I got a great comment from a reader asking why I left my postdoc before I had secured another job. I've often asked myself whether that was a good decision, especially since not having any structure to my days generally makes me unhappy. There were two very good reasons why I left when I did: I was going crazy; and I could.
The first reason is one that I've talked about before. Though I'd toyed with the idea of leaving graduate school, my emotional sunk costs were high enough that it was worth sticking it out and getting the degree. My work environment as a student was pleasant in that I had a wonderful group of friends around me. As a postdoc, I no longer had that nice social workplace, and I no longer had interest in my research. Going to work each morning involved an internal battle between emotion and obligation. And by about 4pm each day, emotion won out and I'd come home. A lot of things came crashing down at once: I was living in a strange new place, I didn't know anyone, my building was like a prison, and my research seemed worthless.
I thought a lot about whether research had to be this way. Perhaps if I'd really sunk my teeth into new research projects I would have enjoyed going to work more -- and, looking back, I sometimes think I should have tried a little harder to get new projects going. I also considered changing research directions so that I was working on something that I found more engaging. This would have involved finding another university and advisor to host me as well as transferring my fellowship to another university. While I spent many days and weeks pondering these options, in my heart I knew I wanted to cut bait.
What I ended up doing was giving myself a set date for leaving my postdoc. If I'd found another job by then, great! But if not, I'd leave anyway. I set that date about three months in advance and spent that time applying for jobs and learning some new skills that I thought might make me more marketable. When the three months were up, I didn't have a new job, but I did have two interviews lined up in the town I was moving to.
The other reason that I left when I did was that I could. The numbers for the percentage of Americans who report being satisfied with their jobs are all over the map, but I think it's safe to say that there are plenty of people out there who either detest or simply tolerate their jobs for the sake of having an income. I certainly could have just joined their jolly lot and kept getting a paycheck, but I fortunately didn't have to.
I was raised to believe that women shouldn't be dependent upon men for, well, anything, but money especially. My boyfriend knew that I didn't have the money to quit my job and continue paying my half of the rent for more than a few months. And while I didn't want to mooch off of him indefinitely, I also didn't want my extended job misery to affect our relationship. So he offered to pick up the tab for a while, and I gratefully accepted.
Had I known that that tab was going to accrue for as long as it did, I probably have stayed in my postdoc longer. But the interviews I had lined up had made me very hopeful. During my time of unemployment, my boyfriend and I developed a de facto division of labor: he worked and earned money while I did most of the cooking, cleaning, and reading of novels. Not a fair trade, by any means. But maybe someday he'll want to quit his job, and he can be the novel reader for a while. If that day comes, I'll be happy to pick up the tab.
Thanks to a comment left by DayByDay, I discovered a bunch of great blogs written by female scientists. Once I have a chance to read them a bit more, I'll add some to the blog roll. We're not alone, ladies.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
blatant discrimination against women
My interview for my current position was an interesting one. Clocking in at 10 hours, 2 meals, 2 deans, and 6 faculty members, it felt a lot like what I imagine a faculty position interview would be like...minus the job talk, of course. The day held a number of surprises, mostly pleasant, but a few nervous-making. Some of the questions that X and Y asked that day were difficult, and I had to choose my words carefully. The interview as a whole probably deserves its own post -- and I'll get to it at some point. But I was reminded today of the question that surprised me most during my interview: Have you ever experienced discrimination in academia because you are a woman?
I have an answer to that question that I give to my friends: Uh, yeah. We recount experiences with advisers, interviewers, and colleagues. We shake our heads and wonder when it will end. We cringe at the revelation of our own subconscious gender biases.
This issue infuriates me so much that it's difficult to talk about it without getting up in arms. So how to answer a question like that during an interview when you're face to face with a male interviewer? For that matter, how should you answer any sort of question that hits the nerve of all womankind?
This blog could easily become a litany of experiences we've had, incidents we've witnessed in which our female colleagues were treated unfairly. We could write ten blogs about all the things we do subconsciously, if only we knew what to write. But I'd probably start foaming at the mouth and biting if I made that the focus of this blog. So I'll limit myself to the extreme cases, which hopefully will only happen every once in a while.
Today was one of those extreme cases. I was at a symposium that was tangentially related to the work I'm doing. The event included a really really cool mix of people -- from museum educators to real estate developers -- and was focused on a big report that just came out of the university. In response to this report there was a panel of four state senators (two men and two women) who were responding to questions and offering their opinions. The panel was moderated by a male professor at the university.
The panel members sat at a long table at the front of a packed auditorium. In order from the moderator's podium, they sat male, female, female, male. The moderator asked the male senator closest to him for his opening comments. He spoke. The logical thing would have then been to move on down the line, asking the next senator -- a woman -- for her comments. Everyone on the panel was certainly expecting that. But the moderator chose to jump to the end of the panel, to the other male senator, for his opening comments first. Both he and the women that were skipped seemed surprised.
"Okay," I thought, "don't get all worked up about this. He'll come back to her." And he did. He introduced this woman -- a state senator, remember -- as being the mother of a graduate from our university. Turns out that she herself had gotten a law degree from our university.
When I see things like this, I hear the voices of my mother and grandmother in my head. I hear my mother telling me to be ambitious and career oriented as she cleans the house and cooks us dinner every night after getting home from her full-time job. I hear my grandmother telling me how glad she is that I have a nice fellow in my life as I set off for a new graduate program. With every generation, we get a little bit closer to equality, but there is still so far to go.
With those voices echoing in my mind and my own experiences stored within me like heavy black coals waiting to be stoked, answering the discrimination question with grace wasn't easy. I said yes. I gave an example of an extreme incident that occurred in a foreign country, something so clearly cultural that it almost didn't apply to American academia, hence letting the male interviewer off the hook. Then I moved the discussion away from myself to gender in general in our society because most of the discrimination I've witnessed and experienced has been subconscious on the part of the perpetrator. These guys aren't mean. They aren't chauvinists. They're just fucking clueless.
I have an answer to that question that I give to my friends: Uh, yeah. We recount experiences with advisers, interviewers, and colleagues. We shake our heads and wonder when it will end. We cringe at the revelation of our own subconscious gender biases.
This issue infuriates me so much that it's difficult to talk about it without getting up in arms. So how to answer a question like that during an interview when you're face to face with a male interviewer? For that matter, how should you answer any sort of question that hits the nerve of all womankind?
This blog could easily become a litany of experiences we've had, incidents we've witnessed in which our female colleagues were treated unfairly. We could write ten blogs about all the things we do subconsciously, if only we knew what to write. But I'd probably start foaming at the mouth and biting if I made that the focus of this blog. So I'll limit myself to the extreme cases, which hopefully will only happen every once in a while.
Today was one of those extreme cases. I was at a symposium that was tangentially related to the work I'm doing. The event included a really really cool mix of people -- from museum educators to real estate developers -- and was focused on a big report that just came out of the university. In response to this report there was a panel of four state senators (two men and two women) who were responding to questions and offering their opinions. The panel was moderated by a male professor at the university.
