I wanted to allow a margin of error to go back in case it didn’t work out for us. So, I took a leave of absence for the next academic year, and headed out after the Spring semester ended in early May. As people I knew found out I was leaving, most of them assumed I had gotten another professor job. When I said I hadn’t, they asked me what I was going to be doing. I don’t know, I would answer honestly. I’m going to look around and see. Almost nobody understood. They seemed uncomfortable, embarrassed for me, and sometimes I got the feeling they thought I was a loser. Other times they reacted as if I had told them I had a fatal illness and only had a short time to live.

When I got to North Carolina, I began going to networking events. I met a lot of people who asked the standard question, “what do you do?”. I’m a professor, but I’m looking for new opportunities. Again, with most people it did not compute. Especially with the graduate student and postdoc age people. One person asked me why I would want to abandon a dream job that so many people wanted.

It was a fair question, to be honest. But, it wasn’t framed quite right. It is not that I wanted to abandon the job, just that I was willing to. I had enjoyed my time as a professor, hopefully made an impact with my research, teaching, and service, and helped some students advance their careers. But now that I began to think about other options, I was ready to try something new. 

One thing I had been doing at the University of Nebraska was teaching a scientific writing course and running a student/postdoc learning facility called the Scientific Writing Lab. I was really enjoying learning about scientific writing, teaching it, and coaching writers. In my last semester, I learned that there are actually jobs for scientific writers! I began applying for some, then interviewed, got an offer, and accepted. On July 1st I took the job as a scientific consultant/grant writing specialist.

Six months later, I can say it has been an awesome experience. I work with small business and startup company clients who are developing all kinds of amazing technologies. Helping them develop their ideas and seek grant funding has been every bit as intellectually stimulating as being a professor. I get to use my analytical and logical skills to help them tell their stories, my mentoring skills to help them prepare grants, and my scientific writing skills to help them write their proposals.

What does the future hold? It’s still a bit uncertain, but I’m enjoying the consulting and grant writing work and I can see doing it for a long time. Being a full-time writer is intense, fast-paced, and stimulating. At the same time, I still enjoy teaching scientific writing, and I’m looking at a few different ways to keep that going. This blog is one of them.

The other strange thing for me about this year was that it was my first year since I was six years old that I didn’t have a one-to-two week winter break. I had been a student or employee of schools or universities ever since then, until 2019. Oh well, welcome to the real world!