An appropriate introduction to this piece vexed me for some time. But let’s begin with music. Join me in recalling the chorus of a twenty-teens anthem: Hello from the other side.

Few readers will have seen my name in academic circles of late. After receiving a PhD in musicology in 2013, I published one article, adjuncted for a few years, took several editorial contracts, and then opted to pursue a career in coding. For years now, I’ve referred to this series of events as my “divorce” from academia. Why I left academia is a tale for another time; suffice to say that commitment to the poverty and mayhem of life as an adjunct quickly lost appeal. Thus in 2016, I entered one of only two nonprofit coding schools in North America and emerged on the other side employed in software development.

If that sounds like a wild, borderline impossible shift, I can assure you that it was not easy or psychologically kind (i.e., debilitating imposter syndrome for several years in the tech world after my switch). But now, five jobs and nine years in, I have secured a role that aligns with my academic background. I work for a digital-services company embedded at the National Archives and Records Administration, a facet of the US executive branch charged with the preservation and documentation of historical records.

What does it take to make such a career transition? I have by now served on numerous hiring committees and am often sought to run them. From those experiences, I can say that the primary exercise in an “alt-ac” shift—into tech or other professional sectors—is rebranding. And the most painful truth is this: Outside academia, no one cares what you know, only what you do.

Rebranding the Skills You Already Possess

Before you can rebrand, you have to realize what you’re selling. In the era of “move fast and break things” corporate culture, musicologists—and humanists broadly—possess three superpowers that are vanishingly rare in the professional world(s) I have seen thus far.

The Ability to Sit with Ambiguity: Many folks in the corporate world panic when there isn’t a clear “yes” or “no” answer. Humanities academics spend years sitting with incomplete archives and conflicting interpretations. In a corporate setting, being the person who calmly confronts the murk makes you a leader.

Systems Thinking: Musicologists understand how minute signals—a single accidental in a score or a footnote in a manuscript—can change the entire trajectory of an argument. This is exactly how complex data systems underlying corporate structures work. We arrive already trained to understand how small parts collide and how they affect the whole.

The Translator’s Ear: Humanists are professional translators of jargon. Whether you are teaching music theory to a freshman or presenting a technical roadmap to a CEO, the skill is the same: funneling deep expertise into a short blurb for someone who doesn’t (yet) speak the language.

The Psychological Shift

The next hurdle is psychological, and I’d be remiss not to mention it here: loss of control. As an academic, you are the primary investigator of your world. You decide which libraries to visit, which arguments to make, how to run your classroom. The corporate world does not work that way. You will have agency, but almost never control. Projects are canceled for reasons that have nothing to do with their quality. Priorities shift overnight because of a budget meeting you weren’t invited to. Metrics or timelines change because an executive doesn’t want to upset a board member you will never meet. To succeed, you must accept the chaos. You needn’t welcome it, but you must learn to navigate its waters.

Résumé

A successful rebrand also requires rethinking the construction of a résumé. This becomes fraught because no one outside academia wants a CV of the kind most academics use (keep yours up to date despite this). They want to see two pages, maximum. Moreover, musicologists’ training focuses on the “what”—conferences, publications, grants, titles—but in the broader professional world, people hire you for the “how.” In a résumé, your dissertation should not be framed as a forthcoming book; it was a multiyear project you managed independently that involved budget oversight, international copyright logistics, and complex data synthesis. You didn’t just “teach”; you designed and delivered training programs for diverse audiences under strict deadlines. If that sounds cringe (and trust me, I realize why it does), wait until you see what’s next.

Networking

The word feels dirty, a betrayal of one’s academic lineage or the institutional standing backing one’s prestige. But on the other side, networking is just a word for curiosity. It isn’t begging someone for a job; it is reaching out to people whose titles you don’t understand and asking for fifteen minutes to find out. People are happy to talk about themselves, and these conversations are how you learn the language of your new world. Think of it as field research for your new life.

Acceptance, Not Defeat

And finally, we tackle what to many of us will be the elephant in the room: Leaving the traditional academic path is not an admission of defeat. It may feel like defeat. You may go through periods of telling yourself it is because defeat is the précis you can slap onto the transition to help make sense of why it was necessary. I cannot tell you that a “divorce” from academia will be simple or painless. Deciding to leave, however, does not equate to losing your skills, your knowledge, or your soul. I do not view my time in academia as a failure, nor would I trade that training for something else.

The world outside the ivory tower is noisy and frantic, yes. But it is also vast. And it desperately needs people who know how to listen, to notice, and to respond as closely as a musician does. Musicologists are often taught to be keepers of the past, but we are also uniquely equipped to be architects of the future. For anyone considering the move, I’ll see you on the other side.