Category Archives: Early Career Researchers

Issues particularly relevant to early career researchers

Circles of Uncertainty

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I started this blog with the intention of creating a journal of my life as a postdoc, therefore, it is probably important to write about the hard times, as well as the more positive and advice-giving posts. As I sit down to write this, I am unsure where it will lead. It currently has no title. I am not starting, as I usually do, with a flash of inspiration. Rather, I am starting from a point of low inspiration, a sense of impending defeat and general uncertainty.

It is probably true to say that for most people, being a postdoc is a time of uncertainty and difficulties. I hear this a lot from other early career researchers, but it could be that the uncertain somehow flock together (or that I seek them out). Perhaps others are just getting on with it and keeping their eyes firmly on the elusive prize of the professorships that are reserved for the elite 0.5% of us (at least in science in the UK).

With only 9 months left of my current contract, and no firm plan of what to do next, a permanent academic career couldn’t feel further from my grasp. Have I reached the time to change direction far sooner than I expected? I wonder whether to divide my resources and hedge my bets on different career options, or whether to make a decision and throw myself fully in one direction (academic or otherwise) and hope for the best. My mind is full of doubts about whether the career I have spent so many years working towards is right for me, and whether I am right for it. The strange thing is that I thought I had already come to this crossroads a long time ago. I thought that I had decided to put all my eggs into the academic basket and hope for one to hatch. So, it seems I have been going round in circles, coming back to the same feeling of uncertainty over and over.

So many reasons for this uncertainty are almost a right-of-passage as an early career researcher. Often, we work on short-term, soft-money contracts, which puts us in a precarious position from day one. The limited availability of academic research positions means a high likelihood of moving to another city, if not another country, to take up a job offer. This results in the difficult decision to leave friends and family behind, or to uproot them to trail after you, only to have to move again to chase the next contract. None of this sounds very compatible with being healthy, happy, and secure. While my non-academic friends of the same age are mostly busy buying houses and settling down, the postdocs and PhD students around me are planning months or years away from their partners and facing the unsettling prospect of having snippets of pension funds scattered across countries, currencies, and continents. The obvious differences between the early academic life and the non-academic life inevitably make me question whether their grass is greener, or whether it is it just a trick of the light.

There is no real way to conclude this post, as it has no end, no beginning, and still no title. There are only unanswered questions. What next? Where next? How? Why? When? Hopefully my next post will come from a more secure and certain place (mentally speaking), with some answers, or a least a plan to find them. If you have some advice I would love to hear it, but if not, feel free to use the comments to get your postdoc woes of your chest too.

 

My top 10 postdoc pick-me-ups

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Being a postdoc can be hard. Many postdocs seem to feel a sudden increase in responsibility that is not (within the near future) matched by the rewards. We can feel trapped in a postdoc holding pattern, with no stability or promotion in sight. So, when things get tough, we need a little something to remind us how good life is, how great we are, why we love our job, and sometimes just how to be happy again.

Different things will work for different people, but here are a few of my favourite ideas to lift your mood during a rough patch, to reignite your enthusiasm, and to help you see the light at the end of the tunnel (with thanks to Twitter contributors via #postdocpickmeups).

1. Teach an introductory course

Surely there is nothing like a room full of fresh, eager, inquisitive minds to reignite your love for your field? I recently had the pleasure of teaching an introductory course to first year students and found this an amazing way to rediscover topics I had forgotten about and questions I never thought to ask before. If you want your students to be enthusiastic, you have to show them your enthusiasm, and for me this process of picking out the exciting and challenging aspects of each topic and showing them off in all their strange but magnificent glory reminded me exactly why I fell in love with psychology in the first place.

2. Mentor a junior student/colleague

Closely related to teaching is mentoring. I say this because teaching brand new students and mentoring a new student or colleague have something very important in common; having a role in someone else’s learning and development. Being in this position of responsibility can bring challenges and stresses, but being in this privileged position should also show you how far you have come and how much respect you have already earned. I find mentoring very fulfilling; it’s a huge self-esteem boost when someone comes to me with a question that I know the answer to, or even just know how to help them find it.

