Happy 2020, Recovering academic audience (& hello to those new to us). We hope you had a restful break and 2020 is off to an amazing start. Recovering Academic has been invited to the annual NPA Meeting in March, and we’re raising money to travel there. Instead of just asking for donations (you can, if you like, however!), we’re selling awesome Rec…

Dr. Emily Roberts. Photo source: pfforphds.com. We spoke with Emily Roberts, PhD about their business Personal Finance for PhDs. Emily’s career after academia is advising PhDs about finance. One of the key points she made was to how having a solid amount of savings enabled her to make the decision to start her own solopreneur business, making the t…

Eva Amsen, PhD. Photo from Easternblot.net. Photographer: Rannie Turingan For our series four opener, we talk with Freelance writer, editor and science communicator Eva Amsen, PhD who joined us in the middle of her night from London. Eva got her PhD at the University of Toronto where she started a blog, EasternBlot.net. During her PhD, Eva had alre…

We’ve discussed our experiences regarding the struggles we faced when leaving academia. So now we want to hear from you! The recovering academic trio is on summer break, but we want to ask for your help to plan our next season! Send us questions, suggestions for topics, tell us about your specific transition struggles! Let us know if you’d prefer t…

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Public Domain. Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Recovering Academics. Its mission: to explore different and new industries. To seek out life outside of academia To boldly go where no former academic has gone before! In this episode, our intrepid trio discusses the importance of giving yourself spa…

In this episode the recovering trio discusses how to ask for more when academia train us not to negotiate/request what your time is actually worth. How do you put a dollar value on your time. Entrepreneur Amanda has so many great things to say, like researching rates charged by others in the industry, charging more for rush requests, and not fallin…

In this week of the Recovering Academic podcast we talk with Dr. Gary McDowell and his journey outside academia. Gary is the executive director of The Future of Research, a non-profit organization created for and by early career researchers to make the research enterprise more sustainable for future generations. Their mission is to champion, engage…

On this episode, we talk about what surprised us the most about the transition from academia to our post-academic lives. What has surprised you the most when leaving academia? Was it the difference in working life? Was it the different feeling about work? Did you have a lot of free time? Was it an easy adjustment? Or difficult? Transitioning can be…

Drought Crack Life Survival Flower Desert How to avoid cynical feelings of feeling helpless. “Always wear shorts under your skirt so you can go to the monkey bar” —@ladyscientist Mentioned in this episode: Learned Helplessness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness Grant rejection tweet: https://twitter.com/jeroenphv/status/10645790501…

The Recovering Academic trio takes some time to reflect about the past year and make plans for 2019. We also discuss how it is hard to find motivation and focus during this time of the year, but we give some tips about how we can trick ourselves to have some work done during this holiday season! It’s the season of generosity, but there’s actually l…

Have you ever felt ‘decision paralysis’? With so many choices and not sure which way to go? Hesitant to put all your eggs on a single basket? Well, you are not alone! In this week’s episode we discuss how to define your career path when you leave the ivory tower. Academia has a defined career path, but that may not be the case once you leave it. Th…

We’ve noticed that a lot of new people have subscribed to the Recovering Academic podcast. Here’s your chance to listen to our very first episode when we started on our path to recovery. Keep an eye on this space for our next episode!Par Recovering Academic

In this week of the Recovering Academic podcast we talk with Dr. Dennis Eckmeier, his journey outside academia and his actual advocacy projects, including the Science for Progress podcast and its twitter rotating twitter account @SfPRocur. This was a joint podcast between the Recovering Academic and the Science for Progress podcasts, so we all disc…

Dr. Kristen Witte, Ph.D. We sat down and spoke with Dr. Kristen Witte, an exhibit developer at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago Illinois. They discuss their transition story, taking some time away from academia to find what’s next and the challenge of getting to know yourself in an all-consuming environment that is earning a PhD. “Once…

Image by Richard Stephenson Adaptation. It’s not just a macroevolutionary term. It applies to all of us in our transitions, too. In this episode, we discuss how we’ve adapted to life outside of academia. What changes around you? What changes do you have to make? Do you have to wear sunglasses to handle all that sunshine? A lot of things do change, …

Welcome back to the Season 3 of our Recovering Academic Podcast! We missed you, and hope you missed us as well :)” For this first episode of this season, the recovering trio discuss a very important topic: NETWORKING But what is networking? And how do you do the networking as a recovering academic? And more importantly, how do you get into the head…

Flowers blooming in the snow. Out of the snow and into Spring! Could there be a better metaphor This is the last episode of our Second season! And it’s packed! We answer listener question about balancing work and family in the private sector and the best advice we received that helped us during our career transitions, including applying anyway if y…

