Doctoral degrees: facts and figures

I recently came across the following infographic, and would love to share it with you!
The facts and figures are interesting to see, but I must say, that I'm not sure if you can make a distinction between "difficult" and "easy" PhD programs. Saying that a PhD in psychology is "easy" seems to be based more on perception than on data...


Source: Online-PhD-Programs.org

Learning from my Research Experience

Today I have the pleasure of hosting Vijay Thamarai who discusses his research journey, and what he learned to be crucial for carrying out research. Vijay is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering department in SRM University, Chennai, India with research and design-professional interests in Finite Element Analysis, blast engineering, underground infrastructure and translucent concrete. He obtained his Master’s in Structural Engineering from SRM University, Chennai (2013) and Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering from Anna University, Chennai (2010). His research in blast analysis and design received recognition from Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in March 2011. Besides receiving a ‘Best Performance Award’ for academics in M.Tech program, he also received many awards for national level service in scouting. He has published journals on blast resistant design, outrigger frames and pushover analysis and a book titled ‘Modern Heliport Design'. He runs his own structural consultancy firm ‘Trustus Structural Consultancy’ and started an educational foundation for helping the needy and empowering poor people.

My experience in carrying out research began when I was consistently tried to explore different projects in which I can learn more about structural engineering (I decided to choose Structural engineering as my specialization in the second year of my undergraduate studies) and that fire my imagination. During my second year of undergrad I got a chance to watch a movie with my family members and there was a scene in which the heroine dies in a bomb blast. That triggered my desire to design the structures that are resistant against blast load. The very next day, I started collecting journals, books and other articles related to the blast resistant design of structures. I was so excited and started learning with a good level of confidence. My undergrad project and postgraduate thesis are on the analysis and design of blast resistant structures. These research experiences have strengthened my intellectual ability and leadership qualities. I have published several articles, few journals and a book as a postgraduate , which taught me how to effectively convey my thoughts and research to the community.

The topics of my research have varied in structural analysis and design, nonlinear static procedures, strengthening of reinforced concrete members and Translucent Concrete , and the breadth of these topics will facilitate my future research. The common objective I have with my research is to produce a positive impact in society. Before joining the postgraduate course I was working as an Assistant Engineer for Design in an architect firm at Chennai, India. The learning process during the postgraduate pulled my mind out from returning to a corporate office after the course and pushed me in the direction of research. I am currently working as an Assistant Professor in the department of Civil Engineering at SRM University, India (Sri Ramasamy Memorial). Still I am learning and working towards joining a Ph.D program. My thoughts are widespread with different problem statements, selection of universities and funding. So, I am now in a stage of exploring various Ph.D opportunities. Let me share something I learned during my past years of research.

First of all, there is no recipe for good research. Some students expect or hope to be provided with step-by-step instructions or guidelines on how to find or tackle problems. Research is all about thinking, thinking and thinking again. Never hesitate to throw your mind at anything. Before looking up a book or paper, before asking anyone, think. Never be lazy about thinking. That's how you build up understanding and develop a bag of useful techniques. Thinking is fun.

In a second step, you will work on the idea that functions as a benchmark for your research. You pick up how research is done by seeing examples and extrapolating. Attending conferences, reading journal papers, and discussions with your advisor or peers are great sources of research material. Learn how to write a paper by looking at other papers. Make analogies. When you see a new problem, ask yourself which questions were asked previously and use that to ask questions about your new problem. Don't be narrow or concentrate only on your particular problem. Learn things from all over your field, and beyond. The facts, methods, and insights from elsewhere will be much more useful than you might realize, possibly in your thesis, and most definitely afterwards. Being broad is a good way of learning to develop interesting questions.

The third point is understanding your research question. It is more important to understand deeply what you know than to know a lot. Successful research comes from having a good understanding, especially of the basics. When you read a research paper, ask yourself questions. Understanding means the ability to go beyond the immediate. It means knowing not just what the item in question is, but how it fits into a larger context, what are its variants, and what happens if you perturb it one way or another. I follow the quote, “Know something about everything and everything about something”. Knowing everything about something will empower you on the research part you have chosen and will lead you to reach milestones.

The fourth and most important point is ‘Time’. How people allocate research time varies enormously, not only from person to person, but, for a given person, from week to week or quarter to quarter. Some people work on an inspiration or deadline basis, sometimes putting in long hours, then doing nothing for a few days. Others maintain a steady schedule, coming to the lab at a certain time in the morning and leaving a certain time in the evening. Neither is right or wrong or better or worse; it is a question of finding what works best for you.
I always look for long-term productivity. A successful researcher should display some degree of productivity and progress over the course of a reasonably long period, like a summer, a quarter, or more typically, a year. This would include signs of increased understanding, confidence and maturity, and some visible output or deliverable, like a complete paper.

Self-confidence comes next to time as an important asset as a fifth element. Self-confidence affects our performance and success in all walks of life, from sports to socializing to dating. It plays a role in research too. Lack of self-confidence leads to disinclination of work. Fear of failure leads to inactivity. People freeze up because they are so worried they aren't good enough. If this sounds familiar, at least you know you are not alone. Increasing your self-confidence is very much a personal issue, but here are some reflections from my experience. You can find confidence only within yourself. Don't expect to get it from others. Someone telling you that you did well is useful to boost morale, but in the end you must believe in yourself.

If you are afraid of failure you will have a hard time succeeding. You have to fall a few times to learn to skate or ride a bicycle. Research is worse. Once you learn to ride a bicycle you don't fall again, but in research you never stop failing. Failures increase your understanding and maturity. If you find the process of research fun, failure to solve a problem is not daunting. In fact, it leads to all kinds of discoveries. You should feel proud, because you are a problem-solver. One nice thing about research is that nobody needs to know when you failed. You write papers only about your successes. But that is also deceptive, because you don't see the failures of others. But they are there. Even the top people don't always succeed. Gauss failed sometimes, as did Einstein.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Selecting a PhD program and supervisor

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

In our most recent post, we've looked at the benefit of your academic skills for finding employment after the PhD. Today, we take a step back in time, and look at the very beginning of your PhD adventure: finding a PhD program and supervisor.

The typical approach of finding a PhD program, is just by applying to a number of institutions, and seeing where you get accepted, with funding.

While getting into a program with funding is, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects of finding a PhD position, there are a number of other aspects to take into account as well. As a side note: almost all PhD positions in The Netherlands come with secured funding. In The Netherlands, a PhD student is considered an full-time employee of the university, with an OK salary, and social security. You won't got in debt over your PhD in The Netherlands, and you might even be able to save some good money if you live frugally. Besides the top-quality programs, this secure positions of PhD students could be one more reason to look for a PhD in The Netherlands.

Before zooming in to the aspects you should consider when selecting a program and supervisor, I'd like to share the two elements that made me pick my program and supervisor. The first factor that determined my choice, was interest. I wanted to do research on either buckling of concrete columns, or shear or torsion problems in reinforced concrete members. With that research interest in mind, I started to browse the pages of concrete research groups in various universities. I had given up on the idea of doing a PhD in the USA because of the crisis and the difficult funding situation (that was Fall 2008, and the confusion was complete). As such, my search was narrowed down to European universities. The second element that guided my search, was the reputation of the universities and their professors. I checked out the work of research groups of universities that I consider highly in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Sweden. Delft showed that they would start a large project on the remaining life capacity of concrete bridges, with shear as a mean topic, and that struck a chord immediately. Moreover, I was attracted by the reputation of the professor leading the research group. I sent an e-mail, then later sent my resume, and the rest is history.