3. Get busy

Being busy as a pick-me-up probably doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s one that definitely works for me. If I have too much time on my hands then I don’t tend to get much done and my self-esteem suffers along with my level of progress. If I have deadlines that must be met, I know I will meet them, so I have guaranteed milestones of achievement to celebrate. Self-imposed deadlines just don’t work for me at all, but if I promise my time to someone else, it (usually) will get done. At the time, I will tell myself off for taking on too much at once, but afterwards I nearly always feel rewarded.

4. Find some quiet space and fresh air

Taking a long walk or cycle, or being by the sea or in the mountains are popular ways to feel good. Taking some quiet time for reflection or to clear your head can be a great way to feel refreshed and reinvigorated, perhaps even more so when combined with strenuous enough exercise to warrant some liquid refreshment of your choice (maybe a nice beer in a cozy pub?) followed by a long, exhausted sleep. However, be clear that this tip is not mutually exclusive with tip no. 3, in fact a balance of the two might a very effective mood-lifter.

5. Talk about your research

So, you’ve been busy teaching and mentoring and you took the whole weekend off to hike in the mountains. Perhaps it worked for a quick fix, but overall you still feel kind of glum? Maybe it would help to talk about your research? Presenting your research for a departmental seminar, lab meeting, supervisory meeting, lecture, or conference might help you to find your enthusiasm. It gives you a fixed deadline and fairly clear requirements, which could be helpful if you are struggling to focus. Trying to convince someone else that your research is important and exciting can also be a way of reminding yourself of these things. Even if you don’t feel your research has been going well, the feedback that you get could help you make a break through that you might not have found on your own, or find a new collaboration that helps you see things more positively.

6. Get data – even just a tiny bit

Research is difficult; things don’t go to plan, there are administrative hoops to jump through, getting funding and equipment take time, and so on. Therefore, sometimes it can help to celebrate reaching small, but significant, milestones along the way. If you wait until you have collected all the data for a study, you may be waiting a long time. But if you remind yourself that each and every tiny piece of data counts, then perhaps you can feel up-lifted, even if (like me) you have only completed 4 out of 60 testing sessions. I keep reminding myself that I have completed 4 successful sessions without a hitch, which feels far better than none.

7. Ask for help

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t fix things on your own. Try to recognise these situations and don’t forget to ask for help. A while ago, my direct supervisor stopped working due to health problems, but I had a research plan and (in principle) everything I needed to carry on. Everyone assumed everything was fine. I assumed everything was fine. But I underestimated how important it is just to be able to tell someone when (even minor) things go wrong. There was a gap where I didn’t feel like I had anyone to turn to for advice, so I just made the best of things. Once I spoke to my new supervisor about the problems, we set up regular meetings to keep an eye on how things are going. This regular contact has made a huge (positive) difference to how I feel about my research in general.

8. Make a plan

One of the things that has come out of the new regular supervision meetings is a better plan. I had a research plan to start with, but it was more a list of goals, rather than a practical way to achieve them. Since then, my supervisor and I have worked on fleshing this out into something a bit more realistic. The plan started very small; just a list of a few changes to implement for two months, with a commitment to regular evaluations. Then, we slowly introduced more long-term goals, changes, and strategies to achieve them. Each time we meet, we look slightly further into the future and see if things are progressing in the right direction. It can be daunting to plan out a large block of time at once, especially if you set goals that are too broad, so just making a small plan for the coming days or weeks can be a good way to kick-start progress when things haven’t been going well.

9. Make time for your guilty pleasures – without feeling guilty

When you hit a research rut it can be easy to think that longer hours are the answer in order to push through it. Before you know it, you haven’t had a weekend in months. Therefore, this tip is all about making time for yourself. Remind yourself there is life away from your lab or desk. Indulge yourself in those special treats that you know will put a smile on your face. Put on your favourite music, eat your favourite food, drink your favourite drink, do whatever it is that makes you tick. The key is that you must (regularly) put special, sacred time aside for this, because you deserve it! Last weekend I spent most of my time making my own glittery shoes and the rest of my time watching bad TV. No marking, no (work-related) reading, and no guilt! I can almost hear you say how lucky I am to be able to afford to take a whole weekend off, but I assure you that I have plenty of deadlines and tasks I should have been working on. I just decided that from when I left my office on Friday until when I got back there on Monday I was taking the weekend off. Not because I had made any special progress that week, just because everyone needs a full weekend at least now and then!

