The Secret to Happiness as a Postdoc...?

If you’re on Twitter or other social media, you might be aware that #LeavingAcademia has recently been getting a lot of attention, as more and more people are leaving the profession – or are being forced out – and are speaking up about the inequalities, unfair treatment, discrimatation, lack of resources, lack of support, dramatic reductions to pensions and more.

This all paints a bleak picture of academia, and I’m not for a second going to defend any of it. I’ve seen first-hand the toll this profession can take on both the physical and mental health of colleagues and friends, and I’ve certainly felt its effects myself. But what are the issues facing postdocs specifically, and how can we best deal with them?

Doing a PhD is hard, but throughout you have a certain sense of security that you’ve got 3-4 years of funding (at least in Europe, and at least in physics) and it’s understood that it’s a ‘training’ position, where you spend a lot of time learning the techniques you’ll go on to use in whatever career you end up in. Though it didn’t feel like it at the time, I realise now that I had a lot of leeway and breathing space in my PhD to explore different topics and learn different things, and that there was a lot less external pressure on me as a student than in my later career stages.

Doing a postdoc is vastly different, and I don’t think anyone really understands this until they get a few months into one. For one thing, expectations are higher: you’re no longer in training, you’re trained, and you have to consistently deliver. For another, you have to be performing to a higher level than before, faster than before, with greater autonomy and taking more responsibility for your work, perhaps with supervisory or teaching duties on top of that.

You might sign a 2-year contract, but you’ll probably have to start applying for your next position around the halfway mark, which means you’ve got 12 months after starting to get some publications out there, potentially less if you want them to have gotten through peer review by then. And remember, you might have to do this while also learning to live in a different country, learning a new language, navigating foreign bureaucracy (looking at you, French tax office…!), trying to maintain friendships and relationships and achieve a healthy work-life balance, all while the clock on your contract is ticking down and you’re never sure where you’ll have to move to next, or how much of your life you’ll have to leave behind when you do.

This is not a recipe for security or stability, nor does it do much good for your sense of self-worth.

This piece is titled “The Secret to Happiness…” but let’s be honest, there’s no one trick to navigating the postdoc phase of academia, and as someone still in that phase I’ve no recipe for success. I can say though that on what is now my third postdoc¹, I am happier and more comfortable with my choices and career than ever before, and this seems to be going hand-in-hand with more success and a generally greater quality of life. For me, the transition happened when I began to realise what my skillset was and what I wanted to get out of academia, and began tailoring my applications accordingly rather than desperately applying for every postdoc position under the sun, hoping to cling on and stay employed.

In fact, I almost left academia entirely, after making it through to the final stages of the interview process with a prestigious publishing firm. The day after receiving a “come meet the team at our office” invitation from the publisher, I got the offer of a postdoc position that gave me an unmissable opportunity to fill in some of the gaps in my skillset.

In short:

Make sure you get more from the job than it gets from you.

Do

• Remember that your value as a researcher is not in your h-index, and you are not your publication list.
• Remember that your skills are almost never fairly represented on paper alone.
• Seek out support if you need it. Talk to people: friends, family, colleagues, or therapists. Social media can also be an immensely constructive place to look for support, if you can find the right community.
• Keep your options open and don’t think of academia as the ‘default’ path. Staying in academia is a choice, and it may not be the right one.
• Be honest with yourself about why you want to stay in academia, and what it’ll cost you to do so.
• Be aware of academic privilege. For example, people who have family members in academia are statistically more likely to do well than first-generation academics.
• Try to make your own opportunities.

Don’t

• Don’t compare your career to others'. We’re all on different paths. Things like your number of publications, citation count etc are all subject to a huge number of arbitrary factors. (Caveat: absolutely do compare things like your pay grade to others of similar career stages to make sure you’re fairly renumerated for you work.)
• Don’t resent the success of others. It’s not a zero-sum game.
• Don’t feel inadequate compared to others around you. A curious number of people who win early career research awards have superstar PhD or postdoc advisors. The cynical interpretation is nepotism, but a more charitable expalanation is that many first-time advisors just don’t know about these sorts of opportunities for their students/postdocs, and so don’t think to encourage or put them forward for awards.

Anything I missed? Are there any things I’ve misunderstood, or any bad advice contained above? Let me know by dropping me an e-mail or hitting me up on Twitter!