374: Writing Authentically and Choosing an Aligned Career Path in Academia with Dr. Leslie Wang

Your Internal Compass: Writing Authentically and Choosing an Aligned Career Path in Academia with Dr. Leslie Wang

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Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: [00:00:00] Have you ever sat down to write a paper and then you suddenly felt a wave of dread instead of excitement? Maybe you began your PhD program feeling curious, energized, and committed to your research and community, but somewhere along the way, the pressure to publish, perform and constantly prove yourself began to overshadow that initial spark and enthusiasm.

Maybe you're telling yourself that once you finish that chapter, pass your comps, defend your dissertation, or secure that coveted tenure track job, everything will finally fall into place, and still there might be a quiet question lingering underneath it all. Is this path aligned with who I am, and how I want to live?

Today we're exploring that question together. I'm joined by Dr. Leslie Wang, who is the writing coach, developmental [00:01:00] editor, and career coach. She helps scholars develop sustainable work lives and publish books that matter to both themselves and the world. Her work involves supporting authors in making values aligned decisions, so that they can write with joy and purpose.

Leslie is also a certified life coach, former tenured professor of sociology, and now the host of the popular podcast, Your Words Unleashed. In this conversation, we talk about values misalignment in academia, how to identify your internal compass, and what it means to write authentically while still meeting disciplinary expectations.

You'll hear about early signs of misalignment, how to approach career decisions with more agency, and practical ways to center your ideal reader instead of writing only for gatekeepers. If you've been questioning your path, your writing, or your definition of success, this episode is for you. Here is [00:02:00] my conversation with Dr. Leslie Wang.

Welcome to the award-winning Grad School Femtoring Podcast. The place where first generation BIPOC students and professionals can listen in on inclusive grad school stories and gain practical tools for sustainable success. This is Doctora Yvette Martinez-Vu, a certified coach, consultant, author, and speaker.

I will be serving as your femtor, providing you with insider knowledge to help you thrive in grad school and beyond.

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Grad School Femtoring podcast. This is your host, Doctora Yvette. Today we are talking about writing authentically and [00:03:00] choosing an aligned career path in academia. I'm really excited to have our special guest, so I'm gonna jump right into the questions and I'd love, love, love for you to let us know a little more about your background. I know that you were a tenured professor and now you're a certified life coach. You're also a writing coach, and I'm curious. What came up for you or what shifted for you when you made these transitions? What did you notice in academia that made you want to support scholars differently? And anything else that would be helpful for us to know about how you arrived at where you are now?