The panel members sat at a long table at the front of a packed auditorium. In order from the moderator's podium, they sat male, female, female, male. The moderator asked the male senator closest to him for his opening comments. He spoke. The logical thing would have then been to move on down the line, asking the next senator -- a woman -- for her comments. Everyone on the panel was certainly expecting that. But the moderator chose to jump to the end of the panel, to the other male senator, for his opening comments first. Both he and the women that were skipped seemed surprised.
"Okay," I thought, "don't get all worked up about this. He'll come back to her." And he did. He introduced this woman -- a state senator, remember -- as being the mother of a graduate from our university. Turns out that she herself had gotten a law degree from our university.
When I see things like this, I hear the voices of my mother and grandmother in my head. I hear my mother telling me to be ambitious and career oriented as she cleans the house and cooks us dinner every night after getting home from her full-time job. I hear my grandmother telling me how glad she is that I have a nice fellow in my life as I set off for a new graduate program. With every generation, we get a little bit closer to equality, but there is still so far to go.
With those voices echoing in my mind and my own experiences stored within me like heavy black coals waiting to be stoked, answering the discrimination question with grace wasn't easy. I said yes. I gave an example of an extreme incident that occurred in a foreign country, something so clearly cultural that it almost didn't apply to American academia, hence letting the male interviewer off the hook. Then I moved the discussion away from myself to gender in general in our society because most of the discrimination I've witnessed and experienced has been subconscious on the part of the perpetrator. These guys aren't mean. They aren't chauvinists. They're just fucking clueless.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
First Impressions
As I mentioned in my last post, week one of the new job went really well. On a very basic level, it just feels good to be working regular hours -- and earning money -- again. But even after having a long period of unemployment, routine and income alone wouldn't be enough to make me optimistic about this new career direction. (That may not be entirely true. At some point while looking for a job, I was really keen on working for the U.S. Postal Service. I needed the money, and there's probably nothing more routine than carrying letters. And after all, you get a $404 uniform budget your first year...and they sell skirts now!) This past week, I was encouraged by a number of differences between past employment situations at universities and my current situation.
First off, people knew that I was going to be arriving. Not just my new boss and the administrative assistant, but most of the people in the department. So as I roamed my new halls looking for the printers and the paperclips, the people I met all said "Oh! You're Ivory Schmower! We've been waiting for you to arrive!" They have made me feel welcome, which makes all the difference when you're the new kid in town. In a week or so, my department is having a little welcome party for me. I've never had this experience before. When I arrived as a postdoc, I didn't actually see my new adviser for a few days. And I never actually met the people whose offices were on either side of mine. So the fact that one of my new bosses here told people about me, explained my background, explained what I'd be doing, etc. was really thoughtful.
I have two what I guess you'd call bosses, though they don't really seem like bosses. We'll call them X and Y, though suggestions for better names are welcome. Anyway, in my initial meetings with X and Y, they made it very clear that they have some ideas about how we should proceed, but they really want to hear my ideas as well. They also don't want me to let them dictate what I do. Because of my background, they trust that I can figure out what's important or interesting on my own, and they trust that I'll figure out how to act upon those interesting things. Which is great. At times in the past, I felt like I had no collaborators, no one helping me to find direction. So to have X and Y's input is wonderful. While they are clearly in charge, we all have a lot of respect for each other and I think we'll work well together. So far it seems like just the right level of autonomy.
There aren't many young scientists in my department, so I can't say that I've met anyone yet that I really connected with on a more personal level. Although one of the secretaries is going to give me some Indian cooking lessons :)
I hope to post more this week than last week. I basically collapsed at the end of each day last week and could barely keep my eyes open long enough to unpack my pyjamas from my suitcase. But things have calmed down a bit, so I have high hopes.
First off, people knew that I was going to be arriving. Not just my new boss and the administrative assistant, but most of the people in the department. So as I roamed my new halls looking for the printers and the paperclips, the people I met all said "Oh! You're Ivory Schmower! We've been waiting for you to arrive!" They have made me feel welcome, which makes all the difference when you're the new kid in town. In a week or so, my department is having a little welcome party for me. I've never had this experience before. When I arrived as a postdoc, I didn't actually see my new adviser for a few days. And I never actually met the people whose offices were on either side of mine. So the fact that one of my new bosses here told people about me, explained my background, explained what I'd be doing, etc. was really thoughtful.
I have two what I guess you'd call bosses, though they don't really seem like bosses. We'll call them X and Y, though suggestions for better names are welcome. Anyway, in my initial meetings with X and Y, they made it very clear that they have some ideas about how we should proceed, but they really want to hear my ideas as well. They also don't want me to let them dictate what I do. Because of my background, they trust that I can figure out what's important or interesting on my own, and they trust that I'll figure out how to act upon those interesting things. Which is great. At times in the past, I felt like I had no collaborators, no one helping me to find direction. So to have X and Y's input is wonderful. While they are clearly in charge, we all have a lot of respect for each other and I think we'll work well together. So far it seems like just the right level of autonomy.
There aren't many young scientists in my department, so I can't say that I've met anyone yet that I really connected with on a more personal level. Although one of the secretaries is going to give me some Indian cooking lessons :)
I hope to post more this week than last week. I basically collapsed at the end of each day last week and could barely keep my eyes open long enough to unpack my pyjamas from my suitcase. But things have calmed down a bit, so I have high hopes.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Informational Interviews
I'm almost through with week one of my new job, and it's been fantastic so far. Almost a full year has gone by since I've really interacted with scientists, and I forgot how strange most of them are. (I mean that in a good way.) I haven't had any time to write in the past week, but I'll start sharing my impressions soon.
In the meantime, someone asked whether I was doing anything beyond sending out resumes and cover letters during my job hunt, which is the perfect follow up to my last post about talking to people.
Most of those 50-ish resumes and cover letters that I sent out were met with a resounding silence. Never heard a peep. There's nothing worse than spending a few hours perfecting a cover letter and then not even being met with a rejection letter. After sending a couple dozen applications out into the black hole, I had some great templates for my cover letter and a few different resumes that were tailored for different types of jobs. For instance, I had a resume that I submitted to academic publishing jobs that highlighted my writing skills and experience. That resume was very different from the one I sent for jobs that were education-oriented.
Despite all of the great application materials I had, I didn't appear any closer to actually having a job. When you look at the numbers, the percentage of people who are hired through online job applications is relatively small*. This is a fairly major difference from the academic world, where lots of jobs get filled by people who simply sent in applications in response to an ad. When I started really reading the ScienceCareers forum, it became clear that I had to change my strategy a bit.
The word "networking" always sounds cheesy to me. Worse than cheesy, actually. Sleazy. But it doesn't have to be. During my job search, I built up a network of people in my area who were doing interesting things, working at interesting places, or seemed well-connected in a given field. Looking back, this kind of happened naturally. It started with one woman I met who was working in science education/outreach at my postdoctoral institution, then she gave me the names of a bunch of other people working in that arena. Slowly, I contacted all of them and set up meetings with them. These are often called informational interviews, and they can be really interesting.
There are a couple of schools of thought about how you should approach informational interviews. Some people feel that you should approach informational interviewers and new contacts without telling them that you're actually looking for a job. Others feel that you should be up front about the fact that you are job-hunting, though you shouldn't expect that the person you're meeting with will actually do anything about it. I opted for the latter approach, because it seems more honest to me. You can tell someone that you're looking for a job and think they're company is interesting without sounding like a bozo. I also suspect that people can see right through your request for a meeting...they know on some level that you're gunning for a job.
