humansofnewyork: “I’m working on my second doctorate and doing clinical research in HIV. I’ve always wanted to be a tenure track professor, but I’ve been questioning that lately. I imagined that one day I’d get to a place where I can do the research that I want to do. But I’m seeing now that it’s more about doing the research that will get funded. I’m noticing a lot of disenchantment among my senior mentors. They don’t get to be as innovative as they’d like. Their primary task seems to be sustaining the institution. It’s not about doing the research that they think will make the most impact. It’s about going for the most likely money. It’s publish or perish. Fund or get fired. And education suffers as well. I love to teach, and I’ve always thought that teaching would be a big part of the process. But it’s not emphasized. Because teaching is paid for by tuition. It’s ‘money in, money out.’ But research funding comes from outside the school. It’s new money.” Reblogged from humansofnewyork

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humansofnewyork: “I’m doing post doctorate research in health economics. My research looks at two variables: dollars spent and numbers of years lived. The goal is to determine how best to utilize Medicaid dollars to maximize the lifespan of recipients. It’s important to study healthcare because it’s the most precious resource we have. Monday was Martin Luther King Day, and he said that there was no greater injustice in America than our distribution of healthcare. Researchers can determine your life expectancy based on the closest subway stop to your house. That’s not due to genetics. That’s not because the breadbasket of America is running out. That’s because of how we choose to divide our resources. And I think it defines our character as a society.”

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humansofnewyork: “I’ve got a PhD in classical history. I think the goal of most academics is to publish something that moves the line of scrimmage ever-so-slightly. But instead of participating in the discussion, I spend all my time comparing myself to top scholars that I’ll never measure up to. So my goal now is just to be a good teacher. I figure that teaching is about forming relationships, and that’s harder to measure.“

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Classical history

teaching

Amy Bucher, PhD After earning my undergraduate degree in psychology, I decided to work on a PhD at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I loved studying psychology and wanted my career to be in the field, but felt the best opportunities would only open up if I had an advanced degree. When I initially started grad school, I was planning an academic career. Not only do I enjoy research and teaching, but academia was the career path outlined by my mentors and followed by most of my classmates. However, I became increasingly aware that academia might not be a good fit for me. While there are certain research areas that have always captured my attention, I was much more of a dilettante than the typical successful academic candidate. At one point I worked in four separate labs. I didn’t want to limit my learning to one type of methodology or one narrow topic area. Although I could explain how my many interests intersected, it didn’t necessarily make a compelling research statement for a prospective academic employer. When I was ready for the job market, I went through an intensive future faculty seminar and applied for a handful of academic jobs. I was offered one interview at a school I admire, and my gut quickly told me this was not the choice for me. At the same time, geographic freedom was becoming more important to me as my relationship became more serious. I decided to turn my attention to an industry job search instead. It’s worth pointing out that I did not have strong support for my decision. My mentors felt that I was better suited for an academic career, and had few resources to offer me. In hindsight, I realize they were trying to do right by me; their perspectives were mired in their own academic careers. Nonetheless, at the time I felt alone and uncertain if I was making the right choice. My first job out of grad school was working on internal research for an agency that worked for pharmaceutical companies. I was part of an innovation team exploring ways pharma companies could offer more value to their customers through technology. I credit this job with giving me the initial experience I needed to work in healthcare and technology. From there, I joined a startup called HealthMedia that had spun out of the University of Michigan Tech Transfer Office in the late 1990s. I worked coordinating content and requirements, with a focus on behavior science, for specialty health programs for pharma customers, as well as developing content. Over the next few years, I was involved in an exciting blend of research and development. At the same time, HealthMedia was acquired by Johnson & Johnson, which opened up opportunities to work across a large and diverse enterprise as well as for our external clients. Two things that have made my job with J&J a great fit for me are the mentorship I’ve received here, and the variety of projects to work on. In terms of mentors, I am lucky to be part of a team of psychologists who share a passion for taking scientific knowledge and getting it into the marketplace to help people be healthier and happier. I’ve also benefited from mentors outside my field who’ve broadened my experience and exposed me to new ideas. In terms of variety, I am able to indulge my intellectual dilettante at J&J thanks to the number of incredible projects throughout the company. I still get to feed my love of teaching, too. A lot of my internal consulting work involves providing training or helping people better understand psychological principles. I present as much as I can at conferences, and write frequently. In 2014, I started my own blog at amybucherphd.com to give me a personal outlet to talk about psychology alongside my hobbies like running, cooking, and travel. My advice to an up-and-coming PhD student is to think about the activities you love to do, and be open to possibility in how a career might help you practice those. I found that research and teaching can be part of an industry career, and you might find a similar outlet for your passions. Reblog