Maybe I was extremely lucky to find a topic that really fit my research interest. Maybe the fact that I had a clearly defined research interest helped me find my position, which turned out to be a very positive experience.

Now that you know my story, let's look at a number of aspects to consider when selecting a PhD program and supervisor:

1. Your research interest

If you're going to spend 3 to 4 years of your life focused on one single topic, it'd better be a topic of your interest. Don't settle for a topic you are not interested in at all, just because you are getting funding. Don't settle for a topic that doesn't raise your enthusiasm just for getting a chance of putting "Dr." in front of your name.

2. Compatibility with supervisor

Before enrolling in a program, take a trip to your prospective institution to talk to your future supervisor in person. See if you share perspectives on your years as a doctoral candidate, see if you are on the same wavelength. While anything can happen along the road, such a discussion can give you an idea of how compatible your working style is with that of your supervisor.

3. Lab facilities

If you have an interest in experimental work, see what would be available to you when you'd join a given research group. Likewise, if you're more into numerical/analytical work, see what is available.

4. Learning opportunities

Every PhD is a learning journey. Inquire about the requirements with regard to technical courses, courses in which you train your soft skills, and more. Some PhD programs have a larger course load, some PhD programs are more research-oriented. Define what your learning needs are, and if these are in line with the opportunities at a given institution.

5. Post-PhD employment opportunities

Doing research for 3 to 4 years is lots of fun, but there's the truth of life after that too. Inform about the career paths of graduates from the program you are interested in. See if your prospective institution has good ties to the industry, which might give you more chances at finding employment after your PhD.

6. Location

If you are moving abroad for your PhD, consider the country and city you are moving to. Is it easy to find housing in that region? How high is the cost of living? What is the crime rate (aka is it OK to walk around with your laptop in your backpack?)?

7. Funding/Employment conditions

How is your research going to be paid? Will you be treated as a student on a scholarship, or a full-fledged employee of the institution with job security during a given amount of time and social security? Does your funding cover all years your PhD program is supposed to last?

8. Support for foreign students

If you are coming from abroad, inquire if the university is providing you with assistance for getting your visa, work permit, housing and all practical aspects of moving abroad. I can speak from experience that having to figure out all bureaucratic rules as a foreigner can be a long and confusing process...

9. Travel funding

What is the conference/field research travel policy of your prospective research group? Are you entitled to 1 international conference per year, or do you get to go wherever you feel like, as long as you write and present a paper? Is there funding to go and visit foreign labs? To participate in technical committees?

10. Research group

Last but not least, how is the atmosphere in the research group? Are people hanging out together for coffee breaks and lunch? Or do you feel that the cohesion in the group is rather small? Do you feel "at home" with those people, or do you think you'd be left alone?

These 10 aspects highlight different parts of your PhD research. From feeling well in your environment, to having the tools and resources to carry out your research, there are a number of topics to think of when you make your decision with regard to selecting a PhD program. Above all, trust your gut feeling: if you visit a research group, and your inner Big Nerd starts to get itchy fingers and shouts "Yes, yes, yes, this looks cool!", then go for it!

Happy PhD: Thinking Positively in an Ocean of Criticism

Amber Davis is a political scientist and PhD coach, who studied at the London School of Economics and Leiden University, and holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. She teaches stress-management and productivity seminars for PhD students and created the HappyPhD Online Course to help you write your PhD (almost) effortlessly in a couple of hours a day. On her blog, she is giving away the online course twice to celebrate the New Year. Click here to enter the contest.

In the first blog post of this series I discussed how to take care of your brain, and create optimal physiological conditions for doing academic work. It’s the first and most basic level of productivity. The second level of productivity relates to the work structures and habits you have in place. In the second blog post I discussed how to create a workday that boosts your productivity. The third level of productivity is about attitude. In this blog post I will discuss how to enhance your emotional experience of writing a PhD. Creating a new, more positive attitude towards your PhD (and life) is a process. It requires a daily commitment and is not something you can figure out in a couple of soul-searching sessions. But the rewards are very much worth it. There is a way to live and work more effortlessly. You only have to decide to give it a go. And keep at it.

Writing a PhD is difficult, but often it is not the work itself that presents the main challenge, but our thoughts about our work. It is the criticism inherent to academic work, the constant trying to do the near impossible, and then being criticised either by ourselves or others for failing, that gets us down. It can be hard! An academic friend of mine compares working in academia to eating shards of glass every single day. You have to be a bit of a stoic to be able to do it. In fact you have to be an über-stoic. That is bad news for us non-stoics. How to cope when you don’t have insides of steel?

The best strategy for mental and emotional resilience in academia has two components: the first is to become more professional by creating space between work and self. As academics, with minds on overdrive, and highly individualistic work, it isn’t surprising that the distinction between work and self becomes foggy. It’s a recipe for disaster. To help separate ourselves from our work the strategies mentioned in my previous posts (physiology and work day) are crucial: you need to create a time-structure in your day that will make the distinction between work and play for you; and you need to train your mind (using exercise and meditation) so it will be easier to focus on work when you want to, and to relax when so you so choose. Taking control of your time and your mental energy and focus will start making the difference between being stuck in the zone of procrastination and guilt and feeling down, or being in the zone of getting things done and sustaining momentum. Try it.

The second is to start appreciating the positive more, and start taking it as seriously as you take criticism and negativity. Our brain has a negativity bias: it registers what it perceives as a threat or a problem more forcefully than it does positive experiences. It may feel like the absolute objective truth that everything sucks, including your PhD, especially when you are processing a lot of criticism (the job description of being an academic). It is not.

Seeing and experiencing the positive in a situation, and cultivating these qualities in your life will start lifting you out of any PhD blues you happen to sink into. The nice thing about being a non-stoic is that you can use your feelings to lift you up and soar. If negativity impacts you in a major way, so can positive feeling states. Cultivating these feelings is a skill you can develop. It is not about positive thinking, or positive affirmations, or any other sort of constructed positivity. It is about finding and appreciating real excitement, beauty, joy, or wonder, or whatever your positive flavour of choice happens to be. It’s next to impossible to give you a roadmap, as this is such a personal process, but I can suggest a few simple strategies to get you started. Start by choosing to give energy to the things that are going well, and the things and people that make you feel good. Take note of these small positive things daily. Give yourself compliments for every small achievement. And be compassionate with yourself when you feel you are falling short. This may sound too obvious, but if you honestly give it a go, you will see that your experience of life (and your PhD) will change for the better.

Another important aspect of creating an experience of effortless flow in your work is to find out more about your inner drive. Why are you doing this work in the first place? What aspects of your work get you excited and ready to go? Working with our feelings and motivation in this way, helps us shift from a mode of working from fear (deadlines, criticism, failure, aaargh!), to a mode of working from inspiration.

How to do it: Create a workday that works for you, and train your mind (see my previous posts: part 1 and part 2). Start balancing the negative with the positive: actively ask yourself what uplifts you in any situation. Start paying attention. These tiny shifts will keep adding up. It is a muscle that academics, especially, need to train and grow. Finally, reflect on the aspects of your work that excite you. How do you feel when you are truly engaged with what you are doing? How could you cultivate more of this feeling in the way you work? Start to be more aware of whether you are working in the ‘old’ way – that perhaps feels like forcing, pushing or clenching, and see whether, in those moments, you can be aware enough to recalibrate. Take a short break, find your excitement, and choose to work from there.