Dr. Leslie Wang: Lots of really great questions I can't wait to dive in. But first thank you so much for having me on your podcast Yvette. It is such a useful resource for so many people, so I'm really happy to be here. A little bit about myself basically I was in academia from the ages of 24 to 44. It was pretty much my entire adult life. I [00:04:00] started my PhD program in 2002 at UC Berkeley in sociology. I graduated in 2010. I was really committed to the tenure track path. That was definitely something that I was socialized to want in the program that I was in. So I did all the things. I moved to another country I moved from California, which I said I would never leave to Canada to do a two year postdoc, and anyone who's been on a postdoc knows that like you don't actually have a huge amount of time cause you're just always on the market looking for something else. Tried to start my life over there, but then I got my first tenure track position in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I moved there knowing pretty much no one. So I started , again, and within I think two or three months of being there I got my second tenure track position. I ended up moving to Boston, and I joined the sociology department at UMass Boston in 2013. So [00:05:00] along the way, I would say that I was just so deeply committed to doing the tenure track path, because I believed that at some point everything would click, and I would be really happy. And I don't know where I got that belief from, but I do think it's pretty prevalent in academia, the idea that once you find the right job everything is going to be resolved for you. Again, I poured myself into research, into teaching, into service. I was really trying to be a hundred percent in all the things. I published my first book. I got a contract for a second book, organized conferences, did all the networking. And there was this nagging sense of, Is this all there is for me? Because I don't feel happy yet. Like when is that gonna happen for me? So I just kept grinding, and anyone on the tenure track knows, it's just this grind, and you don't stop. There wasn't a huge amount of time for reflection. I didn't take a lot of time for reflection. But I was getting older. I [00:06:00] was in my late thirties. I was single, because I had followed my career really around the world for a decade, and I was like I want other things. I want a partner. I want a family. How is this all gonna happen if I'm only putting all of my time towards my job? All of those things at the same time that I was going up for tenure, where I started just having these doubts around, is this the job for me? Is this the profession for me? I can't distinguish the two, and I use this analogy a lot of feeling like you were in a long-term relationship with academia and I just felt like my relationship was not healthy, and I didn't know what needed to shift or if I needed to break up with it. So that spun me into this big identity crisis, and coincidentally or not I started a life coach training program the same time basically that I put in my tenure file. It was [00:07:00] for a very social justice oriented life coaching certification program in Los Angeles. So again I was living in Boston, but I flew to LA every six weeks for nine months, and it's where my family lives so I had a place to stay. It was a big commitment, but it was also this totally life altering experience where I started learning another set of skills that were very, I would say academia adjacent, but from a totally different lens. The first principle of coaching that I learned that I really love is that, everyone is fully whole resourceful. There's nothing to fix. It's not a deficit oriented model of thinking about human beings. It's really strengths based, and just trust based. So my first taste of that was like that's the opposite of academia where everything is always wrong, and it's [00:08:00] always how do I fix this problem? How do I do this thing? And once you fix the problem either by publishing something or doing something, there's often just a sense of relief as opposed to like true achievement. So I trained as a life coach, and I started coaching on the side, and really honestly, I would say for that first year and a half, I just took advantage of being coached by everybody around me, always around the same question of, is it my job that's the issue or is it academia and I are not compatible? It took me years to answer that question. I started coaching in 2018. I didn't leave the academy, I didn't leave my job until 2022, but in that time I really became convinced that I just was not aligned with the values of academia, and maybe I never had been, but I also didn't stop to question if there was a difference between [00:09:00] my own values and what I was seeing valued in the academy. It was like a coming into myself as a three dimensional human being, and not just a worker in the academy. Like I said I was a professor, but I was also coaching, and so I built up a pretty robust kind of side hustle that was just general career coaching, life coaching. It also had writing components to it. I realized though that one area that I really had something to offer was in book writing, because I had by that point, published two sole authored books with university presses. I felt like the whole process of publishing a book, especially an academic book, was really mystifying. There were no clear answers to anything, and I feel like everyone I know took a totally different path to publication or you just google things, and you just hope you can hit or miss find your way to a publisher. And so I was [00:10:00] like that's something I could do I could help walk people through a process of figuring out how to write in ways that feel good for them. They reach their goals, but also help demystify this process. And that's what I turned my business into which is called, Your Words Unleashed, also has a podcast, and that is my primary work as a coach is helping people write books, with probably, I don't know, 20 percent or so of my clients are just straight career coaching, so mostly faculty members. But really that was my story, and I think having been there, and done all the things, and seeing that it wasn't enough to make me feeling true internal sense of satisfaction was the real tipping point.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Wow. What I heard in what you shared is that, there was so much movement, there were so many transitions with that 20 year span of being in academia, [00:11:00] going from UC Berkeley to Canada, to Michigan, to Boston. That's a lot of different places to try to hopefully finally arrive.

Dr. Leslie Wang: Yeah

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And subtext of that, is that a lot of academics find themselves in a similar situation where they fall under this idea, this like false belief of the arrival fallacy, that one day I'm gonna get that perfect job, and then I'm gonna finally be happy.

Dr. Leslie Wang: Right

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: And for some of us, it just doesn't happen. I think at the core of that is that misalignment that you mentioned, and also that, you didn't have a lot of time and space to slow down and to reflect.

I find it so interesting, was it when you submitted your tenure file that you did the life coaching certification? Okay. Yeah, that you did eventually turn to that, because not everybody will make time and space for prepping for the next [00:12:00] step. And you did. That's a big commitment to fly every, what, six weeks to the other side of the country. That's a lot. And then you also developed your side hustle, and I hear that a lot from a lot of other, not just entrepreneurs, but creatives and just professionals that have portfolio careers, that we built something for ourselves on the side, and that then turned into something else.