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psychology

psychologist

consultant

submission

Brian May, PhD Brian is best know for being a founding member of the rock band Queen; he is lead guitarist in the band. Before Queen, he attended Imperial College in London where studied physics and math leading to obtaining a BSc degree. He went on to enroll in a doctoral program, but he abandoned his efforts when Queen started to explode in popularity. Thirty years after abandoning his PhD, he went back to school and earned a PhD in astrophysics (from Imperial College). You can learn more about Brian here. He also gave an interesting interview to NPR in 2010 in which he talks about his interests in stereographs, gives some insights into Queen, and finally he talks briefly about his PhD starting at the 35:30 mark. Photo source: Brian May_BF_North 3 by flamesworddragon on Flickr. Photo being used under a Creative Commons license. Reblog

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Brian May

Queen

science

astrophysics

Isaiah Hankel, PhD

Founder of Cheeky Scientist and Author of Black Hole Focus. Hey, I’m Isaiah. I hope my story can inspire other PhD’s to follow their life purpose. My career journey has been a mix of ups, downs and then luckily ups again. My first struggle started when growing up in rural Idaho where I was diagnosed repeatedly with ADD and ADHD. I survived college and barely made it into graduate school where I was quickly put on academic probation and forced to work as a janitor and sleep in a friend’s basement to make ends meet. I enjoyed graduate school for the first few years and met some really interesting intelligent people. But I reached a point where I realized that becoming an academic was not right for me. That’s the moment I felt really stuck, as I had no idea what I could do outside of the narrow career path that I was on. I was confused and felt like a failure. I felt depressed, gained 20 pounds and developed-stress induced kidney disease. Then one day I changed my perspective. I decided that I needed to start with the end in mind. This meant deciding on an endpoint and then working backwards to get there. I started at the end by making a list of actions that I wanted to wake up and do on a daily basis. I wrote down things like writing books, speaking publicly, traveling the world, creating businesses, and connecting with people in a meaningful way. Next, I wrote down the key outcomes that I would need to achieve that lifestyle. I continued working backwards by writing down smaller checkpoints, or benchmarks that I would do, in order to achieve those outcomes. Suddenly, I felt energized. I also started seeing opportunities to reach my new goals in everything that I did. First, I graduated with my PhD in Anatomy and Cell Biology, then, to fulfill my goal of traveling the world and speaking publicly, I took a job as an application scientist. At the same time, I started building my blog and online platform, which gave me the opportunity to create online products and get my bestselling book published. I continued to develop my skills in business by moving into a sales and marketing role with a Fortune 500 biotech company. I read business books, attended business seminars and networked outside the world of academia to help me hit the ground running. By mapping out my endpoint, I was able to achieve all of the things that I wanted to achieve, including my life goal of publishing my first book, Black Hole Focus. But I don’t share any of this to impress you, I share it to impress upon you that any PhD reading this has the ability to change their life in an instant, by mapping out his/her end point and working backwards to achieve it. You can follow us on Twitter: @cheekyscience and Facebook for tips on transitioning out of academia, into business or entrepreneurship. Reblog

