The Options Suite

One of the things participants in my courses notice is that I keep it ‘real’. I don’t portray life as a last-year PhD student or as a newly minted PhD graduate, or an early to mid career researcher, as a glamorous path, because it ain’t. It’s stressful, it’s exhausting, it’s anxiety-producing. And I help people…

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Confident or not, here I come

How to build self-confidence and crush academic networking

In a recent online discussion in PhD2Postdoc, one participant asked what a ‘shy’ type can do to overcome her reluctance to put herself forward in a networking environment and, more generally, ‘promote her research’. We brainstormed some great networking strategies, but it’s the theme of self-confidence that I wanted to tackle more deeply here.  …

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Social is Successful?

I was sitting in on a conversation with a group of ECRs this week, all sharing their anxieties and concerns about their research careers. I could relate to all those worries and what ifs, and it felt like only yesterday I was at the coal face of life as a postdoc.    One question posed…

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Money with meaning

A friend of mine, an avid cyclist, recently told me about a guy on a bike who sat on her tail while she was riding to work one morning, goading her to speed up or get out of his way. He eventually overtook her, and in response to his pretty colourful language, she replied ‘Riding…

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Goals? No thanks…

Goals. The start of the year, any year, seems to be all about goal-setting. And it’s easy to get sucked into the idea that we need to set a ‘S.M.A.R.T’ goal then make rapid progress on it – in no time at all. What a shame that academic publishing and grant-winning have slower lifecycles!  …

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