And usually we build the thing that's missing, that is more aligned. So I guess I want you to say a little bit more about this misalignment, especially when it comes to your core values. So what are core values? How does it impact the individuals that you work with? I know that you work with a lot of women of color academics and other academics as well.

So how does it impact women of color in academia in particular, when they find themselves feeling misaligned? And then what are some early signs that misalignment is [00:13:00] happening?

Dr. Leslie Wang: I love this question so much, because I don't think this conversation was happening at all when I was coming up in academia. There was no discussion of values, because there's a conflation between individual personal values, and the values of the academy, to the point where I don't think, unless you stop and reflect, and do some of your own digging, you may not even know what values are. What do they actually mean? It's a very general kind of term. And so when I'm using core values, I'm really talking about like internal qualities or principles that make each individual person like the best version of themselves when they are fully present. So it's gonna be completely different for each person. And one thing to know is that these core values are consistent across your personal life and your professional life. A lot of times people will be like, these are my professional values. No, you have your values, and ideally they're consistent [00:14:00] across all areas of your life, so that you can actually show up as yourself in the different parts of your life, which is why it's really important to really dig into what are your values? And also if you are trying to ignore your values or you're unaware of your values, and therefore you take on the values of the academy, when you're working you can easily find yourself in a state of misalignment. Before I talk about that though I think it's important to talk about what I think the values, the core values of academia are. I think it's really around external measures of productivity, particularly around research output. So that relates to other things like getting grants, like getting the elite jobs, fellowships, like all the awards, all those things are very much valued, and then also conflated with personal value oftentimes, because people identify so much with their work and their ideas, there's no separation between the [00:15:00] two. And that also points to another core value I would say of the academy, which is a complete lack of boundaries between personal and professional life. So core values should go across the two but you're not supposed to be the exact same person in both places. And you're not supposed to be doing the exact same things in both places, but that's what we find ourselves in as academics. I definitely did. I would say that 90 percent of my social network, I was far enough into my job, was other academics. So, coworkers, colleagues, collaborators, peers, competitors, social support, and it's all tied in with work. I think that is something that the academy very much values. Now, I think saying that we can talk about, what does misalignment look like if that's not really what you're all about. If productivity is not the number one thing that you [00:16:00] care about, and I would say in having worked with like hundreds if not thousands academics at this point, not a single person has ever said productivity was their top core value. It's usually not in there at all. It might be things like achievement. It might be accomplishment, but that doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as an externally measurable outcome, right? It could be feeling like you are in a state of accomplishment all the time, and that often relates to other things like curiosity and learning and growth and wanting a good challenge. I would say that's a lot of what academics that I work with really value. They value putting in the work, because they enjoy it right? And not just because they're gonna be judged on it. Some signs of misalignment, and definitely I [00:17:00] found this to be the case for me, is feeling dread around your work, and particularly around your writing. When I was writing my dissertation it was all dread. It was like 95 percent dread and then 5 percent actually doing the thing, and it was actually mind blowing to me because I remember talking to a friend of mine, another grad student, who has gone on to be extremely prolific academic, and she had said to me, when I'm writing my dissertation, I just feel this sense of relief, like it's finally coming out, and I was like, oh my gosh, I feel the exact opposite. It's all bottled up, and I can't get it out. So there's like misalignment there. For me it was around perfectionism, and wanting things to sound perfect before they were ever on paper. Other signs can be like feeling resentment of your work, or resentment of things that relate to what you have to do for your [00:18:00] job. There's a lot of things that can be done about that but first you need to recognize that resentment is there, what's like the need underneath these feelings that's not being attended to right now? It can manifest as things like envy, jealousy, like I feel like there's this incredibly harsh comparison game that happens in academia, in part because everything seems so scarce. There's a real scarcity mindset at work. There's not enough jobs, obviously, there's not enough money to go around. Everything is being cut, therefore if you can rise to the top then you're like a salmon swimming upstream, and it's like the survival of the fittest kind of mentality, and I think that can really cultivate these deep feelings of insecurity that can be debilitating. I think all of that is signs of misalignment that something's going on there that is not matching well to the environment that you're in. And obviously I haven't been in every academic environment, but I [00:19:00] was in higher ed long enough to see a lot of trends, and it's pretty pervasive like people feeling like they're not enough. I think just recognizing sometimes that's part of the ecosystem of academia. It is set up that way. Higher education really benefits, honestly, from people feeling that way ,because they will go to the ends of the world to do the work, right? Now, does that benefit individuals as much is a completely different question. So, if you're feeling like you're in a constant state of dread, panic, anxiety, which will manifest in a lot of physical ways from insomnia to other conditions. That's probably a really good sign that there's misalignment, and it's time to take a step back and reflect on what are the things that you do value about your work, and the impact that you wanna be having through that work, and whether that's [00:20:00] possible sometimes in academia or if there's another path potentially, that could help you do all the same things with less anxiety or less insecurity or less stress. But I would say really if you don't attend to these early signs of misalignment, you will burn out. There's just no way around it, and I would say especially women of color academics or any folks from historically marginalized groups like first generation students, trans students, there's this additional layer of stress on top of the existing stress. And so I would say the biggest thing is to not personalize it by saying to yourself, it's me that can't hack it, but recognizing it's the environment that actually is cultivating all of these feelings in ,.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I know that it can be so hard to distinguish between your values and the values of academia when you're [00:21:00] immersed in it, especially because you mentioned the values conflation aspect of it, that a lot of folks just start to assume that those are their values as well. But then, if they start to notice the signs of misalignment, whether it's the dread or the resentment or the envy, I guess I'm curious if you have more to say about the process of finding their own internal compass and how to more confidently distinguish between what is their value and what are the values of the academy, because I know some of the values might overlap and some of them might be completely different.