If you are interested in boosting your mental and emotional resilience, and find more effortless flow while working on your PhD, have a look at the HappyPhD Course I created. It will walk you through it step-by-step, day-by-day, for 6 weeks. To celebrate the New Year (it’s still January after all), I am giving away the course for free twice on my blog.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Leveraging your Job Seeking Position by Highlighting your Academic Skills

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

After 3 or 4 years of hard work and study, you have received your PhD degree, and you wonder: "What is next in life?".

Very few PhD graduates remain in academia after obtaining their doctoral degree. Most of us will go to the industry.
And every so often, especially in the Netherlands, the following remark comes up during the hiring process:

"Why did you spend your time on doing research, while you now want to come and work in the industry? Shouldn't you have gone to work straight after your Master's degree and used these years to get real-life experience?."

When this question, or a similar remark comes up, don't feel offended or misunderstood. Instead, highlight your academic skills as a function of your job search. Needless to say, think thoroughly about this subject before you walk into the interview room...

While a number of years of experience in practice are certainly very valuable, these years in academia, especially while working towards a PhD degree, provide you with skills that might make you a more attractive candidate for the open position.

Let me restate that clearly: your doctoral training has made you an independent researcher, with an array of unique skills that are highly valuable in industry.

Depending on your field, you can think of the following skills that put you ahead of other applicants:

1. Analytical skills
Whether your PhD research relies on qualitative or quantitative data analysis, there is almost always a large chunk of analytical work involved in PhD research. Being able to handle large amounts of data is a skill needed by consultancy offices, private labs as well as many large technical companies.

2. Autonomy
Getting a PhD is all about becoming an independent researcher. No third or fourth year doctoral candidate has his/her adviser watching over his/her shoulder while working. You might be working weeks on end on something, trying out different paths, iterating, and making your own decisions. This large level of autonomy gives you the ability to work on larger projects, all by yourself, while being able to communicate your decisions and the reasons for these decisions to your superiors later on.

3. Ability to learn new topics and skills
A very typical situation during your PhD studies is one in which you run into a subject that you don't know much about, or one in which you seem to be needing a different computer program or programming language to continue your research work. Instead of lifting up your shoulders and thinking: "Well, too bad, I don't know that...", you head out to the library to pick up a book on the subject, read a couple of papers on the subject, follow an online tutorial or start getting involved in a programmer's forum. This ability to learn by yourself new topics and skills, combined with your autonomy, gives you the ability to advance quickly in your career in almost any given field.

4. Deep understanding of your field
Since a doctoral degree is the highest level of education you can achieve, you can pride yourself in the fact that you know more about a certain topic than most other people. In fact, when it comes down to your sub-topic of research, you can claim that you are the expert in your field on that topic - you simply are the only person who knows all the ins and outs of the topic you chose for your PhD studies.

5. Teamwork skills
A PhD degree is always the result of cooperation: with your supervisors, with funding institutions, with other researchers, and with laboratory technicians. Nobody ever graduated by brooding in his/her room in complete isolation for a couple of years and then spitting out 1000 pages of innovative research material. Being able to work in teams is one of the great skills you learn during your doctoral studies.

6. Writing skills
Those papers and that thesis didn't write themselves, and they certainly did not get written without developing sound academic writing skills. With all the writing practice you get during your doctoral years, you will be able to whisk together reports and briefings faster and in a clearer style than your peers who did not go into a PhD program.

7. Presentation skills
Just like you got a good training in (academic) writing during your PhD, you also got a good training at giving presentations. Remember your very first presentation in graduate school? Remember how nervous you were, and how afterwards you learned how to better structure your talks until it almost became second nature? You need to realize that this communication skill is again very valuable to prospective employers.

8. Extra skills you learned during your PhD
During your PhD years, you certainly picked up a few extra, general skills besides your analytical and communication skills. You might have taught yourself a programming language, you might have learned how to speed-read, or you might have taken a number of courses to sharpen your soft skills. Think about all these extra skills, and use them to your advantage to show the benefit of your years of doctoral study.

As I said earlier, make sure that you go well-prepared to your interview, by thinking about the additional benefit you can bring to a company through the skills and topics you mastered during your PhD research. Highlight the value of yourself and your skills as a function of the company where you are applying for a position: show them clearly what unique characteristics you are bringing into the company, and how the company will benefit from this.

Time management in Academia: Balancing teaching and research

Spring 2014 is my first semester in which I have a full course load to teach - and from now on, I'll (most likely) be teaching 3 courses in Spring and 3 courses in Fall. This semester. I'm teaching 3 new courses - courses that I'm developing from scratch for the students at USFQ.

As we saw earlier, it takes about 4 hours to prepare an hour's worth of lecture. Since I'll be teaching 9 hours a week, that puts me already at 45 hours a week (1 hour teaching + 4 hours preparing => and this 9 times a week). Add in some time for grading, and regular admin stuff, and replying emails, and you can imagine that my time is running out quickly.

And all of that is just teaching - what truly matters, on the tenure-track, in my field, for my institution and for my overall career, are my publications. I made an ambitious schedule for churning out a large number of journal papers based on the novel elements in my dissertation (and the massive amount of test data that we produced), but I'm already experiencing that, even though everything is written in my dissertation, it takes more time to write the papers.

With a number of papers in the submission process as well, I forgot to keep time and space in my planning to deal with the comments of the reviewers. Overall, I'm now slowing down from initially wanting to submit a paper per month of 1,5 months to a paper per 2 or 3 months.

Nonetheless, given my part-time appointment in Delft, I want to carve out at least 10 hours per week for research and writing. Ideally, I'd love to up that number to at least 20 hours per week, but I'm afraid that will be hard in my first semester.

As I was scratching my head, and wondering how to fit teaching and research into my schedule (and still find time to eat, play music, play with my cat, given some attention to my husband, exercise, meditate, read for pleasure, sleep at least 8 hours per night, maintain this blog and explore this country), I turned to Twitter for advice. You can find the Storify of the tweets at the bottom of this post.

The main take home message from the tweets was to plan time for writing. This advice closely corresponds to the idea of making the weekly template, as I saw earlier on the blogs of Tanya Golash-Boza and Raul Pacheco-Vega.

As such, I made a weekly template for myself. Over time, I'm planning to change this template in line with ideas from Alisa Vitti's monthly cyclic approach (as outlined in her book WomanCode) and Laura Vanderkam's 168 hours mathematics (see 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think). I'm also planning some trials of writing first thing in the morning, from 6am to 8am, as well as going to the gym first thing in the morning.

Taking into account my previous reservations, and highlighting that this schedule is in its experimental face, I'm here sharing my current weekly template.

An Expat Scholar’s View from the Gulf

Since I wrote a post about the topic of finding a job after the PhD, I've been receiving a lot of feedback from you guys (thanks so much!). One of the people who approached me to discuss the employment debate a little further is John Laprise, a Visiting Professor in Residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. He's about as interdisciplinary as you can get with degrees in Media, Technology and Society; War Studies; History; Religion; and Interdisciplinary Studies. He has also worked as a consultant in the private sector for a decade in the logistics, telecommunications and higher education sectors. John contacted me and told me about his story. Since I'm now a professor at a young university in a country that might be considered as "off the beaten path" as well, my curiosity was triggered, and I asked John to share his story on PhD Talk.

I recently re-entered the job market for the first time in ten years from Doha, Qatar. In 2003, I began my PhD at Northwestern. Five years later, they approached me and asked me to join the faculty of their new campus following my graduation. I was fortunate. I was the right person at the right place at the right time. I could teach needed courses, my research was portable, I had lived previously in the Middle East, I did not have a family to complicate relocation, and I had a solid reputation as a graduate student. I was also an older graduate student having spent ten years in the private sector consulting before returning to university.