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Science

Anatomy

Cell Biology

Consultant

entrepreneur

author

Black Hole Focus

submission

Tara Kuther, PhD As an undergraduate I planned to major in English as I loved reading and hoped to be a writer. After taking an introductory psychology class (and listening to my father’s worries about whether I’d get a job after college with a BA in English – a whole other story), I decided to major in psychology. I earned a PhD in developmental psychology from Fordham University in 1998. As a graduate student I was acutely aware of the abysmal academic job market. I obsessed, scoured the Internet, and armed myself with as much advice as I could find. I tried my best to prepare by immersing myself in multiple research projects and pursuing publications. I got my teaching experience as an adjunct at several institutions while I wrote my dissertation. It was far from ideal but I learned a lot and paid the bills when my funding ran out. When it came time to look for a job, my advisors informed me that I’d never get one as I committed a cardinal sin: I was picky about location. Frankly, they were right. If you want an academic job you must be prepared to move anywhere the job takes you. I only applied to positions in a few select areas of the country. I was lucky and received a couple of offers. One I declined because of geography. My professors thought I was out of my mind – and, really, I was. I accepted the other offer. I have been at Western Connecticut State University for 16 years, earned tenure in 2004, and was promoted to full professor in 2008. I was successful in getting a job offer, but my advisors didn’t support my choice. I was told to do a postdoc and I’d have more opportunities. They were right, but I aimed for location – something that we are not supposed to care about. I work at a teaching institution where I teach 4 courses and ~150 students each semester. They felt that I could do “better.” I internalized that message. In my first few years as an assistant professor I stayed on the market, obsessively looking for that “better” position. I never stopped to think about what I wanted. After all, everyone wants an R1 position, right? I applied, interviewed, and applied again. Each time I compared my potential gig with my current position. In most cases it didn’t seem that my quality of life would improve. Yet I continued. It took years for me to realize that this is where I want to be, that there are perks to being at a teaching institution, and that it’s ok that my mentors didn’t approve. Would I prefer teaching a 3/3 or 2/2 load rather than my 4/4? Or classes of 20 rather than 40? Of course! But I love what I do. I love being in the classroom, getting students intellectually engaged and excited about my field, chatting with them out-of-class, and helping them get useful research experience. As an undergraduate I hoped to become a writer. That dream has come true. I’m not writing the stories or poetry I dreamed of (yet) but I have written a number of books over the last dozen years. In nearly all I share advice for undergraduate and graduate students as well as early career academics. Since 2001 I have written about the graduate school experience for About.com (http://gradschool.about.com). I struggled and over time carved my own career niche. It’s not what I expected as a grad student, but it’s uniquely mine – and gratifying. My advice for early career academics, in addition to the usual tidbits on getting pubs and funding, is to stop and tune into your own needs. Career decisions are personal decisions. Ultimately you need to do what is right for you, even if it means “disappointing” your mentors. Find me @AboutGradSchool. Reblog

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Psychology

Faculty

submission

Mayim Bialik, PhD Mayim is best known for being the leading actress in the TV show Blossom and for playing the role of Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory. Her role on The Big Bang Theory highlights her love for science as does her BS and PhD in neuroscience. You can learn more about Mayim here, and she gave a great interview to the prestigious journal Nature in 2012 which you can read here. Photo source: Mayim Bialik 5 by afagen on Flickr. Photo being used under a Creative Commons license. Reblog

