 I'm very happy to welcome everybody to the session called Navigating the Inner Journey, and our speaker today is Charlotte Lindy, and I think you were probably able to read something about her in the announcement about this but I just want to say that Charlotte has known each other for a long time. I think we published short versions of our dissertations as articles in language and successive issues of language, and many many years ago in the 70s. Charlotte has a great, had a great title during her work which was socio rocket scientist at NASA. What a fine thing and I don't think they could ever find another socio rocket scientist to replace you. I'm delighted to introduce you to the LCL participants, and welcome Charlotte. Thank you. Welcome everybody. I'm so glad to see everybody and I, I hope that what we're going to talk about today is going to be useful to you. I'm going to just, I've color coded my my own professional journey, where the, the academic stuff is in blue, the running my starting my own business is in red, and green is various research institutes Institute for Research on learning, and then later NASA. So, what this means is I have a fairly wide experience in various working in various contexts I, I have not worked directly in industry, although I have done research project studying various industries including a ethnographic study of a major insurance company, etc. So, somewhat where I'm coming from. Next slide please. So, here's what I am up to. I intend to talk about the, the emotional and social aspects of this issue of linguistics outside the Academy. People who may be considering it. People are maybe early in their academic careers who are seeing it as a possibility. If you know people who are you know are definitely clear they are leaving the Academy. That could be students it could be faculty members who are also thinking of moving to non academic employment. What I know and what I don't know well what I don't know is very large, but I'm sort of in this context. I don't know that much about being a faculty member. I was always I was never a 10 year line faculty member so I have never in my life been to a faculty. So, some of what I say about faculty has to do with what I've heard other people say as I talked to them about these matters. I certainly know what it's like to leave an academic job and not and be uncertain not know what I'm doing. In terms of the experience of finding your way in the business context or finding a way to connect your linguistics work with, you know, with employment. I'm a sociolinguist by training and I've sort of slid into being an anthropologist I'll talk about that later. I know much more about that than I do about formal linguistics, because the relationship of formal linguistics to research institutes and corporations is very different. And I mean I know that from afar. I say also that I broadcasting here from Silicon Valley, which is a non existent place. If you look for it on a map it doesn't exist. But if I if I say I'm on Silicon Valley you, you will know where I am. If I say I'm in Redwood City, you will not know where I am necessarily and I've. I'm also speaking from being an absolute participant in Silicon Valley culture. And one thing I want to say. I find this. This is important. Anything I say will not be true for everybody. You know, even, you know, even something that I take as completely obvious as navigating the journey from academe to something else is emotionally fraught. I have come across a few people who say well no it wasn't, or no it isn't. So, don't think that I'm you know as I describe various emotional responses, don't think that you that there's something wrong if you if that's not what you're feeling. This is not, you know, this is not required. It's just something that I often see. And then finally, what I'm going to try to do is talk through one or two slides, you know on a topic and then try to take a few, a few questions. I'm what I'm talking about as an inner journey as you know as you as you're doing the work of finding your way to a new career, or for faculty members who are trying to assist their students do this journey. I mean, there is inner exploration as well as the practicalities and I'm very impressed by the attention that this conference is giving to practicalities. But there are some very existential questions that come up, like, who am I, am I a success, am I a failure, how do I know. Am I still a linguist if I leave the Academy. And does that matter. I'll come to all of these later. But that's what we're going to be talking about. Okay, next slide. Okay, so fear. For many people, not everybody but for many, many people there is a great deal of fear involved in that that point of transition or that those years of transition. For me, I, I have a memory of I was a visiting assistant professor at the University of California Berkeley. I was on a one year line. There had been some talk that it could be extended but it wasn't. And I remember in the spring break, sitting in a friend's living room. And suddenly realizing I have no idea what I'm going to do next. And I was so shaken I went and sat in the corner and cried with terror, because I really felt like I was sailing off the edge of the known world. I mean, different people may experience this differently, as I said for some people. Not at all. But the majority, there is some variety here involved. And I've bolded this next one because I think if there's one takeaway that I want you to that I that I hope will be useful for you in this talk, and that it will be a takeaway is how to deal with fear. So, first of all, it is absolutely reasonable in this situation to be a fear to be afraid. This is a big life change. It may not have been