Transcript
Speaker: Academic defectors.
Speaker: My first job ever was waiting tables at a place called Zachary's Pizza in the town where I went to high school, which is St.
Speaker: Albans, Vermont.
Speaker: I didn't really want this job.
Speaker: My mom got it for me because she thought I should have a job literally three days before I turned 16.
Speaker: And one of the best things to come out of working at Zachary's Pizza was that I had this mysterious customer who came in three weekends in a row.
Speaker: And instead of leaving me cash as a tip, he left me Zen books, which in retrospect is a pretty Zen way to get someone else into Zen.
Speaker: And anyway, one of the books that he left me is actually to this day one of my favorites.
Speaker: It's the classic Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, which is compiled by Paul Reps.
Speaker: And one of my favorite parables from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, it's in the compilation, is called You Cannot Steal the Moon.
Speaker: And it goes like this.
Speaker: A Zen master called Ryokan lived a life of simplicity in a little hut at the foot of a mountain.
Speaker: One evening while he was away, a thief snuck into the hut only to find there was nothing in it to steal.
Speaker: Ryokan returned and found him.
Speaker: You've come a long way to visit me, he told the prowler, and you should not return empty-handed.
Speaker: Please take my clothes as a gift.
Speaker: The thief was bewildered, but he took the clothes and ran away.
Speaker: Ryokan sat naked watching the moon.
Speaker: Poor fellow, he mused.
Speaker: I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.
Speaker: Now, one of the best parts about Zen parables is that you can interpret them any number of ways, but to me, this speaks to how fulfillment comes from within.
Speaker: And this is something that comes up a lot with the conversation I'm sharing here on episode seven of Academic Defectors with Dr. Jackie Coley, PhD.
Speaker: Dr. Coley earned her PhD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2014, where she studied biomedical sciences and pathology.
Speaker: Her dissertation was titled, Dopamine Increases Mature Monocyte Migration in the Context of HIV Neuropathogenesis and Substance Abuse.
Speaker: and she received travel awards to present her research at the 2012 conference on HIV in the nervous system and the 11th International Symposium on Neurovirology, as well as the 2013 Society on Neuroimmune Pharmacology conference.
Speaker: Today, Dr. Cauley works as a confidence coach specializing with academics, former and post, who are interested in changing careers, which of course is very topically relevant for the conversations we've been having here on Academic Defectors.
Speaker: So in addition to sharing a common interest in giving a voice to PhDs who have, in many cases, ultimately chose to leave the academy, Dr. Coley and I also both share a common experience in teaching English in Japan with the JET program.
Speaker: Different years and different locations, but still, the Zen parable I thought was especially fitting for our conversation.
Speaker: So without further ado, Dr. Jackie Coley, PhD.
Speaker: So what I do now is I am a confidence coach.
Speaker: I help PhDs who want to leave academia, develop the confidence to actually step out into industry and go after the roles that they really want, because making that kind of a transition is huge and it's really scary.
Speaker: And what I've noticed and what I've experienced myself, I mean, I got into this journey because this was a problem I struggled with as well.
Speaker: When we step out of our comfort zones,
Speaker: We want to do big things.
Speaker: We want to do exciting things and impactful things.
Speaker: But you get into this mindset of, but I'm just a scientist.
Speaker: But all I know how to do is what I've been trained to do.
Speaker: And so what I help other PhDs do now is make that leap to step into that version of themselves that does those amazing things.
Speaker: That's really great.
Speaker: I imagine that the more people...
Speaker: hear about the kind of work that you're doing, the more clients you would have because there are so many PhDs that across the board
Speaker: In hard sciences or I think in humanities too, there's a huge issue with this.
Speaker: What do I do with my degree?
Speaker: You know, you hear about like the philosopher barista, you know, at the PhD level, it's not just, oh, my degree doesn't have easily recognizable transferability, but also you're out of the job market in a PhD building, you know, your resume up for the better part of a decade.
Speaker: And then when you're finished, you have the question mark that is your degree, but also, oh, wait, I haven't had a job in almost a decade.
Speaker: How do I do this?
Speaker: Do I really have to start from the bottom?
Speaker: And there are all of these questions and all of this anxiety that I think maybe even keeps people stuck in the loop of adjuncting here, doing a semester there somewhere else, and just kind of scraping by.
Speaker: Where do you find your clients and what are they in any kind of specific discipline?
Speaker: Everything you just said about the fears and the thoughts and the anxieties around leaving academia, 100% true.
Speaker: Like those are the kinds of thoughts we all have.
Speaker: I had them through.
Speaker: I'm not perfect.
Speaker: Let me just put it that way.
Speaker: I mean, I struggled with these things.
Speaker: I still have those doubts, even to this day.
Speaker: And I've been out of academia for...
Speaker: almost a decade now.
Speaker: And, you know, the reality is that the thoughts don't necessarily go away.
Speaker: It's how we choose to handle them.
Speaker: The people that I seem to attract tend to fall into a couple of broad categories.
Speaker: There's a group of people who are still in academia, whether they are nearing the end of their PhD candidacy or those who went into a postdoc and kind of got stuck in
Speaker: postdoc hell, and are wanting to transition out of academia for the first time.
Speaker: There are also folks who were like me when I made this leap into a more personal growth focused approach to my career.
Speaker: Those are folks who have left academia and are working in industry, but seem to not really love what they're doing in their current field and are thinking about a field change.
Speaker: a job change or even a field transition.
Speaker: And that calls up all those same fears that you felt when you first left academia, right?
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And then I do seem to attract a handful of PhD students as well who are not ready to enter the job market yet, but are thinking ahead.
Speaker: They've already made that decision that, yeah, research isn't for me.
Speaker: Academia isn't for me.
Speaker: I know I want to do something different, but I'm not sure what that is.
Speaker: And so those seem to be the three broad
Speaker: categories that I seem to attract.
