What are you going to do after your PhD?
If you’re like most PhD students, you may have started your PhD with loose plans to stay in academia when you’re done.
But for many PhD students there comes a stage in the PhD when they realise that academia isn’t for them.
That may be because of the famously (and horribly) precarious job market facing many PhD graduates, or because you’ve been turned off research all together now you’ve seen ‘under the hood’. Or perhaps you don’t think you’ve got what it takes.
The realisation that your future isn’t in academia can be an incredibly stressful one. For many PhD students, their entire lives have been characterised by being smart, and their identity is inextricably linked to studying and being in the university system.
Deciding to leave isn’t just as simple as choosing a different career path, it can often mean having to reinvent an entire identity.
The trouble is though, that takes time.
For one, it takes a while to work out what it is you want to do after the PhD, particularly if you started out intending to stay in academia. What’s more, if you’ve found the PhD traumatic, it’ll take time to process that and pick yourself up.
But there’s no rush.
Choosing a career path is one of the biggest decisions you’re likely to make, and not one that should be taken lightly. The danger of rushing is that you’ll end up making a poor choice, living to regret it, and end up back at square one not long after.
In this case, patience is a virtue.
Let me share my experience.
Once I decided I wasn’t staying in academia – towards the end of my PhD – I hurriedly searched for a job, and ended up being accepted into a prestigious civil service role.
0 Comments