In 2009 I arrived in Doha and for the past four years, I have been part of an amazing project. There have been many challenges. Starting a university campus is no small feat but the faculty, staff, and students have produced a truly remarkable program over the intervening years. Along the way, my faculty position has afforded me amazing opportunities. Northwestern supports active global scholarship at international conferences which has enabled me to stay connected with disciplinary colleagues and build new international networks of contacts and collaborators. Moreover, I have had truly unique opportunities for interaction ranging from a serendipitous coffee with Vint Cerf to chatting with cast members from Kevin Spacey’s touring production of Richard III. I have had the incredible good fortune to work with ictQatar, the government council that regulates and sets policy for information and communication technology. Many if not most of the amazing interactions I have had here are unthinkably improbable if I were a junior faculty member in the United States.

It is thus with some regret that I confront the end of my time in Doha and look forward to new challenges and opportunities. Unlike many colleagues who have written about the dismal state of the academic job market, I have a decidedly rosier if broader point of view.

I will never be unemployed unless I choose to be.

As an international academic, I quickly realized that as a holder of a US PhD, I would always be able to find a job if I did not limit myself to US academia. Start-up universities are eager to fill newly created faculty positions while existing universities are always interested in improving the prestige of their departments. While US universities receive significant criticism within the US, they have a strong global brand and a US PhD is prestige. PhD holders from US universities are globally rare and sought after, regardless of discipline. A PhD can be a credential for non-academic employment. International organizations and governments are eager to hire PhDs.

PhD holders are trained to be creators of new knowledge and in an information society that skill set is highly valuable.

Our information society thrives on the creation of new knowledge and PhD holders are an important part of that ecology. A PhD announces expertise at creating and sharing new knowledge in a critical and intellectually rigorous way. Disciplinarity is in some ways less important than the skill set that comes with the discipline. These skills are also very valuable outside of academia. I am a historian of computers and the same skills I use to sift through archives and construct narratives is equally useful when I consult on trends in technology policy.

I want to be paid for doing intellectually challenging work with people I like.

My happiness is important to me and I value it highly. Crucially, I do not define who or what or where my employer might be. I think of myself as a renaissance artisan or condottiere whose work is supported by a patron. When the funding runs out, the contract ends, or the interests of patron and scholar diverge, I must find a new patron. This does not diminish the quality of my work or my professionalism. This is the situation I find myself in currently. Northwestern has established itself in Qatar and is now developing a strong regional research program while I study White House computerization. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.”

Non-tenure track faculty are underpaid academic consultants.

Post-docs, visiting and adjunct faculty tread academic water hoping for a tenure track line, but most will drown without ever landing that position. If these academic consultants decided to ply their trade in the private sector, they would almost certainly command equal if not better compensation and work-life balance but this is not an easy choice because:

Academics tend to identify with their knowledge rather than their skills.

Academic position are frequently advertised by looking for scholars with knowledge in particular areas. The private sector is interested in what skills you have. For many academics, setting aside their knowledge in a subject and identifying with the skills of an archival researcher for instance can be difficult. One big exception are scholars who are methods pioneers. They tend to make the jump without a problem. This is compounded by the fact that:

Academia does not encourage taking risks.

Graduate students spend five or more years at the mercy of their committees. In some cases, this is a benevolent tyranny but in others it’s more like the Terror. Tenure-track faculty are no less ruled by tenure review committees. So for ten or more years, academics are encouraged to take some risks but only within circumscribed bounds. It’s no wonder that many academics fear a private sector job search.

It has never been easier to search for a job.

Internet ubiquity and the global hunger to fill challenging positions means that employment and networking opportunities abound. Spread your wings and move a little outside your comfort zone. Odds are your comfort zone is actually bigger than you thought it was.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Getting Started with Working in a Research Lab

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

So you've found yourself a great PhD program and supervisor, which is part of your Plan for Your Academic Life, and now you're supposed to get started with your experiments in the lab of your research group.

After a few days of taking care of the basics of getting started in your program and doing all the paperwork, you're excited to get started working in your research lab.

You start with a smile on your face, maybe even whistling while you work.

And then you break something.

And then all your experiments go wrong.

And then you stay up all night trying to fix something.

And then you just want to go back to mom and pop and give up on it all.

Before you go down this road, which some might consider as your lab baptism, you might as well sit down and reflect first. Sharpen your pencil, and get planned. I can't repeat it often enough, but planning is an essential part of getting sh*t done.

Even though some productivity gurus might claim that planning takes too much time and that it is not productive time, I beg to differ. In academia, in experiments and in research, there's no point in getting start without making a plan.

So what should your plan for getting started in a research lab contain?

1. Basic literature review
Before you get started, make sure you have at least a basic grasp of the topic you will be studying. Just spend a few afternoons with a delightful cup of coffee or tea to work your way through a few seminal research papers before you start pottering around in the lab. You might not understand all the details of these papers, and that's perfectly OK. Make sure you can produce about 5 pages of text describing what you want to test, why you need to do this, and what your possible outcomes could be.

2. Materials needed
List the materials and equipment that you need for the experiments you want to carry out. Go to the lab to take stock of what is available, and bug someone to order whatever you need if it's missing or almost running out.

3. Planning of your (first series of) experiments
Yeah right, planning experiments? As if that ever goes according to plan... Well, you need a planning even though you might find yourself adjusting your planning throughout your lab days. Making a planning for your experiments helps you to determine which parameter you want to study, and what really matters to your research question.

4. Gantt chart for your experiments
If your experiments consist of different steps, make a Gantt chart outlining which actions should be taking place when. For example, if you are doing research on concrete specimens, you'll need to schedule time for preparing the reinforcement and formwork, then casting the specimen, then waiting 28 days, and then testing the specimen.

5. Setting up your labbook
How will your labbook be? Make an overview of what you want to note down of every experiment. I made a sample sheet and predictions for every experiment, and printed this before every test. During the tests, I would scribble down my notes, and have my predictions handy in case somebody passed by to ask what the theory said.

6. Starting a research diary
Start a document that serves as your research diary, in which you track what you did throughout your experiments. This can be part of your labbook, or you can start a notebook in EverNote.

7. Set up a processing protocol
What will you do with the raw data of your experiments? Have a plan in place for processing your data, before you have gigabytes full of raw data and no time to start coding a way to process your results into graphs. Set up a sheet that can read your raw data and process it into visual information. I used Matlab, because I prefer to see my code rather than having it hidden in awful cell-based formulas (as in MS Excel).

8. Set up a storage protocol
How are you going to save your data? Are you going to make a folder per experiment, or will you save things together per parameter? Set up a protocol and stick to it, so that you can easily find everything back once you're in the full swing of your experiments. Oh, and now that we're at it, include a protocol for making back-ups of your data as well. If the world succumbs to a zombie apocalypse, you might still want to have your data, instead of needing to repeat your experiments.

9. Plan time for writing
If you have a protocol for processing your data into visuals, you also need a protocol for preparing your research report. Set up the skeleton of the report of your testing, outline the data you need to write about, and start filling it out every single experiment to stay on course.

For experiments in a research lab, having a good plan is a great starting point. You might feel tempted now to run into the lab and start tackling your research. I'll have to bring you to a halt again, and point out the following things to consider before you really hit the ground running:

1. Learn from the more senior researchers
Get together with more experienced PhD researchers in your lab over lunch or coffee, and ask for their advice. If possible, ask if you can work along with them for a few days to learn from their routines. You'll sure learn a few tricks and hints you didn't think of when preparing your Lab Plan.