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Mayim Bialik

Blossom

amy farrah fowler

science

neuroscience

Camille Delebecque, PhD

President and Founder of Synbio Consulting Hey there. First question first, yes this first name is also for guys. Actually, it used to be mostly for guys and things started to switch in France around the time I was born in the mid 80s. Damn, I feel old now. Anyways, not the point here, I’m supposed to introduce myself and tell you a bit about my PhD and what makes it special. Well, first let me tell you my experience with research has been quite a fun and unusual ride. My background is actually bio-engineering, and although I was already interested by research at the time, I was also getting increasingly frustrated by how research was managed and the poor innovation transfer in most places. To the point, I actually had a PhD in management of innovation lined up at the end of my MEng. But then I discovered Synthetic Biology, and it moved things around a bit. To put it simply, Synthetic Biology is the design and construction of new biological devices and systems for useful purposes. This is quite a broad definition but the idea is that our current understanding of biology has come to a point where we actually envision engineering the living in a controllable and modular way to get cells (usually microbes) to produce interesting molecules for us (biofuels, drugs, etc…). My first research experience with Synthetic Biology was for my master thesis research (yes, I also did a MSc) which I did in one of the leading labs in the field at Harvard Medical School. One could say I fell in love with the science. It’s multidisciplinary, it’s quite applied and a young field with a very specific culture inherited from the open-source software movement, electrical engineering, etc… So I ended up putting together a joint supervision PhD set-up whereby I had two advisors and two labs (the same one at Harvard and one in Paris). It’s a bit weird but worked wonders. I was able to combine and harness the advantages of the two systems, with a relatively shorter PhD while making the most of an incredible ecosystem around Boston. I ended up working at the crossroads between Synthetic Biology and DNA Nanotechnology. We built artificial “organelles” to increase the yields of biofuel production in bacteria. The approach we came up with was actually quite novel and we published in Science, made the cover of the edition, and got some press. But the drive to work at the interface with academia and foster innovation transfer was still there. During my PhD I founded my first startup, was a director of external communication for the Biotech club at Harvard, did intellectual property consulting for the Technology Transfer Office and took a summer off to work in a Venture Capital firm specializing in the Life Sciences. I kept busy! At the end of my PhD, there was still no consulting company specializing in Synthetic Biology. I jumped in and founded Synbio Consulting right away while working on a pilot project in Nepal around using Synthetic Biology as a tool to foster responsible development. Everything just happened quite naturally. We now work with a number of US and Europe based organizations across the private, public and social sectors on projects ranging from assisting with R&D all the way to business development and corporate strategies. Synthetic Biology is also a wonderful tool to better science education and sprout startup ecosystems in the developing world and we work closely on these questions. I was also recently selected as a Synthetic Biology expert for the European Commission which has also been very interesting. Anyways, it’s quite an exciting adventure so far. Oh, and please do reach out if I can be of any help. Here’s my Twitter and my personal website (www.camilledelebecque.com) where you’ll find my email. Drop me a line! Reblog

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science

synthetic biology

consultant

entrepreneur

submission

lookslikescience: David Liao, PhD, physics—enjoys singing and creating video tutorials at lookatphysics.com Reblogged from lookslikescience