During my job hunt, I had about 15 informational interviews with people from state agencies, nonprofits, research institutions, universities, and schools. Almost everyone I contacted was happy to meet with me, and most of them gave me the names of a couple other people to talk to. These interviews also gave me a good sense of what was going on in my community. One of the interviews led to a conference for science educators, which I attended at the expense of the school that invited me. The conference led to more contacts...and so on.
Because I was living in a fairly small and economically sleepy town, I started to feel like I'd exhausted my network. Luckily, the interview process for my current job started just as I'd run out of people to talk to. But one way to take the sleaziness out of networking is to actually keep in touch with people. Networking is a two-way street, so keep the lines of communication open.
Tips for Informational Interviews:
1. Keep your initial email to someone you don't know short, but put the text of your resume in the text of the email.
2. Coffee shops make good venues for meetings, but always offer to meet the person at his or her office. Essentially, make the meeting as easy for someone to attend as possible.
3. Dress nicely. For most meetings, there's no need to wear a suit. Nice pants and a button-down shirt (or something along those lines) sends the message that you have your shit together.
4. Do your research. Make sure you know what the person you're meeting with does and how it fits in with the rest of the company, just like you would if you were visiting a university department for an interview.
In the meantime, someone asked whether I was doing anything beyond sending out resumes and cover letters during my job hunt, which is the perfect follow up to my last post about talking to people.
Most of those 50-ish resumes and cover letters that I sent out were met with a resounding silence. Never heard a peep. There's nothing worse than spending a few hours perfecting a cover letter and then not even being met with a rejection letter. After sending a couple dozen applications out into the black hole, I had some great templates for my cover letter and a few different resumes that were tailored for different types of jobs. For instance, I had a resume that I submitted to academic publishing jobs that highlighted my writing skills and experience. That resume was very different from the one I sent for jobs that were education-oriented.
Despite all of the great application materials I had, I didn't appear any closer to actually having a job. When you look at the numbers, the percentage of people who are hired through online job applications is relatively small*. This is a fairly major difference from the academic world, where lots of jobs get filled by people who simply sent in applications in response to an ad. When I started really reading the ScienceCareers forum, it became clear that I had to change my strategy a bit.
The word "networking" always sounds cheesy to me. Worse than cheesy, actually. Sleazy. But it doesn't have to be. During my job search, I built up a network of people in my area who were doing interesting things, working at interesting places, or seemed well-connected in a given field. Looking back, this kind of happened naturally. It started with one woman I met who was working in science education/outreach at my postdoctoral institution, then she gave me the names of a bunch of other people working in that arena. Slowly, I contacted all of them and set up meetings with them. These are often called informational interviews, and they can be really interesting.
There are a couple of schools of thought about how you should approach informational interviews. Some people feel that you should approach informational interviewers and new contacts without telling them that you're actually looking for a job. Others feel that you should be up front about the fact that you are job-hunting, though you shouldn't expect that the person you're meeting with will actually do anything about it. I opted for the latter approach, because it seems more honest to me. You can tell someone that you're looking for a job and think they're company is interesting without sounding like a bozo. I also suspect that people can see right through your request for a meeting...they know on some level that you're gunning for a job.
During my job hunt, I had about 15 informational interviews with people from state agencies, nonprofits, research institutions, universities, and schools. Almost everyone I contacted was happy to meet with me, and most of them gave me the names of a couple other people to talk to. These interviews also gave me a good sense of what was going on in my community. One of the interviews led to a conference for science educators, which I attended at the expense of the school that invited me. The conference led to more contacts...and so on.
Because I was living in a fairly small and economically sleepy town, I started to feel like I'd exhausted my network. Luckily, the interview process for my current job started just as I'd run out of people to talk to. But one way to take the sleaziness out of networking is to actually keep in touch with people. Networking is a two-way street, so keep the lines of communication open.
Tips for Informational Interviews:
1. Keep your initial email to someone you don't know short, but put the text of your resume in the text of the email.
2. Coffee shops make good venues for meetings, but always offer to meet the person at his or her office. Essentially, make the meeting as easy for someone to attend as possible.
3. Dress nicely. For most meetings, there's no need to wear a suit. Nice pants and a button-down shirt (or something along those lines) sends the message that you have your shit together.
4. Do your research. Make sure you know what the person you're meeting with does and how it fits in with the rest of the company, just like you would if you were visiting a university department for an interview.
Friday, May 11, 2007
lesson #1: talk to people
At some point, I'll write more about strategies for finding a job outside of academia and such, but for now let's start with a few statistics about my job search:
- Number of months between leaving postdoc and securing new job: 8 1/2
- Number of resumes with customized cover letters sent out during this time: about 50
- Number of formal interviews: 4 1/2 (I never figured out if my third interview was for real or not, so I'm counting it as half an interview)
- Income during this time period: $0
- Number of part-time (10-30 hours/week) volunteer jobs done during this time: 3
Scientists out there, you could interpret these results in many ways, no? In terms of how these numbers fit in with the experiences of other academic refugees, I'm not sure. The only thing I am really sure of about my refugee status is this: It fucking sucked.
For 8 1/2 months, I felt like I had severe head wounds from banging my head against the wall that I had to neatly cover up each time I went begging for a job in my new suit. I jumped up and down screaming "I'm here! I'm smart! Hire me!" until I was hoarse. I put on song and dance routines for the many kind strangers who granted me informational interviews (another topic for a future post).
In the end, though, the head-banging, the screaming, the singing, and the dancing, didn't get me a job. What got me a job was all of the genuine hard work I'd done as a graduate student.
When I started applying for non-academic jobs, I sent a quick email to the three people who had furnished letters of reference for all of my academic job applications asking them if they would still provide letters for me for this new breed of applications. They all said yes, but only one of them -- committee member X -- asked what kind of job I was looking for. I emailed him some of my general ideas, and never heard back. In my mind, I thought "It's true. They all think I'm a failure."
About five months after I sent that email, I got a call from X out of the blue. He was calling to find out whether I would be interested in a job at his university. He described the job and I nearly fell over. It was *perfect*. I had described a job like this -- but not quite as cool -- to friends and family. My qualifications were perfect. He hadn't called anyone else. I am starting on Monday.
Having spent over 20 years in school, I really wanted to believe that the old adage "It's not what you know, it's who you know" wasn't true. I wanted my resume to speak for itself, and to some extent it did. On its own a resume can say a lot of things. Mine basically says "I'm a nerd, but I just got my braces off, so I'm cool now." X knew that I was a nerd, and my qualifications were a big part of why I got the job. As important, though, was the fact that we had worked together in the past. X and I wrote two papers together -- I was first author on one, and he was first author on the other. We worked well together and had a great deal of respect for each other. There are plenty of other people out there with resumes like mine, but X hadn't worked with them before.
And so we come to the first, and most important lesson when looking for a job:
Talk to people. Every single person you know is an important contact, and they need to know what kind of gig you're looking for. Even more fundamental than that, they need to know that you're looking for a job. Don't be afraid to tell them, whether they are former advisers or relatives. These people already know you and, hopefully, think well of you. So if they are ever in a position to suggest someone for a job, they'll think of you.
