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.
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