When PhD students (and even academics) think about their career options, it often gets divided into "academic" or "non-academic" careers. In this episode, my guest Holly Prescott, a careers consultant for PGRs, talks about academic adjacent careers. She explains what they involve, why people should consider them and we discuss some of the issues that sometimes hold people back from discovering, and moving into, these interest careers.
In this episode, Holly talks about:
Transcript
Vikki: Hello and welcome to episode 37 of the PhD Life Coach. This week is another one of my exciting episodes where we have a guest in to talk. And this week it's Holly Prescott, who is a PGR Careers Advisor from the University of Birmingham, and an independent consultant who works on all things researcher careers.
So welcome, Holly. Thank you so much for coming.
Holly: Thank you so much, Vikki. I'm very glad to be chatting with you.
Vikki: Super exciting. So Holly and I have worked together several times in the past running sessions for postgraduate students about different topics to do with careers, and this week we are going to be thinking about academic adjacent careers. Before I ask Holly to explain to you what that even means, first of all, tell us a little bit about what you actually do at the University of Birmingham and elsewhere and maybe stuff you do when you are not thinking about PGR careers.
Holly: Yeah, sure. I did a PhD myself at the University of Birmingham between 2008 and 2011 and my old kind of research area, if you like, was a combination of literature and cultural geography. So I did a lot of work in urban fiction, London writing, city writing and things like that. And I think it was in my second year of my PhD, I started to realize that I didn't think straight up academia was what I wanted to do, but I did very much get the strong sense that whatever I did want to do was going to involve being student facing, was going to involve using teaching, presentation, public speaking skills and things like that. So from an early stage, I started to explore what else was out there that would let me do those things most of the time.
And I tried bits of part-time jobs across the university and started to feel my way and learn things that way. When I finished my PhD, I worked for a couple of years in post-graduate student recruitment where I represented the university at post-graduate study exhibitions across the UK and Europe and it was from there that I then decided to do a career guidance qualification and moved over into working in careers in 2015, which is where I've been ever since.
What I do now at the University of Birmingham is I look after one-to-one, group and events, career guidance for post-graduate researchers across all subject areas. So that includes one-to-one guidance consultations, it involves workshops and tutorials on a range of career related topics.
It involves putting events together with alumni and speakers to come back and tell us what they've been doing since they've finished their PhD. And then a whole host of other strategic and management things that I do behind the scenes that the students don't see as well. I also consult for other organizations and institutions running a range of workshops and talks for postdoc and postgrad researchers as well.
Vikki: And outside of that? I mean, that sounds like a pretty busy schedule, but in the downtime that I hope you have?
Holly: In the downtime, yeah. So I mentioned that I have a bit of a background in literature, and one way that I keep that alive is that back in 2013 with one of my oldest friends, we started a small theatre company based in London called Ottisdotter. And we specialize in bringing the obscure to light, so we focus on productions of obscure, maybe kind of, lesser performed works of European playwrights. And our latest production, Lady Inger, which is an early Henry Ibsen play is showing at the Space Theatre between the 27th of June and the 8th of July on the Isle of Dogs in London. So most of my spare time is taken up with being involved in that. I’ve also been involved in the company at the Crescent Theatre I Birmingham. So, I guess when I don't have my careers hat on, I'm probably being stagey somewhere.
Vikki: I love that. Those of you watching on YouTube… So if you listen to this on the podcast, we do also put this on YouTube. Those of you watching on YouTube will see the silly grin on my face. I've worked with Holly for ages and I had no idea you do that. I love, I love the answers I get to the questions because people always do such interesting things. That's awesome.
Holly: I realized when I saw your face, I thought, oh, I've not told Vikki this before.
Vikki: I don’t know how we’ve never had this conversation, but that's awesome. Love it, love it.
Holly: You’re seeing a whole new side of me already this interview, Vikki. But this is what I, we might come on to this, but this is what I have consistently found so interesting and so stimulating about continuing to work in a university environment, in that so many of my colleagues and the people that I'm working with every day have such rich and varied interests and activities.
