\n <\/p>\n
Illustration: David Parkins<\/span><\/p>\n Dear Nature,<\/p>\n In December 2024, I finished my PhD in biomedical chemistry in Italy, and I now find myself in that all-too-familiar early-career crisis, struggling to work out what to do next.<\/p>\n Research is important to me as a way to contribute meaningfully to a better, healthier world. But I have other life goals, such as becoming financially stable and starting a family, that seem incompatible with the reality of academic life. The cost of living is rising everywhere, and early-career research jobs come with low pay and short contracts. <\/p>\n Trying to transition out of academia brings its own frustrations. After years of dedication, I\u2019m treated by those hiring in industry as if I have no real work experience. It feels like starting from zero again.<\/p>\n Is this early-career crisis an inevitable part of life after a PhD? How do I navigate a career when my goals and values conflict? Does my passion for research have to be all-consuming? Do I have to choose between research and a reasonable work\u2013life balance? \u2014 A melancholy chemist<\/p>\n You\u2019re not alone. These are big questions, echoed by newly minted PhD graduates around the world. This is a notoriously challenging time in the career of any young scientist, and it doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re failing if you\u2019re struggling. Nature\u2019s careers team sought advice from three researchers on how to resolve your problem.<\/p>\n Peter Hanenberg, vice-rector for research and innovation at the Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon, says: \u201cThe first step is to recognize that this crisis is something which comes with what it is to be a researcher. An academic career is, to a certain point, a matter of passion, which means it might not be just a job. But the balance should be healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n When she completed her neuroscience PhD at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, last year, Maria del Mar Cajiao Manrique knew that she didn\u2019t want to continue in academia, but she didn\u2019t have a clear idea of the alternatives.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the time we start university,\u201d she says, \u201cwe are shown there\u2019s only one path: bachelor, master, PhD, postdoc, and then more postdocs until you become a principal investigator. It becomes internalized. If someone doesn\u2019t feel like they fit that one path, that\u2019s when they start having this existential crisis: What is it that I\u2019m good at? Have I wasted the past four years on this PhD?\u201d<\/p>\n Cajiao Manrique took a three-month contract as a visiting researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, then found a position as a medical writer in August this year. She says that going to talks at other research institutions and connecting with PhD holders who have been in similar situations has helped her to broaden her perspective and discover fresh possibilities.<\/p>\n An \u2018agony aunt\u2019 for working scientists<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Lynn McAlpine, whose higher-education research at the University of Oxford, UK, focuses on PhD and post-PhD career trajectories, points out that research career paths are not as straightforward as they once were. \u201cNow we see a shift to what we\u2019re calling self-authored careers,\u201d she says, \u201cwhere people have to take more responsibility for figuring out what they want, what kinds of jobs there are, and find ways to integrate their life\u2013career goals.\u201d<\/p>\n McAlpine has investigated how researchers navigate their careers and personal lives after finishing their doctorates. She observed that personal life aims, such as the desire to live close to a partner, have children and achieve financial security, tend to have greater influence in shaping career paths in the long term than do professional aims \u2014 such as reaching for a prestigious job title or a dream research project.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are myriad factors coming into play in the life journey of early-career researchers,\u201d says McAlpine. Your priorities and your opportunities will be affected by variables such as location, age, international mobility and personal values.<\/p>\n Sometimes, she says, people seek academic careers, but realize that what they really love is the academic environment. \u201cSo maybe they find a job in academia \u2014 not as a professor, but working in a museum or university archives, or as a communications officer in a research centre.\u201d<\/p>\n One PhD holder, interviewed as part of McAlpine\u2019s research, wanted to relocate with her partner, who was also an academic, but she knew that it would be difficult for both of them to get posts in the same place. \u201cWhen she got a postdoc in another country, they both moved there, and he took a professional position working in the university museums as a curator. There, he could apply his academic knowledge \u2014 until they moved again.\u201d<\/p>\n McAlpine points to perseverance as a crucial skill from a PhD programme that can be applied at the job-seeking stage. Getting a job is itself a job, she says. In her observations, whether they were looking for an industry job or an academic grant, \u201cthe people who were most successful just kept applying. They weren\u2019t put off by not getting an answer or getting a no.\u201d In other words, \u201cit\u2019s a race against your own frustration\u201d, says Cajiao Manrique. After her PhD, she spent months applying for jobs. \u201cI was sitting at my desk nine to five. I sent over 1,000 job applications.\u201d She estimates that she received a response for only about one in every 50 that she sent.<\/p>\n Then, Cajiao Manrique went on LinkedIn and started finding communities of PhD graduates who were dealing with the same issues. Through these connections, she learned that her CV was probably being discarded by AI tools. After more research and more conversations, she rewrote her CV to make it \u2018industry-ready\u2019, focusing on results rather than technicalities. For example, she changed \u201cperformed in vivo experiments to assess A using technique B\u201d to \u201cplanned, managed and performed more than X studies, leading a team of Y people, which resulted in the publication of article Z\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Illustration: David Parkins The problem Dear Nature, In December 2024, I finished my PhD in biomedical chemistry in Italy, and I now find myself in that all-too-familiar early-career crisis, struggling to work out what to do next. Research is important to me as a way to contribute meaningfully to a better, healthier world. But I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1704,859,16456],"class_list":{"0":"post-37794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-earned","9":"tag-ive","10":"tag-phd"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The problem<\/h3>\n
The advice<\/h2>\n
Perseverance<\/h2>\n