Enjoying the process

It’s 2024, but BlueSky feels like 2012 Twitter right now, which means blogs are totally back! I suggested that I would write a few blogposts about career advice for each stage of academia, from PhD to Associate Professor. This was partly prompted by the fact I have recently been promoted to Full Professor, so it seems like a nice way to mark climbing the academic ladder and to reflect on how I got here. Hopefully it will help others on a similar journey.

Before I write those pieces though, I wanted to write a blog about the why rather than the how. By focusing on careers and career advancement, I run the risk of proceduralising everything and losing sight of the bigger picture. This is my attempt at ensuring that doesn’t happen.

Why are we in academia in the first place? There are plenty of better paid options out there, and plenty of less stressful options. The current financial contraction of the UK HE sector is incredibly worrying. In short, it is easy to identify reasons to not be in academia. I’m not here to tell you why you should be – that is an individual choice that you need to make. However, I think it is useful to think about the things that might be important if you want to be in academia long-term. This is perhaps less important if you view yourself as someone who is likely to get a PhD and then leave for industry or leave to pursue another career. I’m focussing here on a potential sustained academic career.

First, a confession. I used to worry that I wasn’t intrinsically motivated enough about science to be an academic scientist. I enjoyed science at school, but I didn’t have a burning passion for it. I enjoyed my BSc in Psychology, and worked hard enough to get a good grade, but I can’t claim to have put my heart and soul into it. I don’t have an origin story about wanting to cure a disease because of a specific life experience. It felt at times that I didn’t have the right “passion” or “motivation” to be an academic.

What I have come to realise is that passion and motivation is a good starting point but is perhaps not a means of sustaining an academic career. Instead, what I think is critical for sustaining a career is enjoyment of the process. Research can be a day-to-day grind. This will differ dependent on the subject, but all subjects have aspects to them that are, to be frank, dull. In experimental psychology, explaining a behavioural task to participants can lose its charm on the fiftieth repetition. So can sitting outside a testing booth reading papers when someone is completing the experiment. As an aside, the first and only textbook I have read cover-to-cover was Alan Baddeley’s Human Memory: Theory and Practice when I was undertaking a summer research internship during my undergraduate and I was sitting waiting for participants to finish. It was during this internship that I realised how much I enjoyed research. Not necessarily the big picture theory stuff – though I enjoy that as well – but the nitty-gritty day-to-day process of research. Having passion might get you through the research grind in the short-to-medium term, but at some point it might not be enough.

When I say you need to enjoy the process, I don’t mean every aspect of it, but there have to be enough aspects of the research grind that you can find enjoyable or rewarding. For me, there are aspects of the process and job that I love. I have always loved experimental design. Thinking through and discussing experiments with colleagues, solving problems that at first did not seem solvable, coming up with clever experimental manipulations that no-one has used before. However, I have also always been able to find satisfaction in smaller aspects of research – collecting another data set, writing a script that does what you want it to do in a neat and efficient way, making sure an fMRI testing session goes smoothly on the day by emailing and checking up on participants earlier in the week. I can gain satisfaction from doing the necessary (sometimes dull) things well. Yes, you need the bigger picture enthusiasm and interest in your topic, but I think finding the process rewarding is overlooked and just as important.  This is particularly the case when things just aren’t working. This will come in phases during your career, and enjoying the process allows you to get through the troughs while the peaks take care of themselves.

So have a think about what aspects of the job you do find enjoyable and rewarding. It might surprise you. Had you asked me five years ago what I find most enjoyable, I would have said experimental design. It is still up there, but what I really love now is helping lab members develop into awesome researchers. Largely this involves stepping back and just allowing people with exceptional talent to express it, but supervision isn’t that simple, and I must be playing some small role in supporting them to develop. It is incredibly satisfying and rewarding to work with amazing people on a day-to-day basis and watch them fulfil their obvious potential over the longer timescale. I had no idea this would be the aspect of my job I would find the most rewarding even a few years ago. The point is your tastes can change. I think it is important to find some of the day-to-day aspects of your job rewarding in and of themselves, but don’t presume this is fixed. You might enjoy programming analyses today but organising patient and public involvement (PPI) events in the future. Perhaps you found preparing lectures slides a chore a few years ago, but now you can’t get enough of carefully selecting out-of-date memes that the students don’t relate to. Whatever floats your boat really. Don’t worry about that change in focus over time. As long as you find reward in a reasonable proportion of the small things, the rest can be dealt with.

Ultimately, academia isn’t a calling. It is a job. If there is another job out there that you find more rewarding or more enjoyable, then get applying! If you want to stay in academia, I think it is useful to do so with your eyes open. Despite many issues in HE, being an academic can be great. It is only great if you find the work interesting, enjoyable and rewarding. Otherwise, what is the point? If you’re in academia for some big lofty end goal, but you hate the day-to-day grind, then I think it is worth reflecting on that. It might be enough for you, but I think enjoyment of the process is perhaps more important in the long-term. It’s a cliché, but it’s about the journey, not the destination.