So you’ve earned your Ph.D., but have succumbed to the temptations of the world outside academia, where people trim their nose hairs and live on sustenance other than leftover sesame salad from the qualitative research methods colloquium. It’s a brave choice, and you’ll be just fine. Mostly. Here are ten things you need to know before you take that leap out of the ivory tower and into the unknown.

1. Your natural peer group will be people ten years younger than you. You’re fresh out of school, looking for a place to live where your roommate’s not stealing from you to feed his meth addiction, trying to convince potential employers that you have actual skills at doing things that could help them make money, and festively binge-drinking just like you did at school. So are they, but the difference is that four years of college was enough for them. You rode that train for another decade, and now the people you went to high school with are living in far-flung suburbs and raising children whose names you can’t remember. Pro tip: Study up on the TV programs kids were watching when you were in high school. Those are the references you’re most often going to miss.

2. Your academic credential will be used against you. The fact that you were once the world’s leading expert in some esoteric corner of knowledge will be rarely mentioned, except when it turns out there’s something in the world that you don’t know. “What?! You don’t know how to get from First Ave to the Modern Café?! Don’t you have a Ph.D.?!” Pro tip: Never play Scrabble again in your entire life.

3. Your degree won’t impress the people you want it to impress. Inside academia, your degree was a requirement for jobs but didn’t guarantee that anyone would call you back. Outside of academia, your degree is not a requirement for jobs and still doesn’t guarantee that anyone will call you back. Pro tip: Don’t even try applying to be a server at a diner. The manager will assume that the only reason you’re not at a Princeton podium discoursing on Kant is that you’ve been involved in some undisclosed sexual assault and/or financial scandal.

4. If someone is impressed to hear about your degree, you’ll know something important about that person. Specifically, you’ll know that person is a grad student herself, with another seven years left in her program. Pro tip: Spend lots of time with current grad students. They will look up to you in awe because you actually finished your dissertation, and they have deep reservations about academia that will validate your choice to leave.

5. You’ll be addressed as “Dr.” in the most unexpected of circumstances. The university that granted your Ph.D. will address your student loan bills to “Mr.” or “Ms.”, but then one day you’ll pick up the phone and it will be the guy from the appliance store. “Uh, yeah, is this Dr. Gabler? Hey, we got that replacement part for your icemaker.” Pro tip: Suppress your secret rage about the fact that physicians, who get their degrees after only four years of medical school and don’t even have to write a dissertation, are invariably addressed as “Dr.”

6. Even if you thought you’d never teach in your discipline again, you will be tempted by the many jobs available at for-profit colleges that advertise on billboards. If you take a job at one of these institutions, your Ph.D. will delight the college administration and will be regarded with surprise by your colleagues, who were previously under the impression that to get a job at that college you actually have to know how to do something, like design a website or take a blood sample. Pro tip: Teach online, and you never have to talk to anyone.

7. Your ability to talk for hours on end about the subject of your dissertation will remain undiminished. You’ll lose track of current research in your field, but if anyone ever gives you the slightest opportunity to explain why your dissertation represented an important contribution to your field of study, you’ll jump on it like a tight end at the Super Bowl. Pro tip: If anyone ever brings up your dissertation, warn them that they may want to hang themselves before you’re done answering their question.

8. Your grad school colleagues will start getting tenure, publishing articles, and appearing on CNN. Then they’ll start having kids, too. Pro tip: Consider writing a book in the “For Dummies” series. It will be completely ignored by scholars in your discipline, but unlike an academic book, it will be read by tens of thousands of people and you’ll actually make money from it. You’ll also receive nice holiday cards from the “Consumer Dummies Team” and be supplied with a customized widget to advertise your book on your blog.

9. Your academic knowledge will spurt forth without invitation. You spent ten years stuffing it all in there, and occasionally you’ll have an irresistible urge to vent some of it out. For example, someone will mention that his friend helped him get a job, and you’ll spend the next 20 minutes talking about Ronald Burt’s theory of structural holes in social networks. Pro tip: This need can be met by talking to yourself, alone.

10. Having a Ph.D. is great for drinking games. “Never have I ever drawn a diagram depicting the transformation of cultural fields under the circumstances of emerging new media within the boundaries of a constant discourse. Oh! Looks like you’re all drinking!” Pro tip: To be a good sport, drink even when the rules of the game don’t require you to.

– Jay Gabler, Ph.D.

Photo by Jen Hsieh