- Number of months between leaving postdoc and securing new job: 8 1/2
- Number of resumes with customized cover letters sent out during this time: about 50
- Number of formal interviews: 4 1/2 (I never figured out if my third interview was for real or not, so I'm counting it as half an interview)
- Income during this time period: $0
- Number of part-time (10-30 hours/week) volunteer jobs done during this time: 3
Scientists out there, you could interpret these results in many ways, no? In terms of how these numbers fit in with the experiences of other academic refugees, I'm not sure. The only thing I am really sure of about my refugee status is this: It fucking sucked.
For 8 1/2 months, I felt like I had severe head wounds from banging my head against the wall that I had to neatly cover up each time I went begging for a job in my new suit. I jumped up and down screaming "I'm here! I'm smart! Hire me!" until I was hoarse. I put on song and dance routines for the many kind strangers who granted me informational interviews (another topic for a future post).
In the end, though, the head-banging, the screaming, the singing, and the dancing, didn't get me a job. What got me a job was all of the genuine hard work I'd done as a graduate student.
When I started applying for non-academic jobs, I sent a quick email to the three people who had furnished letters of reference for all of my academic job applications asking them if they would still provide letters for me for this new breed of applications. They all said yes, but only one of them -- committee member X -- asked what kind of job I was looking for. I emailed him some of my general ideas, and never heard back. In my mind, I thought "It's true. They all think I'm a failure."
About five months after I sent that email, I got a call from X out of the blue. He was calling to find out whether I would be interested in a job at his university. He described the job and I nearly fell over. It was *perfect*. I had described a job like this -- but not quite as cool -- to friends and family. My qualifications were perfect. He hadn't called anyone else. I am starting on Monday.
Having spent over 20 years in school, I really wanted to believe that the old adage "It's not what you know, it's who you know" wasn't true. I wanted my resume to speak for itself, and to some extent it did. On its own a resume can say a lot of things. Mine basically says "I'm a nerd, but I just got my braces off, so I'm cool now." X knew that I was a nerd, and my qualifications were a big part of why I got the job. As important, though, was the fact that we had worked together in the past. X and I wrote two papers together -- I was first author on one, and he was first author on the other. We worked well together and had a great deal of respect for each other. There are plenty of other people out there with resumes like mine, but X hadn't worked with them before.
And so we come to the first, and most important lesson when looking for a job:
Talk to people. Every single person you know is an important contact, and they need to know what kind of gig you're looking for. Even more fundamental than that, they need to know that you're looking for a job. Don't be afraid to tell them, whether they are former advisers or relatives. These people already know you and, hopefully, think well of you. So if they are ever in a position to suggest someone for a job, they'll think of you.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
you can take the academia out of the academic...
I recently mentioned that less than 20% of science and engineering doctoral recipients are in tenure-track positions 4-6 years after they graduate. According to survey of 2003 graduates, though, 80% of those who don't go on to do a postdoc after graduation are still employed in their specific field of science*. In trying to find people who'd left the ivory tower from my super-specialized niche, I only found a few. So where are all these people going? Do they go into hiding after leaving the tower?
Data from 1996 to 2003 from this same report shed light on where these mystery folks go. It turns out that a majority (40-68%) of those fleeing academia find jobs in...drum roll please...academia. Yep, you read right. The survey doesn't go into any depth about what these non-academic roles in academia are, so they could be anything from technical research positions to janitorial jobs. Who knows.
The fact that there are people doing jobs aside from research and teaching at a university often goes unnoticed by the faculty members, postdocs, and students. As a graduate student I -- admittedly -- assumed that pretty much everyone who wasn't a researcher or professor at my school was a secretary of some kind. But when you start to really look around your university, you'll find people working on the periphery of science in all sorts of roles. There are grant writers, journalists, science communicators, K-12 outreach specialists, academic administrators, lobbyists, event planners, caterers...the list truly goes on and on. They are truly working on the interface between the research world and the real world.
In my experience, these people are an incredible font of information about leaving academic research. Many of them have their doctorates, but either lost interest in their research or simply wanted to explore different positions. I met with many such people at both my graduate institution and my postdoctoral institution, and I found that they were always happy to share their stories, experiences, and, most importantly, their Rolodexes (Rolodices? Rolindices?). Best of all, these are people who are actually at your current institution. You can just stroll into their offices in your lab coat and start asking questions.
This is a good time to announce that I, too, will be joining the ranks of the non-academics in academia. I start at my new job (!) at a large R1 university on Monday. I started this blog at the prompting of friends who are curious about what it's like to work on the periphery of science, so I'll finally start writing about that on Monday. For those of you who have read about all of the emotions that lead up to my decision to leave academia, I hope you don't feel betrayed by the fact that I'm headed back into the halls of the Ivory Tower.
* If I site this survey, it will be revealing too much about who I am, and we can't have that. But if you'd like me to send you the published data, leave a comment.
Data from 1996 to 2003 from this same report shed light on where these mystery folks go. It turns out that a majority (40-68%) of those fleeing academia find jobs in...drum roll please...academia. Yep, you read right. The survey doesn't go into any depth about what these non-academic roles in academia are, so they could be anything from technical research positions to janitorial jobs. Who knows.
The fact that there are people doing jobs aside from research and teaching at a university often goes unnoticed by the faculty members, postdocs, and students. As a graduate student I -- admittedly -- assumed that pretty much everyone who wasn't a researcher or professor at my school was a secretary of some kind. But when you start to really look around your university, you'll find people working on the periphery of science in all sorts of roles. There are grant writers, journalists, science communicators, K-12 outreach specialists, academic administrators, lobbyists, event planners, caterers...the list truly goes on and on. They are truly working on the interface between the research world and the real world.
In my experience, these people are an incredible font of information about leaving academic research. Many of them have their doctorates, but either lost interest in their research or simply wanted to explore different positions. I met with many such people at both my graduate institution and my postdoctoral institution, and I found that they were always happy to share their stories, experiences, and, most importantly, their Rolodexes (Rolodices? Rolindices?). Best of all, these are people who are actually at your current institution. You can just stroll into their offices in your lab coat and start asking questions.
This is a good time to announce that I, too, will be joining the ranks of the non-academics in academia. I start at my new job (!) at a large R1 university on Monday. I started this blog at the prompting of friends who are curious about what it's like to work on the periphery of science, so I'll finally start writing about that on Monday. For those of you who have read about all of the emotions that lead up to my decision to leave academia, I hope you don't feel betrayed by the fact that I'm headed back into the halls of the Ivory Tower.
* If I site this survey, it will be revealing too much about who I am, and we can't have that. But if you'd like me to send you the published data, leave a comment.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
can they do that?
I had a pretty good idea of what my perfect job would entail. The question then became "Is that possible? Is there anyone out there actually doing this?"
When you've spent your life in school -- and always assumed that you'd spend the rest of your life teaching and working at a school -- it's not surprising that you don't know about careers that exist outside of school. As part of this process of figuring out what went on out there in the real world, someone suggested that I find some role models, essentially people who had studied what I'd studied and didn't end up in academia. Reasonable, yes, but easier than it sounded. On my first pass, I found a science writer and a TV personality, and that was about it. No joke. There was no obvious industry drawing people away from universities.