Speaker: That makes a lot of sense given the work that you're doing.
Speaker: And also it's, I can't help but make the connection that maybe there's like a misconception about for people who aren't in academia, that what we do in academia, it's certainly not a conventional nine to five, but it is a career and it is a kind of very clear kind of work.
Speaker: And leaving academia means like, again, it's like getting a new job.
Speaker: There are challenges to breaking into, I guess, like the regular job market because of the nature of academia.
Speaker: Those anxieties do come up, which I've certainly felt on the other side of academia as I've also been like, okay,
Speaker: What do I do now?
Speaker: And you mentioned that you decided to focus more on personal growth, which I can't wait to get into in a second here.
Speaker: But to finish this little anecdote for me, like I wanted to be a creative.
Speaker: How does that look?
Speaker: Oh, cool, fun.
Speaker: I'll publish a book and then I'll be in the door and then I'll get my six figure book deal and it'll be perfect.
Speaker: That's clearly not how it works.
Speaker: Now things, of course, are more stable, thank God.
Speaker: But I've had to kind of confront these fears again and again.
Speaker: And I really love what you said about how it's not like squelching those fears.
Speaker: It's about working with them.
Speaker: Something to that effect.
Speaker: I don't think I said it as eloquently as you did, but I think that's really profound advice because I do think in academia, there's this notion that like you just have to put your head down and push through.
Speaker: And if there is a challenge, you can figure it out.
Speaker: And it's just really pervasive, not only with research tactics, but also with career and like being on the job market.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The
Speaker: The number one thing that I think that any person who wants to leave academia needs to learn is to unlearn a lot of the lessons that we internalize during graduate school.
Speaker: What I mean by that are those stories around how you're never quite good enough.
Speaker: There's always someone smarter.
Speaker: There's always someone more talented or luckier.
Speaker: And we're not overtly told these lessons necessarily, right?
Speaker: Like no one's sitting there saying, oh my God, you're terrible.
Speaker: It's that lesson that we devise in our own head to explain why we don't feel like we're good enough.
Speaker: And I don't know how it is in the humanities or some of the other fields, but I know in science, we're even taught to use language that is hesitant.
Speaker: You never say that the data prove, you never say anything is definitive.
Speaker: It's always the data suggest.
Speaker: You know, it's always a very soft statement.
Speaker: And that's just the norm.
Speaker: I mean, and that is a completely okay way to talk about science because as techniques change, as our understanding of a field changes, those conclusions might be disproven later down the line, not because they're wrong, but because our ability to look at it has changed with time.
Speaker: So for science, that sort of language is great.
Speaker: Like you don't want to be so married to your idea that you're unwilling to consider other alternatives.
Speaker: So it makes sense in that context.
Speaker: However, when you get out into the job market and you're in an interview, the last thing you want to do is hedge and to be super hesitant to say, oh yeah, I did this thing and I'm awesome, or I'm really good at this thing.
Speaker: And a lot of PhDs who are transitioning out of academia struggle with presenting their value in a way that is authentic and genuine
Speaker: because they were afraid of coming across as arrogant.
Speaker: And that's one of the big things that I help people with, learning how to recognize what you bring to the table and how to communicate that in a way that is respectful, but still powerful.
Speaker: And there's already a lot of misconceptions with people who are not PhDs.
Speaker: And a lot of the hiring managers aren't going to necessarily have an advanced degree and they might have
Speaker: assumptions, you don't know this, you cannot control this, but it's possible that they have some assumptions about what it means for someone to have a PhD.
Speaker: And part of your job as the candidate is to educate them about what you actually can do, what you're actually good at, and how that might bring value to the company.
Speaker: I'm picking up what you're putting down because you're hitting on something that is very implicit.
Speaker: We're not told you're not good enough.
Speaker: We're not told, hey, at least I wasn't told.
Speaker: I wish I was told, hey, the odds are stacked against you.
Speaker: I wish someone had said that.
Speaker: We are told implicitly through our methodologies, which is, I think, what you're also saying.
Speaker: We...
Speaker: We can't just come out and say it.
Speaker: We can't just come out and, you know, own it, own what we're thinking, own what we're researching.
Speaker: And I felt like in the humanities, it's very similar, actually.
Speaker: I did a lot of work with like social theory because I was doing anthropology of music.
Speaker: It's called ethnomusicology.
Speaker: And I was thinking about societal trends and society on like a bigger scale.
Speaker: I couldn't just have a thought.
Speaker: I had to double check it.
Speaker: triple check it, quadruple check it.
Speaker: And I had to see if someone else said something remotely similar.
Speaker: And if they did, I had to defer to that.
Speaker: I had to write the footnote.
Speaker: I had to have the citation.
Speaker: And that started to really, that drove me insane.
Speaker: Luckily, luckily I recognized that
Speaker: I don't want to have to, I want to be able to think freely.
Speaker: I don't want to have to, you know, quadruple check everything from 10 different angles before I'm allowed to come out and suggest it.
Speaker: So I totally, I think that point you're making is really profound.
Speaker: And I've often wondered too, the nature of a PhD program kind of requires, dare we say, to use a parlance of our times, a toxic kind of perfectionism.
Speaker: From people.
Speaker: And I was laughing with a friend once who was also doing a PhD at Cornell.
Speaker: And we were like, man...
Speaker: How many like PhDs out there also struggle with like perfectionism and feeling like a low sense of self-worth, even from childhood that you go and then recreate a situation in your life where I'm going to prove that I am worthy in front of a, you know, very, in a very intimidating high stakes context.
Speaker: And it was like, it started off as a joke.
Speaker: And then we both kind of were like, wait a minute, maybe that's real.
Speaker: And I have to ask too, why did you choose to focus on
Speaker: self-growth after you finished your doctorate versus going into industry yourself?