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science

Physics

Catherine Maybrey, PhD, CDP Owner www.cmcoachingservices.com

Alumni Career Coach at McMaster University

Comments & questions are welcome at cate@cmcoachingservices.com When I was little, I used to dream of becoming a teacher, a writer, and Wonder Woman. It’s true, but I gave up on the super hero fantasies when my lasso of truth never came in the mail. I didn’t give up on teaching and writing, though, and when I was in high school I discovered that those were the two main components for a career as a professor. My undergraduate and Master’s degrees seemed to pass all too quickly, and when I applied to PhD programs in the US (American History) in 1998, I was turned down by all my prospects despite graduating with honours and holding scholarships. In my post-grad desperation, I applied to any job I thought I could possibly do, never asking myself if I wanted to do it, and landed an interview with a staffing agency for a management training program. I still remember that interview, and how badly I answered the questions, but the recruiter must have seen something in me because she called a few months later with a temporary position in the financial sector. It was a two week assignment that turned into 18-months as a Sales Associate handling a client base of over 3000. Talking with so many people about investing, retirement savings, and financial literacy helped me to quickly realize that our customers didn’t understand how the accounts worked, what tax implications they could expect, or what questions they should ask. I decided that they needed someone (me) to teach them about investing, and I pitched a monthly newsletter to my manager. In the first month, we had an increase in calls asking specific questions about the tools and services that had been explained, and business increased. I enjoyed this aspect of my job very much – reading industry articles, identifying trends in client concerns, and translating that knowledge through writing. In hindsight, I can see that I could have pursued a career in financial literacy, education, or even credit counseling, but at that point in my life I didn’t know how to explore careers or what questions to ask. Instead of making the 25% of my job that I loved become my focus, I let the 75% that bored me drive me out of the industry and back to grad school to pursue my PhD. I entered Loyola University Chicago in 2000, and for the next five years I researched and wrote my dissertation, but I also had the opportunity to engage in curriculum development for the courses I taught. I learned how to write lectures, break information into digestible bits, present in front of large and small audiences, and teach my students how to develop skills in writing and critical thinking. Teaching was all that I hoped and dreamed it could be, but I read The Chronicle, and knew that the academic market for American Historians wasn’t great. I decided to hedge my employment bets by pursuing a dual designation PhD in both American and Public History. Purely by chance, in my first year, one of my professors asked me if I would be interested in coordinating a cultural program that he managed. The program included large events at the Field Museum of Natural History and the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall, and internships in the summer. As an international student, I jumped at the chance for extra income. I managed the New Frontiers Program for four years, and discovered a deep love for guiding our students through the internship process. From selecting applicants and assigning placements to evaluating their learning experiences and helping them to use their summer job as a career stepping-stone, I discovered that I was using the same skills that I used in teaching, and it was just as satisfying. I returned to Canada in 2005, excited about where my career would take me and hoping to find an education-related position outside the academy. And then nothing. I applied for hundreds of jobs, scoured the boards, wrote resumes and cover letters, and had 2 interviews and a few temporary placements from a staffing agency in the first year of my search. The second year wasn’t much better, and in a fit of frustration I contacted the Alumni Career Coach at McMaster University, not sure if I was even eligible to use the service. She was amazing, and helped me to define what I wanted from my career. I learned how to network, interview, research career paths and employers. Again, I was using all of the skills that I had spent years of graduate school developing, and it felt good to take charge of my search, even if I still had no clue what I wanted. A few months into working with my coach, she observed me offering advice to another alumni job seeker, and she told me that I would be really good at her job. For the first time in my life, I had the right timing and the right tools. I started conducting informational interviews about career development, enrolled in a recommended diploma program, and began concentrating my search on my new field. Within a few months I had several interviews and received an offer from a non-profit organization as the Education and Training Advisor working with newcomer (immigrant) youth and contributing to a study for Citizenship & Immigration Canada. At the end of my contract in 2009, I was ready to return to higher education on the administrative side, and I was fortunate that the Alumni Career Coach was leaving for a post at another university. I hit my network hard, connected with the decision makers related to the role, and officially joined McMaster University in 2010. In 2013 I opened my private coaching practice (www.cmcoachingservices.com) in addition to my role at the university, to allow me to focus on my specialties in post-academic and mid-level career transitions. If you’ve read my entire post, you’ll see that there are so many times in my career history where I could have made a slight move to embrace my skills and interests, but I lacked sufficient understanding of how to make that happen, and who to ask for help. I included most of my missteps so that anyone who reads this will hopefully see that there are numerous paths you can take that will lead you in a direction you find satisfying and that pay the bills. In every role I’ve had, I have incorporated some aspect of teaching, writing, and helping others. My career may not be linear, strictly speaking, but I have definitely managed to keep the spirit of my original intent. You can do that, too. Reblog

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social science

humanities

history

career coach

consultant

entrepreneur

submission

Kristin Hennessy-McDonald, PhD When I walked into my high school freshman biology class for the first time, I fell in love with the methods, with the questions, with the idealized version of a scientist that had formed in my head. Everything I did from that point forward was helping me work towards my goal of sharing that love with as many people as I could. I can remember, even at that point, making connections between what was going on in the world and what I had learned in the classroom. I majored in biology at the University of Notre Dame, and while I was there I worked in the laboratory of Dr. Malcom Fraser. I spent a summer in the library stacks, looking up old scientific papers and making copies while my experiments were incubating. That summer broke my ideal version of what a scientist was, and I began forming an idea of what science at the bench really looked like. I wasn’t sure it was for me, but I still loved sitting and talking science with the people in the laboratory, and I still loved the things I was learning about the world around me. I made the decision to attend graduate school because I still loved doing science, even though I didn’t love it quite as much as talking about science. My mentor, Dr. Susan Bellis, fostered both my love for doing and talking about science during my time in her laboratory. It was in graduate school that I really learned how to write a paper, how to put together a decent PowerPoint presentation, how to share my ideas in a meaningful way with others. It took a while, but I grew to love bench science just as much as I loved sharing science. I changed my goals, I believed I could never leave the bench. My postdoctoral fellowship was not like my graduate experience. I did not feel as fulfilled as I had during graduate school. I still loved to share science. Every time I went to a scientific meeting, I came back reinvigorated about the work I was doing. But, the environment was not the same nurturing environment I had grown to love bench science in, and I spent more and more of my time looking for ways to talk about science rather than actually do science. That is about the time that I heard about a position teaching high school at a local catholic school in Memphis, TN. I had always sought opportunities to teach others and share my passion about science. During undergrad, I had been a teaching assistant every year for the biology laboratory classes. During graduate school, I had helped teach a class with my mentor. I just had not realized that my path could be to share my love of science with the young. I struggled with the idea of giving up, of leaving the traditional science path that all PhDs are encouraged to follow. I think the biggest hurdle I had to overcome was my own idea of what a PhD should do with their career, and fighting with myself about what would make me happy. I am so glad I took the leap.