Lacking role models, I spent every waking hour looking at job postings and reading job descriptions. There's the Chronicle of Higher Education job board (which has separate sections for non-academic careers). Science and Nature have job listings, some of which aren't at universities. But more interesting were sites like Indeed, which searches listings from tons of job sites and aggregates them for you. Here, I found job titles I'd never heard of: Program Coordinator, Assistant Editor (different from Editorial Assistant), and Awake Overnight Life Skills Coach (also known as your boyfriend/girlfriend).
I also made lists of companies I admired for whatever reason, whether they had anything to do with my specialty or not: The Gates Foundation, United Nations, Wikipedia, and countless others. I made lists of places I liked to spend time: Museums, national parks, libraries, cafes. For each of these companies and venues, I checked out their online job listings to find out what people there actually do. What are their job titles? What sorts of backgrounds do they have? What value would they see in a niche-geek like me?
When I started looking outside of the academic bubble, I got really excited. There are thousands of interesting companies out there and millions of people doing really interesting things. But I also got worried because I didn't see many job ads geared toward people like me.
In reading my posts about this whole process, you might get the impression that I approached it all rationally and intelligently like a good scientist should. And to some extent, that's true. I knew that I needed to figure out for myself what I wanted in a job, and I needed to figure out how those desires fit in with the already existing working world. But at the time it felt like utter chaos, and there were many times when I was hard on myself for not knowing what I wanted to do next. It didn't feel rational or intelligent to give up things like money, health insurance, and direction in hopes that I'd find something better. It was kind of a mess, and I can't claim that I navigated the process with grace, but I did eventually find a job that met all of my criteria.
When you've spent your life in school -- and always assumed that you'd spend the rest of your life teaching and working at a school -- it's not surprising that you don't know about careers that exist outside of school. As part of this process of figuring out what went on out there in the real world, someone suggested that I find some role models, essentially people who had studied what I'd studied and didn't end up in academia. Reasonable, yes, but easier than it sounded. On my first pass, I found a science writer and a TV personality, and that was about it. No joke. There was no obvious industry drawing people away from universities.
Lacking role models, I spent every waking hour looking at job postings and reading job descriptions. There's the Chronicle of Higher Education job board (which has separate sections for non-academic careers). Science and Nature have job listings, some of which aren't at universities. But more interesting were sites like Indeed, which searches listings from tons of job sites and aggregates them for you. Here, I found job titles I'd never heard of: Program Coordinator, Assistant Editor (different from Editorial Assistant), and Awake Overnight Life Skills Coach (also known as your boyfriend/girlfriend).
I also made lists of companies I admired for whatever reason, whether they had anything to do with my specialty or not: The Gates Foundation, United Nations, Wikipedia, and countless others. I made lists of places I liked to spend time: Museums, national parks, libraries, cafes. For each of these companies and venues, I checked out their online job listings to find out what people there actually do. What are their job titles? What sorts of backgrounds do they have? What value would they see in a niche-geek like me?
When I started looking outside of the academic bubble, I got really excited. There are thousands of interesting companies out there and millions of people doing really interesting things. But I also got worried because I didn't see many job ads geared toward people like me.
In reading my posts about this whole process, you might get the impression that I approached it all rationally and intelligently like a good scientist should. And to some extent, that's true. I knew that I needed to figure out for myself what I wanted in a job, and I needed to figure out how those desires fit in with the already existing working world. But at the time it felt like utter chaos, and there were many times when I was hard on myself for not knowing what I wanted to do next. It didn't feel rational or intelligent to give up things like money, health insurance, and direction in hopes that I'd find something better. It was kind of a mess, and I can't claim that I navigated the process with grace, but I did eventually find a job that met all of my criteria.
do what you like
So I knew that I wanted to do something that kept me in touch with the big-picture scientific questions. And I wanted to be able to draw upon that well of scientific information in my head lest it become like a bottomless cup of decaf coffee -- completely useless in most situations. To avoid falling into another unsatisfying job, though, I had to figure out what I did and didn't like about academia.
I've mentioned some of the aspects of research science that I disliked. At first, I was so consumed with the idea of escaping academia that it was difficult to look objectively at my job and see the things that I did like. But there were actually a lot of things that I liked about it and that I wanted to find in a new role.
Writing. Those days and nights of writing papers, of being knee-deep in references, of trying to put my own meager contributions into the context of decades of work, and of tweaking sentences and paragraphs were my favorite part of the scientific process.
Being around smart people all the time. Academics are generally pretty intelligent, and I like being around smart people.
Variety. I like to dabble in a lot of different projects and do a variety of tasks. Writing is great, but I can't do it 8 hours each day. Teaching is fun, but teaching the same thing year after year doesn't appeal. Ditto for data analysis, labwork, and putting together prensentations. I do best when I have a lot of variety in my day.
I could also identify some qualities I wanted in a new job: I wanted to talk to people during the day; I wanted to have a more obvious connection to what was going on in the real world; and I wanted to work more collaboratively, so that whether or not I showed up to work actually mattered.
I've mentioned some of the aspects of research science that I disliked. At first, I was so consumed with the idea of escaping academia that it was difficult to look objectively at my job and see the things that I did like. But there were actually a lot of things that I liked about it and that I wanted to find in a new role.
Writing. Those days and nights of writing papers, of being knee-deep in references, of trying to put my own meager contributions into the context of decades of work, and of tweaking sentences and paragraphs were my favorite part of the scientific process.
Being around smart people all the time. Academics are generally pretty intelligent, and I like being around smart people.
Variety. I like to dabble in a lot of different projects and do a variety of tasks. Writing is great, but I can't do it 8 hours each day. Teaching is fun, but teaching the same thing year after year doesn't appeal. Ditto for data analysis, labwork, and putting together prensentations. I do best when I have a lot of variety in my day.
I could also identify some qualities I wanted in a new job: I wanted to talk to people during the day; I wanted to have a more obvious connection to what was going on in the real world; and I wanted to work more collaboratively, so that whether or not I showed up to work actually mattered.
fantasy vs. reality
In thinking about what I wanted to do next, there were a few things that I had to figure out for myself:
1. Did I want to leave science all together and pursue one of my butcher/baker/candlestick-maker fantasy careers? Or did I simply want what's usually called an "alternative career" in science?
2. What was it that I liked about my job in academia? What didn't I like? These likes and gripes would serve a purpose in evaluating future job possibilities, should any actually arise.
3. What do people actually do outside of academia? Aside from the professions in which the tasks are fairly well-known -- doctor (the real kind), teacher, lawyer, etc. -- I really didn't know what was out there or how I might fit in.
In the next few posts, I'll look at each of these in more depth. For now, we'll just look at the fantasy career question.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'd come up with a lot of careers that I thought would be more fun than being a scientist. This was not a difficult thing to do since everything looked more fun than what I had been doing. I'd wander through Williams-Sonoma silently choosing the Wusthof knives for the kitchen of my haute-vegetarian restaurant. Or I'd read a Kristof piece in the New York Times and spend hours researching careers in public health. Most of these fantasy careers involved working more directly with people -- feeding them, serving them good coffee, helping them. But another thing these jobs had in common was that I'd never done them before.
