When my PhD advisor told me he thought I was ready to graduate, it came as a shock to me.
Surely he was mistaken; I wasn’t ready! We were a key experiment away from publishing my main project and I felt like I couldn’t (or didn’t want to) graduate without it. While I didn’t realize it at the time, my refusal to graduate stemmed from feelings of doubt that had started to bubble up in the few months before. I had always been so sure that I wanted to run my own lab one day, but all of a sudden I found myself second guessing this idea.
It took some time to realize what was happening: I was going through a very early, but incredibly intense, midlife crisis. It was time to overcome my worries and face my doubts head-on to figure out where I wanted to take my career next.
We are all in this together
I now know that I am not alone, and that almost every early career researcher goes through this phase sooner or later. We are so invested in our projects and aspirations that our jobs become our identity. Along the way, we make a lot of sacrifices for the sake of science: we often work long hours, spend weekends and holidays in the lab, or move far away from our family to join the lab or the institute of our dreams. So, what do you do when you start to doubt your dedication to research?
I will be honest, the hole I fell in when I started to doubt my career path was quite deep. I felt like a failure; I was convinced that I was good at nothing besides running experiments and I struggled to define myself: who was I, if I wasn’t a scientist?
Mostly, I couldn’t tell if these were just fleeting moments of self-doubt, or if something else was going on. It took me a few years to figure it out, so I want to share my experience in the hope that it may help some of you overcome your own doubts and find your direction.
Before we dive in, I do want to make one thing clear: this is not a post about leaving academia. This is a post about the process of finding out which career path is the right one for you. whether that means pursuing a staff scientist or tenure-track position, or rebranding yourself into a consultant, medical science liaison, entrepreneur, etc. There really are many options that may be a great fit for you, and your PhD taught you how to teach yourself the skills you need to be competitive in any field. One thing that is important to realize is that no career path is objectively superior to another one. Instead, some career paths will suit your skills and personality better than others. So, it is up to you to figure out which ones they are before you make the jump.
Get to know yourself
Figuring out what you are good at, what your values are, and what is important to you is the hardest, but most important, part of identifying your career options. While survey-based resources, such as my Individual Development Plan (myIDP), give you an idea of the career paths that best fit your skills, I found that I could sway the results depending on how I answered the questions. The Clifton Strengthsfinder helped me understand what my natural strengths are, but I wasn’t sure what to do with that knowledge. I read several science career books that did a great job of explaining the various options that exist for PhDs, but didn’t help me figure out which one was the one that was right for me. It was different (for me) with Melanie Sinche’s “Next Gen PhD: a guide to career paths in science”. The first few chapters of this book come with “homework” that help you identify and rank tasks, skills, and values to figure out what you are good at and what makes you happy. While I still wasn’t sure which job was the right one for me, at least I now had a better idea of what I wanted that job to look like.
Before you start, I will tell you that this level of introspection can be quite confronting. It is not easy to answer introspective questions about yourself, so it takes time to do it right. Pencil in an hour per week (or a couple, depending on your schedule) where you work through the assigned “homework” for each chapter. Marking these times in your agenda will make it easier for you to really think through your answer to each question and will let you finish the book with a clear idea of your next steps.
Go easy on yourself
In general, the most important part of this process is to change your mindset: be ready to explore and to ask yourself some difficult questions and stop viewing any one career path as inferior or superior to another one. It may take time to accept the “loss of your academic determination” and feel ready to determine which path is the right one for you. Until you are ready to ask yourself the real, hard questions, you can gather information and explore the different career paths that exist for PhDs (more about that in part two of this mini-series).
Another important mindset to achieve is to realize that you have a lot to offer. Your academic training has helped you build a diverse set of skills, beyond conducting and analyzing experiments, that can be applied in many different areas. Take a sheet of paper and write down everything that comes to mind. This may take a bit of time because it requires you to think outside of the box. If you find yourself struggling to list your skills, try asking your friends and colleagues what they think you are good at. I’m sure you will be positively surprised by their answers! Once you have listed your skills, it’s time to classify them broadly in a 2x2 grid according to what you are better or worse at and, more importantly, according to what you like better or less. Then start ranking them: first your top 10, then your top 8, top 5, and so on. It may sound strange, but I actually found Marie Kondo’s advice for cleaning up – if an item doesn’t spark joy, it is time to let it go – really useful when ranking your skills. How fulfilled or happy do you feel when you mentor undergrads, when you design experiments, when you write, or when you advocate for change in the academic system?
Finally, the skills and values that you identify in this step will give you an idea of the types of tasks that you should look for in your next job, but this will likely still leave you with many options. Don’t feel overwhelmed. It is great to have options and you shouldn’t close doors too quickly. Instead, it is time for the next step in overcoming your midlife crisis and do a deep dive into the various career paths that are out there. I will tell you more about how to best approach this step of the process in part 2 of my guide to overcome your academic midlife crisis.
