Quarterly Summary – Life choices in (and out of) academia

This quarter, although we didn’t really plan a theme prospectively, the majority of our posts have focused on the critical decision making process of early career researchers at the end of their training or the beginning of their independence.

Jonathan has collated a particularly insightful series of stories from colleagues of his about the varied career trajectories of young scientists in a highly uncertain economic climate. Reading stories from other people charting their journey can often help with making your own similar or dissimilar decisions – thanks to those who have shared with Jonathan.

On my side, most of the efforts (writing and non-writing) have been focused on the 3.5 month parental leave from which I have recently emerged. My overall thoughts are perhaps best encapsulated in the recent post Reflections from a male scientist on parental leave, but the other two posts have some side stories that readers may find interesting. The differences between countries, institutes, and colleague opinion are so varied within academia that it is extremely difficult to generalise, but one thing is very clear – the changing human resources of scientific research have made it such that we are older when we get our first pot of money for an independent lab and this means more houses, more life partners, and more babies – life circumstances that still disproportionately lead women to leave academic science. Much work remains.

Articles written this quarter:

Jonathan

• Go ahead and jump: from academic to scientist entrepreneur
• The faculty recruitment process is complex, competitive and crazy
• Academic science does not prepare you for the challenges ahead
• The line between successful academic and unemployment is razor thin

Dave

• Reflections from a male scientist on parental leave
• Parental leave: the poor man’s sabbatical
• Taking parental leave: I’m glad I’m not a postdoc

Dave also continued to write for Signals blog, this time on the 10th anniversary of the discovery of iPS cells.

We hope you’ve all enjoyed reading and as always, encourage you to bring issues to our attention and consider writing your own piece to feature on the site.