I NEVER PLANNED to become an academic. This is what I remind myself in the grim months after my doctorate has been conferred and the automated rejections won’t stop coming, first for the lecturing jobs, then for the residency, the scholarly journal, the post-doctorate. In my experience such barrages always arrive when things are desperate, by which I mean I am broke. Each unsuccessful application appears, to my convalescent ego and bank balance, like a snub to my very survival. Each position description includes ‘resilience’ among the ideal candidate’s desirable attributes. 

Like many young-ish writers, I conceded to postgraduate study under the misguided apprehension that a PhD was a comparatively dignified method of funding one’s first book. And if said book was a bust, well, at least I would surface three to four years later with a useless qualification. It’s difficult to pinpoint the precise moment during my seven-year candidature that the Stockholmian instinct kicked in, but apparently I started imagining that academia might also bestow me with a method of living.