I love what I do. I love that I can share my knowledge, and my resources with the students at my school. I love that I see some of my passion being transferred to them. I love that I see them thinking. I get to spend each and every day talking about my favorite things, and imparting knowledge on the youth of my community. I know that part of that is due to the resources I have at my school and the amazing teachers I get to work with every day. I am glad I took this opportunity and gave myself permission to take this risk, as it has ended up being one of the best choices I have ever made. Reblog

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science

biology

high school teacher

submission

John D. (J.D.) Laughlin, PhD For the first three years of my undergraduate education I majored in English. I had no idea what careers one could have with a degree in English; I just knew I liked reading and writing. In my junior year it occurred to me that I was indeed going to graduate one day, and I had no idea what I was going to do when that happened. As it happened, my girlfriend at the time (who would later become by wife) convinced me to enroll with her in a botony class for biology majors for one of my science electives, rather than the dumbed-down versions that I had been taking. I was frustrated at first because a lot of material was assumed to be preexisting knowledge for the students. However I soon found myself wishing that I was learning more about chemistry or biology when I was reading my English texts. So I added a second major, biochemistry. I became fascinated with the different molecules in my future wife’s roommates’ Physician’s Desk Reference, and decided that I would pursue a career in drug discovery in the biotech industry, which at that time I only understood to mean Big Pharma. When I graduated with my biochemistry degree (I ended up 6 credit hours short of the English degree! Three years down the tubes!) I briefly worked as a lab technician and then enrolled in the Biomedical Sciences Program at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver (it has since moved a few miles east to Aurora). I chose pharmacology at the end of my first year, and did my thesis work on pheromone binding proteins, learning structural biology and ligand binding techniques. The whole time I was in grad school, I was solely interested in a career with Big Pharma. When I graduated I failed to land an industry post-doc, so I did what I considered the next best thing and moved to The Scripps Research Institute-Florida, which is a nonprofit research institute that is built on an industry model. At Scripps I got the chance to do genuine drug discovery work, working to discovery new candidate molecules to treat Parkinson’s disease. I also started teaching at a local college. One day my boss from the college called me to ask if I was interested in working for a small local biotech company, doing recombinant protein work. Since that time I have been employed as a Senior Scientist for the company, which is focused on orthopedics. There is something that must be pointed out here. The amount of my life that I have just summed up in a paragraph, between discovering science to the present day, is going on 15 years. In that time I have gotten married, had three children (well, technically my wife did that), bought a couple of houses, gained, lost, and re-gained weight, and gotten crow’s feet. I have also discovered that careers in the pharma industry are often quite unstable, with most people getting laid off multiple times in their careers, and since you usually can’t just walk down the street to the next Big Pharma company, most people that work in this field have to move every few years (or sooner — I remember one guy telling me that he got laid off two weeks after moving across the country for a job!). Now, when you are 22 years old and single, the prospect of moving every couple years may not bother you — it didn’t bother me. But the PhD route takes so long to complete that your concerns are often quite different at the end than they were at the beginning. I wonder now if I shouldn’t have gone the academic route: tenure track professorships are the definition of stable, and I hear they’re quite easy to get (joke!). Based on my experiences, I have these pieces of advice for anyone starting out down the PhD road: Try your best to anticipate what your priorities will be in the future. If you have or want kids, think about the life you will want to give them. Industry is nice in some ways (more money, more defined direction, more teamwork) but your job is always at the mercy of the man or woman in the sky who pays the bills. And when you lose it (and almost everyone does at one point or another), at a minimum you may have to move to find another. Luckily, there are a lot of other jobs that don’t require a PhD but it can help to have one: writing, sales, medical affairs, business, and many others. The problem with these jobs is mainly in the “breaking in” — employers will want prior experience, as well as your knowledge. Try not to get fixated on ANY particular career path. Your life and desires can change! Start networking. Have you started yet? Stop reading this right now and start networking! Following up #5 — you never know which contact will be the one who will be the one to help you get the next job. Meet as many people as possible. My final piece of advice is perhaps controversial: if you start your PhD program and don’t love it right away, give it a year or two. If after that year or two you still don’t love it and can imagine yourself doing something else and being happier, drop out. If you get a Master’s, great. If you don’t, drop out anyway. Getting a PhD takes way too long to complete just to not have to feel the sting of failure. A PhD is also not a guarantee of financial success like some other degrees are. It’s simply not worth it if you don’t really want to do it. Consider it a valuable lesson learned. Have I bummed you out? Well, maybe that’s a good thing. A PhD program should not be undertaken without serious consideration. But if you are truly dedicated, and above all, truly love the work, then it can be a wonderful career choice. Good luck! Reblog