For example, in the office where I sit, there's myself with the theatre things, there's a colleague who sits right next to me who's just got a novel deal, just signed a deal for two novels. There's another colleague, who has a background in film, and makes film video essays and things like that.
Pretty much everybody's got the secret second life and we tend to have our fingers in lots of pies. I think if you've come from an academic background, you do tend to, you are the kind of person that gets deeply interested and passionate about things. And I think often that leads to people in that environment just having a really, like I say, rich and varied background
Vikki: Love it. You started to touch on how you came across the idea of academic adjacent career. But maybe we should just go back a step. What do you actually even mean by academic adjacent careers?
Holly: Good point. But before I explain the meaning of the phrase, I just want to stop for a second to acknowledge something that does annoy me a little bit.
Vikki: Let's do it.
Holly: Which is when we're talking about researcher careers and career options after a PhD, I do notice that often the discourse falls in into defining career options by their positionality according to academia. A way that I've described it before is it's as if once we have been touched by academia, we have to define everything else in terms of its position, alongside, close to, in or away from academia.
And I acknowledge it's not a perfect way of talking about career options and, and possibilities, but I do like the term academic adjacent far more than I like terms like non-academic careers or careers outside of academia because I certainly don't feel like I, and a lot of my colleagues in professional services in HE, have left academia at all. I think if you look at what we do day to day, a lot of our work from the outside looks like what academics do; it just has some slight differences.
So to explain then, academic adjacent careers is a term that I have seen become more popular, certainly over the past sort of six or seven years. And it works on the principle that the word adjacent at its root means something that runs alongside or next to a thing or that supports a thing, which is why I think academic adjacent is a really nice phrase to use to describe career options that run alongside academic research, that work closely with academic research or that support academic research in some way.
The best way I could describe what an academic adjacent career is, is to get someone to think about who makes your PhD possible. Or who makes your postdoc possible? Outside of your academic supervisors, advisors, and PIs?
Do you reflect on, for example, when you were looking at doing a PhD, who supported you at the start? It might have been, you might have gone to open days, you might have attended events. You might have had contact with administrators or a funder or other places like that. They're all functions that support research, that work adjacent to research.
When you are doing your PhD or your postdoc, who else makes that experience for you? Think about the teams you come into contact with in library services, student support, disability support services. EDI. Graduate schools, career support, academic skills, and researcher development research support. Those again, are all examples of academic adjacent work. And then thinking about moving on from your research and who helps you with that, professional development careers, things like that.
So that's the best way I can describe academic adjacent careers are lines of work that happen and occur close to, alongside of, or supporting academic research and researchers. And a way that you can map them and discover what they are is by digging into your own PhD or postdoc experience and thinking who are the people, who are the teams, what are the support functions, that helped you achieve that out beyond your, kind of your academic teams, if that makes sense.
Vikki: Yeah, no, definitely. And I think, you know, different universities, those functions that you mentioned might have different names, but they're pretty universal experiences that most universities to a greater or lesser extent will have all of those sorts of things. And the other ones that popped up in my mind might be a bit more discipline specific, but things like lab technicians, lab managers, clinical trials managers, all those sorts of people. The people that run the ethics process, if you do human studies. And then people like the archivists and the librarians and so on. I think there's all of those sorts of things isn't there as well that are kind of intrinsic to the actual research process, but that are different from being an academic per se.
Holly: Yeah, absolutely. And you make a good point there, Vikki, in that not all academic adjacent careers are based in universities. Thinking about the external organizations, facilities, um, and bodies that support your work as a researcher,
Vikki: I mean, at Birmingham we have museums within the university, don't we? We have Barber Institute, Lapworth museum. There's all people that run those and things that absolutely would, I would consider academic adjacent at least.
Holly: Um, yeah. Anywhere where you might go on a research trip for a research visit counts. As do, um, organizations who advocate for particular academic subjects and research in particular areas. For example, professional bodies, learned societies, places like the Royal Society of Chemistry, Royal Society of Biology, are again rich in types of roles and careers that support scientists, support people who do science and support, people who do research in particular areas as well.
