Leaving academia: Ditch the blanket, take the skills

By Williams

As a researcher you are called to investigate, discover and reveal. A skilful vocation leverages your skill set to build a career that serves a larger purpose. Your research brings value to your discipline, your institution and society at large. You chose academic research for a myriad of great reasons. Stopping to take stock of whether academia

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellectual Perspective Press
• Release date: Apr 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9781908770585

Williams

I 'left' academia over 20 years ago, leaving behind a medical imaging postdoc and the not so tragic backstory of a physics degree and PhD from the University of Cambridge. I find myself wondering if I have in fact left academia or not. Those 20 plus years have been spent empowering researchers to embrace their careers positively and proactively - academic or otherwise. I've worked with thousands of researchers from around the globe as a coach, trainer and speaker.This book embraces the career route the statistics tells us most researchers will take.

Book preview

SECTION ONE

SO, HOW IS POSTDOC LIFE

TREATING YOU?

Light and shadow are opposite sides of the same coin. We can illuminate our paths or darken our way. It is a matter of choice. – Maya Angelou

Every career journey starts from where you are, right now. That much seems obvious but we can be too eager to look forward. Without understanding our current situation, we may well make unwise choices about the future.

Our current situation is built of our job, circumstances and the environment we find ourselves in. Are we still growing ourselves and our CV? Are we happy? Have we stopped and taken a good look at the environment we find ourselves in? Have we tied ourselves down unwittingly?

It is time to stop and smell the coffee. This section is the essential pre-work to the next steps in your career. You need to make time to do some thinking. Go ahead and book it in your diary now. Too often urgent tasks (your PI demanding results or the masters student looking forlorn) wipe out any time for the important ones. You are important. Your career is important.

The only person who is going to prioritise you is you.

But before you embark on exploring your current patch of Planet Postdoc in this section, I would like you to do one more thing.

In the book resources you will find a timeline exercise. This will help you understand more about your route here. Not everyone embarks on a PhD. A select group of those choose a postdoc. Why did you?

Postdoc A felt stuck. Unhappy in a second postdoc after a good experience in the first. They were contemplating a third postdoc or non-academic jobs. They looked surprised when I asked, What was great about the first? Our timelines hold vital clues as to what might work in our future. Not just things to avoid. But things to actively seek in our next steps. What have you really enjoyed? Not just the work but the environment.

CHAPTER 1:

HAVE YOU HIT PEAK POSTDOC?

I can remember the meeting as if it were yesterday even though several years have passed. I was meeting with Sam in one of those random unofficial courtyards that most large universities have. You know the ones: air conditioner vents, metal fire escape ladders, crumbling concrete paths and a couple of temporary buildings that had probably been there at least twenty years. We sat within one of these. A sad room looking out into the London drizzle. My companion’s mood matched the scene perfectly: worried, resigned and full of guilt. If you had transplanted us into a gritty 1980s police drama, we wouldn’t have looked out of