Speaker: Well, I did go into industry.
Speaker: I knew about halfway through my PhD program that I didn't want to stay in academia, but I did choose to complete my degree because I saw the advantage of having the degree in the first place that, you know, I wasn't entirely sure at the time what I wanted to do.
Speaker: And I figured having the credentials would be better than not having the
Speaker: Because, you know, to be completely transparent at the time, I really didn't know what the hell I wanted to do besides not research.
Speaker: So for anyone who's listening to this feeling like they have to have it all figured out, you do not.
Speaker: It's okay if you don't.
Speaker: But to answer your question, I didn't even entertain the idea of a postdoc as I was nearing the end of my degree.
Speaker: So I also didn't really know what I wanted to do, except that I wanted to do something that was applications-based, something where, you know how in research,
Speaker: there's never an answer.
Speaker: It's all about the questions.
Speaker: And then when you get some kind of an answer to the question, there's another question and it keeps going.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So that's the thing I didn't want to do because it made me feel dumb and I didn't enjoy it.
Speaker: I didn't find it exciting.
Speaker: And that's not to say that that's wrong.
Speaker: Again, I want to be very clear that I am not saying that there's any path that's wrong or bad.
Speaker: It's about what's right or wrong for you.
Speaker: I wanted to be able to have an answer to the question and then be done and move on.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: I ended up going into forensics.
Speaker: I worked as a forensic toxicologist for a crime lab for almost five years.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: At the time that I made that decision, it ticked all the right boxes.
Speaker: It was always applications based.
Speaker: So the answer to the question was, yes, there is an impairing substance in this sample or no, there is not.
Speaker: You didn't take your work home with you because you did your testing, you got your results, you sent your reports out.
Speaker: It was, that was the end of it.
Speaker: It was interesting.
Speaker: just intellectually, because I was learning how to do techniques that I didn't learn in any of my prior experiences.
Speaker: And because it was part of the justice system, one component of that job was testifying in court as an expert witness.
Speaker: And so I got to educate people on what we were doing at the crime lab, which was really cool.
Speaker: It checked a lot of the right boxes.
Speaker: And it was during my time at the crime lab that I realized that there was a lot more to
Speaker: finding a job that was a good fit that I was completely clueless about, nor did I really ever stop to think about what I actually wanted to do.
Speaker: Like I chose to go into forensics at that point because I was like, oh, this is a good idea.
Speaker: Someone else suggested it to me.
Speaker: It was a suggestion from my dad, actually.
Speaker: My dad's a retired police officer.
Speaker: And when we were talking, cause I was like, dad, I don't know what I want to do.
Speaker: I'm just a scientist.
Speaker: All I know how to do is this.
Speaker: I mean, that story that I hear so often now,
Speaker: It's the same story I used to tell myself.
Speaker: And my dad made a comment.
Speaker: He's like, well, he said, have you thought about forensics?
Speaker: Like, all right.
Speaker: And it just, it made a lot of sense.
Speaker: But what I learned through that experience is that there are other questions that I didn't know to ask at the time.
Speaker: So as time went on and I realized that it really wasn't as interesting as I wanted it to be, like, it just didn't fit my interests.
Speaker: And then there were things about the culture in that environment that just didn't mesh well with me.
Speaker: It was a bad fit on both sides.
Speaker: It turned into a really toxic situation.
Speaker: And I was very unhappy and started looking for other job opportunities in completely different fields.
Speaker: I didn't even want to stay in that field.
Speaker: So when I decided to leave the crime lab, I did all the things that you're supposed to do.
Speaker: I wrote an industry resume that was not a CV.
Speaker: It was focused on accomplishments that were relevant to the types of fields that I was in, the types of jobs that I was interested in.
Speaker: Started networking, you know, all the things, all the things that you know you're supposed to do to get a job.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I kept getting told no over and over and over again.
Speaker: Like this went on forever, it felt like.
Speaker: And it's really demoralizing.
Speaker: And I know lots of people are going through that right now.
Speaker: where you've applied to all these jobs, you feel very certain that you meet all the qualifications and you don't understand why it never gets to the interview phase.
Speaker: Or I've talked to a lot of people who have nailed that first step and they're getting interviews, but they're not getting offers.
Speaker: And I had an experience where I reached out to a contact I knew from grad school about an informational interview.
Speaker: Her job was one that I had read about and it sounded really cool on paper.
Speaker: But again, I've learned to ask better questions now.
Speaker: So I wanted to get an idea about what it really meant to have that kind of a role, what that field was really like.
Speaker: When I reached out to this one individual after, oh gosh, probably a year of like trying and failing to get any traction in my job search, I reached out not to ask potentially for a referral, but literally just to get info, right?
Speaker: No agenda other than that.
Speaker: We had a nice conversation where she told me about what her job was like and how much she enjoyed it.
Speaker: And sounded like a great, actually a great role.
Speaker: I was like, oh, this is really cool.
Speaker: And during the course of that conversation, I learned about an opportunity for, there was an opening on her team.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And, right.
Speaker: And it was like, oh, hey, why don't you apply for this?
Speaker: I'm like, okay, cool.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: I go through the entire hiring process for this role, multiple rounds of interviews, got to the very last interview, the one where you have that half day interview.
Speaker: presentation and lots of conversations with various people.
Speaker: And I blew it.
Speaker: I was up in my own head and freaking out and just a nervous wreck.
Speaker: And the story that was playing in my head the whole day, don't mess this up.
Speaker: Don't mess this up.
Speaker: You really want this, right?
Speaker: I was so desperate for it that of course I came across as like,
Speaker: like scared and anxious.
Speaker: And like, I wasn't sure of myself and, you know, and a couple of days later when I got the call from her, she's like, yeah, we went with the other candidate.
Speaker: And I'm like, I'm not surprised.
Speaker: I wouldn't have hired me either.