Vikki: And you mentioned briefly people having contact with funders at the beginning of their studies. But that's a whole other thing, isn't it? Is the, you know, the Economic and Social Research Council and all the other research councils, depending on what discipline you are in, they have, they have staff, they have people, you know, I've, back in the day when I was writing grants, you'd have huge long conversations with people there about what they're looking for in that particular grant call and how you can make sure your work fits. And, you know, providing that sort of, really quite technical scientific advice about whether what you are proposing fits within the, the interest that they're having in that particular call. And I think PhD students don't necessarily, some of the things that you mentioned, they will come into contact with a lot, but might not think about, but then I think there's also some bits that they might not actually be involved with, depending on what stage their supervisor's at with getting funding and all those sorts of things. So how do PhD students, beyond looking around their area, how do they find out about these things?
Holly: Hmm. The first thing I would say there is that if you are, if you are in a university already, then you are in the perfect place to discover academic adjacent careers. One of the ways that I know a lot of people find out about these things is by accident, by doing them. And I want to especially here, give a shout to self-funded PhDs or part funded PhDs. And you know, you have to find other income streams, which is why I often see a lot of PGRs I work with have built whole CVs through doing part-time roles in various parts of the university. They might have done some academic skills tutoring. They might have been a post-graduate ambassador and help with open days. Then might have done things like international student support and things like that. So it's through doing, that I feel a lot of people discover these academic adjacent career roots and that was certainly how I felt my way towards mine. I had several part-time roles during my PhD in various university functions, and that certainly helped me to see, “oh, look, there are all these other people who keep the university going apart from the professors.” And here I am discovering who some of those people are in the work that they do.
So that's one way, just by getting involved and, and doing some bits of things. There's the mapping your own PhD or postdoc experience out, like I've already mentioned and thinking about who you've come into contact with so far that's supported you in your research. I think that's a really good way of uncovering these kinds of roles and these kinds of career roots.
And I think another way is looking what PhD graduates from your subject area have actually gone on to. You could use something like LinkedIn for that. For example, I did this with someone recently for history. We looked at where history PhD graduates had gone and we found so many of them working for organizations like the British Academy, who support and advocate for humanities research.
Quite a few of them working as a research facilitators, or research support managers helping academics to bid for funding, helping them to actually articulate their idea in an effective way, that's going to convince people to invest in it.
And yeah, when we uncovered lots of these kinds of academic adjacent places that history PhDs were in. So do what you can to find out where the people before you have gone, because it may not be where you think they've gone. It may not just be into academia, teaching and industry. The likelihood is that they've actually gone into a much richer, broader range of destinations and you think they have.
The last thing I will do, um, in answer to that is a shout out for a podcast by Sarah McCluskey called Research Adjacent podcast, where Sarah interviews different people in different academic adjacent roles. So if you are really interested in finding out more, I highly recommend that podcast.
Vikki: Perfect. And I will link that in the show notes. It sounds like it would be searchable in all the places you get podcasts, but I will put a link in for people to find that as well. So maybe this goes without saying to some extent, but what advantages do you see in these sorts of careers? Why might people want do them?
Holly: Hmm. I think it depends on the individual. It depends on what you want. But one of the main tools that I use with researchers in thinking about where they want to go next is to ask the question - if you were going to turn your PhD or your postdoc into your ideal job, what aspects of it would you want to keep? Which aspects of it would you want to lose and ideally not do again? And which aspects would you want to add to it that you don't have much chance to do now?
And the interesting part here is thinking about what comes in your keep column. So this is thinking about what aspects of academia have you really enjoyed and do you really want to keep on doing? And that may be things like teaching, presenting, helping students. It may be something like, I want to still be on the cutting edge of research. I still want to be involved in new discoveries and things like that. It could be I still want to be working with academics. It could be, I still want to be writing, I still want to be doing X. But all of the things I mentioned there, there are academic adjacent roles that will let you keep doing these things.
Vikki: And I don't think people believe that. We're going to come to sort of what prevents people from going for these and what thoughts they have about them. And bring a bit of a coaching perspective to that in a minute.
