How Getting Kicked Out of My Lab Kick-Started My Career

Dr. Kristen Vogt Veggeberg

A brief spoiler before you continue reading: I ended up finishing my doctorate in 2019. 

In my first year as a doctoral student at the Learning Sciences Research Institute at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), I was studying how people learn through different modes of education, ranging from computer tablets in museums to hand gestures in chemistry classrooms. Informal Education is a diverse and fairly new topic for research, and each university that offers this program of study is usually doing something wildly different than the next. I was thrilled to bring my own background and interest as a learning disabled student in urban public education, with my prior undergraduate experience in museum education and archaeological research at the University of Oregon. Going into my graduate studies, I had already worked in multiple museums and out-of-school learning activities across the United States to gain a better understanding of how these modes of education effect the people they are aimed to support, and especially how well individuals learned from them.

My world was turned upside down when I met with my chief advisor one day, right after finals during my second semester as a doctoral student. In this meeting, she told me she no longer supported me in the Learning Sciences as a researcher or as a mentee. When I cried and asked her why, she didn’t talk about my performance as a researcher or as a student, although my co-advisor would shortly fail me in his class. Instead, she talked about my career, which was baffling. She thought that with my ‘bubbly, chirpy attitude’ and outgoing nature, I should be working full time, rather than ‘wasting my time’ in a doctoral program. I wanted her to tell me that I was a terrible student, or that she ran out of funding for me, but she was silent on either of those reasonings.

But, like most graduate students, I did not apply to this program on a vain whim: I genuinely wanted to better comprehend learning differences and access to out-of-school educational experiences, such as museums and after-school programs.

In this program, I wanted to study the access and subsequent experience of the different participants in educational programming outside of the classroom, using methods commonly associated with cultural anthropology (especially interviews and studies of visitors in museums). As I would explore later on in my dissertation, it was the study of why some learners and educators felt excited and elated while in a museum’s settings, but felt lost and disenfranchised in their classrooms.

I also felt hurt on a deeper scale by this rejection, as my learning disability has always been a barrier for more engaging classes and enriching activities throughout much of my academic career, which bubbled up with this denunciation as well.  I have Nonverbal Learning Disability (NVLD), which compounds my ability to easily understand non-verbal subjects, such as math. For me, this learning disability is also comorbid with major depressive disorder (MDD), which often gives me brain fog and exhaustion – two metrics that do not work well with the tasks expected of many graduate students, but are unfortunately common throughout higher education.    

As a result, I did not hear I want the best for you, from my advisor. I heard, Get out of my program for the smart students and get back to the academic enrichment office with the rest of the handicapped kids. As someone who has been told that she was extremely bright, but never good enough for certain universities and programs, this was a cruel reminder that I was never bright enough or talented enough to sit at the smart kid’s table.

I was bitter and angry. Fine, I thought as I signed up for the next few classes within the College of Education at the university after a gentle suggestion from another professor, I’ll take a few classes as a doctoral student in this new department. If I don’t successfully transfer in or get accepted, well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. But I’m not giving up on this degree without a fight.

I knew this new program also studied access to education, but at a different level: instead of simply regarding learning patterns with a focus on behavior, the College of Education regarded all of the different data points that could be used to come to a conclusion about educational experiences. Questions now arose, at the same level of any microbiology or chemistry lab: I could, and did, use data sets such as school performance, zip code incomes, and even the backgrounds of teachers. I could then make sense of how all of it could tell us different things about how and why people choose to learn outside of the classrooms.

As I traversed this new academic landscape and searched for a new source of income and research, my passion for education and equity never wavered. I have always wanted to study why learning outside of classrooms had such a different and profound effect on individuals who might otherwise struggle in education, whether as an issue of disenfranchisement or an internalized issue of literacy. Luckily, I was studying in one of the most museum-enriched cities in North America: Chicago. Finding interesting research sites – as well as a job managing a tiny science museum on Chicago’s Gold Coast – less than a mile from my house and my department was not an issue in the slightest. Additionally, because of the generosity of the College of Education at University of Illinois at Chicago, I was given full tuition waivers for the rest of my studies, and most of the classes were either taught at night, or online. This allowed me to work a full day at the museum and then show up to take Urban Curriculum Studies at 7 PM on Tuesdays.