10. Write something

This final tip is in the same vein as number 6. Just write something, anything, and then celebrate this achievement. If you are stuck on a manuscript, just write one paragraph and then recognise that you have made progress. If you are stuck on a revise-and-resubmit, just address one reviewer comment (similarly for manuscripts returned by collaborators) and then cross it off your list. If you are stuck with what to do next or where to start, write a plan, and consider the plan itself to be step one complete. If you only recognise your progress when you have completed something, it will take a long time before you have anything to celebrate. Therefore, don’t forget to reward yourself for the small amounts of progress you make. As my PhD supervisor told me towards the end of writing up my thesis, every tiny step adds up – if you are trying to cross the Arctic you cannot see the other side, but if you just keep on putting one foot in front of the other, eventually you will reach it.

I hope some of these tips will work for you if you have been having a hard time lately. Don’t forget to add your own postdoc (or researcher) pick-me-up ideas via the comments below.

 

I’m ‘Research Whispering’ Today

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My latest post is out today on The Research Whisperer!

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might remember that a couple of months ago I asked whether you ever stop feeling like a student. After getting some really helpful feedback on this blog and via Twitter, The Research Whisperer offered me the wonderful opportunity to expand on my thoughts for their blog. You can find me there today, complete with floppy-hatted photo!

Please hop on over to The Research Whisperer‘s blog to share your thoughts on the question “Do you ever stop feeling like a student?”

Top 10 Post-PhD Resources

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Recently I have been thinking and talking a lot about how difficult it can be to move on from life as a PhD student. I have found some aspects of this transition very difficult, as I have written about previously. It seems that a lot of people who have made their way on to my blog have also experienced a loss of confidence or direction; towards the end of their PhD, during the period after thesis submission, or as they move into (or search for) a new job. Therefore I would like to list a few of the articles and resources that I have recently found helpful; some for very specific advice, and some for more general support. I have picked out an article from each site, but all of these sites offer a wealth of other useful and interesting information.

“Charting a Course for a Successful Research Career” by BiggerBrains

This academic career planning guide covers lots of useful topics, such as ‘selecting a mentor’, ‘applying for fellowships’, and ‘collaboration’. I’ve only read bits and pieces so far, but I’m going to put it on my kindle for bedtime reading.
N.b. I will report back whether this results in positive optimistic dreams of a glowing research career, or nightmares of disappearing job prospects.

“How to write your academic CV (and how not to)” by 3 Month Thesis

This could well be the best CV advice I have read so far (please let me know if you’ve read better). It really helped to put me in the place of the recruiter and think about what they are looking for in a CV. I will definitely be using these tips in my next application.

“The importance of doing your homework” by Prof. Pat Thomson

Assuming you have written an amazing CV (perhaps using the tips above), you may be invited for an interview. I have recently tweeted about this post, and I think it’s worth sharing again, because it’s so valuable to hear about the academic interview process from the person giving the interview. The motto: Know your prospective employer.

“Something Scary” by Prof-like Substance

This is a great, and reassuring post about the pressure of moving on from your PhD or postdoc supervisors’ research interests and coming up with your own big idea. (Thanks to Annelies for leading me to this one.)

“Help! I Have To Write A Grant Application” by The Research Whisperer [apologies for originally mis-naming this link, The Thesis Whisperer is also an excellent resource!]

A major hurdle for anyone wanting to do research is to find the money to fund it, making grant applications a necessary part of most (all?) researchers’ lives at one time or another. The Research Whisperer offers some excellent advice on how to make it successfully through the grant application process.

“Why Academia May Not Be For You” by Online PhD

I haven’t had much chance to delve into this site yet, seeing as I just discovered it today (thanks to InBabyAttachMode), but from what I have seen so far, there are lots of resources here for post-PhD life, whether you are thinking about staying in or leaving academia.

If all of this advice so far is overwhelming, the next two suggestions are intended to offer a little more reassurance for those of us (including myself) who are feeling uncertain at the moment.

“Imposter Syndrome” by Scicurious

If you have ever looked around you and felt like somehow everyone else has got the hang of something that you haven’t, then you need to read this great post by Scicurious discussing ‘Imposter Syndrome’.

“A grey area” from Researcher Life: The early career researcher experience

There are lots of great posts and resources on the Researcher Life blog, but I picked out this post in particular because the time between finishing a PhD and starting a full-time job is somewhat of a grey area (and this is a common feeling, judging from the comments and mentions thread). Decisions need to be made about career direction, whether to relocate (this is a must-read), and a non-academic plan B (yes, I’m finally thinking about admitting this).