2. Make friends with the technicians
I credit the success of my PhD to the wonderful support of my daily supervisor and lab technician. You're part of a team, so show your team spirit and learn from the technicians - some of them might have been in your lab for 20 years and know exactly what all the noobs do wrong when they start.

3. Ask someone for a tour
Ask a senior researcher or lab technician to take you on a tour and show you what's inside of every cupboard, and what every machine does. You might not need everything at day 1 of your experiments, but it's good to know what is available and where to find it. Heck, you might even get a few ideas by seeing what is possible in your lab.

4. Know where to find products
When you get a tour, and you know that your brain is not so good at remembering things, take notes of where to find whichever product you might need for your experiments. Nothing is as annoying as having to explain the newbie 4 times in a row in which cupboard the markers are hiding.

5. Get acquainted with the lab etiquette
How does your lab work? When do people start working, when do they take a coffee break? When do you clean up after experiments? Learn about the customs of the lab, and adhere to the unwritten rules of your lab. Again, you're in a team, you're not a lone wolf looking for mischief.

Above everything, remember that having the opportunity to touch science with your own hands is a blessing. Even though you might get stuck and feel overwhelmed by the vast amount of experimental work that there is to be done, remember how privileged you are. And above all, remember that science is fun!

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: The Curious Case of the Academic Nomads

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

Life in academia can take you from one temporal contract in country A to another challenge in country B, with stops for fieldwork in countries C and D and maybe a few months as a visiting scholar in country E. Most academics are hired for a period of 2 to 4 years, depending on the type of work that they might do.

I like to call those that hop from country to country as their career meanders over the years the academic nomads.

Most of us might not be expecting this ever-evolving and ever-traveling path when we start our careers in academia. But then research life happens and you get to know people and opportunities come up, and before you know you're boxing up your life for the umptieth time.

That happened to me. As a student, I enjoyed going on exchanges during the summer holidays, and I was planning an extra post-graduate year after my engineering studies, but I thought I'd try and score a job at Belgium's biggest prefab concrete fabricator, conveniently located in my beloved hometown of Lier, Belgium. But then I received this email to notify me that, with my good grades, I could apply for scholarships to study in the US. And in the process I thought, well, why not set my mind on going on for the PhD afterwards? With 2 prestigious scholarships in my pocket, I set sail for Atlanta, and started my second Masters' degree in Fall 2008. And then the financial crisis hit, and soon it became clear to me that securing funding for a PhD would be difficult. I knew that I wanted to stay in structural concrete research, preferably a topic on shear, torsion or second-order-effects in columns, and I started to look for openings. I learned about the new project in Delft, applied, and got accepted by the end of my first semester at Georgia Tech. I rolled up my sleeves, studied a little harder, got my Masters' by August, and started in Delft in September, leaving a then-boyfriend behind in the US. He finished his PhD and went to work for the industry in the US, and then I finished my PhD. We had to look for a place where both of us could find a job, and so ended up in Ecuador. At the same time, I could secure a part-time position in Delft, to keep involved in research. Don't ask me how often I've moved over the past years...

Very often, I read stories of fellow academics who move from continent to continent, as they amass scholarships, short-term job contracts and the like.

If you are considering graduate school, you might as well get yourself prepared for this roller-coaster of moving from place to place. And now that we're at it, why not consider going to the Netherlands for your PhD? It wasn't part of my original plan, but it worked out like a charm.

My main message is: be prepared for gradually turning into a nomad! You might just get lured into this lifestyle while you follow your excitement over projects....

If you notice that you are headed for a life as an academic nomad, then you might want to take the following tips into account:

1. Go digital

Books are heavy, so to avoid having to move by container all the time, try to buy as many books digital as you can. Similarly, get your music as digital files, scan your important notes, and go paperless as much as you can.

2. Fly the same airline

As an academic nomad, you will be flying a lot. Pick an airline, and be loyal to them in return for getting miles. Mileage status will give you extra perks over time, and you can turn them in for a free flight.

3. Sort out your clutter

Unless you want to keep a room filled with boxes in your parents' house "until you get a tenured position in your homecountry", you might just need to sort through all your stuff and sell/thrash/recycle what you don't need anymore.

4. Identify a few items that you value

Even though the hardcore minimalists might disagree, I think it's perfectly OK to have a couple of items that you cling to, and that you use to make your new place truly feel like you home. I have a number of totally random items (a giant wall backdrop, my "pace" flag, 2 sets of matryoshkas, a teddybear and a small stone for putting essential oils) and my cat that I drag along with my wherever I go. These little things just make me feel more comfortable wherever I try to settle for a little while.

5. Embrace the best of every country

If you move, you get a culture shock. That's the plain truth. But in order to overcome the I-hate-this-place phase, you'll have to learn to find the best in every country. Go out and explore the natural beauty of your new place, visit local festivities and events, and try to bond with the locals. Before you know, you'll have yet another country that you'll miss when you're not there...

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Cultivating the Art of Writing

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

Let's talk about the nitty-gritty of academia today. If you are thinking about applying to PhD programs (in the Netherlands, or any other place in the world), you'll need to be ready to roll up your sleeves and type and type until your keyboard comes apart. If you are a seasoned researcher, you know that writing is important, and today's post can help you get your focus clear.

Writing is a skill that I always considered very important. However, when Cal Newport from Study Hacks did the math to determine what makes a successful career in science, and found out that it your number of published papers, and how often they are cited, I realized that, more than anything, writing is what matters in academia.

To understand writing in its different aspects, I've been running the Writers' Lab series over the past year. The writers' lab series contains posts about my experiences writing my dissertation, guest posts from academics and writers from all walks of life, and other topics related to (academic) writing.

But let's say that you are a fledgling graduate student, or an early career researcher wanting to be successful in academia. the previous has shown you that, more than anything, you need to cultivate the art of writing. How do we develop the habit of writing so that we can steadily produce our reports, dissertation chapters and papers?

1. Schedule time

If you start writing a conference paper the night before the deadline, something is wrong with your planning. Research has shown that academic writers who write steadily for a certain amount of time every day, have a larger academic output than those who go for binge-writing.
If you are an (aspiring) PhD student, this means that you should continuously report your work, so that you can pull from that material later on when you need to write a paper, or for when you start writing your dissertation.
If you are an early career researcher, this means that you should try to set aside chunks of writing time, preferably every day, so that you can steadily work on your publications.

2. Have a writing planning

When you schedule time consistently throughout your months and weeks, you also need to know what you want to be writing from week to week and from month to month. Make an overview of the reports, chapters and papers that you need to write, and make a planning for your writing.
PhD students, this means that you have the general overview of which chapters you will be writing when (in which year of your program), and keep space to write background reports and papers that will come up along the road.
Early career researchers, you'll need a planning for writing your journal papers. With all other responsibilities popping up in between, I understood that (when the research is done) 2 to 3 months per paper is a good estimate.

3. Write a lot

Train that writing muscle by writing a lot! It sounds like a no-brainer, but it is so important. By the way, writing e-mails and tweets doesn't count towards your "writing a lot". Develop your writing skills by writing for different audiences. Outside of academia, you can further develop your writing skills through journaling, blogging and writing fiction.

