Print This PostAt this point, I doubt that anyone in an academic career is hanging on still believing that it’s possible to have it all. Just in case, as it’s the whole premise of this article, I’m here to say resoundingly, with great force, that it is not. The life of a newly independent investigator can be a never ending expansion of increased responsibilities. Would you like to sit on this committee? Please could you review these 12 grants in the space of a week? We’re short of women on our graduate student admissions panel – can you step up? There’s a new grant mechanism announced – you have 6 weeks before the deadline, better get writing. Prof X has retired and we need someone to give their 4 lectures – what do you think? And on it goes, with the effect being that if you were to say yes to everything, your work tasks would quickly expand to fill all available time and energy, leaving behind a shrivelled husk of a person who is absolutely zero fun at parties.
In this blog therefore, we’re going to talk about how I prioritise the things that I say yes to, how I say no to the roles I can’t fill, and how these decisions may change depending on your career stage and current situation. I think it’s important to consciously declare your long-term goal to yourself (and to your mentors, if you feel comfortable), and it can relieve a bunch of stress to have a clear-eyed view of how to attain that goal in a best case scenario. As things like grants, fellowships and life can be unpredictable, it’s also important to remain flexible, and open to reshuffling priorities when goals change. I’ve realized on mentoring new PhD students and Post Docs that these are often not things that come naturally to a young scientist.
I was really lucky in that when I was in my early twenties, I was in the GB Orienteering Team (yes, I am THAT cool, and yes, it is a real sport, and yes, we do run – fast) at a time when we got amazing sports physiology and psychology training thanks to National Lottery funding. Goal setting and cognitive flexibility are key parts of sport psychology, and something we would spend significant time on at every training camp we had. I’ve mentioned SMART goal setting in previous blogs, but there’s a couple of other things that are additionally important here that are relevant for an academic career. The first is that you can only control your own performance. You can write the best grant you’ve ever written, but someone else might knock it so far out of the park that the funding line is in space, and you don’t get funding that round. That doesn’t necessarily mean the work you put in was meaningless, or that you failed. You will also need contingency plans. In orienteering, this might look like six weeks of pool running (actual torture) to maintain your fitness while you get over a stress fracture. In science, this may look like re-purposing a well-reviewed grant and sending it to another mechanism or agency without starting again from scratch. Mentally preparing for these contingencies ahead of time can make rejection and setbacks much easier to deal with.
So what’s your big picture, where would you really like to be in 5 years time goal? Since I arrived back in the UK, mine has been to get a salaried “permanent” academic role. In my final 5 years in the USA, it was two-fold; get a green card (achieved) and get a tenure track position (almost). COVID threw a spanner in those works, but having those goals gave me a framework to decide which things to accept, which to turn down, and which opportunities I needed to create for myself. Different big goals require different things, and if you weigh every opportunity against these requirements, you can make conscious, informed decisions. It may sound a little brutal, and of course it’s okay to say yes to something you will genuinely enjoy with people that you like, but it’s good practice to evaluate against your goals and make that decision conscious of how it may affect your long-term outlook.
To say no effectively in academia, express appreciation, state your inability to commit clearly, and offer alternative solutions or individuals. Be assertive and setting boundaries to protect your time and well-being.
For the salaried role at Oxford, it’s a three part job. The first part is world class research. You need a growing international research profile (conference invites, editorial board positions, prizes, grant review boards), which is well balanced with a productive record of publications and obtaining grants. The second part is teaching, and here this comprises undergraduate lectures, small group tutorial teaching, marking exams, and vivas. Finally, there is the somewhat woolly “Departmental Service” part, which is being on committees, grad student interview panels, and working groups. All the decisions I’ve made since coming to Oxford have been weighed first against these three parts. Would joining this working group build my CV in one of these three domains? Will it raise my profile in the department? Would it compromise my ability to publish this paper, which is essential for my next grant? I’m already on one Editorial Board for a journal I respect – will adding another really build my international reputation further? I don’t think being part of this workshop will really add to my CV, but I will enjoy it and it may help me with the PPI section of my next grant. And on it goes.
The decisions I have made here have been quite different from the ones I made in the USA. When I needed a Green Card, papers reviewed was an important metric. I accepted every review request that came to me from every level of journal, and built that list to add to my application. These days, I rarely accept a review request, as there just isn’t the time unless it’s something that falls perfectly within my expertise and interests (when are journals going to start employing full-time reviewers?). Permanent salaried roles are rare in the USA, so one way to build a stable salary is to take a role on long-term grants. This was how I came to be Associate Director of the Biomarkers Core for two major Program grants, providing a solid base for my salary and less uncertainty year to year about how to get paid. This was a fantastic way to increase your publication rate, and boost your local profile, but not a good way to fully own a program of research. It also helped with the Green card application to have a key role in these long-term programs.
So if you’ve evaluated a request to do something, and you’ve decided it doesn’t fit with your long-term plan, how do you say no? It kind of depends who you’re talking to and whether you want to keep open the possibility of saying yes later. For reviewing papers and those kind of one off requests, just decline, no need to explain. If you can’t fit a review panel into your schedule this year but you’d be happy to participate another year, a brief e mail explaining that is sufficient. While you don’t owe anyone an explanation, it may help ease a refusal in your department (such as when I recently stepped down from the MSc Neuroscience Committee) to briefly explain your decision, as people are more likely to understand. In this case, with my new role, I was lined up for three admissions committees, and one of them had to go. For three years the MSc Neuroscience Committee was a great way for me to get excellent students and build my profile in the Department, so it was also a good opportunity to pass on to someone else. It’s worth noting that a brief explanation is not an apology – you have the right to make your own decisions, as you’re the main person tasked with looking after your career.
If you are struggling with any aspect of this – setting your long-term goal, figuring out what’s required to reach it, and making judgement calls on opportunities, then this is where you turn to your network and your mentors. What’s required to reach a goal can be extremely location specific, and so this is exactly the kind of thing a mentor can help you figure out, and could form the basis of a mentoring agreement. Insider knowledge from someone who has recently achieved the thing you’re hoping to get will be really helpful. Don’t be afraid to ask for a meeting with your Head of Department and get them to evaluate your CV, and offer suggestions as to which bits need extra work. My HoD was happy to do this and it really helped me refine my decision making. Finally, don’t sit around and wait for these opportunities to fall into your lap. You have a long-term goal, you have found out what you need to do to achieve it, and now you have to seek out those experiences.
You are the one who drives this train, even if sometimes you have to swerve around some pretty unexpected obstacles. Good luck!
Dr Becky Carlyle
Author
Dr Becky Carlyle is an Alzheimer’s Research UK Senior Research Fellow at University of Oxford, and has previously worked in the USA. Becky writes about her experiences of starting up a research lab and progressing into a more senior research role. Becky’s research uses mass-spectrometry to quantify thousands of proteins in the brains and biofluids of people with dementia. Her lab is working on various projects, including work to compare brain tissue from people with dementia from Alzheimer’s Disease, to tissue from people who have similar levels of Alzheimer’s Disease pathology but no memory problems. Becky is also a mum, she runs, drinks herbal tea’s and reads lots of books.
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Dr Becky Carlyle
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