Speaker: But I asked, I asked for a little bit of feedback.
Speaker: Cause I know I didn't do well, what can I do better?
Speaker: And her response was one that just completely blew my mind.
Speaker: She said, it's not, it's not a matter of whether or not like
Speaker: you have the qualifications.
Speaker: It's about, it's about whether or not we think you do a good job in the role and you don't have, you don't seem to have the confidence for it.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And that was the moment where I completely saw everything differently.
Speaker: That was my, my step to the side where my perspective finally aligned and I could see the bigger picture and I'm not going to lie.
Speaker: Like it hurt.
Speaker: it stings.
Speaker: I mean, I, I had a good cry about it and, you know, and had a little pity party because I'm human, but then I took a hard look in the mirror and I asked myself, like, are you, are you going to give up over this?
Speaker: Are you going to throw in the towel and settle for this job that you hate?
Speaker: And when I looked at the future, if I continue down that path, it was terrifying.
Speaker: And so I,
Speaker: I made a choice in that moment that I wasn't going to settle, that I wasn't going to sacrifice my future on the lie that I wasn't good enough.
Speaker: And that's the reason why I do what I do now, because I believe that we all deserve to have fulfillment and joy in our lives, starting with our careers, and that we shouldn't be settling for what we think we can have because we're afraid to go after what we truly want.
Speaker: And
Speaker: The fact of the matter is, is if you're like I was and you are doing all the right things and getting told no over and over again, it's probably not your qualifications.
Speaker: It's the way that you're presenting yourself.
Speaker: It's the way that you're coming across, the way that you're communicating who you are and your qualifications.
Speaker: And all of that comes back to what is going on in your head.
Speaker: It comes back to your confidence, your beliefs,
Speaker: your self-talk, the way that you think about yourself and how you fit into the world.
Speaker: As I like to say, if you're carrying around a lot of head trash, it doesn't matter if you're doing all the right things, you're going to get in your own way.
Speaker: And that was my big lesson.
Speaker: I was my own worst enemy.
Speaker: That's such a thing.
Speaker: I just have to, like, everything you're saying is really hitting hard.
Speaker: My plan B has always been, oh, I will go and I will be a public school teacher.
Speaker: And I actually...
Speaker: three and a half years ago, I got a substitute teaching license here in the public schools in New York.
Speaker: And I did get hired by a school and I was like, I'm gonna try this out and see what it's like.
Speaker: At that time too, I was transitioning out of waitressing, which was my post PhDs and in the art of motorcycle maintenance, kind of like, I cannot crawl into my brain to make a living.
Speaker: So I, in 2019, when I was thinking like, okay, what's the next step out of waitressing?
Speaker: I'm not going to step out of this and do a six-figure book deal, but I want to be able to have a good life that I'm proud of, that I'm using, you know, my skills that I did earn.
Speaker: You know, it's not like waitressing or PhD la-la land.
Speaker: There's clearly something in between and I'm going to find out what that is for me.
Speaker: So I was like, okay, I'll get this substitute teaching license.
Speaker: And I went through all the hoops, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And then I got it.
Speaker: I got hired by my school on the first day.
Speaker: They're like, you just...
Speaker: come back.
Speaker: And then they made me a kindergarten teacher, which I did throughout the pandemic.
Speaker: It was wild.
Speaker: I'm very happy to be of service during that time in, uh, American, particularly like urban American history, because I worked in like a kind of high risk neighborhood kind of deal.
Speaker: The kids are amazing.
Speaker: That being said, um,
Speaker: if I wanted to go back and be a public school teacher, this is very specific, but it speaks exactly to what you're saying.
Speaker: And like this promise that I kind of made myself when I finished school, I would have to go back to school and get a master's of education, which would take two to three years.
Speaker: And I'm like, well, looks like I'm not doing that.
Speaker: I just can't like, unless it were to be like completely paid for.
Speaker: And then I actually, right now I have like an offer for a final round interview to do that.
Speaker: But it would be like working full time as a school teacher and then going to night school for three years.
Speaker: And I'm like, no.
Speaker: I didn't know.
Speaker: I want to just like start my life and I'm already in my life, you know?
Speaker: So this is like the intermachinations of my head as a, you know, creative, you know what I mean?
Speaker: You're constantly like, I want to make rent.
Speaker: I want to do this.
Speaker: Well, I make my rent obviously, but like, you know what I mean?
Speaker: Speaking figuratively.
Speaker: But instead I also, like you, I opened up my own business.
Speaker: I have an LLC and I teach.
Speaker: And a lot of people come to me for that and it feels really great while I also have the flexibility to work on my other stuff.
Speaker: But I'm interested too, th is is like a segue to talk about you opening up your own business because I will just say one of the things that I, one of the motivations for me to open up my own LLC and to kind of be, you know, full-time me as I like to think of it is I loved the autonomy of the academic world.
Speaker: And I
Speaker: I have that autonomy now, you know, because like, you know, in academia, certainly in the humanities, a full teaching load is you might teach three times a week.
Speaker: You're not like on nine to five.
Speaker: You're not clocking in, clocking out.
Speaker: It's and even with research and stuff, it's like writing a paper.
Speaker: It's like long term deadlines.
Speaker: It's not like day to day.
Speaker: You have to do this.
Speaker: Even if you feel horrible, you have to show up and commute to work like there's not you don't have that culture in academia.
Speaker: And I, for one,
Speaker: really enjoyed that, even if I definitely needed a break from long term projects when I finished.
Speaker: But I'm for me, like opening up my own business, I guess it's like employing some of these other skills that I did gain in academia and also kind of taking the best of what I had in that world and making it for myself.
Speaker: here, anchoring myself in that out here.
Speaker: And I'm curious how you transitioned into opening your own business and whether you can identify with enjoying the autonomy of grad school if you had autonomy.