But as you talk, I could hear voices of students that I coach, that I've coached on recently on these sorts of things, saying, you know, I don't see what I can do because I love doing research, but I want someone to tell me what to do because I don't enjoy the coming up with ideas and the having to drive it forwards and stuff, I just love making it happen. And others saying, you know, I want to keep doing research but I hate teaching and I just can't imagine ever, you know, I want to be able to think and read and do stuff, but I hate teaching and I, you know, I'd never have an academic career, so I don't really see what's out there for me.
So there's definitely students that, I mean, you get them all the time, but I'm seeing them in my memberships where they desperately want jobs that are part of what they're doing, but not all lots of them are seeing their supervisors and going, “I know what I want, but I definitely don't want that” you know, seeing the life that academics have. For others, it's the dream, but for lots of people it's like, “yeah, I don't want that.”, and really not believing that those options are out there.
Holly: But then what I would say, and this is the one that blows people's minds sometimes, is to say that there are roles where if you still want to be involved in contributing to scholarship, you still want to publish and you still want to go to conferences and you still want to contribute to a particular area, but you don't want the pressure of that to, you don't want the pressure of having to do that to keep your job, there are options you can do where that's the case.
And again, I I need to be cautious about using myself as an example, but I still publish. I publish more now probably than I did when I was doing my PhD. I had a book chapter come out earlier this year. I've got two conference talks currently under review for two different conferences. I just do that, I just publish and speak on a different area from what I did my PhD on, right? So if I want to still be involved in the scholarship behind my discipline of Careers, I can be, but I do that on my own terms. Which is something that to some people it's like, “oh my word. That's the dream.”
And what I would say there is yes, that does mean that I have changed career. I was a literature cultural geography person and now I'm a careers person. But number one, the thing that you are interested in now is not going to be the only thing you are ever interested in. And number two, if you are a researcher, you have a transferable mindset. You have a certain way of approaching work in general. You have a researcher brain that gives you a rigorous approach that means the way you do your work is evidence based, and that means that you approach problems in a particular way. You can apply that researcher brain to so many other areas as well. So don't limit yourself in thinking that you'll only be an expert in what you are an expert in now. There are lots of these academic adjacent areas where you can really, you know, go to town with applying your researcher brain to them to still contribute to a scholarship and still contribute to a discipline. It's just a slightly different one from the discipline that gave you your entry into academia in the first place. Does that make sense?
Vikki: Yeah, massively. And I think that will be, like you say, mind blowing for a lot of people. And I think it'll be super inspiring for loads as well, because I think that's not necessarily made clear to people and people. I've seen lots of people taking this really all or nothing thing that if I want to teach and or research, I need to be an academic and if I don't, I need to go and do something else. And I think the fact that there are these places where you can do bits of it and other bits is fascinating.
I think that question that you asked, what do you want to keep lose and add, I think is such an interesting way of framing it as well because I think it really emphasizes that it's not an all or nothing situation that you, you can do that.
It really made me reflect on my own career because I really feel like now actually I've kept pretty much all the bits that I loved about being an academic. Now that I'm out of traditional academia. I think I would still just about consider myself academic adjacent because I work with students and academics all the time and yeah, just thinking through as you were talking, what things I wanted to keep that kind of student contact, that supporting people to excel and all those sorts of things and the stuff I wanted to lose is absolutely how it's gone for me. So I think those are really, really powerful questions.
Um, one caveat I would add to the publishing away from academia, depending on whether you're an academic adjacent person who still works for a university versus an academic adjacent person who works outside of a university. The thing that is driving me cuckoo at the moment is that as an independent contractor, I don't have access to journal articles.
Anyone who wants to give me an honorary professorship at their university, I'm get in touch. Because I can do interesting consultant things for you and you can give me access to your journals cause it's driving me mad. So there are sometimes frameworks that you take for granted. I've seen people on Twitter talking about if you want to do human research as somebody not affiliated to a university, how do you go through ethics processes and make sure that you're following the right procedures and stuff? So there are some complications to some of these things, especially as I say, if you are outside of the university structure, but I think it's so important for people to be aware that there are these, these sort of, these different options. So, so fruitful.
