I've had a few friends (not all in academic fields) who have taken "sabbaticals" or unpaid leaves of absence for periods of three months to a year. They've mostly raved about the experience. My boss is planning a three-month sabbatical next spring to take her family to Africa, where they will volunteer on aid projects. A friend of mine just took a six-week leave of absence to take his young family to Europe; they stayed with friends of friends the whole time and lived very frugally.

Have you ever taken a sabbatical or leave of absence, and if so, what are the pros and cons?

If you haven't, is this something you'd like to do? And what would you do if you took a sabbatical?

Kind of...

It was more of a career transition. I was working at Vanguard, about to get a promotion I didn't want, 27, single, nothing holding me in one spot so I quit and moved to Europe for a year. I got a job as an Au Pair so I got free rooom and board + $750/month salary. I worked 30 hours/week and was off from 1 pm Friday afternoon until 3 pm Monday afternoon and got 4 weeks of vacation. During my 14 months living in Geneve I visited 13 countries and had amazing experiences. I learned a lot about myself and what I want out of life. I met incredible people saw amazing things and became a whole different person.

When I got back to the US I moved to DC and became an operations consultant and started on a different career path.

It was a fantastic experience that I intend to repeat more than once in my life. My next big adventure will probably be 6 months to a year in Asia some time within the next 5 years. I think these experiences are invaluable and you should take them if you can.

It hasn't impacted my career, in fact, I'm probably further ahead than I would be had I stayed at Vanguard and I certainly have a more diverse skill set and impressive resume. People ask about the gap and when I explain it most are jealous and want details and wish they could do it.

So if you're thinking about it, I say do it!

So you worked at Vanguard and loved it (based on previous posts) -- what sort of promotion would drive you to quit? Couldn't you have politely declined?

I was being promoted to a paper pusher. Not a bad job but one that would have driven me insane with boredom. I was working in the AZ office and they do not have all of the jobs there that you could get at headquarters. I was as far as I was going to get and still have a job I was interested in. The job I was in at the time had pretty much been created specifically for me and I was allowed to make it into what I wanted it to be. The advantage was that it was very interesting and challenging while I was doing the creating. The disadvantage was that once I got all the kinks straightened out it was neither interesting nor challenging, it was just time management. That was the situation I was in when offered the promotion. My ideal job would have been with the education department, traveling to clients and teaching them about their 401k plans, but that wasn't an option.

I'm a trouble shooter/problem solver and I get bored quickly and easily which is why I like consulting and project work. Doing the same thing day after day is my version of hell.

So, while Vanguard is an excellent company, it is still a corporation that has rules about what people in specific positions can and can't do and that doesn't fit my work-personality very well. I would have stayed there forever if they had allowed me to just hop from department to department solving problems along the way.

That sounds wonderful! Geneva's a cool place, at least the old part of town. I've spent a few weeks there over the years attending UN meetings at the Palais des Nations, but that's in the ugly newer part of the city--with all the Brutalist architecture.

One of my first real jobs was five years as an expedition coordinator and program manager at Earthwatch, a nonprofit near Boston that gives people an opportunity to take working vacations (anywhere from 2-4 weeks) on field research projects in fields like archeology, ornithology, animal behavior, ethnomusicology, etc. and a lot of people treated it as a sort of mini-sabbatical. It gave them an opportunity to try something totally different in life, and quite a few people changed careers after they went on Earthwatch projects. I've often thought it a concept that could be applied to other fields as well. Let's say you had a childhood dream of being a doctor or a construction engineer, but you ended up as a bureaucrat or a financial advisor instead. A program like this could let you experience what your other career choice would have been like, but without risk and only for a few weeks.

I've never taken a sabbatical. I'd probably love the experience. My friend went to South America for 6 mos and thought it was amazing, and one of the best experiences of my life was a summer spent working in NC whilst I was at Uni.

However, I have money/security issues - I'd probably only want to do it if I had a job when I got back and had a huge pot of money to fund it all.

What I'd do to start off with is take the train from London to Singapore. That would be so cool.

My husband and I have taken a few sabbaticals from between 2 months and 6 months and at the end of next year we will go for a year. We always travel and have seen lots of Africa, the middle east, Europe and Asia.

I highly recommend it as a chance to escape your world and to get some perspective on the way the rest of the planet lives. When I come back from a trip, it is many months before I bitch about work or other people or anything because I am just so fully appreciative of the opportunities we have available to us here. I know that I need some perspective when my job starts getting me down or I start to complain about my washing machine/car/co workers/whatever (like right now I am getting stressed out over a couch purchase, see, lacking perspective)

It gives me fresh eyes when I come back to work, my batteries are recharged, and I often make astounding improvements in my performance after the break - and don't forget that it huge amounts of fun!