Dr. Leslie Wang: Very true, and there's a lot of really good free values exercises that you can find online. Now, there's other ways to get to your values. A standard one you'll find online is just a list of a hundred different values, and then you use your gut to circle all the ones that feel the most aligned [00:22:00] with you. There's nothing wrong with that exercise. I think it's useful. I've given it to a number of different people, but I would say that's only the first layer of the onion, because a lot of times what people choose is what their conscious mind is choosing. So they will often circle things that are kind of on top of mind: Social justice, equity, diversity, and all the things. When I personally coach my clients, I take them through an exercise that is called A Peak Experience exercise, and it's really about reflecting on a time in your life when you felt your very best. And this could be from any part of someone's life. So sometimes they remember when they were six years old. It could be like two weeks ago. It doesn't matter. It could be from their professional life. It could be from their personal life. In having done this with so many people I would say, more than half the time it's actually coming from someone's personal life, and then they visualize this. They go into it. They relive [00:23:00] this period of time, however long it was, then we talk about it and we go underneath that memory to be like, what are the things that this peak experience of your life, out of all the probably hundreds of millions of options of memories that you have stored in your brain that stepped forward, and then we go from there. What values really come out of that? And it's often very surprising to people what comes out of that, because it's not gonna be the more obvious ones. I'm not saying that like social justice and equity are not people's values, that's part of their values, but there's other ones oftentimes things like beauty or like adventure comes up a lot. Discovery. Curiosity is a huge one. I would say probably every single person that's gone down the academic path, has a very strong curious child kind of energy to them. Of, ooh, like this is interesting. Let me follow the path and [00:24:00] see what comes up. And so we make a list of those values, and then they sit with those values, they really define what those values mean to them, especially if it's something like accomplishment and especially the word success. If you do not have a personalized definition of this word, you will absolutely take on someone else's ,and by someone else's I mean, the academy's definition. When I have people define success oftentimes it has nothing to do with outcome, and we really try to move away from outcome to process.