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science

biochemistry

Pharmacology

industry

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Heidi Scott Giusto, PhD One of the key things I learned while earning my PhD was that I greatly enjoyed helping others develop and refine their writing, which led me to found my editing and consulting business, Career Path Writing Solutions, LLC (www.careerpathwritingsolutions.com). I have a BA in history and political science and an MA in history and a certificate in historic preservation all from Youngstown State University and a PhD in history from Duke University. Although my academic background fully prepared me to become a professor of history, I decided to pursue my passion for editing and mentoring by launching my company. I primarily help writers with résumés, cover letters, application essays, and personal statements, although I enjoy variety and also edit curriculum, dissertations, fiction, and business documents. While in graduate school, I was very aware of the dismal academic job market and tried to get varied professional experiences. I researched my career options and “tried out” other professions that were either still within higher education or had a relationship to it, such as academic editing and university admissions work. The most meaningful “non-history” professional development experience I had as a graduate student was working as a writing tutor at Duke. I learned that I loved helping writers develop their ideas and text, especially “high stakes” writing such as application essays. Although I always felt comfortable teaching in a classroom, I also realized that I prefer working one-on-one with people and providing mentoring as needed. I am able to relate to writers’ struggles and to offer suggestions for overcoming difficulties. Collectively, my experiences in graduate school made me realize that I wanted to use the skill set I acquired on my path to becoming a professional historian but in a way that I had not originally intended. As I was finishing my dissertation, I also started helping people with résumés. Friends and family would occasionally approach me for help because they knew I did a lot of writing and tutoring. Much to my pleasant surprise, they all got interviews (and jobs) shortly after I helped them. This uplifting experience crystallized my decision to pursue a career in which I could assist others with their writing because I saw how I could play a small part in changing a person’s professional life. As a result of my evolving professional ambitions, I decided to forge my own career path by starting my business. During the last 18 months or so of my graduate education, I schooled myself (through research and Duke’s resources) on personal branding and launching a business, two ideas that had been relatively foreign to me. I attended, and continue to attend, professional development seminars, workshops, and institutes, which have taught me critical skills and knowledge of writing résumés, cover letters, and LinkedIn Profiles—all documents for which I offer editing and consulting services. To learn more about my career path, feel free to listen to my PODCAST interview on PhD Career Guide (http://www.phdcareerguide.com/podcast.html). Reblog

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social science

humanities

history

writing

editing

consultant

entrepreneur

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