Paul’s finishing up his PhD in ethnomusicology. After he returned from fieldwork in Turkey, he started working in the private sector. His work is fascinating!
I have to admit that despite this, I had a naïve view of academia and thought that it was simply an extension of grad school. The closer I got, the more I realized that it is not, and that I was less interested in the reality of being a professor. I wanted academia to be a society of people who are devoted to scholarship and who were genuinely interested in talking about ideas from morning until night. It very rarely lives up to this ideal, and despite my attempts to make this happen, I quickly became somewhat disillusioned. As I got closer to looking for work, I found I was more interested in looking for something that is closer to this ideal outside of academia. I still have not found it, but I fully believe that it can be captured, albeit only for fleeting moments, anywhere. Academia does not have the monopoly on interested people doing interesting things.
Read Paul’s full Q & A on my University Affairs blog.