May 22 is the anniversary of my PhD dissertation defense. I still hold this day very near and dear to my heart, and try to acknowledge it each year. This year, I am officially 4 years post-PhD, which is wild! I thought I'd commemorate this day by sharing 4 lessons I've learned over these four years.
1. There is still so much learning and growing to do
I really thought I would have everything figured out after graduate school. But I didn't. My four years of postdoc have been filled with even more professional and personal growth. Some of that growth was fun and exciting, some of it was painful. For example, I had to come to terms with some bad habits I developed in graduate school, such as "hoarding" my work until I thought it was perfect before choosing to share it with anyone for feedback. This slowed down my progress on projects and left me feeling quite lonely and isolated. Throughout postdoc, I've had to learn to do research more collaboratively, which means having an open exchange with my mentors and collaborators throughout the writing and data analysis process and to ask for help when I need it instead of trying to solve all my problems alone.
2. You get to be in charge of your career
Graduate school, especially at a research-focused institution, definitely leaves you feeling like there is only one track: the academic track. This is changing, but when I was in graduate school, it was still a little taboo to want to pursue careers outside of academia. At an R1 university (high research activity), it was even taboo to want to focus on teaching instead of research! Personally, I know I prefer research to teaching. But over the past four years, I've had to come to terms with the fact that my research productivity may not be a great fit for highly competitive universities. My writing pace is slow :) And I also do not live and breathe my work. I have other priorities, like friends and family. I do not like to work on evenings and weekends. Being a researcher is not my identity (although I tried to make it my identity for many years). One day it finally dawned on me that there is nothing wrong with this. I get to navigate my career how I want, and I will trust that I will eventually end up in a position that is right for me. My mentors and colleagues can give all the advice and opinions they want, but at the end of the day, I must live with the outcomes of my decisions. I have had to shed the fear of disappointing my mentors and the fear of being perceived as a "failure" in the academic community in order to give myself the freedom to be more flexible about what my career can look like. Lesson learned: a competitive research career at a competitive R1 is not the only option!
3. You are responsible for your own training and development
This one was hard for me. In an ideal world, our mentors would be completely invested in our personal and professional development; they would sit down with us and ensure we are getting the training and mentorship we need to learn the skills we want for our careers. The truth is, our mentors are busy. Sometimes, mentors are just plain bad and do not care about anything other than their own success. But other times, as in my case, our mentors are simply spread too thin. Most professors are spread too thin; suffocated with expectations and demands both in terms of research and service to the department. This means that we as trainees cannot rely on our mentors to take charge of our training and development. Instead, our mentors are available as resources. They are there to share their wisdom, but we must tell them what we need. We are responsible for seeking out the experiences and training we need, and we have to keep our mentors accountable (in many cases, mentors appreciate this!). When I finally came to this realization, my postdoc experience improved tenfold, because I was no longer sitting and waiting for my mentors to help me, and I was no longer distressing over unmet expectations and disappointment. I am looking out for myself.
4. Your experience as a trainee is nothing like being a PI (principal investigator)
Okay, so I don't know this from personal experience. But I have a mentor who shared this wisdom with me and it really freed me. I have struggled a lot as a postdoc. I have struggled to balance learning new skills with publishing papers. I have struggled with the lack of structure in my day. I have all this free time to "just write" and personally, that ends up being a huge challenge rather than help. One day, one of my mentors shared with me that postdoc was hard for them, too. But, they also shared that struggling through postdoc does not necessarily mean I am not "cut out" for a life in academia, because postdoc is nothing like being a professor who runs their own lab. Don't get me wrong, postdoc is a luxurious time. I'm sure many professors wish they could have the amount of free time postdocs have to do their work. But for some people, like me, that luxury ends up being problematic. It's too much unstructured time. Being a PI is more than just writing papers. It's mentoring. It's service to the department. It's teaching. This is the type of diversity in the work week that I crave and really enjoy. I like doing other things. I like the idea of supporting other peoples' research projects. And I think those changes, although stressful in many respects, would make my career feel much more fulfilling than the way postdoc has made me feel. And I've had a taste of that these past couple years as I've taken on some service roles in my department and volunteered to mentor students. My career feels more satisfying when I'm not just focused on writing and research. So if you're a trainee, keep this in mind. Each stage of the academic journey is a little different. And before you rule academia out, or commit to it wholeheartedly, do some research on what it's actually like at the final destination (whether' that's being a PI or an employee in another industry).
There's so much I've learned during my four years post-PhD. As much as I wish I was already in a tenure-track position somewhere, I have no regrets about my time as a postdoc. Each year I feel wiser and more prepared as an academic and a professional. Turns out, development is lifelong. It's easy to get stuck in the "rat race" and spend each day focused on some ambiguous future date where you finally achieve the academic dream of landing your final, full-time position. But that's no way to live! There is something to appreciate about each phase of this journey.
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