how you expected you expected your life was going to go. So you are not being neurotic or incompetent, or you know whatever kind of self blame you might turn it into don't. Absolutely normal and in fact, a somewhat intelligent response. But then the next thing is on. Don't be afraid of being afraid. Don't try to get rid of it. Just carry on while being afraid. And let me stop here and ask a question. Any questions. Comments. That would be good. Objections. Have a question. Please. So how do you. You're saying like don't be afraid of, you know, the fear, don't, you know, feel bad about it. But sometimes I feel that fear can kind of be a stopping point for a lot of people like it kind of stops you from doing the things that you actually want to do so how can you push past that fear that, you know, ignore it or anything like that because a certain amount of fear is healthy, but actually kind of like work, I guess, alongside your fear and not let it stop you from doing what you want to do. I think you just answered your own question. And I love your metaphor. Thank you. Yeah, I think. You said it work alongside your fear. I mean the worst thing to do is to try to push the fear away to try to not feel it. Because that gets you so tangled up that you really can't. I mean that's paralyzing if you're trying to say I am not afraid when you are. That doesn't work. But you know if you, if you acknowledge it. I'm terrified. I mean what what I find what finally happened with me sitting in the corner of my friend's living room, feeling like I was sailing off the edge of the world is that I eventually the thought entered my mind. Well, something will happen. And I don't know why exactly that was consoling but I was able to get up and cook lunch. And, you know that's true something will happen. I'm seeing a lot of comments in the chat I'll take a look at them. Well okay this is wonderful. Okay, a lot of people saying hooray. It's good to be talking about this that's not you just made me very happy. Someone says, I try to turn my fear into motivation. That's Natalie. I'd be interested to hear how do you do that. Natalie do you want to say another thing something about that. Sure, let me see. It's, I don't know if I do intentionally, but the amount of energy I use towards dealing with fear or the anxiety that I get. I look back and look at it from a different perspective and take all that energy that I use. Turn direction and motivate me what am I afraid of. So the things that I'm afraid of maybe I can tackle those things, or whom I comparing myself to. That's a good one. Yes. That's great. You're reminding me of actually the best advice I, I training I got in fear which was from my mother, who, I mean I remember this in high school. You know, she would ask how are you. You know, I'm, you know, I'm scared what are you scared about well, I have this geometry final, and I'm really scared about it. What are you scared about freight on my fail. Okay, what's what's the worst thing that could happen, I would, I could fail. Okay, if that happens, what will you do. Well, I guess I'll just have to retake it in summer school. You know, can you do that. Yes. Okay. So I mean that that training and what's the worst thing that can happen. And then, if that happens how will you, how will you deal with this. Okay. There's a great question in the chat that's gotten some responses some wonderful responses already but I'd like to share it. Please would like to share out. Do you let me know, but she asks how to deal with other people's fear on us or on yourself. For example, she names parents being afraid. Yes, yes, prospects. I'm sort of dumbstruck which is kind of a reflection of my own experience first of all I was a cross country. My parents didn't know quite very what I was doing. And I think they were terrified but they also didn't load it on. So, I mean, I think one thing would be do you have a plan B. You know, if I, if I can't make some kind of spectacular jump into a very profitable startup. What's plan B. You know, that's that's certainly one thing that that's the best I can do. My hope is that the LCL is going to present you with enough examples of other things you could do besides being a professor that you'll be able to talk to your parents and say, I'm in the midst of making decisions. I have just been presented with so many options. I'm trying to weigh which direction to go and how many of them I can pursue at once. And these are just real money buys. What a good idea. Okay, so going on in the chat there's an interesting point about fear might come from outside us and be pushed on us and maybe if we become aware we don't have to internalize this Kelly Evans. Thank you. That's also, that's also a good point. And I think I'm going to put that off until we talk about identity. Because I think that will come up again. Great, great questions out loud and in the chat. I think we should move on just in the interests of time. Next slide please. Okay, so I want to talk here about the kind of a kind of uncertainty that happens when you are thinking about making a transition. And the, the academic career has a very well marked out trajectory of, you know, stages that you know you, you go to college you go to graduate school, you know you know that you know the stages of graduate school, then either you get a job as an assistant professor or you get a postdoc. And then you go through and you, you know, you, you have to go up for tenure within seven years or whatever your university is etc, etc. And the stages are very, very, very well marked out. And many other ways of making a living don't have this kind of structure. I mean, I think as, as academics, or people who certainly been up that ladder. We sort of think