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How would you plan a route without knowing the destination?
13 November 2009
By Ian Wood
The summer is over, a new term has started. A few weeks I had the initial meeting with my first year personal tutorial group; six students for whom I will provide academic advice and support throughout their degree. During these ‘get to know you’ sessions I always enquire what plans they have post-graduation. The most common response is a non-committal ‘I don’t know’ – presumably because they genuinely don’t know or they think I might not approve, so choose to keep their ambitions to themselves. One student however mapped plans which included a PhD, working in a university research laboratory and then becoming a lecturer – though the tone and words used to describe becoming a lecturer suggested it was something inevitably forced upon them; a penance rather than a pinnacle to aim for. With such clear goals I am confident that I can provide a lot of (hopefully useful) advice to this student, not least because this is exactly the career path I have followed so I have plenty of personal experience to call upon on as well as the advice that has been given to me over time. But what about those students who don’t know what they want to do? Without a destination in mind a journey can become haphazard, the traveller finding themselves stuck up a dead end before they know. For these students, thinking about where they wish to head is going to be key to obtaining a career they find rewarding. Hopefully the student with the plan will be successful in pursuing their goal, they certainly have a head start by knowing which direction to travel. Perhaps later in the term I can make the journey more appealing by describing the ways they could have a research career without having a lectureship foisted upon them!
Sarah Davies13 November 2009 at 02:54 PM
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I quite envy your students, Ian - you certainly sound more on the ball than my undergraduate personal tutor (one cup of black tea in the first term, a dinner party with his wife and - well, that was it). But your final comment links in to a lot of the recent conversation on the blog - how to have a research career without having to get a lectureship. Do you know the secret? Please do tell...
Matthew Salois16 November 2009 at 05:09 PM
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Perhaps this is more a personal belief than a professional truism, but I tend to think of a research career and a lectureship (or any permanent academic position) as goals that cannot (or should not) be divided. As the many discussions on this blog have certainly emphasized, a research career without a permanent staff position is without a doubt a tenuous career path that has many downsides and potential risks in regards to your future career development.
Ian Wood17 November 2009 at 01:19 PM
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I agree with you, in fact I think the academic career path is less like a path you can travel and more like a runaway train - once you get on you go all the way or jump off somewhere along the line. In any other career (I presume there are exceptions but I can't think of any right now) there tend to be lots of junior workers, fewer middle management and even fewer senior management. It stands to reason then that all of the junior workers won't be able to reach the top management positions. This isn't such a big issue though as those individuals would at least still have a job at the junior level - such a position isn't available to postdocs anymore though. I have known quite a few postdocs that had managed careers spanning 20 years on fixed term contracts but since the change in employment law those postdocs that don't fnd an academic positoin are effectively kicked out even if they are really good at what they do. Until there is an overhaul of the way we fund reasearch then we can only help those under our supervision be the best they can and hope that is good enough for what they want. In answer to your question Sarah, I don't know the secret but if you listen to any of the top scientists retell their career path luck always seems to play a part somewhere along the line. So my one piece of advice would be to ......be lucky!