Holly: And, and just going back. There what you said about the keep lose add and that reflecting on your journey, and then also going back to what you said earlier about talking to people who don't believe there are the options out there for them to keep some things but lose some things. What I would add there is perhaps relax the expectation of being able to keep everything you want to keep and lose everything you want to lose all in one go.
Vikki: Yes.
Holly: I think the other key to the keep lose add model is to emphasize that it is an in your career is an incremental process of gradually keeping more of what you want to keep losing, shedding the things you want to shed, and then incrementally adding in the things you want to add. You're not going to solve all of your keep/lose/adds with your first job after your PhD or your first job after your postdoc. I think that's important to say but what I would also say is that I feel like in these academic adjacent areas, People seem to move around, move sideways. There seems to be much more flexibility in where people go and moving roles and changing roles than in an academic career structure, I would say.
VikkI; Yeah, no, definitely. And I think that's so important to sort of emphasize that because you know, I mean, thinking about my career, it wasn't a “I was an academic and then I left and now I do this and it's all the bits I love.” Even through my academic journey was a process of building more of the things I loved and less - so I switched from being a research active academic after about 10, 15 years maybe something like that, and became teaching focused and teaching leadership focused after that. So even within academia, I was going through some of those processes of keep, lose and add and then sort of, this is not even the final combination, but a culmination of that.
I think the other thing that, my question at the beginning about what you do outside of your work is also really crucial because we have to remember that we are part of lives. We are not just part of careers. You know this, this podcast and the work that I do is called the PhD Life Coach for a reason. It's partly because I'm a life coach for people with PhDs, but it's also because I believe we want have the best PhD life, not just sort of success and productivity. And I think one thing I really see with your career is that, you know, you've shifted your disciplinary interest, like you say, your writing and publishing and presenting about careers now instead of about urban fiction.
But you have this amazing hobby where you scratch the itch of the urban fiction interest. So it's not even that you've lost. Maybe you've lost the writing academically about that stuff, element of it, but you still seem to have an outlet for that side of what you love even though you're now writing professionally about something different.
Holly: Absolutely. And I still think that does keep true to my Keep/Lose/Adds because the losing the kind of the specific academic research and writing in my field was something that I wasn't that keen to keep because I found it quite isolating. And I tell this story and it, I, I tell it because it is a, you know, a bit amusing, but it, it says a lot, about in my PhD. The further I got into it, the more I would pick up bits of teaching and really focus on teaching and spend loads and loads of time doing my teaching and preparing for my teaching to the detriment of my research, which I would start putting off. And I would put it off more and more, and I would put off, you know, going to the British Library to find something.
And I would put off writing a chapter and I, and instead I would fill that time with teaching, teaching, teaching. And it's like, why are you doing this, Holly? You don't need the teaching to get the PhD. Why are you doing this? But the fact I was doing that was telling me something. It was because that was where I found my energy.
I found my energy in planning the teaching, delivering the teaching, and it zapped my energy in organizing the research trips and having to sit by myself and look at books all day. So what was initially a story of me being a naughty PhD student and of what is apparently a weakness is actually also a story of finding a strength.
And so think about that. I would encourage people to think about that as well. What do they keep being drawn to? Throw in the balance of what you do if people are nagging you, saying “no, don't spend so much time on that. You need to do these other things as well.” Think, well why am I spending so much time on that? Maybe that's actually telling me something about what I enjoy and what comes naturally to me.
Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And there'll be people listening who are doing what I'm doing and nodding along because that was exactly what I was like as a PhD student through academia, which is what then led me into becoming teaching focused in due course. I got to the stage where I was procrastinating writing grants because I'm really good at writing grants and I didn't want to get them because then I would have to do the research. And it was at that moment that I was like, you need to stop doing research. This is ridiculous. Yeah. But there'll be other people who were the other way around who are absolutely, they know they probably “should” get some teaching experience before they start applying for academic jobs, but they just keep procrastinating cause it feels uncomfortable, they don't want to.