If you've never done something before, it's very easy to fantasize about it. In these daydreams, it somehow never sinks in that bakers actually have to get up at 2 a.m. to prepare those lovely warm croissants they serve you in the morning. Or that many chefs work until 2 a.m., sleep for a few hours, then get up early to get the freshest fish at the market. If you've ever fantasized about owning a restaurant, I highly recommend reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Bourdain bills himself as a renegade chef, which gets pretty annoying, but he describes his life as a chef, and it's horrifying. All the things you never thought about in your glowing vision of chefdom are brought out into the light.
The greater message here is this: Really think about these fantasy careers. Are these jobs things you'd like to do for an afternoon or for a month? Or are they really something that you want to do day-in, day-out for years to come. One of the best ways to figure this out is to actually talk to someone who does that job for a living. Talk to your barista, and you'll realize that she's making minimum wage and has coffee burns on her hands. What are these jobs really like? Stop fantasizing.
The other thing I realized about my fantasy jobs was that I wasn't qualified for most of them. Sure, I'd waited tables for a summer in college, cooked dinner for friends, and made truffles for my valentines, but did that mean that I could effortlessly slip into a glamorous career as a personal chef? No. Did my Ph.D. qualify me in any way for a career in public health? No. In the course of getting a Ph.D., you realize that you can pretty much learn anything. You learn how to learn, and you learn how to learn quickly. You figure out how to learn on your own, with a book and a stack of journal articles. So it is easy to think that you can do anything you want. And you certainly can. But when I looked at many of my fantasy jobs and what it would take to actually do them, I realized that many of them would require more school. I love learning and all, but going back to the classroom to learn held no appeal for me. At some point you have to stop loading and start firing.
Crazy (okay, nerdy) as it may sound, in college I fantasized about becoming a science professor. I now knew that that fantasy career was unsatisfying, but there were aspects of science that I was still drawn to. I kicked and screamed my way through labwork, but still loved to spend hours puzzling over the big-picture questions that had been challenging scientists in my field for decades. I still had a sense of wonder about the overall concepts in science. And over the years those questions and concepts had come to shape who I was and how I viewed the world. I didn't want to leave them behind completely, but I did want to change how I approached them.
There are a few well-trod paths into the world of alternative careers in science. Science education and outreach. Science writing. Science policy. What these all have in common is, well, science. They offer the opportunity to stay in touch with those seductive big-picture concepts, while trading the nitty-gritty details of academia in for other nitty-gritty details that might be a better fit.
I loathe the phrase "alternative careers in science," so you won't see it here again. With less than 20% of science and engineering doctoral degree holders in tenure-track positions 4-6 years after graduation, it's clear that academia is just one of many choices that are out there*. To describe non-academic careers as "alternatives" is silly and only furthers the perception that those who don't pursue the tenure-track are failures.
* In 2003, the actual number for the physical sciences was 16.7% [National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 (NSB Publication 06-01, Arlington, VA, 2006)]. For more statistics, check out the National Postdoctoral Association.
1. Did I want to leave science all together and pursue one of my butcher/baker/candlestick-maker fantasy careers? Or did I simply want what's usually called an "alternative career" in science?
2. What was it that I liked about my job in academia? What didn't I like? These likes and gripes would serve a purpose in evaluating future job possibilities, should any actually arise.
3. What do people actually do outside of academia? Aside from the professions in which the tasks are fairly well-known -- doctor (the real kind), teacher, lawyer, etc. -- I really didn't know what was out there or how I might fit in.
In the next few posts, I'll look at each of these in more depth. For now, we'll just look at the fantasy career question.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'd come up with a lot of careers that I thought would be more fun than being a scientist. This was not a difficult thing to do since everything looked more fun than what I had been doing. I'd wander through Williams-Sonoma silently choosing the Wusthof knives for the kitchen of my haute-vegetarian restaurant. Or I'd read a Kristof piece in the New York Times and spend hours researching careers in public health. Most of these fantasy careers involved working more directly with people -- feeding them, serving them good coffee, helping them. But another thing these jobs had in common was that I'd never done them before.
If you've never done something before, it's very easy to fantasize about it. In these daydreams, it somehow never sinks in that bakers actually have to get up at 2 a.m. to prepare those lovely warm croissants they serve you in the morning. Or that many chefs work until 2 a.m., sleep for a few hours, then get up early to get the freshest fish at the market. If you've ever fantasized about owning a restaurant, I highly recommend reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Bourdain bills himself as a renegade chef, which gets pretty annoying, but he describes his life as a chef, and it's horrifying. All the things you never thought about in your glowing vision of chefdom are brought out into the light.
The greater message here is this: Really think about these fantasy careers. Are these jobs things you'd like to do for an afternoon or for a month? Or are they really something that you want to do day-in, day-out for years to come. One of the best ways to figure this out is to actually talk to someone who does that job for a living. Talk to your barista, and you'll realize that she's making minimum wage and has coffee burns on her hands. What are these jobs really like? Stop fantasizing.
The other thing I realized about my fantasy jobs was that I wasn't qualified for most of them. Sure, I'd waited tables for a summer in college, cooked dinner for friends, and made truffles for my valentines, but did that mean that I could effortlessly slip into a glamorous career as a personal chef? No. Did my Ph.D. qualify me in any way for a career in public health? No. In the course of getting a Ph.D., you realize that you can pretty much learn anything. You learn how to learn, and you learn how to learn quickly. You figure out how to learn on your own, with a book and a stack of journal articles. So it is easy to think that you can do anything you want. And you certainly can. But when I looked at many of my fantasy jobs and what it would take to actually do them, I realized that many of them would require more school. I love learning and all, but going back to the classroom to learn held no appeal for me. At some point you have to stop loading and start firing.
Crazy (okay, nerdy) as it may sound, in college I fantasized about becoming a science professor. I now knew that that fantasy career was unsatisfying, but there were aspects of science that I was still drawn to. I kicked and screamed my way through labwork, but still loved to spend hours puzzling over the big-picture questions that had been challenging scientists in my field for decades. I still had a sense of wonder about the overall concepts in science. And over the years those questions and concepts had come to shape who I was and how I viewed the world. I didn't want to leave them behind completely, but I did want to change how I approached them.
There are a few well-trod paths into the world of alternative careers in science. Science education and outreach. Science writing. Science policy. What these all have in common is, well, science. They offer the opportunity to stay in touch with those seductive big-picture concepts, while trading the nitty-gritty details of academia in for other nitty-gritty details that might be a better fit.
I loathe the phrase "alternative careers in science," so you won't see it here again. With less than 20% of science and engineering doctoral degree holders in tenure-track positions 4-6 years after graduation, it's clear that academia is just one of many choices that are out there*. To describe non-academic careers as "alternatives" is silly and only furthers the perception that those who don't pursue the tenure-track are failures.
* In 2003, the actual number for the physical sciences was 16.7% [National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Statistics, Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 (NSB Publication 06-01, Arlington, VA, 2006)]. For more statistics, check out the National Postdoctoral Association.
Monday, May 7, 2007
pleasantly surprised
Telling my parents that I was leaving my job rated about a 7 on the Dread Scale. I knew they thought I was crazy for doing it, but I figured that they saw my leaving a "perfectly respectable" job as the latest in the slew of questionable decisions I'd made since leaving their house to go to college. The conversations I was really dreading were the ones I had to have with my postdoc adviser (an 8.5) and my graduate adviser (10).
