Why scholars break their bonds
A year ago, I decided to give a talk about bondbreaking. I wrote an email and asked friends to forward it to anyone who might be interested. A handful of brave souls showed up. The really interesting outcome was that the email got far wider circulation than I had expected. In fact, I was recently introduced to someone who knew of me because a friend of his had read that email. Yeah. Small world.
This person asked why I broke my bond.
It has been 5 years since the bondbreaking. This past June would have marked that all important 6-year mark, the theoretical end of the bond had I stayed to serve the whole thing.
When I talk to scholars who find their way to me, I still feel a sense of deep identification with what they are going through, even though it’s been years. When you are in that position, you come to believe that there is no bigger problem in the world. You look around at your scholar friends and they seem unhappy too, but you become convinced that no one really gets it. Your problem is individualized and isolating.
And yet from the other side and with distance, I see the patterns. I now think my reasons for wanting to break my bond are not very different from why any scholar might want to break his or her bond. Boredom, bureaucracy, a nagging sense that my paper pushing wasn’t actually making a difference to serving the public. The most unhappy scholars I knew were often the ones who cared too much.
The best explanation I’ve found for why people want to break their bonds is this concept of cognitive dissonance. There is immense cognitive dissonance that comes from being told you’re supposed to be appreciative of your amazing opportunities as a scholar, while having to face a reality that the job you’re assigned to is one of the most uninspiring things you could do with your life.
(This is not true of everyone’s experience, of course. I know some happy scholars. I was not fortunate enough to be one of them.)
As for what separates unhappy scholars from actual bondbreakers (aside from monetary considerations), I think bondbreakers have a clearer idea of what would make them happy and are willing to stomach the emotional risks to make it happen. You need to be able to imagine what happier looks like. And then be willing to fight for it.
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Note: this is not to encourage or discourage anyone from bondbreaking. These are merely observations from having had having many people open up to me on this topic.
For non-Singaporean readers, it seems there is no good Wikipedia entry on scholarship bondbreaking…