that that's how things are structured. And that isn't true. I mean, there are, there, you know, there are certain kinds of informal structurings or rules of thumb about to count yourself as a success. You should have made so much money by the time you were 35 or things like that, but they're not official. And so just thinking about this structure matter on, think about the difference between a career and a job on, which I only really discovered in my 40s. You know, I was working with a colleague at a research institute who had a very strong sense he was also not in the academy but you know very much publishing and networked into the academy at a research institute. I mean, he, he would be talking about, well, I've had an, you know, I've had an opportunity to give a keynote address at this conference or lead a session at this conference and which one will be more useful for my career. And I was, I was stunned. I had no idea of managing my research career like that. And, you know, as I was talking to him, I realized my parents were both working class my father was a machinist. My mother was a secretary. They had jobs. There was no trajectory you know you, you might quit a job or be fired from a job and get another job and one job might be better than another, but the real binary was, I have a job I don't have a job. And that's very different from a career which has stages and success and failure and how do I manage it. How do I network it. And, you know, I mentioned this partly because there are a lot of class implications that are so subtle that you know you don't necessarily consider them. And, you know, think also about even. I should correct that slide. What's the difference between a job and gig work. So you know we have other, you know, all of these situations of precarity, you know, also have to do with with uncertainty. Now, one of the things that trajectory is good at is letting us know how we're doing. Am I where I should be at this stage in my career. Am I a success or failure. I'm going to leave the last bullet and come back to it but I'd like to see if there are any questions or comments about this one. Yes, please. Who is this. My name is way. Oh, hi. So we're talking about the difference between a career and a job, big work. Are you trying to make the point that some of them are better than others and like they do rather future or do you think they're just ways of making a life. That's a very interesting question. I mean, it, I would say it has taken me a long time of a very unstructured career of bouncing around from here to there. And over nostalgia for this the structured nature of the Academy. And I mean I, there was a there was a while when I couldn't really say you know, that's pretty stifling. You know, I, I'm looking forward to adventuring because I was afraid that it was going to be sour grapes. Now, I really feel like I kind of I like somewhat less structure, but that's me I'm not saying that that's true. You know, it I think it's really more like, I want to identify these issues for you so that you can see what your own response to them is or if you're talking with somebody else, what their response is. You know, and see which which fits you. I mean there's also this wonderful, I didn't put it on here but this wonderful concept that musicians have of this is my day job. Okay, which means I make money from it so that I can go to the blues bar and perform at night. And that's what I really care about and, you know, a day job can be better or worse but it's not what I'm really about. I was certainly thinking exactly that, that it's the creatives who take gig work in order to pay the bills, when it's their, their creative work their writing their music their art, or something like that. And really, their passion, but they know the economy won't support it. And so they get a job or gig work to help support their habit of creative work which is where their heart is and their identity is. I mean, I will say I have published two books, and the number of articles, which were not paid for by the work that I was doing. And the articles were the books were passion projects and I, you know, I had, I had jobs that didn't mind that I did it on weekends, or they might be even proud of me afterwards but they certainly weren't paying you to do it. So they know then that I say well okay, if this is a day job, is it a good you know is it functioning well. Okay. Yeah, is there something besides success or failure. I think I'm going to leave that one for now I think I think we'll come back to it. Next slide please. Okay, big topic, identity. And I can say very personally was, you know, in that same time of terror that I told you about. I was negotiating with NASA to do a project they wanted me to do was a wonderful project that was on some of the problems in the cockpit during aviation, commercial commercial aviation accident some of you may have seen this work where there was nothing wrong with the plane, and there was an accident so something must have been gone wrong at the communicative level. So we had decided they wanted me to do this and I was, I was trying to go through the contracting process with them. I was not, I was not attached to a university. So I didn't know where to run the money through and they said, so the biggest lie that has ever been told to me in in my professional life. Start your own little company. It's easy. I'm getting the right response from Nancy who knows what I'm what knows what I'm talking about is not easy, but I was, you know, in the in the course of trying to set this up, I was also trying to figure out who am I. Definitely, you know, am I a business woman. Am I, you know, I hadn't come up yet with socio rocket scientists, you know, am I a mad