Is academia a dead end?

We recently got this question on our weekly bulletin that sent me into an emotional spiral!

I could stay at my job and try to find some way to make it more interesting (by switching teams, switching companies, etc?) or I could fully commit to an academic life and pursue a PhD. Any advice for how I can think about making this kind of decision? Is it as simple as “just do the thing you like best”?

For those that don’t know, I have spent the last 6 years of my life studying part-time while working a VERY demanding job in Google. The goal was to leave my corporate job and enter academia full time. In November 2025, that is exactly what I did. I left my well-paying job, to do a PhD, full-time, self-funded, with no income.

I didn’t make this decision on a whim. I had a roadmap. I had planned and worked towards this, knowing full well that the academy is a volatile place, that funding is being cut, and that the future for academics is rather bleak. I knew the risks, and yet I felt confident I was making the right decision for me. I took the path of ‘doing the thing that you like best.’ Nevertheless, I questioned myself. There had been some voices in my head that made me doubt.

However something truly extraordinary happened in the last couple of weeks. In my pursuit of life long learning, through a number of different readings & art works that fell at my feet during my weeks of doubt and worry, my decision to return to academia was reaffirmed.

The first was one of my journal prompts, from How to Live an Artful Life by Katy Hessel, that I read out to members of Accepted Society during my ‘End of Week Reflection & Write’ session:

Find a way to revolt!

‘I always imagined I would have a life very different from the one that was imagined for me, but I understood from a very early time that I would have to revolt in order to make that life. Now I am convinced that in any creativity there exists this element of revolt’
- Leonor Fini

The prompt asked us to reflect on the life that you want to live, taking a moment to write down how it would feel to live that life.

I remembered that when I was in my Masters, I had written out a five-year vision. It encompassed me standing in front of a class on my first official day as a lecturer. I wrote about what I would wear, what my lecture would be on, how I would feel delivering that lecture, and the support I would have from my family and friends.

During the reflection in the writing session, I acknowledged that there were aspects of that vision that were no longer realistic, but those aspects were mainly superficial. My ultimate vision of myself was still the same. I still wanted to be delivering that lecture.

The second was an reference to ‘Vanishing Points’ by Barbara Walker; a British artist who creates art by obscuring dominant white subjects in Old Master painting through blind embossing, while highlighting the Black subjects by drawing them in graphite. The purpose is to remind us to resist looking at the ‘main event’ and see the narratives of those in the background. I remember thinking that

Just because society tells us we ‘should’ do something doesn’t mean we have to abide by it.

Vanishing Point 4 (Solimena) was the one I felt truly drawn towards. It shows a figure off to the left of the canvas, her body obscure and her hands lifting up a tray of heavy metal loaded with treasures. I felt myself in this figure because I feel that I have always existed in the background, pushing others ahead of me and doing everything I can to make sure others were comfortable, often sacrificing myself and my peace. This comes from being raised in an abusive home, and it comes from being told that you cannot do what you want to do because you are not good enough. Now in no way am I equating my, frankly privileged, experience to centuries of oppression and violence. But lately I have felt taken advantage of, and these are the immediate thoughts that came into my head when I saw that piece.

The third was this part of The Amber Spyglass, that I was listening to on my way home from university. This year I have been reconnecting with Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust series. Although technically a YA series, it has so many deep life lessons that spring forth from the magically plot, memorable characters, and exquisite writing. During a very pivotal moment in the final book, Mary, talks about how she left the church to become an academic:

“When did you stop being a nun?” said Lyra.

“I remember it exactly,” Mary, said, “even to the time of day… Well I don’t know if it was the wine, or my own silliness, or the warm air, or the lemon tree, or whatever… But it gradually seemed to me that I’d made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I’d spend my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn’t matter because there was the rest of the world to visit.
And then someone passed me a bit of sweet stuff and I suddenly realised I had been to China. So to speak. And I’d forgotten it. It was the taste of the sweet stuff that brought it back — I think it was marzipan…
And at half-past nine in the evening at that restaurant table in Portugal, someone gave me a piece of marzipan and it all came back. And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without ever feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It’s full of treasures and strangeness and mystery and joy. I thought, will anyone be better off if I go straight back to the hotel and say my prayers and confess to the priest and promise to never fall into temptation again? Will anyone be better for making me miserable?”
…
“Was it hard to leave the church?” said Will

“In one way it was, because everyone was so disappointed… they were so upset and reproachful… I felt as if something they all passionately believed in depended on me carrying on with something I didn’t.
But in another way it was easy, because it made sense. For the first time ever I felt I was doing something with all of my nature and not only a part of it.”1

I was crying in my car hearing this speech because I had felt all those things when I left Google for academia; shame at the disappointment and reproach of those around me, and feeling like I was letting my friends and family down. And for the majority part of this year, these feelings have persisted, gnawing at my insides as I have to navigate not having an income, as I run a business that supports those who like me are undertaking this hard road, as I manage a team who are attempting to make a name for themselves within academia, as I see many of my friends facing down disappointment day after day despite being incredible researchers, and as I see funding being cut for humanities departments.

But I also relate to that sense of thinking I was happy and fulfilled in my job. I have written a full series of this if you would like to learn more. In that series I liken falling in love with the feeling I felt in rediscovering my love for learning, for my research and the drive to do something with all of my nature.

So why do I still have faith? I have faith and hope because I do not see academia as an institution. In line with this wonderful article by Adam Walker: ‘The humanities are the last bulwark standing between us and [a culture that regards human lives as cogs in economic machinery and mere data points]… In a society motivated by power, money, accelerated convenience, the humanities truly are the last common ground to provide that exercise and vocabulary.’

There is always a practicality to be faced. We need to make decisions that work for us, our responsibilities, and who we are. For me, that decision meant forgoing the salary for the research skills that a PhD will provide. It means continuing to learn, write, research, and live a cultural and intellectual life. You don’t have to have a degree to live that kind of life. That life is made up of a pursuit of life long learning and academic community, which does not presuppose the holding of a degree in anyway. For me, however, the need for a PhD went further than just a piece of paper and a title. It was a revolt, it was a charging forth along my own path, a path that was not ‘the right one’. This was my visit to China, my marzipan moment. This was the way I could define myself against the corporate lawyer, who put everyone else’s needs before her own. This was my chance to reclaim for me, a life I had wanted, and still want.

For me, radical possibilities exist in academia, if we have the courage to take them. I will be delivering my ‘Radical Possibilities’ keynote at this year’s Accepted Society Symposium. Register here to see how we at Accepted Society are rewriting the narrative of academia.