Speaker: I know with research, working in a lab is a little different.
Speaker: Well, even in science, you do have more autonomy in grad school than you might in a job job.
Speaker: We had recommended work hours when we needed to be there, but they tended to extend on either end of that.
Speaker: But we had a lot of flexibility about when we did
Speaker: did what we did.
Speaker: You scheduled your own experiments and things like that.
Speaker: But to your point about how I got from being a miserable toxicologist to having a business.
Speaker: So to pick up the story, I had that decision I had to make of it.
Speaker: Was I going to settle or was I going to do something about it?
Speaker: And I decided to do something about it.
Speaker: I made the choice to go all in on personal development and personal growth because of that lesson from that one rejection.
Speaker: that was kind of the culmination of all of the smaller rejections that happened along the way, like getting turned down for that job, which was my dream job at the time, was a really hard hit.
Speaker: And I decided that I needed to figure it out because it wasn't my qualifications.
Speaker: It wasn't my experience.
Speaker: It wasn't my background.
Speaker: It was something else.
Speaker: And so I dove headfirst into the personal growth rabbit hole.
Speaker: And I learned about why we have limiting beliefs, where all that comes from,
Speaker: what's underlying that fear response that drives a lot of us to stop when we get nervous about something and as well as what really goes into habit building and how to shift those habits because a lot of the stories we tell ourselves are just mental habits we're all familiar with the external habits like i drink coffee every morning we're really familiar with these external physical habits and i think a lot of us don't think about the fact that
Speaker: those negative stories that we tell ourselves that hold us back are all mental habits, which means that you can also ship them.
Speaker: And so I started learning about why our minds work the way they do, because I'm a science nerd and I wanted to understand it from a scientific perspective, as well as diving into habit building and how to recognize when we have a habit that doesn't serve us and how to build a new habit to replace it.
Speaker: And that was the catalyst for helping me shift
Speaker: Not what I was doing, but how I was doing it.
Speaker: And so eventually I landed a job interview for a completely different opportunity that I went into the interview process not thinking I have to get them to say yes.
Speaker: I have to get them to like me.
Speaker: I have to get them to do something.
Speaker: But I went into it thinking, I just want to have a conversation with this human being that I'm talking to.
Speaker: see if we like each other and go from there.
Speaker: And it was an entirely different experience.
Speaker: It wasn't adversarial anymore.
Speaker: It was collaborative.
Speaker: And during one of the interviews I had during that process, I was like, wow, I feel like I've kind of found my tribe.
Speaker: And I said it really off the cuff.
Speaker: And it was a completely genuine thought.
Speaker: And the other person lit up and I
Speaker: at that same moment, I realized that, you know, six months or a year prior to that, I would have never said something so vulnerable because I would have been worried about my, like coming across as too friendly.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It was, it was, it was a dumb story that I was telling myself that forced me to act in a way that wasn't authentic to who I was.
Speaker: And when I let go of that and just kind of just showed up as myself, the entire thing was more fun and I got the job and,
Speaker: It was a huge turning point because it got me out of that situation that was just so oppressive and so unhealthy.
Speaker: Once I was out of the crime lab and in a better situation, I had the space to think a bit more broadly about what I really wanted to do.
Speaker: Did I want to do this?
Speaker: Did I want to do something different?
Speaker: And I started listening to some of the conversations that were happening in groups that I'm in where there are other PhDs who are either thinking about or actively trying to leave academia and
Speaker: And I realized that there were so many familiar stories being told.
Speaker: That was the inspiration that kind of planted the seed for, oh, I see what you're struggling with because it's the thing that I was struggling with.
Speaker: And I think I can help you.
Speaker: The vast majority of us who go into grad school do so because we want to make an impact of some sort.
Speaker: We don't do it because it seems like fun.
Speaker: There might be some people who think grad school is fun.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: I wasn't one of them.
Speaker: And most of my friends and colleagues did not fall into that camp.
Speaker: But, you know, don't want to say never.
Speaker: You never know.
Speaker: But the vast majority of us who go into grad school, we want to do something amazing.
Speaker: And somewhere along the line, that spark gets tamped down or squashed or something.
Speaker: And I was hearing that.
Speaker: I was hearing that dejection.
Speaker: underneath a lot of the conversations.
Speaker: And I was like, I got to do something about this.
Speaker: You know, if more these bright, talented individuals who are driven did the things that they felt called to do, how much better would the world be?
Speaker: I feel like far too many people stifle their ambition for a variety of reasons, you know, because they feel like ambition's a bad word or they never got over that self-doubt that got drilled into them during grad school or whatever it was.
Speaker: I think that's really beautiful.
Speaker: It is lofty, but I think that's one of the things about grad school that I also, for me, it was one of the draws, and maybe it goes into what you're saying, like, yeah, wanting to do something big, wanting to go into territory that no one has gone into before.
Speaker: And in my case, as someone that did ethnographic research, like, that was quite literal.
Speaker: Not that there weren't people there already, but, like...
Speaker: going and digging for music in Japan, you know.
Speaker: And that was pretty fun, I will say.
Speaker: That was something that was fun.
Speaker: But yeah, I don't look back at grad school and think that was a party.
Speaker: Although now it's far enough in the rearview mirror.
Speaker: I'm coming up on almost five years out on the other side.
Speaker: And it is starting to feel like colored rosy with retrospect.
Speaker: But it's funny that you had that kind of aha moment.
Speaker: This is where I could really make a difference is with other PhDs.
Speaker: I had a similar thing to a similar kind of revelation with making this podcast.
Speaker: realizing like this could be a really interesting way to build up an archive of stories.
Speaker: You know, I wasn't necessarily interested when I left academia to hear other people's stories, but I'm really interested now because when I left, I was just sort of in kind of full on rebellion.
Speaker: I don't want to hear anything about anything.