Today InBabyAttachMode joins our hosts to discuss her transition story. Everything Was Now Open – InBabyAttachMode We know InBabyAttachMode (who we affectionately refer to as IBAM) from twitter and her Scientopia blog. She discusses her transition to industry in a Scientist position. She talks about her work in public-private collaborations and var…

In this episode, Chemjobber joins the Recovering Academic co-hosts to discuss his transition and his blog. Quantifying the Chemistry Job Market Since 2008 Chemjobber now works in industrial chemistry. He started his job search in March of 2008 and started his blog nine months later in December 2008. His blog aims to help chemists find jobs in a tou…

In this episode we’re joined by Dr. Chris Humphrey of Jobs on Toast. You Are More Than an Academic Chris received his PhD in medieval studies from the University of York. His first post-PhD job was working as content analyst for an e-learning startup. Currently, he’s a project manager at a bank in England. Chris shares with us his transition story …

Merriam-Webster defines PERSPECTIVE as: 1a : the technique or process of representing on a plane or curved surface the spatial relation of objects as they might appear to the eye; specifically : representation in a drawing or painting of parallel lines as converging in order to give the illusion of depth and distance b : a picture in perspective 2a…

How do you find your happy? Do you have to make big changes? Or can small changes be enough? In this episode, we talk about figuring out what will make us happy. Sometimes these involve big changes (like moving) and sometimes small changes (like buying a new dish rack). There’s a lot of emphasis on making decisions that are right for your career or…

In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Sara Langworthy of, well, just about everything. Team: Do All The Things! Sara is an author, consultant, speaker and YouTuber with a degree in Developmental Psychology. In 2013, she co-founded an organizational advancement and evaluation consulting group, The Exchange Loop, LLC to use her research skills to bene…

In this end-of-the year episode each one of us reflect about our recovering 2017 year and come up with resolutions for the 2018. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast! It is really rewarding for us to feel that we’re able to help you cope with your transition in some way. You are constantly transitioning. Life is about change. And change c…

In this week’s episode, we’re discussing burnout and transitioning. We all think that once we’ve made our decision that all our problems will be solved. We’ll take all that energy we spent on fretting over leaving and put it into side projects. But it seems like it rarely works out that way… Managing Your Energy Even if you don’t move locations (li…

Out of the gray zone. We’re joined by Chall (@challdreams) who left academia behind as a postdoc and currently a Project Coordinator in pediatric cancer via a job in pharma quality control science. Getting out of the Gray Zone We discuss characteristics PhDs have that might lend them or not to careers beyond the bench. Academia is ostensibly creati…

In today’s episode, we talk with Jennifer Polk of PhD to Life. She’s a life coach and entrepreneur and has a PhD in History. Everyone Feels This Way Sometimes We ask Jen about her transition out of academia and into entrepreneur life. She shares with us the high and low points of her transition—and how many of her clients feel (or felt) the same. S…

You always hear about transferable skills—and how PhDs have them. But how do you identify them? How do you know what skills to develop? In this episode, we discuss how you can identify them and how to develop them. What’s Your Super Power? All of us have a tendency to discount things that we find easy. Is it easy for you to pick out grammatical err…

This week we interview (interrogate?) Ian about his recent transition outside of academia. The Many Hats that Ian Wears… Ian shares his venture outside of academia in which he fills a bunch of roles. His current day job is a lab manager with a company that specializes in helping scientists procure lab reagents and equipment. This might seem like an…

In this week’s episode, Ian and Amanda interview Cleyde to get the in-depth story of her experience as a recovering academic. Cleyde’s Advice: Have a Plan Photo by: Steven Johnson Cleyde talks about her reasons for leaving academia, including her relationship with academia. She also talks about what her goals are for her career. We also briefly dis…

This season we will interview other recovering academics, so it’s only fair that we turn the mic on ourselves first. In this episode, Amanda is interviewed by Ian and Cleyde. Revelations in Amanda’s Career… She talks about the realization that money can be exchanged for goods and services, making the leap into self-employment, and the difficulty in…

We’re back! This season, we will interview academics and recovering academics. We’re starting this season off with interviewing the hosts of Hello PhD, Joshua Hall and Daniel Arneman. Hello PhD and the Recovering Academic share a common desire to talk about what no one talks about during your science training. We both hope that by talking about the…

We’re coming back for Season 2 on August 22nd! Curious about what this means for our podcast? Listen to our Season 2 trailer and find out!Par Recovering Academic