scientist. Am I a female mad scientist. What do the female mad scientist look like. So we're walking along one day and thinking I need as soon as I make my first little success. I need a lab coat, raw silk, hand tailored in Italy lab coat, to express who who it is I am and maybe then I'll know what it is. So I mean this is a silly story, but it, you know, it's an externalization of this question of well who am I, I, you know, I used to think I was a linguist. When I was in graduate school I was so intoxicated with linguistics that you woke me up at three in the morning and said, What are you. If you said who am, who are you I probably say Charlotte but if you asked me on what are you, I would say I'm a linguist and very proud. And then came the, at some point to say well, am I still a linguist. You know, if I start running my own business, taking on various consulting work taking on work contract work from NASA, learning how to do the books, etc. Am I still a linguist. Nancy and I have had some wonderful arguments about this. You know, does it matter. Nancy is working very hard Nancy and all everybody involved in this conference are working very hard to convince the, the LSA that, yes, these folks are still linguists. I mean, sometimes I think it is sometimes I think it matters sometimes I think it doesn't matter on one way it certainly matters is, if you have research that you want to continue to do. I mean one thing that says I am still a linguist is. Well, I'm publishing. And that's sort of like I am taking a turn in a long conversation of other linguists in linguistics journals. And so I'm, you know, I am still a linguist, but why else it might matter. Personal branding is so tricky on. Okay, here's a comment in the chats. I was going to come to this issue of personal branding later but I think I just want I want to say here to agree yes it is so tricky and it's not clear how true it is. I recommend that you read Ilana versions work on personal branding. It's also not clear that it's what actually gets people jobs. And it's a it's a tremendous amount of work so if it's not useful, you're putting in a lot of identity work for not very much outcome. So, let me talk about some identity issues for professors remaining in the academy. You know why, why is this an issue to you. Well, you should know something about I mean I think any anybody in the academy who was here already is trying to do that find out what your students may be facing. You may be considering a career change of your own. You may be facing identity issues or ethical issues about being a professor. Sort of as you look at what the job market that your students were trained for and then the job market that they face. I will say for myself I consider this an unjust system where you have if you've got graduate schools pumping out PhDs. You know, any given university could put out in a year, more PhDs than there are academic jobs across, you know, say the entire country, and that's been going on for decades. I consider that an unjust system. And for a professor that means you mean in some sense, you're working in an unjust system and how do you, how do you handle that. You know, to have responsibility. Without an off without authority in an unjust system. It's a very difficult position. So this there's this very frequent advice about, you know, managing your professional identity or your brand is, you know, is something that's frequently offered. And in a sense, the story I told about my friend who was managing his career and he was, you know, he was well along in his career but he knew that. Or I mean, he believed it was true. And he acted according on what my frequently offered advice is is on. It is, it is definitely important to have some sense of what your identity is. I mean, when, during the time that I was starting my own business, I was also writing my book on life stories so I, you know, I had a meta interest in how you tell stories. For a very brief period, when I got very dogmatic about life stories. I said, you know, these are constructions, they're, you know, they're social constructions and I don't want. And so I for a couple of months I tried to have, you know, with my, you know, my friends and my former, you know, colleagues and fellow graduates and I tried not to have a story. And that was a complete bust. I mean, if you don't have a story, other people will give you one, and you probably won't like it. So I came to the conclusion that well I, I need to have an identity, a personal professional identity. But don't don't believe it 100%. I think it's when you start to believe your own stories that it gets, it gets very sticky. You know, at the same time you don't want other people. It's, I mean, here's a little story about different cultures. When I first started this business of starting my own business, I was living in Berkeley. And when I said I'm starting my, you know, I'm starting my own consulting firm in Berkeley, people thought that's an euphemism for oh you're unemployed. Then I moved to Silicon Valley. And I was having my hair cut. And, you know, with a nude hairdresser who wanted to know what do you do. So I'm starting my own consulting firm. Oh, that's great. You know, you look Packard started in a garage. So it was like the, you know, one place knew how to support the identity that I was trying to create the other one didn't. And they're 40 miles apart. Exactly. Any questions. In the chat here. I will also say that I had an identity change kind of forced on me by the outside culture that somewhere about 20 years into my professional career. I was publishing. And I noticed when I said I three years in a row. I submitted abstracts to the LSA. And they were, they were rejected. I was also submitting