One of my favorite things to do in the morning is read articles from around the web; the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Chronicle, and Inside Higher Ed. In addition to those wonderful publications, I recently read through the summer edition of Faculty Matters, published by University of Phoenix. The theme of the issue was failure and how to overcome failure in your personal and professional life. With failure fresh in the air and with so much supposed failure in higher education these days (you can interpret that as you wish), I decided to reflect on my own failures.
Failure can be many things. In my own life, I have failed many times but the ‘big two’ were my first marriage and not being able to attain a professorship. The story behind my first marriage is old news; overly dramatic, and firmly in the past. Too many people have similar stories and there is no need to bore anyone with dull, tired details. My other big failure was my inability to get a professorship.
As a musician, my training was...humble. I went to a nice directional school for undergrad and a nicer school for my graduate work. I never attended an elite institution nor did I go to any summer music festivals that I now know are important for personal growth and networking. The first eight years of my musical training (four undergrad, two masters, first two years of doctorate) did not set me up for success or failure. My personal work habits and innate talent did not lead me to success or failure. I was just there. But then something happened, my doctorate took another ten years to finish.
Recently, a frustrated Ph.D. student talked about the pain of trying to complete his degree in the article “Too Far Along”. This article spoke to me because throughout the twelve years of my doctorate, I wanted to quit every other day. When I was in the throes of trying to complete my degree I was unhappy and obsessed; I was taking too long to finish, I was wasting money, I was getting older, the economy was getting worse, I had no retirement, higher education was struggling, music programs were getting cut, and most importantly, I should have done/completed [Enter Achievement Here] by my age. Living with so much angst was exhausting, counter-productive, and self-destructive. Slowly, very slowly, I came to realize the only thing that was standing in the way of finishing my degree was...me. If I wanted to finish my doctorate, I had to finish it; I could only blame myself.
After I had this realization came new found direction; I finished my penultimate recital and kept writing my dissertation while making the recommended corrections from my committee. On a side note, there are four recitals that are part of the Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Arizona and I had completed three of the four with only the Lecture Recital left (small dissertation). Part of my problem as an aspiring academic doctor was I did not know how to act, write, or be a doctor yet. Even though I had finally taken the responsibility to complete the degree on myself I still struggled, but I slowly started acting the part and finally finally in the twelfth year, after taking my comps over (they had expired), I finished my degree.
With doctorate finally in hand, I had another realization, I, along with my life, had changed.
This led me to my second failure, my inability to get a professorship. I should rephrase this, my unwillingness to go down that career path anymore. To get a professorship, I would have to come home everyday from work and practice a minimum of two hours for up to two years to get my chops back up and be truly competitive. Even if I did this there is no guarantee that I would get a professorship and even if I did, I would have to move my family to the job, somewhere in this great expanse of a country. I could not and still cannot do it anymore. I realized my degree journey had changed me so much that getting a professorship did not fit my life or career goals anymore. Now this change was subtle, slow, and at the same time it was so unexpected it hit me like a ten-ton truck. Part of my change came from the job I got at the University of Phoenix during the latter half of my doctorate. To be honest, working at University of Phoenix was about the last place...the last place I ever thought I would end up. Living in Arizona was unexpected; working as a staffer at a for-profit...unimaginable! This job was to get me through a difficult time in my life but years later with doctorate in hand I am still working in Online Academic Affairs; enjoying the work and living what I would call a lucky and blessed life.
Failure is not the end, it is a beginning. The failure of my first marriage forced me to grow and open up my mind to new ideas and people. The failure of not getting a professorship forced me to realize that my career path evolved into something different than I had originally envisioned. If you are lucky enough to get a professorship at a cute college or massive university, you have to find happiness or else you will spend twenty years being miserable not because of the job or the people, but because of yourself.
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