I want to point out for people that when you're looking at what you get drawn to, I think it's a really, really good idea. I think be careful as to why you are getting drawn to and away from things because I think sometimes it's driven by fear of something, just feeling, you know, that you are unsure of yourself and those sorts of things whereas when you then actually do it, maybe you actually enjoy it and you build your confidence slowly and so on. So sometimes, sometimes we stay within comfort zones, don't we? But then doing a bit more, uh, helps us. Other times those comfort zones. Let's expand the comfort zone and be really, really amazing at those things that, that come naturally to us and we enjoy.
Holly: And also think about where your energy is with your research at the moment, because I do see a lot of PGRs who - I had a really interesting appointment the other day actually with someone who said I want to explore what else I can do apart from working in the lab. But then they were also saying, but I am going to apply for lab jobs as well.
And I thought, oh, that's interesting. If you don't want a lab job, why are you going to apply for them? But it actually came out that this in our conversation, that this person was actually just feeling really kind of tired and burnt out at this point in their PhD, but they had the self-awareness to know that might not last forever.
And they said, you know what? I just think my relationship with lab work at the moment might be impacted by how I'm feeling about my research in general. Whereas give me a year and I might be raring to go in the lab again, so I don't want to rule it out as an option. But if that energy doesn't come back, then I do want to know what I also could do, which shows brilliant self-awareness that they knew that, so, so yeah, I agree with you, Vikki.
And if you do find yourself continually procrastinating and drawn away from things, also reflect on how is that related to what's going on with you right now, and what's going on with your work right now and where you're at emotionally with that.
Vikki: Definitely and picking some of those thoughts that underpin it is so important because like using your lab work example, I could absolutely see a situation where somebody, really, really unhappy in their lab work thinking, “oh, I just don't wanna do this anymore.”
But really it's driven by the fact they don't like their supervisor, they don't like the people in the lab. They don't like the particular bits of kit they're using because they're not learning new things and da da. But actually in a supportive lab where they get to learn some new techniques perhaps in a slightly different way and stuff, suddenly it's super exciting again.
But then equally there could be somebody if you hadn't done the digging that I know you always do in these sessions to really understand them. If you hadn't done that, it could have been the situation where actually they're only applying for lab stuff because they're terrified they can't do anything else. They hate it, but they think that's where they'll get some stability and those sorts of things. And what they really want is stability. And then that's a completely different scenario than somebody who's saying, I might actually come back to love it if I could fix these other things.
Holly: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.
Vikki: So let's sort of follow that on a little bit more when we're, because we're thinking about the kind of the thoughts people have about these jobs. What reservations do you see PhD students having about saying that they want to do these jobs or starting to pursue these jobs? So once they discover they're a thing, what reservations do some students have?
Holly: I think they have reservations linked to. How academia views these jobs. And then reservations links to how they personally feel about them. So the first group of reservations may be where people present things like, you know, it, it's very possible that they've heard their academic supervisors talking about the administrative bloats of higher education, that they've heard people talking about kind of, you know, neoliberal higher education.
And they may worry about how professional services roles and things sit with that. They may have even heard academic colleagues say certain things about, you know, say, be condescending about about people in academic related or academic adjacent roles, and so there, there may be reservations around that.
And linked to that, there may be reservations that either they've heard people say or they feel themselves like moving into an academic adjacent career is somehow selling out, is somehow failing, is somehow becoming kind of, oh, you, “you almost made it, but not quite”, or that it's a kind of sloppy seconds. Is that a phrase that makes sense to people apart from me?
Vikki: It makes sense to me. The notion that it's sort of second best. That plan A is always academia. And this is plan B in some way.
Holly: That it's a consolation prize if you don't get an academic job. I think a lot of people either see those ideas reinforced within their academic community, or play those ideas in their own minds, because they still feel the expectation is there that you do get an academic job.
Vikki: And how do you help people? Cause I can think about it. Maybe we'll talk in a second about how I would approach that from my sort of coaching perspective, but from a careers consultant perspective, how do you manage that with them, how do you help them explore that?