I started with my postdoc adviser, since he'd only invested a few months in me. I had been spinning up a new project in the lab, and we'd gotten a proposal funded for it, but I hadn't actually done anything in the field or in the lab yet. When I told him that I was leaving, he seemed completely unfazed. We talked about the reasons why, and he suggested some alternatives. Would I be happier at another university? Different projects? Then he said a couple of things that gave me the nerve to talk to my graduate adviser. First, that you have to try to find something that will make you happy. If it isn't academia, bail! Second, that he's had about a dozen students and postdocs at this point in his career. Some have stayed in academia, and some have left. In each individual case, he was completely unable to predict whether a student would stay or leave based on that person's performance or intelligence.
With that conversation out of the way, I composed an email to my graduate adviser. Over the years, she and I had had a few personal conversations, but our relationship was primarily professional, and we weren't very close. Yet I couldn't imagine her freaking out or getting angry with me for what amounted to a personal choice. And I was right. Her response to my email was truly incredible and extremely kind. She wrote that she thought it was a good time to be exploring all my options. She herself hadn't really done that at any point in her academic training and career, and had wondered if she'd be happier in another field.
Telling my mentors that I was leaving lifted a huge weight off my chest. Instead of constantly looking backward (Should I not have wasted all those years in school?) or fantasizing (Oooh, maybe I'll go to culinary school!), I started looking forward to what I really wanted to do with my life.
I started with my postdoc adviser, since he'd only invested a few months in me. I had been spinning up a new project in the lab, and we'd gotten a proposal funded for it, but I hadn't actually done anything in the field or in the lab yet. When I told him that I was leaving, he seemed completely unfazed. We talked about the reasons why, and he suggested some alternatives. Would I be happier at another university? Different projects? Then he said a couple of things that gave me the nerve to talk to my graduate adviser. First, that you have to try to find something that will make you happy. If it isn't academia, bail! Second, that he's had about a dozen students and postdocs at this point in his career. Some have stayed in academia, and some have left. In each individual case, he was completely unable to predict whether a student would stay or leave based on that person's performance or intelligence.
With that conversation out of the way, I composed an email to my graduate adviser. Over the years, she and I had had a few personal conversations, but our relationship was primarily professional, and we weren't very close. Yet I couldn't imagine her freaking out or getting angry with me for what amounted to a personal choice. And I was right. Her response to my email was truly incredible and extremely kind. She wrote that she thought it was a good time to be exploring all my options. She herself hadn't really done that at any point in her academic training and career, and had wondered if she'd be happier in another field.
Telling my mentors that I was leaving lifted a huge weight off my chest. Instead of constantly looking backward (Should I not have wasted all those years in school?) or fantasizing (Oooh, maybe I'll go to culinary school!), I started looking forward to what I really wanted to do with my life.
Friday, May 4, 2007
why we stay
Over the years, I've had countless conversations with friends about leaving academia. We'd have long talks over too many glasses of wine detailing our fantasies of becoming pastry chefs or farmers. The next morning, hungover, we'd schlep back into the lab and into reality again.
Despite our earnest and frequent musings, academia had a steely grip on all of us. I know a couple of people who left graduate school to pursue other avenues, and a couple who were asked to leave. But most everyone I started school with did finish, and did go on to do postdoctoral work. Yet many still toy with the idea of leaving their research behind. Why is it so difficult to leave? Why are there online forums for people considering leaving? Why am I blogging about it?
One word: Tweed. We stay because we want the tweed jackets as badly as medical students want white coats. Professors are admired, respected (though this generally has nothing to do with the tweed jacket itself or any other item in the professorial spring line). That respect is deeply ingrained in communities, families, and individuals, who regard academic work as pure and, therefore, somehow noble. Money? Pah! They don't do their jobs for the money, they do it for the love of knowledge, for the raw intellectual challenge.
A number of people have also echoed a thought I've had myself --one that always makes me cringe -- that they stuck it out through their Ph.D. to prove that they could do it. As a student, math was always my worst subject. So when I got to college -- freshman flagellant that I was -- I signed up for Honors Calculus I&II, taught as a one semester course for math majors. This sort of attitude stayed with me through college and graduate school, through my first months as a postdoc. Some part of me hung onto the idea that if I could be successful at something that was both challenging and highly regarded by society, then I'd be happy.
About five months into my postdoc, my parents came to visit. I wanted so badly to convey that I was doing well despite being so far from home. But I also wanted to talk to them about my plans to leave my postdoc. Until that point, the conversations I'd had about leaving were mostly sardonic, mostly with friends. I needed new sounding boards, fresh ears who could hear me out and provide support. The subject came up over dinner one night during their visit. I resolutely presented my case to the judges who had been assigned to me for life. And as I described how unhappy I had been with research, I watched their faces stiffen. It was a blow to their bragging rights.
Over the next few months, as I went through the motions of being a postdoc and began to translate my CV into a resume, I thought a lot about failure. My gut told me that I had somehow failed. My parents' faces had seemed to confirm that. I obsessively read horror stories online of people whose advisers labeled them failures when they announced that they were not interested in the tenure track. But after some serious wallowing and visits to a couple of shrinks, I realized that I'd be failing myself if I stayed. Sometimes it takes a lot more faith in yourself to leave than it does to stay.
Despite our earnest and frequent musings, academia had a steely grip on all of us. I know a couple of people who left graduate school to pursue other avenues, and a couple who were asked to leave. But most everyone I started school with did finish, and did go on to do postdoctoral work. Yet many still toy with the idea of leaving their research behind. Why is it so difficult to leave? Why are there online forums for people considering leaving? Why am I blogging about it?
One word: Tweed. We stay because we want the tweed jackets as badly as medical students want white coats. Professors are admired, respected (though this generally has nothing to do with the tweed jacket itself or any other item in the professorial spring line). That respect is deeply ingrained in communities, families, and individuals, who regard academic work as pure and, therefore, somehow noble. Money? Pah! They don't do their jobs for the money, they do it for the love of knowledge, for the raw intellectual challenge.
A number of people have also echoed a thought I've had myself --one that always makes me cringe -- that they stuck it out through their Ph.D. to prove that they could do it. As a student, math was always my worst subject. So when I got to college -- freshman flagellant that I was -- I signed up for Honors Calculus I&II, taught as a one semester course for math majors. This sort of attitude stayed with me through college and graduate school, through my first months as a postdoc. Some part of me hung onto the idea that if I could be successful at something that was both challenging and highly regarded by society, then I'd be happy.
About five months into my postdoc, my parents came to visit. I wanted so badly to convey that I was doing well despite being so far from home. But I also wanted to talk to them about my plans to leave my postdoc. Until that point, the conversations I'd had about leaving were mostly sardonic, mostly with friends. I needed new sounding boards, fresh ears who could hear me out and provide support. The subject came up over dinner one night during their visit. I resolutely presented my case to the judges who had been assigned to me for life. And as I described how unhappy I had been with research, I watched their faces stiffen. It was a blow to their bragging rights.