The final two posts revolve around my favourite new support network; Twitter. It has been especially difficult moving away from the two strongest support networks that I relied on during my PhD; my family, and my PhD-student-peers. Now that I have moved away, and my family and my PhD network are also spreading out across the globe, I like to keep in touch with them online. For this personal support network, I tend to use Facebook. However, in the absence of a strong support network in my new location (I’m sure it will come with time), I have found comfort in the global support network of Twitter.

“Great Twitter hashtags I am using as an early career academic” by Dr Anna Tarrant

This post offers a great collection of hashtags to help you find support on Twitter during the PhD and post-PhD phases, including #Acwri, a live chat for academic writing discussion, and #PhDchat, a live chat for PhD-related advice and support.

“#ECRchat: A twitter chat for early career researchers“

If you have been following me on twitter then you will probably already know that I have been involved in setting up a new live twitter chat for discussing academic career issues. If (even after reading all of these great resources) you still have questions, you can suggest them as topics for the live chat. You could try asking me, but I probably don’t know the answer, which is why I was so keen to reach out to others at a similar career stage and beyond, to help me figure out where I fit in, and what to do next.

I hope that some of the sites I have suggested will be useful to you. The list is by no means exhaustive, so please add your own suggestions in the comments below. Perhaps you have found some other (offline) ways of coping with this ‘grey area’, in which case, I would love to hear from you too.

 

Do you ever stop feeling like a student?

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Since submitting my thesis in January and starting my first postdoc in February, there has been a long period of adjustment. I think there are many reasons for this, and I am interested in connecting with other researchers to see if they have had (or are having) similar experiences. Some days I think I know what it is to be a postdoc and other days I am transported back to day one of my PhD. I have found limited advice surrounding the transition from student to independent researcher, and some days I wonder if I will ever stop feeling like a student.

Of course, a lot has changed since I was what I would actually call a “student”. I don’t mean that I still feel anything like an undergraduate, or even a masters student, but I find it difficult to draw the line between PhD and postdoc. It doesn’t help that the line is naturally fuzzy: (in my case) step 1 – submit thesis, step 2 – defend thesis, step 3 – submit final copy, step 4 – receive confirmation of award, step 5 – graduate. My graduation (the day I actually become a doctor) is later this month and I hope this will draw a mental line for me, but I am still pondering the slow and gradual transition to independent researcher.

Another contributing factor is that I moved departments and countries to take up my postdoc (as I’m sure many people do). I don’t regret this decision at all and I am enjoying the new learning opportunities that I am being exposed to, however, beginning my postdoc didn’t feel much like a promotion when I was going back to asking the simplest of questions. Moving from a department where I had been for four years during my masters and PhD, to a department where I had only previously spent a few months, did undermine my confidence to start with. It doesn’t help that many of my colleagues speak to each other in Dutch or German (which I don’t speak), so it can be hard to get to know people and to join in with small talk. A few months on and I am starting to feel a bit more at home in my new department, but I do still sometimes feel like the PhD students around me are racing ahead.

Finally (though I could easily add another few reasons to the list), I feel like there is less solidarity amongst postdocs and early career researchers (ECRs) than there is between PhD students. Perhaps I partly wish I was still in the club? Perhaps there is an internal or external expectation that we should have it all figured out by now? After all, we made it through the PhD process and secured a job (even if it is only a temporary one). Perhaps there is an unconscious (or conscious) feeling of competition between each other? The problems we face as postdocs and ECRs probably become more specific to our own field, to our personal circumstances, and to our own choice of career paths (than the issues we faced as students), but I think there are general problems that we face and advice that we can share. There are already some great resources for postdocs and ECRs, such as Elsevier’s Bigger Brains, The Postdocs Forum, and The Research Whisperer, but I would love it if some postdocs were interested in regular tweetups, akin to the #PhDChat. It would be great to have a place to pool resources, share advice, or just chat (thanks to @biggerbrains and @snarkyphd for suggesting the #ECRchat hashtag).

Some of the points I have raised are specific to my circumstances, but did you experience any similar (or different) problems during the transition from PhD student to postdoc? Do you ever feel like you will fill the ‘postdoc shoes’? Add your comments below or tweet me your thoughts and advice.