One thing led to another: a presentation at the AAAS conference led to another museum hiring me to conduct paid research on educational programming. After I finished there and defended my qualifying exams, I took the position of Director of STEAM and Innovation with the current nonprofit that I work for, the Boy Scouts of America, who were thrilled with the fact that they had an experienced professional with an almost completed doctorate under her belt.

My current position needed an experienced writer and educator, first, to write out the curriculum that needed to be authored for their new national program, and second, to dig through our data and write grants to help fund said program. I didn’t see a whole lot of differences between an academic grant and a nonprofit one, and I’m happy to say that my past experiences have made acquiring grants and funding a simple task since I took this position. Currently, I am using my graduate school experience to craft programs that students who may be challenged with underlying issues, such as literacy, poverty, or even eye-hand coordination, can grasp and complete. I also use my doctorate to conduct evaluations on the program through surveys and interviews, write grants, and present at conferences, all without the concern of tenure or peer review that many of my fellow doctorates must face.

But there were setbacks, as there always are with long journeys: one advisor died a year after I transferred to the College of Education, and I remember sobbing into my steering wheel as I drove to Wisconsin after his funeral. The next one took a new job at another university a year after serving as my advisor. In between these losses and the first rejection of mentorship, there were many times that I felt like the universe was punishing me for my hubris, like a character in a Greek tragedy, and that perhaps by stepping out of my designated zone for the disabled, I had challenged the universe and so it decided to punish those around me.   

But I had to remember that I’m not Antigone or Iphigenia, and there are no wrathful gods striking me down for getting a doctorate. It was just an unfortunate series of events, of which I happened to fall into. One of my committee members took a massive leap of faith, and became my last advisor, for which I am incredibly grateful to this day.

Even amongst all this drama in my academic life, I still moved on with my own personal life. I got married during my doctorate program to my long-term boyfriend and defended my dissertation proposal when I was eight months pregnant with my daughter.

I was, and still am, a very busy person, and I have no time for either maudlin navel gazing or hand wringing amongst academic superiors, which was one of the wonderful benefits of working outside of the realm of the university. I do not have time or really, even the need to compare myself to my peers, as their careers are completely different than mine. Indeed, I try not to glorify workaholic culture, but there is something wonderful about responding to negative feedback from superiors with, “That’s a lovely idea, thank you! I’ll think about it after I finish this memo, work on a paper, analyze some data and then put the baby to sleep. Will you be around in a few hours to discuss it?”

By the time I finished my doctorate in 2019, it was six and a half years after I started my graduate studies. I suppose it could be considered a longer journey than expected, and some folks might turn their noses up at the length of the time it took me to finish my Ph.D, but my journey consisted of work in two different departments, with three advisors, a few jobs in between, as well as my new family. And, according to others both in and out of the ivory tower, by refusing to stay within the expectations of academia, I was still officially out of it, no matter what three letters I had behind my name.

But the facts are the facts, and here is what they are:  

I left with a job (that I still have, despite the pandemic and economic downturn) and a promotion at hand. I am now a director at my organization, as well as a leading voice in my field of informal education. Because I walked two different lines within science museums and academia, I was asked to coordinate and consult with some national science organizations as a result, such as National Geographic, ComSciCon, and the Society for Applied Anthropology, of which I am a Fellow as of October 2020.

A small, but incredibly crucial note as well in these economic times: I left with no student loans at all. Because of how much I was paid as a professional, the waivers from UIC’s Graduate College, along with the mindset of living like a graduate student, I was able to aggressively pay off my student loan debt while continuing my studies. The only thing I left after the doctorate was finished with a CV fat with experience, leadership, papers, and everything else expected of a successful Ph.D.

One of the biggest surprises came in the form of an email from UIC right before my graduation: I was one of the few doctorates at the university to have earned the title of Impact Scholar. This distinction isn’t given to scholars with high grade point averages or other numerical metrics of performance. It is awarded to individuals who managed to work within the university community to bring other scholars together, especially in a community setting oriented towards our city. I could not have earned this distinction had I not started my career in graduate school, and I could not have started without that initial failure at hand.