**Winner of the GOLD Medal in the 2019 INDIE Book of the Year Awards.** Higher education has changed-and we have to change with it. The Freelance Academic will show you how. When Katie Pryal started her career in higher education, she did everything right-she thought. With a law degree, a doctorate, and a federal clerkship, how could her career go off track? But this is higher ed in the new millennium. "Off track" is the new normal. So, slowly, she made her own career, one she dubbed "the freelance academic" in a long-running column in The Chronicle of Higher Education of the same name. Five years after leaving academia, Pryal has created a living for herself. In The Freelance Academic, she tells her story and provides accurate (and sometimes blistering) critique of how higher ed has pushed its workforce to the margins. Best of all, she gives plain, practical advice for how to make the career you want, one that uses your strengths, and your creativity, to thrive. "With candor and vulnerability, Pryal shares her own experiences and hard-fought wisdom to make a compelling case for a rewarding professional life beyond the walls of traditional academia." -Amy Impellizzeri, award-winning novelist and author of Lawyer Interrupted: Successfully Transitioning from the Practice of Law-and Back Again