This post is Part 2 of a series on Creating a Satisfying Academic Career. In Part 1, I introduced the idea of “creating” a career based on the opportunities available and provided some reflection prompts to help you figure out what is important to you in 3 areas: the work itself, security, and money. I expect to add to this series periodically and welcome suggestions based on issues you are facing as you try to create a satisfying academic career.

How does this framework of *creating* a satisfying career apply in the stage immediately following your PhD?

In this post I focus on 3 specific types of opportunity:

1. a multi-year post-doctoral research fellowship
2. a tenure-track job (in North America)
3. a fixed term contract of at least 3 to 5 years which includes teaching and research (or is a well constructed teaching-focused position).

These positions are often framed as “early career”, a term that has become problematic for several reasons. You may have pursued a PhD later, as part of your mid-career development. This is very common in education, and also possible in other fields.

Even if your PhD came relatively soon after your undergraduate study, the state of the academic labour market may mean that you’ve had several years of very precarious academic employment before you are offered a job with even 3-5 years job security. In these circumstances it can feel very much “mid-career”.

Reframing “success”

Unlike very short term, teaching focused positions, especially those paid on a per course or hourly basis, this kind of position gives you an opportunity to build a teaching and research portfolio in your main area. Similarly, the kind of research fellowship I’m thinking of here differs from short term research positions that are mainly contributing to someone else’s research project, with very little scope for you to pursue your own research questions.

Not only does this type of position offer more job security, it could be a clear stepping stone to a long-term academic career.

However: If you treat it as a stepping stone to a “proper” career, you obscure the opportunities it affords in the present to do some of the work you find satisfying.

You risk creating additional pressure on yourself to secure a “proper” job by the end of the term, diminishing the achievement of securing this fellowship and setting yourself up for overwork and burnout.

There is a concept used in the study of childhood that is useful here. “Developmental time” is a way of framing accomplishments in terms of an expected developmental path. When looking at a child playing with a toy, developmental time draws your attention to the skills they are using and how they will help them do some other task in the future. It obscures the fact that the child might be experiencing pleasure right now.

Applying this idea to your job or fellowship, just as the child playing with a toy for pleasure will be developing skills, you will likely be doing things that will serve you well in the future as you focus on the work that you find satisfying now.

The reframing I suggest in “Creating a Satisfying Academic Career – Part 1” means you can allow yourself to approach these positions based on your own values, and use the opportunity to do the work you find satisfying and important.

As I concluded in the post on survivor guilt & Imposter Syndrome”:

At the end of the day, you have been successful. This fellowship or job gives you a measure of security, even if it’s limited. It gives you resources. It enables you to do some of the work that makes academia attractive to you.

The friends and colleagues who were unsuccessful will be happy for you. Their anger, frustration, and disappointment are directed at the system, not you.

Don’t let the broken system steal your joy. Do the work you most want to do.

Allow yourself to focus on the things this opportunity enables you to do. Get what you can from it. 

The post-doctoral research fellowship

Consider post-doctoral research fellowships like the one the Leverhulme Trust offers. These are sometimes highly competitive. The linked one is 3 years. Others are different lengths. The idea is a fixed term that is long enough to do something significant, but with no promise of anything beyond that term.

This kind of fellowship offers the rare opportunity to focus solely on research for a sustained period of time. In particular, this kind of fellowship enables you to establish new directions in your research. If you secure one of these relatively soon after the PhD, not only will you have time to publish from your dissertation; you’ll also be able to move on from your dissertation research to a new project.

If research is what you find attractive about an academic career, this kind of opportunity allows you to make it the centre of your job for several years. You may not get this kind of opportunity again, even if you do secure a permanent academic position at the end of your fellowship term.

Thinking of the fellowship as a stepping stone can affect the work you do during your fellowship.

• It might make you reluctant to take intellectual risks because you fear future hiring committees will not appreciate them.
• You may say yes to too many potentially “career advancing” opportunities to build a network and get additional things on your CV, limiting the time available for your research & writing.
• You may spend time applying for jobs earlier than you need to out of fear there will be nothing to apply for when your fellowship is nearing the end.

It makes sense that you would be worried about your long term job prospects and try to do everything you can to mitigate the risk you won’t have an academic career.

However, even in the best case scenario, you are unlikely to have this kind of opportunity to really focus on your research again. You’ll be teaching. You’ll have various administrative and service responsibilities.

In any scenario, wouldn’t it be nice to look back on your post-doctoral fellowship years knowing you got to spend that time doing work that was important and satisfying?

What if you treat this fellowship as an unexpected windfall?

Like Virginia Woolf’s inheritance, but smaller in scale…

What would you *like* to do with this time and opportunity?

Rethinking “tenure track”

You can do the same thing with a job that is explicitly framed as a stepping stone. I’m thinking of the tenure track (in the US and Canada), or an open contract with some kind of probationary or confirmation process at the 3 year or 5 year mark.