Courtesy of @BWJones In this episode, we discuss the importance of taking breaks. Breaks come in many forms and in different durations—from just an hour to a weekend to a full week (or more!). Preventing burnout and recharging yourself are vital no matter where you are in academia—committed to staying in academia, transitioning out of academia, to …

In this episode, we discuss if we regret doing a PhD and what advice we would give our younger selves. Many times we focus in on the microlevel—what results will this experiment bring, what publications will we get—and forget to look at the macrolevel—what do we want to do, where do our interests lie. Getting a PhD can sometimes encourage us to thi…

In this episode, we discuss the elephant in the room: Are you still a scientist after you leave academia? After spending a decade or more identifying as a scientist, deciding to leave may academia may be mean more than abandoning a culture—it may mean losing your identity. Many factors come into play with deciding who is (and who isn’t) a scientist…

Note: This episode originally had a file error when uploaded. We’ve corrected it. You can re-download the corrected version now. Thanks for supporting the Recovering Academic Podcast! In this episode, we discuss how to tell your story of leaving academia. The age-old advice of staying positive about why you left your previous position can be diffic…

Courtesy of @BWJones Getting over the fear of failure. As academics, we are inherently perfectionists. There’s nothing like applying for jobs to bring out those tendencies. In this episode, we discuss our fear of failure, what causes it, and how we got over our fear. And Ian makes us laugh hysterically over an extended metaphor. Even if it’s n=1… y…

photo by Ian Street In this episode, we discuss how we use Twitter, ways to get involved in twitter, and hashtags. Twitter can be an amazing tool for transitioning out of academia. If you’re wondering where we all hang out (virtually), then join Twitter. For us, Twitter is our virtual water cooler where we keep in touch with each other, talk scienc…

Birds networking. Photo by Ian Street. In this episode, we discuss asking for help. There comes a time in the transition process where you may want (or need!) someone’s assistance. This comes in many forms: talking to friends, reaching out to your network, finding a career/life coach. We talk about what a career/life coach is (and isn’t), tips on h…

Making the transition requires you to take on extra work. Work in the form of side work (a new side hustle), informational interviews, going to conferences in your new field, attending workshops, making different versions of your resume, and so on. How do you stay productive during this time? How do you stay on track? In this episode we discuss our…

What’s so great about LinkedIn? In this episode, we discuss our thoughts about LinkedIn. We all know about it as the professional networking site. It has its upsides (at least two of us have received jobs) and its downsides (the somewhat clunky user interface). So, how do we use it? Why do we use it? What could you use instead of it? Also mentioned…

Following up on our previous episode, we talk about things that many academics are not good at taking: risks. How do you know if taking a particular risk will pay off? Is academia really less risky than non-academic careers? Why do transition stories always seem really well planned? How do you deal with Imposter Syndrome? I believe that anything yo…

In this episode, we discuss when to spend (and save) your money and time to invest in your future career.Par Recovering Academic

In this episode, we discuss the transition in identity when leaving academia. You’ve spent 10 years (or more!) inside of academia. Most of your friends might be inside academia. You likely derive a lot of your identity from your work. What happens when you decide that you’re going to leave? One question that we address is: Are you still a scientist…

In this episode, we discuss unique skills that we gained in academia. When looking to leave academia, you might think, “What do I know outside of pipetting?” …Just for example. As it turns out, working in academia we gain a lot of unique skills. For example, you can prioritize. You’ve spent years deciding what to do first—what to do to get you clos…

Turning your CV into a resume feels daunting—and maybe even impossible. How do you condense a several page document into a one page resume? How do you make the change without cutting important information? And, possibly most difficult of all, how do you convert your academic accomplishments into ones that are quantifiable and meaningful outside of …

In this episode, we talk about the difficulties with deciding to leave academia. We ask two important questions: What made the decision to leave academia difficult? Once you decide to leave, how do you know where to go? While most people with PhDs do not go onto a tenure-track position, feelings of failure with leaving academia still persist. These…

In this episode, we discuss the reasons why we transitioned, or are transitioning, from academia. Our reasons for leaving varied, and sometimes overlapped, but we all made the same decision: leave academia. Looking at your own reasons and seeing them add up to the same decision can be a bit intimidating. We each experienced, or are experiencing, th…

Leaving academia in many fields, scientific and otherwise, is the ultimate taboo. In journal clubs, seminars, and laboratories, jokes are made that scientists who left academia for industry or other jobs have turned to the Dark Side. A certain attitude persists that science is a noble calling, an avocation, that a trainee should pursue with a singl…