4. Learn from examples

Nothing is a better teacher than an example of a paper that you find particularly clear. Did you notice that some papers seem to take you forever to understand, and that you have to read sentences twice? That can be a sign of poor writing, more than of your poor understanding. On the other hand, do you have a paper that you find yourself nodding along, making little side calculations and sketches? Signs are that this is a clear paper. Analyze papers that you appeal to you. How is the sentence length? How much jargon did the author use? How is the structure of the paper? Learn from this example, and apply these lessons to your own work.

5. Become your own critic

It's time to grow up, folks! Nobody is going to come with a red pen and correct your writing anymore. Your adviser might help you out at the beginning of your PhD, but afterwards poor writing will just be sent to the "reject" pile. Learn to become your own critic. Analyze your sentences, analyze the flow of your paragraphs, the structure of your chapter/paper, and the visual clarity of your figures. Give your work a few weeks of rest, and then return with the sharpest eyes.

6. Figures are part of writing too

When we think about writing, we think about words and sentences. Writing is more than that, however. When we ski through a paper, we typically read the abstract, introduction, conclusions and then glance over the figures. As such, figures are a vital part of our writing. Learn how to draw clear figures (admittedly, I still struggle with this area of my writing). For good references on visual information, check out Edward Tufte's books.

7. Revise profoundly

Revising your work is something that needs to be scheduled too. Don't just make a planning based on the time it takes to write your first draft, but plan time for editing, for letting your work rest, and for discussing it with others. What I learned last year, is that editing my dissertation took twice as much time as writing the first draft. Even though I had major parts of my dissertation in conference papers and reports, revising still took much more time than I could have imagined.
When your writing does not flow, erase an entire paragraph, define the message you want to convey in that paragraph (you can do this by talking out loud: "I want this paragraph do describe such and such based on X and Y"), and then rewrite your entire paragraph. Don't be afraid of wiping out text here and there and starting over new. Instead, know that this is an essential step in moving your writing forwards and towards higher quality.

8. Write with others

As a PhD student, you will mostly be writing with your adviser and committee members. But, if possible, try to broaden your pool of co-authors. You might reach out at conferences to fellow researchers, with whom you might like to work on a publication. When you are exposed to other writers, from different institutions, you will learn from their writing styles, and your own writing will mature as well. Break out of the confinement of your fixed group of co-authors and actively seek cooperation across institutions, countries and disciplines.

Scheduling class preparation time

As I've started my new job at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, I got 3 courses assigned to teach in the Spring semester. Three new courses to teach means three new courses to prepare - which initially sounded like a ton of work to me.

For reference, the first lecture I ever taught took me roughly 30 hours to prepare. No way I can spend 15 hours per hour of class when I'm teaching 9 hours of class per week...

To figure out how much time I should schedule, and get a realistic idea of what to expect next semester, I turned to the Biggest Oracle of our World aka the internet.

First of all, I stumbled upon this great resource from University of Chicago on preparing to teach. This document takes you step-by-step through the process of preparing a new course: from the moment you put your syllabus together to the actual delivery of your class.

Then, I found that the American Faculty Association discusses the topic of class preparation time very directly. They give 2 to 4 hours of preparation time as a rule of thumb. My planning is happy with getting a real estimate of the required time.

I also learned (not really to my surprise) that, as with everything, there is a law of diminishing returns for class preparation time. The more time you plan to spend preparing, the more time it will take up. We know that from PhD research too. The guideline from this resource is "Two hours for new lectures and half an hour for lectures you've given before is a good guideline". The authors of the article suggest a "mean and lean" approach to preparing for your class - and I am planning to follow this approach.

Finally, I turned to Twitter to get advice from more experienced lecturers. Many times, 4 hours of preparation for a new class is coming up. The Storify of this discussion is here at the bottom of this post.

In conclusion: I'm scheduling 4 hours of preparation per class. As suggested in the "mean and lean" approach, I am subdividing that into the following activities:
45 minutes to read the class material
45 minutes to distill all important information
15 minutes to outline the class hour
45 minutes to construct the argument around the "what if" question
45 minutes to prepare an example and possible homework
45 minutes right before class to make some slides with figures that are complicated to draw on the blackboard, or pictures from practice, and to revise all material.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to Plan your Career in Science

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

So you just got offered a research position? Congratulations, enjoy the feeling of success and triumph, and celebrate it. Then, fasten your seatbelt, you are in for a bumpy ride.

Regardless of the point in your career in science, you always need to have at least some sort of a plan and roadmap for your next steps (well, unless you are headed for retirement). We are talking about a career in science in general - whether that be at a university as an academic or a position in industry.

And how about planning in these tough economic times? Shouldn't we just ride the waves and hope we find a job somewhere, somehow?

Let me expand on that before you give up on the idea of planning and laying out your roadmap all together.

The key here is that having a plan gives you more determination. If you point your compass to your north and start walking towards it, your chances are much higher than when you simply start roaming around.

However, never forget to be flexible. If your dream position does not show up, then start cobbling together something that makes you happy, and that still more or less points towards your North. Many people (myself included) work a few part-time jobs together to assemble a career for themselves. Create your own possibilities. Don't lean back in defeat when something does not work out - you never did that at first defeat when trying to solve a problem in science, did you?

With that, I assume you are on board with the idea of having a roadmap. Remember that nothing is written in stone, and if you feel like a certain path is plainly making you miserable, then be true to yourself and look for alternatives.
Now, let's look at how you can put your goals into action!

1. Understand the requirements

The first step might sound like a nobrainer, but in reality, the requirements to move forward might not always be that clear. If you are on a tenure-track path, then maybe you have a rigid set of criteria that you need to fulfill within a certain amount of time, before you can move up. In most cases, there is a lot of reading in between the lines going on. Values differ from work place to work place, even from boss to boss. As such, it can be a challenge to see what is valued most highly for a career option in a certain place. When the list of requirements looks endless, the top priority might be hard to find.

When the requirements need some digging to uncover, go and observe people in that workplace. Walking into a place and asking "hey folks, how do things work here" is not what I mean with this. Instead, go to open days, meet people at industry events and listen to their stories. Meeting groups of people from the same place can be particularly interesting to observe their group dynamics.

2. Learn from an example

Who is doing what you would love to do in five or twenty years from now? What did this person do prior to achieving that position? Study a number of people whose career path seems in line with your dreams. Try to identify the tipping points in their careers (from "hit publications" to involvement in industry organizations), and learn from these examples.

To broaden your outlook on achieving excellence in general, look at examples outside of your field. Read biographies of inspiring leaders, and see in which ways you can have a bit of their oomph in your life. Dare to get the best out of yourself.

3. Show up and lean in

Be visible. If you want to climb the academic ladder, then go to the right conferences, get involved in committees, visit other labs, get your name out through publications... You know the drill - or you should have distilled the drill from your examples. If you are shooting for a job in the industry, then start getting involved in industry events, industry organizations and the like.

Don't shoo away into your dark hole where you are slaving away at getting your very best work out. You might be tempted to tell yourself "I'll wait another half year before I go out to a conference and present my work, so that I can be sure it's worth showing to the world." Come out and put yourself out there.

4. Keep your authenticity

With all the previous, you might be tempted to become a copy of successful person who you hold as an example. Keep in mind that an example is just that: an instance serving for illustration. Something to learn from, take your lessons home from, and then add your own sauce to it.

It might sound preachy and fluffy, but only when you are true to yourself, you can stand out. Only when you are true to yourself, people will notice you as being yourself instead of an anonymous copycat of someone who you are not, will never be and can never be.

