Related, but with some aspects tweaked a bit. I've always wanted to be on the academic track and sort of assumed that that was all my advisors in grad school would want to hear. For me, it was not pretending to say so. However, I felt badly for friends who felt like they couldn't be up front about this.
Now that I'm on the other side I see this differently and have also since realized that my advisors could support other paths as well.
First, you want your students to be happy. It's pointless to get people in this field (or in your case in a location) if they're going to be miserable. We're talking about people's lives here, after all.
Second, I have personally also realized that just because people leave academia (or in your case decide to focus on teaching) doesn't mean that they have failed us (that being academics or research or whatever). It just means that they will be making important contributions elsewhere.
The question is whether you can assume your mentors to be reasonable in that way. Fortunately, their recommendations may be less important for non-academic positions (or possibly teaching jobs as well) so hopefully even if they can't be supportive it won't be to your preferred career's detriment.
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Posted by Turquoise Stuff to academicsecret at 11/16/2006 06:39:13 AM
