Tips for navigating the academic ladder (by an early career researcher who left)

Okay, so. I was invited to offer some tips for navigating academia as an early career researcher for the wonderful 'Making Space in International Studies' workshop, so I wrote my notes up and expanded on them a little into a blog. Then, the day before I delivered it, in response to questions the participants had been invited to ask before the workshop, I basically rewrote my presentation to be a little more… honest? Pragmatic? Angry? Whatever it was more of, it was definitely a lot less chirpy. But loathe as I am to delete words (and, yes, I can see the irony of saying that as an editor), I thought both versions might have something to offer… I hope you enjoy at least one of the two blogs.

Version 1: Drafted two weeks out from the workshop

I want to start off by saying that my tips might be a little unconventional because I’m not really an academic anymore – I’m more ‘academia-adjacent’ now. I was awarded my PhD in International Relations in 2016, got a job outside of academia in 2017, returned to do casual convening and contract research work for a couple of years, and then did my postdoc in 2020 and 2021 before leaving academia again to start my own editing/academic writing business, which is what I’m doing now. So my reflections here are very much to be taken with that context in mind.

Another thing before my tips: I got so much out of my time as an early career researcher and I wouldn’t swap it for the world. I had an inkling pretty early on in my PhD that a life in academia was not going to be for me, but I kept on going because who doesn’t love a clear, linear promotion structure and the odd international conference in New Orleans or Hawai’i? And I got to work and learn from brilliant people. I now work with academics editing their work and mentoring them, which I love doing, and some of my favourite people in the world are academics. It's very important for me to say that my cynicism when it comes to academia is not because of the people (though there are some crappy ones out there), but because of the very real structural problems with academia.

 My first tip is to have a five-year plan but to be prepared – and enthusiastic even – to rethink it frequently or even ditch it.

Every early career academic should have a five-year plan on paper at least (and definitely if you’re going for an academic job interview as I found out the hard way) but you should also be open to where you end up in five years not looking like anything you could have ever expected. My now was inconceivable five years ago – really, with Covid, I’m guessing most of our nows look quite different than we might have otherwise expected. Running my own business, having a baby, the friendships that have sustained me and the ones that have fallen away – couldn’t have predicted any of it. So: plan by all means, but know that the really cool stuff is the stuff that you couldn’t have planned. The fun lies in the opportunities that pop up out of the blue or the sudden flashes of insight that are bestowed upon you when you least expect it. Be open and receptive to those opportunities and insights – they have been good to me, and I hope they will be good to you, too. 

My second tip: reframe academic writing from being ‘hard’ to being ‘hard work’.

Academic writing isn’t hard, in and of itself. But it does take a lot more time than we tend to allow for or expect it to.We have this vision of our brains coming up with ideas that our fingers then type out, and that This Is Writing. We assume other people sit down and just… write. And to meet this idea of writing, we try to force our brains to come up with ideas faster and our fingers to type quicker by setting up Pomodoro sprints or making wordcount tables in Excel (unless that’s just me…?!), or doing Shut Up And Write! sessions and then we feel like big, exhausted writing failures when everything grinds to a halt.

But here’s the thing: Everyone feels like big, exhausted writing failures because exceedingly few people actually write like that. Most people, myself included, write slower than they’d like, move stuff around more than they’d like, delete precious words more than they’d like. (Side note: you should set up a homeless words folder so you can keep these words somewhere safe – you never know when they might come in handy.) I’m just starting to develop and write about my approach to gentle academic writing, so watch this space, but I really believe finding a sustainable pace and bringing the joy back to writing is key to navigating academia. I just wish I’d had this realisation… while I was still navigating academia myself.

 My third tip for navigating academia is this: always have an escape plan.

Have you come across the idea of a ‘break up bank account’? It’s the idea that in a relationship you should have money set aside that only you can access so that if you want or need to leave for whatever reason, money won’t stand in the way. You’ll have enough money not to be stuck in a situation that you don’t want to be stuck in. And I want you to sort of do the same for academia, by building up your skillset for not-academia while you are still in academia.

Yes, I know you love academia. Yes, I know you and your academic career plan to be together forever. Yes, I know that you’ll be the one to beat the odds. But still, keep that escape account of yours filled with skills. Plan for the break-up even if you don’t want it to happen. Don’t get five years into a career that you then feel you can’t get out of. Don’t rely on academia. If it works out? Great. If it doesn’t? You're still fine.

What does this look like in practice? Every now and then, I’d suggest having a look at job sites and get a sense of what jobs might appeal and, crucially, what skills you need to meet the criteria. You can (and should!) build a skillset that will make you competitive outside of academia while you are still in academia. Consider how you would write a non-academic CV for yourself (or actually do it and keep it up to date – consider it the academic equivalent of having a draft resignation letter in your top drawer). There are lots of resources online on how to reframe your academic skillset and tell the story of your research to make it make sense to the world outside of academia. Keep your options open and don’t get to the point where you feel stuck in an exploitative work environment that you can’t get out of because you believe you’re not qualified to do anything else.

Tip four: Work on projects that you are excited about and with people you like.

When you can, work with people you like on projects that you are excited about. It seems crazy to include this as a tip, but it can be really easy to forget when you're being all strategic and thinking about the lines on your CV and identifying the things that will set you apart from the thousands of people also trying to nab one of the handful of permanent academic positions available. 