5. Take your personal life into account

Last but not least - don't forget to plan within the opportunities and constraints of your personal life. If you have a family, moving abroad to your ideal lab might be a big challenge. If you're ready to take the plunge, make sure you have everyone on board in this adventure - otherwise you'll end up either separated from those who give you the energy and love to excel at work, or dragging along a bunch of unhappy people who'll take down your mood and energy levels too.

Your career is an important part of your life. It's something you can take pride in, something that can fulfill you intellectually. But it's just a part of your life - there are other aspects you should never let slip to the back unless you consciously take that choice.
When I decided to move to the Netherlands and leave my then partner / now husband in the USA, it was a conscious choice. It motivated me to work hard and finish quickly. At the same time, we had a plan for afterwards, and having that light at the end of the long distance relationship tunnel was something I had to remind myself of regularly.

Now go and reflect on what your ideal next step looks like, what you need to achieve for that - and make it come true!

Finding employment outside of academia

Recently, I interviewed Samuel Oduneye, after his comment on "Getting a Job, after the PhD".

Samuel was awarded his PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto, and just starting working in management consulting (as a healthcare consultant). You can follow him on Twitter @Samuel_ITL .

As I got curious about the many opportunities freshly graduated doctors have in industry, that rely on the generic skills you learned during your PhD, I invited Samuel for an interview.



I've summarized some of the main points that Samuel taught me during the interview.

First of all, there are 3 things to consider for your post-PhD career:
1. Your title is important. It shows your credentials and it can count as a guarantee for a certain level that can be expected from you.
2. Your degree and your title can help you to get a foot in the door and build an audience, but they won't make your career. You'll need to show that you have something to bring to the table.
3. You need a plan!

Regardless of the career you choose after getting your PhD, there are 3 important skills that you learned in graduate school and that you can use as a selling point when you are applying for positions:
1. Communication: all this writing and presenting we did in the past years make us quite experienced communicators.
2. Teamwork: no PhD is a completely solitary experience. You might be working with lab technicians, other scientists, students or senior faculty, and this all teaches you how to perform in a team.
3. Analytical and problem-solving skills: besides solving riddles that were part of our PhD, we are suited for cracking tough nuts regardless of their field of application.

Finally, there is a number of common professions and career paths that are suitable for young doctors. CaleD wrote a series of posts on the blog of Medical Biophysics at University of Toronto, titled "The Inevitable Career Search". These blog posts help us think out of the box and off the well trodden path of academia. The following are careers that might appeal to you:
1. Management Consultancy: This is the career path Samuel chose, and you can hear his description in the interview.
2. Patent Lawyer or Patent Agent: Intellectual property is a buzzword these days, and your technical understanding can be required in a patent office.
3. Financial Services: The banks need people with strong analytical skills for data analysis.
4. Technical Writer: This career path lies relatively close to all the writing you did during the 4 to 5 years of your PhD.
5. Policy Analyst: Both in the public and private sector, your analytical skills will come in handy to weigh qualitative and/or quantitative data to help make informed decisions.
6. Technology Transfer and Business Development: Working at the intersection of industry, academia and law, you can use your communication skills and analytical skills to find a market for a research proposal.

If you have more questions on the possible career paths after your PhD, or management consultancy in particular, you can contact Samuel on Twitter.

Preparing for life after the PhD: re-train your brain

Today, I have the pleasure to host Dr Chris Humphrey who shines his light on that dreaded topic of getting a job after the PhD.  

Dr Humphrey is the founder of Jobs on Toast, a blog dedicated to helping masters students and PhDs to find fulfilling careers outside of academia. Chris obtained his PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of York (UK) in 1997, and he is the author of The Politics of Carnival: Festive Misrule in Medieval England. 

Since leaving academia in 2000, Chris has worked in a range of project and programme management roles in the areas of sustainability, finance, transport and training. 

Chris regularly gives workshops at UK universities on the subject of marketing yourself for a career outside academia, and he will shortly be launching an online directory of paid-for products and services benefiting doctoral researchers. Follow Chris on twitter: @chrishumphrey.

In the final stages of your PhD you can get so absorbed in finishing that the last thing on your mind is what happens next! The risk of becoming too focussed however is that you don’t make the mind-set changes you’ll need to sustain yourself in post-PhD life. Life after the PhD is going to be very different, but no-one really warns you or helps you to prepare for it. In this post I’m going to explain a new attitude that you need to cultivate in order to survive and thrive post-PhD, drawing on my own experience of making the transition from a PhD and post-doc in Medieval Studies into a business career.

My story
During my post-doc I was interviewed for a number of permanent academic posts around the UK. After my fifth interview rejection the third and final year of my funding was coming to an end. So I decided to leave academia and get a job in business instead. The main driver for me quitting academia was my unwillingness to accept part-time teaching and associated pay just to 'stay in the game' for a permanent academic post. My choice of sector, e-learning and web-based training, left the door open to a return to academia, but once I started in business I knew there was no going back.

Reflecting on this decision more than a decade later, especially now that I'm thinking about serious stuff like paying into my pension and when (if!) I might ever be able to retire, I realise how costly those years of low wages and insecurity could have been. I’m glad I made the decision that I did. If I had hung on in there and taught part-time after my post-doc funding ended, when I was already 30 years old, as a family we would definitely have been scraping by financially (my wife was a newly-qualified teacher at that point and we had a toddler too).

To some people I’m sure this would have been a price worth paying, as the prize of a lectureship or professorship would outweigh the prospect of a few months of hardship. In my case it wasn’t a price I was prepared to pay. It got me thinking about how my attitude changed at some point, especially since I’d subsisted on a very low grant income throughout my PhD.

Making the switch
As I said in my introduction, life after the PhD is very different and you need to be mentally prepared for this difference. One major change I believe you need to make in the final six months is to gradually switch off a powerful force that has sustained you for so long: deferred gratification. Delaying gratification is the ability to make do with less now, in the anticipation of future gains. It’s great when you’re in a structured environment like education, as it keeps you focussed on the end goal of achieving your qualification. It gives you the power to knuckle down and write that chapter, read that book, rather than give in to distractions and interruptions. But it’s not such a great capability when it comes to the next major priority after completing your PhD: finding a secure job that will pay you a decent salary and has benefits like a pension and health insurance.

So after having spent more than two decades of your life in school deferring gratification, you are suddenly in the position towards at the end of your PhD where you need to start to embrace it! All those things that we as PhDs have had to put off: having a family, buying and furnishing a home, going on holiday, paying off debt, suddenly become a real possibility. In fact you have to transition quite rapidly from the approach of just getting by, into someone who can really start to ‘make a living’. You have to quickly learn how to present yourself to a hiring committee (i.e. no longer act like a grad student), negotiate yourself a good salary and benefits package, and start work in an unfamiliar place with sufficient professionalism to get you through your probation. The Professor Is In website has lots of great advice in this area by the way, relevant to both academic and non-academic careers.

The true cost of adjuncting
Already I can hear people yelling ‘Yeah great in principle Chris we would wholeheartedly love to embrace gratification like you say, but where are all the well-paid jobs in academia?!’ True enough, the academic job market is currently terrible. Many of our peers are toiling away in under-employment as a result: working as adjuncts, or employed in the university bookshop, as a lab assistant or as a local tour guides, waiting for things to improve. However, what started as a few months of ‘staying in the game’ can easily extend into a few years and then into a whole adjunct or under-employed way of life. As many of our peers have found to their cost, especially in the US, temporary and part-time work is now entrenched in the higher education system. In the US there is the now infamous statistic that 75% of faculty work part-time on temporary contracts, while in the UK, more than a third of academics are now on fixed-term contracts, according to a recent story in The Guardian. The dream job that so many aspire to may turn out to be just that: a dream that will never materialize. Ironically the academy, that last bastion of tenure, is today fronted by an army of casual workers on short-term and temporary contracts.