What does success feel like? What are the things that spark a feeling of success for you? And then that becomes something that's accessible on a daily basis, as opposed to, I will feel successful when my dissertation is done. I will feel successful when I sign a book contract, because that's not enough. And that's exactly what causes people to not celebrate those achievements, because then they get there it's deflating. I did all this [00:25:00] work, and now all I did was I signed this piece of paper. And that's what tenure feels like I would say to a lot of people. I worked so hard ,and what does tenure actually mean for me? Because I'm pretty burnt out and unhappy right now. So it's just more of this? There's like a precipitous sort of depression that a lot of folks go through after they reach these big highs if they haven't been cultivating a sense of accomplishment, achievement, acknowledging oneself all the way through. So you know that peak experience exercise can help you find that list of values that then you can something with, right? You can think about, okay, if I have a really strong need for adventure, but all I'm doing is sitting in my house all day long trying to write this dissertation, which is what I did and it was like soul sucking, how How do I bring a sense of adventure to what I'm doing? [00:26:00] Either through how how I'm doing it or what I'm writing. So that's a lot of what I do with my clients, is like we take the values and we start thinking about, how do we amplify these in the various areas that feel low in that right now? It could be in people's career if they're feeling dissatisfied, different ways to tweak or bring their values more into the different initiatives that they're doing. When it comes to writing it's also that way. How do we bring this value more into your writing. I would say nearly all of the women of color that I work with have a core value of community, and maybe reciprocity or interdependence, and that is very counter to the hyper independent nature of the academy. So how do you bring a sense of community into your writing when it's a sole authored thing? Writing groups, right? [00:27:00] Social support. Finding people to work with. Finding people to share your work with, and also like outside of work. How do you bring a sense of community to more of your life so that maybe that helps to infuse or balance out some of the isolated nature of writing? That's really how values I think are super important, because they are a guide. And not necessarily like a north star, like you're moving towards that thing but like a constellation, and can focus on different values, because some people really do feel pretty good about certain values, but lower in other ones. So it's like the ones that are low, how do we bring that number higher and not all at once either but like bit by bit?

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I resonated a lot with what you shared, especially the examples because a lot of the individuals I work with also share the core value of adventure and community. And then others that come up are [00:28:00] accessibility, creativity is a big one that comes up.

Dr. Leslie Wang: For sure.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: If you're looking for a workshop that helps your team work sustainably while still achieving meaningful goals, I'd love to support you. I offer interactive workshops on sustainable productivity, executive functioning and leadership development designed for nonprofit teams, higher education staff, and mission driven organizations.

These sessions focus on practical systems that help people manage their workload, protect their energy, and build leadership practices that center their long-term goals and impact. Participants leave with tools that can apply immediately, that include strategies for goal setting, focus, prioritization, and collaborative work cultures that support wellbeing and accountability.

Organizations often bring me in when their teams are navigating burnout, rapid growth or leadership transitions, and want a [00:29:00] thoughtful, values aligned approach to productivity. If you'd like to explore bringing a workshop to your team, visit gradschoolfemtoring.com/speaking to learn more or schedule a call with me at the link in the show notes.

I know that as folks are listening, they might be interested in getting some support with navigating their own transitions. I just wanna ask a follow up question around coaching, and coaching differences, because there might be folks who are still trying to figure out their internal compass, but there might be folks who are actually trying to figure out the next steps in their careers. And there might be folks who might be trying to figure out, how do I integrate my core values into my writing? I would love to hear more about, what does coaching look like, and how do you determine whether or not you need a writing coach or a career coach or a life coach?

Dr. Leslie Wang: Great question. I think similar with therapy, [00:30:00] everyone can use a good coach from time to time. And the times are when you're feeling really stuck. Usually it's you've tried everything on your own. You've done all the programs. You've watched webinars. You've read books and you still can't shift out of feeling stuck in whatever situation you're in. So coaching takes I think a countless number of forms because there's not a ton of regulation of the coaching industry. I'll put it that way. So while I say, I am ICF Certified, International Coaching Federation, most people are not, and they can call themselves coaches. There's no uniform definition of what coaching is, to be honest. I would say that the primary difference, I find from therapy, is that coaching is very future oriented, and moving you towards certain stated goals. That doesn't mean you're not gonna unpack some of [00:31:00] your childhood potentially, but a lot of times you won't, depending on what your goal is. So I would say the only way to really figure out what kind of coaching is gonna work best for you, is to meet a bunch of coaches. You kinda have to figure out what specifically would potentially be most useful for you, so for me, like I was saying I really help people identify and solidify their values and bring that into their writing, so that they can feel a sense of more satisfaction in doing something that is actually quite hard. No matter how ease useful it is. Other coaches are there to provide more of a accountability structure. So you meet every week, and you check in, and that sort of thing. And so each coach is gonna have their own flavor of what they do, and how they do it, and also what their beliefs are about it. I bring a lot of mindset, and I would say also spirituality, and this holistic kind of [00:32:00] approach to the work that I do. I'm not just a writing coach, I also give tons of feedback. I do a lot of developmental editing. Other developmental editors are like, I do zero coaching. I do not wanna have anything to do with someone's feelings. You send me your work. I talk about your work with you. For a lot of people that's what they want. They don't wanna be having like a one-on-one kind of heart to heart, deep conversation about what's internally going on. But obviously the people that are compelled to work with me, they like that. They want that.