The academic projects that have been the most fulfilling for me are the ones where planning sessions and problem-solving have taken place over a pot of tea, or on a Zoom call filled with laughter, or while walking around a park. Nourishing spaces in academia can feel few and far between, and sometimes you have to make some for yourself – by working on things you like working on with people you like working with. And that's when you're not just navigating academia but actually getting something quite special out of it.

Version 2: Written 24 hours out from the workshop in response to the questions participants sent in beforehand which were shared with us

I had a very different set of notes prepared for today until 24 hours ago. I was going to talk about making plans but ditching them if more interesting things came along, and how I wished I had developed an approach to writing earlier that wasn’t quite so painful. My third point was going to be to have an escape plan (even if you never use it). That’s the only one that has survived the cull, and I’ll tell you more about it in a sec.

I never want to get too down on academia, because I got a lot out of it. I got to travel for research and conferences. I got the time and space and encouragement to think deeply and write. I got to work with and learn from brilliant people, including all of the mentors you’ve heard from here today. I absolutely continue to enjoy professional opportunities – both inside and outside academia – because of my time in academia. Getting to do my PhD and further research was honestly a gift. I hated it at the time, obviously, but hindsight and all that…

And I keep coming and going from academia. I’m not really an academic any more, but I still do casual research work if it’s a project I’m interested in, people I like working with, or when I need the extra money. I run a small academic editing and mentoring business, and like many small businesses, there are feasts and famines when it comes to my income.

Anyway, I had my lovely light-hearted thingy planned and scripted and I was feeling all smug that I had my shit together so well in advance. And then I read your questions that were kindly passed on to us. And I did that thing where I tried to go and tweak the presentation, but for everything that I changed, something else needed changing, and it was just all wrong and not at all what I wanted to say. So. I started again.

Now, first things first. All of the things that you are worrying about now are things that I worried about throughout my candidature and afterwards. The job market wasn’t great by any stretch when I finished, and it’s just gotten steadily worse and worse. If it feels like there are just no jobs out there, you’re not altogether wrong. I have watched close friends go through the job application process time and time again and it is soul-destroying. They have moved halfway around the world, and that – let’s not sugarcoat it here – can be awful.

What I want to say is that, if you are finding navigating academia hard, that’s okay, and it actually has nothing to do with you. If you are scared to say ‘no’ to something in case that’s the ‘no’ that costs you a permanent job, I get it. I did it too. I overcommitted at every step of my academic journey. (I mean, I still overcommit, but that’s just me trying to bend time to my will and at least I’m doing it for my own business… is what I tell myself.)

The pressure you ­– I, we – feel that came through in many of your questions isn’t because you’re not doing enough. Or because you’re not assertive enough. Or because you don’t know how to say no to things. Or because you’re just not very good at keeping a work-life balance. We’re feeling this pressure because academia as a business is broken. And like any good neoliberal institution, it would rather push that failure onto us rather than fix it (which would cost money).

Conveniently, our fear of saying no and pushing back against excessive workloads and accepting exploitative precarious contracts and working conditions also helps the university’s bottom line. The powers that be in higher education don’t have an incentive to fix the system.

And I say all this having had a really good run. I couldn’t have asked for better supervisors. I have had steady access to casual work and contract-based research. I got to do a post-doc. Yes, I worked hard, but I was also really lucky and in terms of privilege, I had a lot of odds stacked in my favour. But when the funding for my post-doc ran out, I decided to leave academia, by which I meant I wouldn’t be pursuing other post-docs or permanent roles. A month later I had a baby.

My son is about to turn two, and I can’t imagine having gone back to a full-time or ‘proper’ academic role. Like, it just wouldn’t have worked. Not one day passes where I think ‘gosh, I wonder if I made a mistake’. I don’t know how I would have navigated the pressures of juggling teaching, publishing, and service. Honestly, I don’t think I could have. And the reason I could make this decision relatively easily was that I had a safety net – I had an escape plan which I had been working on since during my PhD. And this would be my tip for you today, on how to navigate academia: have a plan to get out, even if you never use it.

Build a skillset that will make you competitive outside of academia while you are still in academia. Have the occasional scroll through job listings. Write a non-academic CV for yourself and keep it updated – consider it the equivalent of having a draft resignation letter in your top drawer. There so many resources online on how to reframe your academic skillset and tell the story of your research to make it make sense to the world outside of academia. (And there is a world outside of academia, and it’s perfectly fulfilling and you can be happy there, despite what anyone may tell you.)

Be strategic about the opportunities that you pursue with a view to building this ‘escape plan’ CV. And in the meantime, treat what you do as a job, as much as you can. Not an identity. There is prestige in saying ‘I’m doing my PhD’ or ‘I work at the University’. We’re made to feel as though we’re the special, chosen, clever ones in academia, and – surprise, surprise – it can be hard to walk away from that.

Don’t get to the point where you feel stuck in an exploitative work environment that you can’t get out of because you fear losing that identity or because you believe you’re not qualified to do anything else. This happens a lot and it sucks.

So, my advice for you – and I hope I haven’t been too cynical and depressed you terribly but I also hope that you’ll listen to me – is to navigate academia by keeping your escape plan up-to-date and to hand. Even if you never end up using it.