Holly: Mainly by diversifying where their information is coming from. So perhaps to explore a little bit, first of all, about where these reservations are coming from. And often it will come out that they said, someone in my lab said, or a postdoc said x?
It will often be people in their academic community who are saying these things or floating these ideas around. And it's thinking about, well, you know, who are those people? What perspective is that information coming from and what would help them to get a more balanced view? And usually that is talking to people who do the academic adjacent jobs, because they are doing it every day. They know the experience of it. And that helps to diversify where somebody's information is coming from. So that would usually be how I would address that, I think.
Vikki: Mm, no, definitely I think hearing from other viewpoints is so important because even within academia there's not, as in, within academics I should say, there's not a homogenous view on these things. You know, there's an awful lot of academics who have enormous respect for all the people that support research and support the students around the university.
So even if you just talk to other academics, you'd get different perspectives as well compared to just listening to one person who says that it would be, you know, it would be plan B or whatever.
One thing I ask people is when they've got a thought that is causing emotions that they're not enjoying and actions that aren't helping them. So a thought like I would be failing if I took a job like that is I encourage them to work through.
- Is that thought true? Do I actually believe it or is it a thought I've inherited from somewhere else?
- Are there other thoughts that I also think are true? So I could really enjoy this job, for example. So that might be another thought.
- And then the third one, what if it's true and that's okay. So maybe for some students coming through, academia is plan A, maybe that is the career that they want best, but they didn't get a job. And what if that's okay. That you don't have to say that, oh, I never wanted academia. For some people that will be true. For other people, academia may have been the plan A at the beginning, but isn't by the time you finish your PhD. For others, they were never considering it in the first place.
So I think sort of exploring thoughts like that, figuring out do I actually think this is true? What else do I think is true? And what if it's true? And that's actually okay. Can really help to kind of figure out the thoughts that you're having.
I want to offer you another one that I've heard students say, and I've experienced this when I was a relatively junior academic hearing people say it about, about supervisors in my department, but I've heard it since as a coach. Um, my supervisor will be disappointed if I don't go into academia. What advice do you - I'll tell you how I cope with it, but how did, what advice do you give people when they say things? Well, firstly, do you hear them say things like that.
Holly: Less often than I would think, but I have heard it, and I feel like it's important to acknowledge where that might come from. And I do think that we need to acknowledge the fact that the PhD supervisors and PIs, they invest a lot of time and resource in a PhD student. The relationship isn't like it is between an academic and a taught student. It's a different relationship. They invest a lot and someone might invest a lot in developing that person. And, um, you know, helping them grow in, into being a researcher. So the fact that this, this idea of being a disappointment could actually come from a, you know, a place of the supervisor really, you know, doing their job and giving you a lot and investing in you and then, you know, if you feel like, well, if I then turn around and say, I don't want to continue with this, are they going to feel like their investment is wasted.
I'm going to stick my neck out here and say some might, some might feel like that, and I think we've got acknowledge that that feeling and that that feeling may be out there, you know. Others won't. Others may feel that they were developing a person rather than researcher. And whatever that person goes on to do, they're still going to be a bright, intelligent, successful person who has a rewarding career.
What would I do with somebody who came with that? Probably first of all, ask if they've got any evidence for it and go from there. And then either if they haven't, maybe explore with them where that's coming from in them. Is the disappointment is actually their own disappointment that they're projecting. Or if they do have evidence for it, they have had comments or picked up hunches or things like that from what people have said and done, probably go into that a little bit. See how they felt about it, and then see what the student's view is. What does a disappointment mean? Like what does disappointment mean for them? Because what's a disappointment for them might not be what's a disappointment to their supervisor and that's okay.
Vikki: And I think, you know, acknowledging that it might be true, again, it's that whole, it might be true and that's okay situation. So one of the things we do a lot in coaching is talk about how we are not responsible for other people's thoughts and feelings. We get to behave in a way that we believe is moral and ethical and right, and in everyone's best interest and whatever.
But other people get to react to that and they get to have their own thoughts and feelings about it. And as much as we'd love to make everybody happy with all our decisions, it's not possible. And more pain comes from trying to make everybody's thoughts and feelings what you think they should be.