The dominant approach to this kind of opportunity is to cede control over your workload and priorities to the employing institution and their criteria for confirmation/tenure/promotion.

What if you saw this as a trial period for the institution?

You’ve reflected on the questions I asked in Part 1 of this series. This job meets some of your criteria. You’ve compromised on others.

You’ve now got several years of job security. Can you prioritize the work that is most important and satisfying to you?

One of the links in Katherine Firth’s post is to a blog post by someone who did precisely that. At Harvard! Imagine getting a tenure track position at one of the most prestigious institutions and deciding you actually didn’t care if you are awarded tenure there?

Prioritising the work that makes this job satisfying for you means you will be doing satisfying work.

It also shifts the power relationship between you and senior colleagues who might try to use their involvement in the tenure or confirmation process to coerce you into doing things that are not actually in service to the satisfying academic career you are trying to create.

These “it’ll look good on your CV/tenure application” requests are often disingenuous, and steal your time and energy from the things that really matter to the committee making that decision (like research and publishing). Sometimes, the people making these suggestions don’t have any power over your long term job security anyway.

I’m not suggesting that you become That Selfish Bastard, but rather that you approach the job from your values and strengths. Allow the security this job offers *now* to give you the confidence to take a few risks.

This is even more important if taking this position meant compromising on one or more of the other things that are important to you. Like living in a particular place. Or earning the amount of money you’d like to earn.

In other words, don’t fear making the institution and department the ones that are on “probation”. Is this the kind of job that you will find satisfying in the long term? You’ve got a few years to really figure that out.

You can do this with precarious positions too

It’s harder for a range of reasons. You know you will need to spend time applying for the next thing. The money might be closer to your survival number than is comfortable. You may have to live away from your support network, or commute further than is ideal. But it’s not impossible.

This is one situation where thinking of the job in developmental terms may be helpful. You don’t need to prove yourself to *this* employer. Think instead about your own career goals and how this job can contribute to achieving them.

• What opportunities does this job provide to develop the knowledge, skills, and networks you need to increase your chances of getting a more secure, and more satisfying position?
• Can you do those things during working hours?
• Or, can you be strict about your working hours, and the energy you devote to your job, so you have time and energy to do them on the side?

In particular, consider the parts of this job that do not contribute to your longer term goals.

• What is the minimum you need to do on those tasks?
• How much time and energy would that free up for the more satisfying work?

This framing might also give you permission to turn down precarious jobs that will take time and cognitive capacity away from the work you find satisfying, without really meeting your other needs (e.g. financial) either.

You aren’t giving up ‘forever’ as an option

There are times when you have to do difficult or unpleasant things to make a greater reward possible in the future. Delayed gratification becomes a problem when the reward is *always* in the future.

Overwork is rife, and burnout is becoming more common in academia. One of the contributing factors is a culture in which “just until I get …” is a common refrain. First it’s the PhD. Then it’s the “proper job”. Then it’s the next promotion.

The questions in Part 1 of this series will help you get clarity on what’s most important to you, personally. That clarity will help you be more confident about your choices, even when they go against the advice of others in the field.

Doing what you can to prioritise the work that is most important and satisfying to you, in whatever job you get, will make the job satisfying in the present. And if that kind of work is not valued by future academic employers, the job they were offering probably wouldn’t have been satisfying.

The person who wrote the Tenure Track as a 7-year Postdoc piece is described as a tenured professor at Harvard in their author bio, despite having paid little attention to the things they were “supposed to do” and focusing on the work they found meaningful and satisfying. Clearly, academia is a good fit for them. And they were lucky that an opportunity that fit their interests came up when they were looking.

The person I wrote about in Risking Doing the Work You Find Meaningful was on a series of 1 year contracts in a place they actually enjoyed living. Shifting their perspective to the one I outline here not only meant they found the work more satisfying, but also ended up leading to a tenured position in that institution.

Security has 2 connotations. You want the security of a security blanket. Something comforting and warm that gives you the confidence to do the work that is important to you.

You do not want the security of a prison. A secure job that requires you to do work that you don’t find meaningful. Or, that makes it difficult to do the work you do find important and satisfying. Or that requires you to compromise on other things that are important to you.

Creating a satisfying career involves evaluating the opportunities available, and proactively using them to pursue the goals that are important to you. It requires you to trust that there are options you cannot yet see. Your choices will be limited but you do have choices. Allow yourself to make choices that nourish you. You can do this.

Related Posts:

Several years ago I wrote a series of shorter posts on sessional teaching (aka adjunct) that may be helpful. The first post has links to the others.

Lies you’ve been told about loving your work

Does it matter for tenure whether you’ve published from the PhD?

Priorities and boundaries in the face of job insecurity

This post is Part 2 of a miniseries on Creating A Satisfying Academic Career. It was originally sent to the newsletter on 20 September 2024 after Part 1 was sent on 13 September 2024. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss any new posts!