When your identity and your institution don’t quite match
The goal shouldn’t be to become what the institution wants. It should be to build a career where your identity and your reality can finally meet.
A few years ago, I sat across from a dedicated mid‑career academic who looked utterly defeated. Not because he wasn’t performing. Not because he lacked talent. But because he felt that he was working incredibly hard but it wasn’t getting him anywhere.
As he talked, something became clear.
He wasn’t burnt out from workload. He was burnt out from misalignment.
He said, “I feel like the things I care about most aren’t the things that get recognised here.”
And I remember thinking: There it is. The quiet tension almost every academic carries.
The tension between who you are and what your institution rewards.
He valued time for deep thinking, meaningful collaboration, and empowering students. The systems he was working in valued speed, visibility, metrics, and outputs.
Neither was wrong. But the gap between them was slowly eroding his confidence and joy.
So I asked him a question I now ask often: “If the university disappeared tomorrow, who would you still be as an academic?”
He paused. Then he smiled the first real smile of the conversation. Because for the first time in a long time, he was thinking about identity, not performance.
That moment changed everything.
Once he could name the tension, he could work with it:
He found pockets of the university that valued what he valued
He reframed his narrative so his strengths were visible
He stopped saying yes to work that contradicted his identity
He started designing a career that felt like his, not one he was trying to survive
And the most surprising part? His performance improved. Not because he worked harder, but because he worked in alignment.
Academics don’t burn out because they’re weak. They burn out because they’re trying to thrive in a system that doesn’t always reward what they naturally bring.
The goal shouldn’t be to become what the institution wants. It should be to build a career where your identity and your reality can finally meet.