So far more pain, in my opinion, comes from staying to do something because you don't want to disappoint your supervisor. You're probably more likely to end up disappointing yourself in the long term because of attempting to sort of micromanage your supervisor's thoughts about something. So yeah, there'll be situations where you are wrong and your supervisor's not actually even disappointed, but when they are disappointed, sometimes we have to go, okay, that's, that's your decision. You get to have those thoughts. But I'm happy with the decision that I've made. I'm happy that I'm going to be taking the skills that you've helped me develop and using them in a useful context and I'm okay with that.
Because I think we also probably need to acknowledge that there can be some weird power dynamics going on towards the end of PhDs as well, particularly people where they're working in laboratory environments where the PhD students have got particular skills or there are ongoing grants and those sorts of scenarios. Where there's a little bit of competing priorities that the PhD student needs to do what's best for them in their career and the supervisors usually want that too. But often I see supervisors trying to persuade people to stay on for a while, to finish off projects, write up papers, and all those things.
And sometimes that can be an amazing opportunity. You know, I'm talking to someone who stayed in the same institution her entire career, so I am not judging but being really mindful of for who's good that is and whether that really is in your best interest or whether it's actually convenient for the PI for you to stay on and finish that stuff off because you're really super useful and you know what you're doing is a really important thing to pick apart when you're kind of deciding what to do after a PhD.
So much of what I coach on is about really figuring out what the thoughts you're having about why you would stay in academia, why you wouldn't, why you would go into one of these academic adjacent careers and why you wouldn't. And then think about which of those reasons you like best. So if the reason you would go into an academic adjacent career is because it sounds super useful and exciting, gets you to do all the things you're interested in, and the reason you wouldn't is because people might judge you for not having an academic career.
You might look at that and go, you know what? I prefer my reasons for doing an academic adjacent career. So you get to sort of balance it out. If you say reasons I would go into an academic adjacent career are because it feels easier right now and there's something happening at my university, but the reason you're do an academic career is because it's your dream job and you'd love to get there, you're just worried it's too competitive. Then you might look at those reasons and be like, you know what? I want to give it a year. Let's see whether I can make this happen.
So sort of balancing out what your reasons for picking each of them are and accepting that we don't get to micromanage everybody else's perspectives. We just get to figure out which reasons do we like best and then make it the right decision.
Holly: That's a great point.
Vikki: So today's been super, super useful. I know it's going to stimulated loads of ideas for the listeners, potentially for people who are academics already. So my listeners are a combination of PhD students all the way through to academics and there's more and more people that are transitioning later in their careers as well. So I think it's been super, super useful. Thank you so much for coming in.
If you had to leave them with maybe one key thing, like a take home message about this, what would it be?
Holly: I think I would say that the main take home for people is whatever you love about academia, whatever you've most enjoyed about what you've done in your academic experience so far, whatever that is, it is highly likely that there are roles, career routes, and other kinds of work that will let you do that thing very often, potentially more often than you get to do it in a traditional academic role potentially.
Vikki: Perfect. And we haven't even touched on industry jobs. That's a conversation for another day. But people often hold up this dichotomy of either it's academia or it's industry. And I love that you've opened up this whole area where actually you can even have the bits you love, within an academic environment, within a university environment, without it necessarily being the traditional academic post.
So if people want to hear more about academic adjacent careers, I know you've been writing about this, so where can they find it?
Holly: I have, and, and you can find an article that I recently published on my blog about this. It's called “Academic Adjacent Careers. What are they and how can I find them?” And you'll be able to find that, on my PhD careers blog Post-gradual which you can find at www.phd-careers.co.uk.
Vikki: Amazing. And as usual, we'll link all that in the show notes, but it sounds as though they should be going to look for that blog, but also to have a snoop around on the website as a whole because it sounds like you've got a whole bunch of really important things. I know, I've seen it before, and I think there'll be things that are really useful for loads of people at different stages of their PhD journeys. So thank you so much for coming today, Holly. I really appreciate it. Thank you everyone for listening and see you next week.