Over the next few months, as I went through the motions of being a postdoc and began to translate my CV into a resume, I thought a lot about failure. My gut told me that I had somehow failed. My parents' faces had seemed to confirm that. I obsessively read horror stories online of people whose advisers labeled them failures when they announced that they were not interested in the tenure track. But after some serious wallowing and visits to a couple of shrinks, I realized that I'd be failing myself if I stayed. Sometimes it takes a lot more faith in yourself to leave than it does to stay.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
eager emigrant (part II)
So, there I was at my new university to start my postdoc -- new lab, new projects, even had a month of exotic field work to motivate me. It seems like most people I know *loved* their graduate institution and had, at best, middling feelings about their postdoctoral institution. It's possible that my year as a postdoc is colored by the things any postdoc has to deal with: Leaving behind the comfort and familiarity of your old home; Not knowing anyone in a new place; Having to figure out where the printers, paper, and staplers are. These things, and the impact they have on your happiness, are not to be underestimated. But beyond those normal transitional things, I noticed some very disturbing things about myself and my new institution:
- I was very carefully avoiding talking about science with my new adviser (to the point of sneaking past his office quietly). He didn't seem very eager to talk to me either.
- I was constantly bored and fidgety during seminars. I started leaving early.
- Everyone in my building worked with their doors closed. Aside from some of the graduate students, almost no one said hello or smiled when we passed in the halls.
- The graduate students were afraid to give talks about their research in departmental seminars.
We could debate the meaning and significance of each of these observations, of course. But what they added up to was simple and clear: Isolation. I worked alone. Days would go by and I wouldn't have talked to a single person about what I was doing. So there was an intense physical and emotional isolation. But there was also a practical isolation from the real world.
By definition, the Ivory Tower is a place in which people focus on subjects that are far removed from the concerns of the layman. And many academics seem to enjoy this. My work was no exception in that there was no obvious connection to what went on outside of the university walls. So when I stopped caring about what I was doing, there was really no one left to care about it.
The Ivory Tower is kind of like a Club Med resort on a poor Caribbean island. While you're visiting, you can fret over whether to spend the day snorkeling or sailing, or whether to drink Cuba Libres or apple-tinis. Because you are surrounded by other vacationers trying to make equally critical decisions, you can easily begin to believe that these decisions are meaningful. But one step off of the Club's groomed beaches tells you that they are not.
Lots of academics are fully aware that their work has never had -- and will never have -- any tangible impact on the world. It's not my intention to criticize them. On the contrary, I fully believe in knowledge for knowledge's sake. It's simple. It's beautiful. And in some cosmic way, a greater understanding of our environment at any level advances humanity as a whole.
During my time as a postdoc, I sincerely wished that I could be satisfied in my esoteric niche. I was doing well at it. I had a steady job, a steady stream of publications. The problems that commonly plague scientists, such as difficulty writing or feeling pulled in too many directions, were not issues I was having. But I wasn't happy. At 28 years old, I couldn't see the point in staying the academic course (tenure-track professorship! tenured! emeritus!) for the next 40+ years.
When you step off of the Club Med beach or get away from the gleaming white walls of the Tower, it can be a bit of a shock. You realize that you speak a different language than everyone else. You don't quite know where you fit in. And you're no longer treading the predictable, well-worn path from the baby pool to the big wide ocean.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
from eager beaver to eager emigrant
Each Ivory Tower exile has his or her own reasons for leaving. There are some common themes in their stories: Lack of desire to compete for an ever-shrinking pot of federal grant money; failure to receive tenure; a lack of passion for teaching, research, or some fatal combination of the two that leads to the failure to receive tenure; research projects failing or never making it to publication; money, and the perception that you could be making more of it outside of academia. While many of these played bit roles in my own departure drama, they weren't the primary players. In these next few posts, I'll write about why I decided to leave despite being relatively successful at what I was doing.
My ambivalence toward academia became firmly rooted mid-way through graduate school. I had finished up all of my coursework, and was in the early stages of my dissertation research. In other words, I was far enough along to be invested, but far enough from finishing that it seemed implausible that I ever would. Each time I glanced at the hundreds of samples in my "to analyze" stack, my heart felt heavy. It wasn't so much the time that it would take to analyze them or all of the failed experiments and instrumentation issues that would inevitably occur in the course of the analyses that gave me pause. I simply didn't care anymore.
Not caring about my research saddened me, even depressed me for a while. For years, I had soaked up all I could about my field, reveled in it. I knew what it felt like to stay up all night reading journal articles like they were steamy romance novels. My college roommates had made fun of my insatiable desire to learn. Losing that desire was unsettling because I knew what it was like to have it. Without it, I felt like a fake who was simply going through the motions*.
Over the next few years, as I completed my thesis, I had moments in which I truly enjoyed my work. My friends and I propped each other up when necessary, and the bonds between us were genuine and lovely. My mood lightened considerably when I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. By the time I defended I was, by most standards, one of the most promising new scientists in my field. I had published four first-author papers by the time I finished school, and had one more in the pipeline. I had received a highly coveted postdoctoral fellowship -- the kind of fellowship that you don't turn down. Despite my very deep concern about whether or not I wanted to continue in academia, I did. Hoping that a new research direction -- in a new lab, in a new part of the country -- would reinvigorate me, I took the fellowship. Once I arrived at my new university, it became strikingly clear that I needed to leave academia.
* Interestingly, the phenomenon of feeling like a fake who could be exposed at any moment is so prevalent amongst students and faculty members at high-level institutions that it has a name: The Impostor Syndrome. I'll write about it someday.
My ambivalence toward academia became firmly rooted mid-way through graduate school. I had finished up all of my coursework, and was in the early stages of my dissertation research. In other words, I was far enough along to be invested, but far enough from finishing that it seemed implausible that I ever would. Each time I glanced at the hundreds of samples in my "to analyze" stack, my heart felt heavy. It wasn't so much the time that it would take to analyze them or all of the failed experiments and instrumentation issues that would inevitably occur in the course of the analyses that gave me pause. I simply didn't care anymore.
Not caring about my research saddened me, even depressed me for a while. For years, I had soaked up all I could about my field, reveled in it. I knew what it felt like to stay up all night reading journal articles like they were steamy romance novels. My college roommates had made fun of my insatiable desire to learn. Losing that desire was unsettling because I knew what it was like to have it. Without it, I felt like a fake who was simply going through the motions*.
Over the next few years, as I completed my thesis, I had moments in which I truly enjoyed my work. My friends and I propped each other up when necessary, and the bonds between us were genuine and lovely. My mood lightened considerably when I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. By the time I defended I was, by most standards, one of the most promising new scientists in my field. I had published four first-author papers by the time I finished school, and had one more in the pipeline. I had received a highly coveted postdoctoral fellowship -- the kind of fellowship that you don't turn down. Despite my very deep concern about whether or not I wanted to continue in academia, I did. Hoping that a new research direction -- in a new lab, in a new part of the country -- would reinvigorate me, I took the fellowship. Once I arrived at my new university, it became strikingly clear that I needed to leave academia.
* Interestingly, the phenomenon of feeling like a fake who could be exposed at any moment is so prevalent amongst students and faculty members at high-level institutions that it has a name: The Impostor Syndrome. I'll write about it someday.
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