I think the only thing you can do is, look around, there's tons of people out there now, and everybody pretty much offers complimentary 30 minute consultations, as I do. And you kind of date around. That's the only thing you can do. And you ask good questions. But I think before you do that read their websites. Read their social media posts. Listen to them on podcasts. Do that kind of work [00:33:00] first, because it's also just respectful to a coach's time, than if you show up and you're like, just tell me about yourself. So a little bit of research, and everyone listening is a researcher. So it can be really fun to do that, too, just to figure out, what might work for me and also what's my price point? Not everyone's gonna be in the affordable range, depending on where you are in your career. Can I do a group program instead of one-on-one? Can I do a self-paced program or do I need that kind of external accountability? So I think there's a lot of different questions, but if you have a sense of curiosity, it can be really fun to find a coach.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I also love that the relationship metaphor keeps coming up. You said, oh, date round. That there are a lot of options. There are a lot of different ways that people coach, and there are different areas of specialization, approaches, beliefs, et cetera. I'm glad that you distinguished that for folks, especially if they're considering getting some [00:34:00] support themselves.

I wanna turn our conversation to talking a little bit more about grad students in particular, especially grad students in PhD programs, they are conditioned to pursue the tenure track. They're conditioned to believe that the tenure track is the gold standard. And as we know, most people will not land a tenure track job. And even if they do, not everybody will stay, as we know, from your experience and many of their individuals who have made transitions to other careers. So I guess I'm curious how a graduate student can take more agency in the next step of making the decision to pursue different career options? How can they make that a more conscious decision, more values aligned decision, instead of just turning to the default? Because once again, the default may not happen for them. And I know [00:35:00] we both work with academics, and so many academics will internalize that as a form or assign a failure. I'm curious, just any thoughts you have about, how to support graduate students as they think about the next steps?

