Persistence v perseverance

What’s the difference between persistence and perseverance?

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.~May Sarton, American poet

What’s the difference between persistence and perseverance? Based on my own undergraduate experience, I’m beginning to believe perseverance is different and matters a whole lot more than persistence. To me, perseverance is moving forward in fits and starts. Persisting may actually do harm if it fails to address what barriers are actually in the way.

When I left for college at the age of 17, it was not under the best of circumstances and I was pretty clearly not ready. Within a semester I was struggling with the decision to drop out of school, but I persisted in attending, trying to figure out if the degree was money well invested. As I came to understand the I had chosen the wrong college and the wrong degree program for me, the fear of failure loomed larger and larger.

At the end of four semesters, my body had had enough. I was getting headaches severe enough to shut me down for days. I was gaining weight after years of managing it. Both are signs of extreme stress. I calculated every lecture I missed cost me $28.00 (obviously, this was a long time ago!), this added to the anxiety of trying to catch up.

I dropped out. My parents were vehemently opposed to this course of action, assuming I would never return to the classroom. I gave them a book called Stopping Out: A Guide to Leaving College and Getting Back In to allay their concerns. They remained unconvinced.

I moved into an apartment with a roommate and found a full-time job as a low-paid research assistant in a telecommunications consulting firm. I knew I would not starve, and I wasn’t flipping burgers. I felt I’d bought the time to figure out what I needed to do next. After I had been working for about a year, I asked the owner if he was willing to pay for one course at a university different from where I started, on the topic of telecommunications. He agreed as long as I paid 1/3 of the tuition cost. I readily concurred.

I considered the course my experiment with going back to school. By the summer of that year, I was enrolled in night classes. After two semesters, I had figured out a course of action that would work for me. I transferred as many credits as possible from the previous school. I took a test to avoid repeating freshman English. At 26, I was slightly older than my classmates, but a lot more mature than when I “stopped out.” I was emotionally and psychologically ready to return to school full-time.

In the next phase of my undergraduate education, I changed jobs to allow for part-time work while handling a full course load. Within two years, I graduated with honors and enrolled in a master’s degree program in anthropology, having left the field of international relations. Anthropology, it turned out, really fueled my curiosity to deeply explore things I found of interest. The discipline moved me from a macro policy view of the world to a “what is happening on the ground?” view that I loved and valued.

So, would you call this persistence or perseverance? I would say perseverance. The dictionary defines persistence as continuing firmly or obstinately in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition and perseverance as doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

I found myself contemplating this subtle difference in definitions after recently reading a short piece in the publication Inside Higher Ed discussing a New America report on “comebackers,” adult students trying to earn college degrees.

These adult students, generally in their 40s, tend to talk about the progress toward a degree as “perseverance.” They stopped and started again and again. They were overcoming different obstacles: gathering funds to pay school bills, taking care of family, trying to figure out fee application forms or get school records, finding adequate software and hardware to work online, and not least, figuring out how many credits they had after stopping and starting and perhaps changing schools several times. Unsurprisingly, most of the comebackers tied finishing their education to the job market, seeing it as a pathway for upward socioeconomic mobility. The report concludes that in addition to helping students better understand the process of attaining a degree, schools should look at ways to apply PLA (Participatory Learning and Action) to literally give students credit for time worked in a particular field.

How does this apply to people in academia?

Perseverance matters whether you are working on a master’s or doctoral degree, looking for academic work, or leaving academia. If you are looking for a job in academia, you may have to stop and start your search between the limited number of positions and dealing with a high teaching workload. If you are ready to leave academia, you may have to realize getting the job you want might proceed in fits and starts as you explore different opportunities. In either case, you will have to get clear about exactly what you want and cultivate your connections. If you are obstinately persisting in looking for a tenure-track academic job against the current odds, unwilling or unable to consider adjuncting or contract work with schools, you may be doing your psyche and your pocketbook a considerable disservice. Perseverance in this instance may be recognizing a change in course is necessary, knowing it will take some time, and be full of unexpected challenges.

Higher education is clearly reeling from unexpected changes in course delivery and financial stability in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Knowing the difference between persisting versus persevering in a course of action can help you make the right choices for yourself. If you have to stop searching for your dream job to take care of your family financially, take heart in those comebackers and their stories of long-term success.

If you are still unsure of what to do next in your life or career, contact Hillary for a free session to discuss your options.

Tags: academia, academic, change, goal setting, productivity