Speaker: kind of mode i was just like i'm gonna go wait tables and screw y'all that was sort of my vibe at that point you know for better for worse um it was just sort of the the brink i think that i had driven myself to and was driven to i think as well to some degree just building up for the defense and then you know incorporating edits and then i had a pdf glitch and i had to potentially retype my whole dissertation it was awful
Speaker: But yeah, it's really interesting to hear how people use what they have learned from their experience in academia out here.
Speaker: And it seems like you're kind of like you and I are sort of cut from a similar cloth where it's part of this like broader tapestry of a journey that we can kind of use to that has helped ultimately define who we are.
Speaker: It's not like something that we've excised from our life because it no longer exists.
Speaker: fits into what we're doing right now.
Speaker: And that's something I think if more PhDs realize, like you don't have to throw away your experience.
Speaker: We just have to be creative about how we integrate that into our personhood now.
Speaker: Because one of the things I think about leaving academia too
Speaker: is that there's this loss of identity.
Speaker: You know, I remember when I first moved, not when I first moved to New York, especially because I was adjuncting at Binghamton University.
Speaker: So I was commuting via Greyhound five and a half hours one way to get to campus.
Speaker: I just took the job to like have rent, basically.
Speaker: I kind of had a feeling too.
Speaker: I was like,
Speaker: it'll be a way to sort of wean myself out of this world.
Speaker: So not necessarily during those days when I was waiting tables, because I was like professor by day, waitress by night.
Speaker: I sort of savored having those dual identities and, you know, people at the restaurant, like since it was more of a social club, everyone knew who I was.
Speaker: It wasn't like, hey, you bring me my chicken parm.
Speaker: It was like, hey, Jillian, you know, how's it going up at the school?
Speaker: You know, people like knew me.
Speaker: But then when I finished the...
Speaker: adjunct job entirely and I was just waiting tables there's a switch that happened where I was like oh god I'm not protected by an institution anymore and I had to kind of redo my identity and I felt like really almost prickly sometimes like some customers they didn't know and when it was graduation season I'm taking pictures of people who finished their like associate's degree and it's like hey good for you and I'm just the waitress bringing over more Sprite and that was when something in me I was like okay
Speaker: I'm ready for next.
Speaker: I got to move on.
Speaker: Like, what is this about?
Speaker: And I think that was like another kind of moment too for me where I realized I have to listen to these feelings and do something about it and not just sit around feeling miserable about my situation.
Speaker: Like I don't have to be a waitress anymore.
Speaker: And it was a great job.
Speaker: It was a great experience.
Speaker: And I really enjoyed waiting tables and it gave me a lot of life skills.
Speaker: Like, you know, I've always been a talker, but like,
Speaker: Really how to talk with people.
Speaker: You learn how to hustle like in a literal sense, but this idea of identity and feeling lost.
Speaker: And I'm not proud of this.
Speaker: I'm not proud of I'm not proud of these thoughts I'm about to share.
Speaker: But there were times when I was waitressing where I was like, I'm better than this.
Speaker: What am I doing?
Speaker: I have a doctorate and I started to like have a taste of potential bitterness.
Speaker: And I had to really, I'm proud that instead of leaning into that or having it kind of harden or solidify, I instead went and got like some freelance teaching work that ended up becoming the basis of my business today.
Speaker: I started teaching Chinese and Japanese, like the languages.
Speaker: And I know I don't look like it.
Speaker: It's kind of the other, I don't know, I like surprising people.
Speaker: But see like, oh, you're like this very tall, like very white lady.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, oh, yeah, I teach Japanese.
Speaker: It's, like, my thing.
Speaker: But one of them anyway.
Speaker: But anyway, yeah, this loss of identity.
Speaker: I still have a couple friends that are...
Speaker: in the adjunct circuit and, you know, maybe have one toe out, one foot out.
Speaker: But this loss of identity, I think, is really hard for some of us post-academics to grapple with, not having a security blanket of an institution or like a thing that you can say that pretty much always will raise eyebrows like, oh, good for you.
Speaker: Like, what do you do?
Speaker: Oh, I'm a PhD student.
Speaker: wow.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Like having that ego stroke built into your just everyday interaction, not by the end, of course, by the end, it's like, don't ask me what I do.
Speaker: Don't ask you about my dissertation.
Speaker: I don't want to tell you.
Speaker: I don't know if like that loss of identity is also something that you grappled with at all on the other side.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Identity is huge.
Speaker: Identity underscores everything that we do in life.
Speaker: We do things because that's the kind of person we are fundamentally.
Speaker: That's really what drives a lot of our behaviors.
Speaker: When we shift from being a graduate student or being a scientist and decide to do something different, you're right, it feels like a loss of identity.
Speaker: And that's how I felt at first as well.
Speaker: What I've come to realize, and I try now to help others see, is that it's not so much a loss of identity, but they shift.
Speaker: Because saying it's a loss implies that it's a bad thing or
Speaker: you know, that it's damaging in some way, shape or form.
Speaker: And it really isn't.
Speaker: It's just a new chapter in your life, a new season.
Speaker: But yeah, it's just a different way of being.
Speaker: And the thing is that you can choose your identity.
Speaker: You know, you chose to be a graduate student.
Speaker: That was your identity for a while.
Speaker: And then you choose what you do next.
Speaker: And so if you look at it as a choice and realize that it's always a choice, then it's easier, I think, to see it as more of a thing where you have options versus something that happens to you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: the loss of identity, that feeling of a loss of identity is something that I think is a major obstacle when it comes to someone stepping out of academia and into industry more than anything, because like you said, you know, there's that comfort in being in an institution.
Speaker: And if, if you are coming out of grad school, you have spent the vast majority of your adult life in school.
Speaker: And
Speaker: you were surrounded by peers who were going through a shared experience.