abstracts to the anthropology association I was never rejected. So after a while I thought well maybe I'm, you know, linguistics has gone a little bit this way I've gone a little bit this way. Maybe I'm an anthropologist. And then it turned out when I moved to NASA. And at that time, I would be introduced. If I said I'm a linguist, they would think formal linguistics pie yes robotic, you know, robots and communication which is totally what I don't do. If I said I'm an anthropologist and I, you know, I work on work on issues of institutional memory, which for them meant knowledge management so I would call it knowledge management. And I'm getting very interested in NASA's culture they said oh boy do we need you. So it's like okay here I am definitely an anthropologist. So that that was very interesting it was like the world shifted a little bit I should have shifted a little bit I shifted into another world. I have you know I have a an identity which is now useful. And they're the one that I had before isn't working. So that's kind of interesting. Next slide please. That's it. That's it. Okay, you did a perfect time. Somebody asked me a lovely question in the chat, which was what is associate rocket scientists. And that's a title I totally made up. And I used to use it in speech, but I wanted on my business card and I couldn't figure out how to punctuate it. And eventually I was talking to a dear friend. Who, who gave me the punctuation which is socio rockets with an internal capital. I mean I wanted to say I'm a social scientist working at NASA. And furthermore, they made me pay for my own business cards. So I thought okay, got to pay for my damn business cards. I can give myself whatever title I want. Very Silicon Valley of you I must say. But yeah, that's a, that's another story about about managing identity. Exactly. Joti says, how does, how does anyone ever get or have money for a startup. And that is a very complicated question, and increasingly ritualized in Silicon Valley. You know, in terms of what the stages are and what is angel funding and what is venture capital funding. There are people who start things on Patreon, or go fund me. I actually, I don't know very much about it. But I am sure that there are people who do. Okay, so, Neda says academia pays little linguistics departments pay least this bother you as well. I hadn't thought about it because I it's been so long since I've been paid by an academic department that you know it hasn't it hasn't come my way but yes I mean I think it's a. It's another example of what's happening to liberal arts and social sciences. So it bothers me and that in that way says my personal fear is how to get request benefits. I'm afraid of speaking out about a chronic disease. That's a hard one. Let me let me jump in for one second and we should. This is a topic that can get taken up in office hours or in some less formal gather session but let me say this in the US, you are protected while you are interviewing and until you become a employee and you don't have to reveal these things at the point that you get offered the job. Then is the time that you get to say I need the following accommodations. Okay, and whatever those are I can only work four hours at a stretch. I have to be able to have my own food cook properly I need this extra equipment because of my disability, but you don't have to reveal those things until a job offer is made to accept it. Thank you. Other countries will differ. So, you know the rules about disability or any kind of health issues are revealed later, but I know a lot of people who have corporate jobs when they would like to have a startup job, because they have some kind of a disabling condition that needs very fancy medical insurance. Joseline had her hand up. Hello, nice meeting you thank you so much for your talk. My question is about your social rocket science. Do you just what I'm picturing is that you maybe watch or listen to recorded interactions and then analyze them. Is that what you do or can you explain a little bit of. Well, I mean, I first, I mean I first got involved with NASA as a consultant. And it was exactly to do with the transcripts of aviation accidents and, you know, analyzing them for labor contractual reasons, I could not get to hear them. So it was, you know, quite frustrating in that manner but I know I was just looking at what are patterns. So, you know, later when I was brought back when I came back to NASA. I was brought by a friend who I had previously worked with in another job. He was a computer scientist in the computer in the computer science department at NASA. In Mountain View, and he had gotten used to working with social scientists so he did the work to get a slot to bring me over. And there. I mean I worked on various things. I mean I feel like what my real job was was wherever I found myself to say things like what about the people. Like, we're designing a mission or, you know, I was on two or three different committees to help redesign the replacement for the space shuttle. And, you know, my job was to say, you know, in, you know, find the places where we're not. Not thinking about the people or talking about documentation of missions. You know, well, you know, we'll just save all of the doc, the internal documents for the mission. Okay, but this is a mission that lasts 25 years where you know we're flying out beyond Jupiter. Do you think people will still be able to read word documents 30 years on. So I mean it was all over the place. So there's always going to be Craigslist. Okay, I think we are. I think we're at time. I appreciate your willingness to come and open this topic for us. And I hope this is not the last conversation like this that we all have. Thank you.