The Real World: Shangrila, Hades or None of the Above

John Barrow, Ed.D.
Counseling and Psychological Services

What can you do as you face the transition from graduate school to a professional career in the working world? Some of the following ideas may be worth trying or may lead you to more productive spin-offs in your thinking:

  • Think about past transitions you’ve encountered-going off to college or graduate school, studying abroad, etc. How were you affected? What were your areas of vulnerability? What helped you move through the transition successfully?
  • Do some reflecting about your life goals and values before you arrive at the new workplace, and anchor these firmly in your mind. Workplaces have a way of dragging newcomers into the flood of expectations that swirl around the institutional norm. If you want to involve yourself in a rat race, just make sure it is a race you want to run.
  • Don’t minimize this transition. Even though much about your new life may feel exciting to you, stress accumulates from welcomed changes as well as from unwelcomed ones. Consider the number of life events that are changing for you: a new job, a move, a change in residence, changes in social and recreational activities, changes in social support and maybe others. According to the Holmes and Rahe research of the 1970s, you are earning enough stress points to put you at risk of an unwanted health change. Planning and self-care are important.
  • Give yourself time to get used to your surroundings and make initial adjustments to all the new aspects of your existence before you expect yourself to feel as good or work as productively as you usually do.
  • Begin to establish some structure in your life once you are settled in a routine that fits with your new job and locale. Not everyone is an exercise person, but if you have enjoyed physical activity in the past, you might get a lot of benefit from locating facilities and beginning to be active.
  • Try to take the long view. You may struggle or have to work inordinately hard with some new tasks initially, but you will probably get the hang of it as you accumulate more experience. If you are a brand new assistant professor, you are probably going to spend considerably more time in course preparation during your first year or two than in any of the years thereafter. That can be hard to deal with when your time for research and writing is limited, and you hear the tick, tick, tick of the tenure clock.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask. This hint applies to everything from figuring out highly technical aspects of your work to finding a good gym, restaurant, or cleaners. This habit does not come naturally to the male of the species, but employers would rather have employees, even the male ones, ask for assistance or clarification than stumble around in the dark or try to fake it. Those of you going into academic jobs probably already know that the departmental secretary is usually the best source of information about almost anything.
  • Stay in touch with your Duke mentor and cultivate a mentoring relationship with a senior person in your new place of employment. Actually, there are some things that a more experienced professional colleague can tell you that the departmental secretary cannot.
  • Be observant of your ways of reducing your stress and be careful about self-medicating your anxiety or loneliness with alcohol, other drugs, comfort foods, internet browsing, or other substances that can have negative long-term effects.
  • Communicate with your partner or your own family fully about the challenges you are facing. Frequent check-ins are needed. In coping with a major transition, it is better to beat a subject into the ground rather than fail to discuss it at all (not that these are your only options).
  • Seek some counseling if your transition feels more disruptive or disconcerting than you wish. It may help you figure some things out and gain needed perspectives. Your health care package probably includes mental health benefits.