So in my view adjuncting and other kinds of under-employment done ‘while I’m waiting for my professorship to come up’ reflect to a degree the mind-set that I’ve already identified: a willingness to delay gratification for the prospect of future gain. Yes there's a chance that things’ll work out next year on the academic job track, but you have to weigh that slim chance against the impact on your whole life of things not working out. Although some folks are willing to take a hit on their income in the short term, as already mentioned this can turn into a serious long-term problem, putting at risk many of the things that will help to define a ‘good life’ for them and their family. This is what we can describe as ‘the true cost of adjuncting’: the risk of becoming permanently locked into under-employment. Many of our peers are facing up to the harsh reality that they are becoming LESS employable as they go on in under-employment, rather than more employable. This is a crushing blow if you’re still wedded to the idea of accepting less now in the prospect of getting more tomorrow.

Empower yourself economically
So what’s the take-away here? Well to me the first thing is to recognise that your ability to delay gratification has been a powerful force that has sustained you throughout your university career. But as you near the completion of your PhD, you need to acknowledge that this driver has done its job, and you need to start to train yourself in the art and science of making a living instead. The blunt message is that you’ve used up all the slack in your life by doing a PhD: now you need to start taking serious steps to assure the comfort, health and dignity of you and your family, not just post-PhD, but for the rest of your life.

Having learned to empower ourselves intellectually, as PhDs we also need to learn how to empower ourselves economically. This doesn’t mean throwing away our principles in the blind pursuit of money. What I’m talking about here is a principled way forward, rejecting the exploitation of low paid and insecure work (adjuncting) or working for free (unpaid internships), in favour of a decent wage in return for our valuable skills and experience. As mature, educated and committed workers we can be of tremendous value to all kinds of organisations outside of academia, including charities, government or business. Check out the profiles on PhDs at Work to see some real-life examples, including my own story. Take some time to read about people who’ve successfully shifted their focus from just getting by (as a grad student), to getting on in life (as a professional with a great job and career). The sooner you can make this mental shift for yourself, the sooner you can begin to realise your full potential and enjoy life after the PhD!

So don’t sleepwalk down the academic job route just because you’re still in delayed gratification mode, or because you’re afraid of upsetting your supervisors. Once you’re awarded your PhD you’re not a student any more – you are your own person who has to make their way in a very challenging world. Yes it can feel like ‘selling out’ or ‘giving up everything’ to go for a job outside of academia. Yes it can sound crass and materialistic to even talk in terms of a desire to own property or assure yourself a decent retirement income. But if higher education can’t offer you a means to support yourself and your family now and in the future, that is a structural problem that isn’t going to be fixed in the near future. Be bold and take matters into your own hands. Make a start today and consider your options for a career outside of academia, even if that plan is only your Plan B. There’s a very good chance it’ll become your Plan A before too long.

Introducing PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer

Starting Thursday, you will find a new biweekly series titled "PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer" showing up here on PhD Talk.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, the portal for academic job positions in the Netherlands - and the contents of this series is aimed at those of you who might be toying with the idea of coming to the Netherlands for an academic position, or who are thinking of starting a career in science in the Netherlands by applying to one of the PhD programs. 

Why would I do a series of sponsored posts?

In short, my 4 years in Holland were the bomb (don't tell anyone in Belgium I said that, though, especially not next summer when the soccer craze will hit). I landed a PhD program in the Netherlands by accident, and at that time it felt like a Plan B since securing funding in the USA was just not going to work out for me. 

But a few months after starting in The Netherlands I realized I was in a very good place. Social security. Awesome lab. Great colleagues. Funding for traveling to conferences. No coursework. Seriously, you'd be surprised to see how much that tiny country by the North Sea has to offer.

Now allow me to introduce AcademicTransfer to you - in their own words:

Since 1997 AcademicTransfer supplies all academic job openings at non-profit research institutes, universities and university medical centers in the Netherlands. In recent years, jobs in the corporate sector have also been added in response to intense demand for talented researchers.

Our goal is to promote PhD positions, research and post-doctoral positions and job openings for assistant, associate and full professors.
Although AcademicTransfer focuses on providing access to jobs in the Netherlands, the website is published in several languages. All job openings that specifically solicit foreign applicants are also offered in English.
AcademicTransfer originated as initiative of three Dutch organisations:

• VSNU, Association of Universities in the Netherlands
• NFU, Dutch Federation of University Medical Centers
• WVOI, Employers Association of Research Institutions (Dutch)

Using AcademicTransfer for your next step in excellence

Job-seekers can use AcademicTransfer completely free of charge. A job search field is placed prominently at the top of the home page, followed by the latest ten jobs posted on the site. Notable or unusual job openings are featured in text boxes, with a short summary of the position.
Ready for your next step in excellence? AcademicTransfer enables you to build your scientific career.

Finding relevant jobs

Start your search by browsing all jobs, entering a search string, or searching for employers in our employer listing, or refine your search results by adding extra criteria in an advanced search, such as academic field, salary or occupation.
Once your search results have been tailored to your preferences, you can set up an RSS feed or email alert for new jobs that match those parameters. You will be notified if new job openings are added that match your criteria.

Applying for jobs

You are always free to apply for a job that interests you, even if you are not a registered user. However, once you reach this point, it may be advisable to join us, since AcademicTransfer supports job applications by providing a user profile. Registered users can create a CV in their profile; you can choose to allow potential employers to access your CV, or send it along with a job application. When applying for a job, you can also attach up to five additional documents. In addition, you can use the ‘Match’ button to ask the system to display suitable job openings based on your profile.

Learn more about employers

Next to the job opening information most employers provide additional information. This information can be accessed by clicking the employer logo shown in job openings or via the employers section. The information provided by employers may include application procedures, tenure tracks, PhD programmes, frequently asked application questions and contact details.

Your guide to additional career information

AcademicTransfer also offers a number of external links to websites with career related information. These links are moderated: checked for relevancy and reliability and provided with a short description. Furthermore they are categorized to facilitate quick access to more information on topics relevant to academic career building. Topics include expat information, career counseling, post-doc programmes and job opening listings in the Netherlands and abroad.

Coming to the Netherlands

The English section of the AcademicTransfer provides many links to information that will be specifically interesting to people from other countries who are considering coming to the Netherlands. This section includes information on visas, housing, cultural tips, taxation, social security and insurance. The information in this section is provided in part by Euraxess.nl, AcademicTransfer’s European partner in the Netherlands.

Expand your horizon

Interested in expanding your horizon beyond the Netherlands? AcademicTransfer to the rescue! In 2008, AcademicTransfer acquired Career|edu, a job board for the international academic and research community. Originally American, Career|edu now operates in 38 countries. AcademicTransfer is also the preferred supplier of job openings in Dutch research organisations for Euraxess, a European initiative. The European Euraxess website offers an overview of all the research jobs in Europe.

Stay informed when and wherever

Always and everywhere informed about the newest job openings on AcademicTransfer or Career|edu? The AcademicTransfer iPhone app might be of help: supplying all the latest job openings in Dutch and English on AcademicTransfer and Career|edu on your mobile.

Posting your job opening on AcademicTransfer

Do you have a job opening and are you considering a posting on AcademicTransfer or Career|edu?
Please let us inform you about the benefits and post your job on AcademicTransfer and/or Career|edu.