Speaker: And then as soon as you're out in the so-called real world, none of that's there anymore.
Speaker: I think this is why a lot of people say adulting is hard.
Speaker: It's because there's no curriculum, there's no guidance, there's no mentors, there's no, it's hard to make friends.
Speaker: And all of that suddenly feels like it's on your shoulders.
Speaker: One of the biggest, most profound life lessons I ever had was like that moment where you realize that
Speaker: Growing up, you thought your parents or the adults in your life, your caregivers, like knew everything.
Speaker: And the truth is that they know they're just making it up every single day.
Speaker: They're doing the best they can, just like you are.
Speaker: It sounds kind of silly when you say it out loud, but you know, but that's, that's one of those moments where I was like, Oh, no one knows what the hell they're doing.
Speaker: We're all just trying to figure it out.
Speaker: We're all trying to figure it out the best we can.
Speaker: And you don't really appreciate that until you're kind of on your own.
Speaker: And I think that's a huge paradigm shift and,
Speaker: Like you said, when you start having those stories in your head of like, but I'm better than this or, but I have these credentials.
Speaker: Why am I doing this thing?
Speaker: They're completely human thoughts to have, right?
Speaker: So I want to encourage you to not make them wrong if you're having those thoughts.
Speaker: It's more like that's an indicator that maybe something needs to shift, right?
Speaker: Like if you're not happy and you're having those thoughts to start looking at other options.
Speaker: Because what happens when you settle...
Speaker: when I thought about what it would look like if I settled and I stayed, I saw a lot of bitterness in my future, a lot of like resentment.
Speaker: And that doesn't serve anyone.
Speaker: Like no one feels good when they live in that place of, I should be doing so much more.
Speaker: I should be doing, you know, a higher paying job.
Speaker: I should be making better decisions.
Speaker: Like when you should all over yourself, it doesn't do you any favors.
Speaker: By the way, that's a good, that's a good pun.
Speaker: I love a good pun.
Speaker: Low hanging fruit.
Speaker: I can't resist.
Speaker: But anyway, so you're, you're shitting all over yourself.
Speaker: Bitterness helps no one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I will climb up on this soapbox every day, all day about do not settle for less than what you want.
Speaker: Do not settle because when you do, you will start to feel resentful.
Speaker: God, yes.
Speaker: And it happens over time.
Speaker: This is what happens when you think I'm not qualified for the job I actually want.
Speaker: So I'm going to apply for an entry level position that I'm way overqualified for.
Speaker: You are going to be bored.
Speaker: You are going to not thrive and you're going to start feeling resentful and it's not helpful.
Speaker: When I say don't settle, I'm not saying that, that you should go after like some super high profile, high paying job necessarily.
Speaker: I'm saying to take a look at what you truly want your life to look like.
Speaker: You know, what do you want your day to look like?
Speaker: What kind of lifestyle do you want?
Speaker: What sort of roles fit the kinds of activities you enjoy doing?
Speaker: Because all of it fits together.
Speaker: And go after the jobs that are going to be enjoyable to do and support the kind of lifestyle you want, whatever that looks like.
Speaker: You know, like think about it more holistically, but then go after it.
Speaker: Because if you settle for a job that
Speaker: is fundamentally kind of boring, it's not going to get better.
Speaker: It's just not.
Speaker: It's always such a profound thing.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I have to continually learn this lesson like in different shades, right?
Speaker: But I'm getting better at it.
Speaker: I feel like that's life too.
Speaker: There's no, you learn it once and it's done forever.
Speaker: Like you might learn it one really big time or you might learn it
Speaker: Without having it reach a boiling point as you get better at it, right?
Speaker: Better at recognizing things, but realizing like when you do just kind of go in and not like expect things from the outside to fulfill something within you, then things really start to line up.
Speaker: I love this message so much about...
Speaker: don't settle because then no one's happy.
Speaker: And in bringing it back to the context of grad school, I'm just very curious because it seems like you're very, you're on the other side.
Speaker: You've been on the other side for almost a decade.
Speaker: What drew you to pursue a PhD in the first place?
Speaker: What was that like for you?
Speaker: You went to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Speaker: College of Medicine.
Speaker: I'd like to hear a little bit more about that time in your life.
Speaker: I was one of those kids who always liked school.
Speaker: I always did really well in school.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And so, oh, this is not the most noble reason for going to grad school, but this is my truth.
Speaker: And so I'm happy to share it.
Speaker: When I graduated from high school, I went to North Carolina State University and I studied chemistry because that was the subject I was best at in high school.
Speaker: I learned a lot of other things in college that were probably more useful in life than chemistry.
Speaker: But a funny thing happened was sometime during that time in undergrad, I started working as a lab tech in a biology lab of all things.
Speaker: And so I learned all of these biology-focused techniques and didn't understand any of the theory behind it.
Speaker: So fast forward, and after I got my first undergrad degree, I spent a year in Japan as an English teacher and then came back and had to get a job.
Speaker: Wait, what program did you do?
Speaker: I taught English in Japan for two years with the JET program.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: Ah, you were JET too?
Speaker: I was, yes.
Speaker: Wait, hold on, hold on.
Speaker: Where were you?
Speaker: I was just outside of Osaka.
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: That's so wild.
Speaker: Izumi city.
Speaker: I was in Izumi city.
Speaker: Izumi.
Speaker: It wasn't in like Osaka, like metropolitan area.
Speaker: It was just outside.
Speaker: It was like rice, rice fields.
Speaker: And, and we waited till now burying the lead here, Jackie.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Oh, I'm kidding.
Speaker: We'll have a whole nother conversation about that then.
Speaker: I came back and had to get a real job.
Speaker: I was working in a pharmaceutical lab.
Speaker: And again, was kind of annoyed that I didn't know, like what all of the science behind the techniques meant.
