The Straightforward Academic (or: Your advisor also poops)

This entry is part of a summer series over at the wonderful My Scholarly Goop, featuring true tales of early career researchers’ scholarly paths. Read my contribution here, and head over to the series to get a new essay each Friday, the whole summer long.

Not pursuing a PhD was, frankly, never part of my thought process. My parents are both researchers (albeit, in Biophysics and Physical Chemistry), and I grew up spending Sunday afternoons in the lab proudly reproducing the Briggs-Rauscher reaction in my own little lab coat while my parents were working. I’m a bit like the medical doctor who became a doctor because her parents are also MDs. You could say I tried to be a bit different and decided to become an opthamologist instead of a dermatologist, but that’s really about how crazy I went.

Seven pieces of advice if you are considering to leave academia

The contents of this posts are inspired by a panel on exploring job options outside of academia at the Department of Psychology at Penn.Thanks to the four cognitive scientists turned data scientists and consultants Ting Qian, Jurgis Karuza, Christine Boylan, and Neil Bardhan, for their input.

In our last post, we interviewed two cognitive scientists who have decided to leave academia for jobs as science communication consultants and data scientists. Complementary to that post, we have assembled an advice shortlist in case you are contemplating to leave academia.