Dr. Leslie Wang: I think this is such an important question. I don't recall there being any conversations like this whatsoever when I was in grad school. I graduated a long time ago back in 2010, so I was part of that group that was indoctrinated into the idea that not only a tenure track position, but like an elite tenure track position with low teaching load, all research focused, was the gold standard, and everybody was striving towards that. I would say many people I know have achieved that, and hopefully you're happy with it. I just wasn't happy with it. In my program, leaving academia or not pursuing the tenure track, was absolutely laid in with a lot of shame and judgment. I don't think anybody talked openly about it at the [00:36:00] time. I'm hoping that's changed to some extent. But my conversations with academics show that, it's still kept very much under wraps. Partly because grad students in particular, I think, face the risk of losing support from their faculty members, and various kinds of social support if they say that they are planning on leaving. That wasn't your question. Your question was more like, how do you keep that as only one amongst different options. And I think that's the first step, is to recognize the tenure track is one option amongst many. And also that you're probably not gonna get a ton of support from your professors. Just accept that, because for them it's an issue of social reproduction. They went this path. They believe in this path. They believe in training students to stay on the same path, unless they're extremely open-minded and some are, but I would say most aren't that open to really [00:37:00] considering what does it look like if you were to get your PhD, and not do the academic path with it. But there's a lot more discussion of this happening, especially on social media and online. There's a lot more resources. There's even guidebooks that can help you sort things out. There's a book called, Leaving Academia, that was published by an author named Chris Caterine from Princeton University Press just a few years ago. I would also recommend that people check out the Designing Your Life Books. There's one called Designing Your Life, and I think another called Designing Your Work Life by these professors at Stanford. Really great coaching tools in there. And I think that they're not specifically aimed at academics, but they're very appropriate, and they walk you through different options. What are the things that kinda light you up in a day, and what are some ways you can foresee some different paths that may allow you to stay lit up? And when I say that it's really like meaning [00:38:00] staying within your own value system, and academia being one of them, right? I think it's almost impossible to not take on that narrative to at least some extent when you're a grad student. I think being aware that it is a narrative, and that you do have other options, can be really freeing. I would just recommend that people take a step back again, and ask yourself, what do you want out of your life, and not just your career? Do you wanna stay put geographically, or do you wanna live in a specific part of the world? Do you want to earn a certain kind of income? Do you wanna maintain hobbies? Do you want kids, and do you wanna be a certain kind of parent or partner? What do you want your life to actually look like, especially beyond work? I think prioritizing things that are outside of the job, it's not , you're gonna hear most professors [00:39:00] ask you to do because they themselves don't do that. But I think if you really wanna have an aligned career path, that may or may not be in the academy, you have to ask yourself these big questions. And looking back, I had promised myself I would never leave California, and it's 2026, and I still haven't returned since 2010. I don't regret it now I feel like things have definitely worked out for me at this point, but those sorts of decisions, if I had actually stuck to my guns, like had a real boundary around, this is where I wanna be, this is where I wanna have my life, and this is where I will find a job. It would've completely altered my path, but I was all in. And I am a little sad for that past version of me that was all in, cause I think it took me so much longer to figure out what might [00:40:00] make me happy. So like I said, I'm not at all regretful of the path that I took, because it brought me to this point. But I do see that I could have had a parallel path that didn't involve as much as it did. So just really telling yourself, I do have a choice. Also recognizing the choice you make may or may not make other people around you happy, and when I say other people mostly professors and others in the academy, and that is still not a reason to not at least consider it.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Thank you for sharing all of those gems. I don't want to close out this episode without actually getting to talk about writing as well, because I know you are a writing and a book coach. So I'm curious if you could share a little bit more about, for those individuals that do turn to coaching and work with a writing coach, how does coaching change the way that they might approach their writing [00:41:00] projects? And then for individuals who don't, and are doing this work on their own, how can scholars, including graduate students, write more authentically while still meeting their disciplinary expectations?

Dr. Leslie Wang: Huge questions. I'll try to be concise about things. Everything in this conversation as in coaching points back to core values, right? So that's the first thing everyone needs to do, some real exploration on what your values are. Once you have this list, and you know what they mean to you, and you know how present they are or aren't in your writing practice or in your life, then you can move forward. Whether you do that work with a coach or you do it on your own, but authenticity I think, comes from really leaning into those values as you're writing, and in your writing itself. So of [00:42:00] the toughest things I would say about the academy, is that it forces people to write in this highly formalized structured, overly objective way, that can squeeze all of the authenticity right out of whatever you're writing. People can take the most interesting material, we've all seen this, and make it bone dry in how they write it. The converse is also true. You can take the most boring, from I dunno everyday standpoint boring topic, and make it the most interesting thing by how you write it. So recognizing that you have some choices. When I'm working with people everything is based in their data. Everything is evidence driven. It's argument driven. That said you can still write in a way that sounds like human being. Part of that comes from leaning into things like [00:43:00] storytelling and narrative, reading a lot of creative nonfiction and seeing how do authors, who are not academics but this stuff appeals to academics, how are they setting up are articles in such a way that I wanna keep reading? And I think that one of my goals as a coach, is to help people produce work that is consistently engaging to readers. And that is never the point of a dissertation. It's never the point in grad student writing, because you know who your audience is. It's going to be someone who's trying to ultimately critique you and poke holes, and you're trying to prove to them that this is worthy of a good grade or it's worthy of my PhD. That is just not the audience that ideally your work will go to after the PhD. So I think part of it is really recognizing or figuring out, who is my [00:44:00] ideal audience? If my audience is not a reviewer, is not a faculty member, advisor, not someone who's a gatekeeper over my future, because that is the default. If you do not ask people to identify an ideal reader who is friendly, they will imagine an ideal reader, who is looking to take them down, for lack of better words, like reviewer number two is reader. So that's a lot of the work I do is, okay, we're gonna take them out of the picture, and now we are going to imagine a real life person that you would want to read your work, and they would wanna read it, too, even if they didn't know you. And we explore what does that person interested in? What do they care about? Why would they wanna pick up your book? What do you want them to get from the [00:45:00] book? How do you want your book to make them feel? When I get into feelings with people, it's often this foreign territory, cause they're like wait it's a book, why should they feel anything? And I'm like, you want them to keep reading through 250 pages. They better feel something other than boredom. So what do you want it to be? And then all kinds of things come out. I want them to feel a sense of urgency. I want them to feel seen, and/or validated through the stories I'm telling. I want them to feel angry about what's happening. I want them to feel called to action in some way. So that's part of what I think grad students can start working with is to imagine a broader audience than your committee, because your committee's gonna understand it, but very few other people will understand it if you only write it to the committee. You know what I mean? I think the earlier you can find this really tricky, but [00:46:00] important balance between being accessible and also being rigorous in your scholarship, that skillset will always benefit you. Regardless of if you stay in the academy or not. It means that you can communicate your findings to other people, and they don't have to be subfield experts. One easy way into this, is to imagine that you're teaching, that your writing is teaching a group of say undergrad students, where they are curious, they're interested, but they're in no way experts on this, and asking yourself, okay, if I was teaching this chapter of my book or dissertation as a 90 minute lecture to a group of undergrads, what do they need to know to make sense of it? You probably won't immediately dive into the details, cause they don't know any of the context yet. Okay, then I need to put in some context. How much context do undergrads need? Because you don't wanna give 15 pages [00:47:00] of context. You might need two pages of context, and what I'm getting at is, that the big switch here is centering the needs of your reader, and envisioning a reader that is curious, and educated, a non-expert and also a fan of yours. They want to read this. They are all about it, but it's in how you tell them the story, whether they're gonna get it or not. And it's a conversation between the two of you. It's a dialogue. You're providing information in such a way, that they can do something with it in their mind or actually through action. So a lot of it just really has to be around , like shift away from the idea of your dissertation committee being the only readership.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: I really appreciate you breaking it down for us, and in giving us some ways to approach writing differently, and more authentically starting with your values, but then really thinking about an ideal [00:48:00] audience. I know not everybody is told to think about that when they're writing, especially writing academic manuscripts or dissertations or any other materials that they're publishing.

