Recovering Academic

I appreciate this podcast and its honest take on the reality of leaving academia. As a humanities scholar who just made the transition away from academia, I do wish the podcast included more voices from outside the sciences. It's such a necessary conversation, particularly in our current social and political climate and with the realities of higher ed today.

I appreciate the podcast shining light on some of the big and little difficulties of leaving academia. It's helpful to have a wider exploration of what it means to make the leap. I wish the discussions would stay on topic more though. Sometimes the conversation drifts off into thoughts on dating and relocation that aren't relevant to the issue at hand. I find this especially inappropriate during interviews, when the interviewee should be the center of attention. Perhaps if the hosts had an outline with designated times to spend on each sub-topic the podcast would feel more coherent and be more successful in helping listeners. A little more time on sound mixing could also go a long way.

Love the podcast and the presentation of materials. Feels a lot like a support group for those who have left or are thinking about leaving academia. Lots of great information sprinkled throughout each episode. Because of the support group feeling each episode feels unstructured. Sometimes it seems like they lose the message and it gets hard to follow along and the point and actionable advice gets pushed to the last few minutes of the show. The sound design and mix are irritating. The intro/outro song cuts out abruptly rather than fades, the intros (and sometimes the whole show) sounds like they are recorded in an echoey cavern a mile under the surface of the Earth, and each of the hosts has a totally different volume/sound quality. Cleyde's volume is almost always on point while everything else fluctuates wildly, it's frustrating to be wrist-deep in work and you're suddenly only hearing a whispering conversation. With more attention to the sound issues I'd rate it 5/5 but the technical problems hold back a great show about issues few others are effectively addressing.

Ian, Cleyde, and Amanda have an excellent podcast about the transition out of science/academia. They talk about lots of important aspects of this experience. So many people leave science and not enough people are talking about it. Thanks to them for starting the conversation. Once I listened to one episode, I was hooked and binged a bunch of them!