And I also appreciate that you've reminded that they should also think about how they want others to feel when they're reading their work. Again, I don't think that we're told that enough, so I appreciate you sharing that. I would love to ask if there was any other question you were hoping that I would ask you, and if not, I would love for you to share a little bit more about you, your work, and how folks can reach you.

Dr. Leslie Wang: I feel like your questions were really thought-provoking, and very thorough. So thank you for those. I don't have anything additional. I would say if listeners want to find out more about what I do, they can go to my website, which is yourwordsunleashed.com. I have a podcast of which you will be a featured [00:49:00] guest very soon. The same name Your Words Unleashed, and that's really it.

I am pretty active on LinkedIn ,so you can always connect with me there, and you can always email me as well. It's leslie@yourwordsunleashed.com.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: Great. We will make sure to include all of those details in the show notes, so that folks can continue to learn more and follow you and your work. I really appreciate the conversation we had today. It's so much fun to talk to another coach who also works with fellow academics, and I just had a lot of fun chatting with you.

I appreciate you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much.

Dr. Leslie Wang: Thank you for having me I had a great time.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu: There is so much to sit with from this conversation. What stands out to me most is the reminder that misalignment often shows up as dread, resentment, envy, or burnout. Those feelings and experiences carry [00:50:00] information. They invite us to reflect. They also point us back to our core values and what matters most to us.

As you continue reflecting on what you just listened to, I invite you to consider what does success mean to you? And think about it as a process, not just in terms of outcomes. And if you are writing for a reader who genuinely wanted to learn more from you and your work, how might your voice tone, structure or storytelling shift? You deserve a career in life that reflects your full authenticity and humanity.

That's it for today, and as always, I'll talk to you all next time.

Thanks so much for listening. If you liked what you heard, here are three ways you can support the show. The first is to make sure you're subscribed and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. The second way is to get your copy of my free resource kit [00:51:00] linked in my show notes. This kit includes tools, worksheets, and curated podcast playlists to guide you through applying to and navigating grad school.

The third way to support my show is by joining my email newsletter where I share key takeaways and additional resources. Thanks again for listening, and until next time.