Speaker: And so I started looking into getting another undergrad degree because I wanted to maybe go to grad school, maybe do some, you know, some more higher ed, but I didn't have the foundation for it.
Speaker: So I went back to school and got a second bachelor's degree in biology.
Speaker: And I did like
Speaker: some undergraduate research and an honors program and things like that at UNC Charlotte, University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Speaker: And the thing that really made me want to go into grad school was like, I was working in the lab of Dr. Jim Oliver.
Speaker: This was a guy who'd been working on this one bacterium since before I was born.
Speaker: And I was looking at what his career looked like now.
Speaker: And I'm like, this might be really cool.
Speaker: Like he kind of does his own thing.
Speaker: runs his own lab, he has his own ideas and has students that he teaches and he teaches classes.
Speaker: Like all of it sounded really cool.
Speaker: I was like, oh, this might be fun.
Speaker: It really was more of like looking at like the kind of life that he has.
Speaker: And I think one of the semesters that I was there, he like went on a sabbatical to Scotland or something.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, that's so cool.
Speaker: You can just go like on a trip for kind of work, but not really work.
Speaker: And okay.
Speaker: And it just seemed really cool.
Speaker: And it's, again, it's not the most noble reason.
Speaker: Like I was just, you know, I like school.
Speaker: I like studying.
Speaker: I want to do some cool stuff.
Speaker: And this seems like an interesting path.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, so many people that I have interviewed, we all say the same thing.
Speaker: Like, wow, we meet someone along the way who's like, you have the life that I want.
Speaker: You are living it up in a way that I think looks awesome because across the board,
Speaker: flexibility or like people achieving some kind of balance between like being in a lab and being out in Scotland or you know this sort of thing like this is I think one of the big draws of academia it's one of the perks the schedule well you can't say the schedule can't be beat because you never get true time off until like you've got tenure and your like second book project is done or you know field specific things like that I mean the whole like
Speaker: There are two kinds of dissertations, perfect and done kind of conundrum.
Speaker: Being able to leave your work at home, that's not like a luxury that you have in academia.
Speaker: So that's sort of the trade-off.
Speaker: But the schedule of like, oh, paid vacations.
Speaker: I've mentioned this in other episodes and stuff in my first book, Japantham, where I kind of detail leaving academia.
Speaker: But one of the draws to academia in the first place was like, yo, I get paid vacations to Japan and I'm researching something cool.
Speaker: and fun.
Speaker: And my field work is, you know, hanging out in parties in Japan.
Speaker: Like, this is pretty sweet.
Speaker: You know, what's the trade off?
Speaker: Well, you know, of course, we've talked about that.
Speaker: It's like crippling self-doubt and all this stuff.
Speaker: So anyway, you you meet this researcher when you're doing your second bachelor's.
Speaker: You think he has the life I want.
Speaker: This looks pretty wicked.
Speaker: And then how did you what was the next step for you?
Speaker: Well, the next step was
Speaker: you know, taking the GRE and applying and doing all the things.
Speaker: And I just want to point out, though, that this is yet another example of how, at the time, you know, naive baby Jackie didn't know to ask certain questions.
Speaker: You know, you learn through experience.
Speaker: And so I didn't really have the forethought to ask, like, is this even a possible career track at this point?
Speaker: Because, you know, the tenured positions were shrinking at that point.
Speaker: This was a long time ago now, but this was...
Speaker: 2008 or so?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The nose dive I think was really in the 2010s, but 2008, like with the recession and- It was starting to contract.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so, um, yeah, it's like 2007, 2008, something like that.
Speaker: But even then, like there, there weren't nearly as many tenure track positions as there had been.
Speaker: So like, but I didn't know to ask those questions.
Speaker: No one ever said, Hey,
Speaker: here's how you should think about your future.
Speaker: You know, it was more like, where am I now?
Speaker: And can I project forward?
Speaker: And do I see myself in that role?
Speaker: And that's a mistake that a lot of us make is we, even when you think about it, like a regular job, right?
Speaker: A real job versus academia.
Speaker: But, you know, a lot of job seekers, and I made this mistake too, you look at where you are now and you project forward.
Speaker: And that's actually not the best way to do it.
Speaker: And I teach a different way to look at it where you reverse engineer based on,
Speaker: where you want to be down the line and you look what you need to do to get there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Anyway, starting with the end in mind, it's one of the, um, seven habits of highly effective people.
Speaker: And that very, that very famous book by Stephen Covey, Stephen Covey, I think.
Speaker: I've heard of this book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, but it's, it's a variation on that, right?
Speaker: Like it's, it's,
Speaker: it's a thing that I didn't know then that I apply now and I try to teach people now so they don't go through all of the trial and error that I had to go through.
Speaker: But anyway, back to your question.
Speaker: Yeah, so at that point, I was like, cool, what do I need to do to get into grad school?
Speaker: And I had been kind of planting the seeds all along by doing an undergraduate research project and getting to know my professors a little bit better so I could get good recommendations.
Speaker: These were all things that I did not do
Speaker: when I was going through grads or undergrad the first time, because I just didn't have a plan.
Speaker: I didn't have a goal or anything.
Speaker: But yeah, I interviewed at a handful of schools on the East Coast, mostly up North.
Speaker: I did interview at one school here in North Carolina, because my parents were very much, I'm from North Carolina, my parents are here.
Speaker: And they were like, please, please just apply to one place here in the state.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, fine.
Speaker: So I did apply and interview at Chapel Hill.
Speaker: But I got accepted at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Speaker: And I was like, I can live in New York.
Speaker: This is fantastic.
Speaker: And this was an opportunity to do that at a really good school and do a lot of awesome science and live in one of the most amazing cities in the world without being
Speaker: tied to it indefinitely, potentially the way that one might do if they move for a job job.
Speaker: So there were a whole host of reasons.
Speaker: But yeah, that's, that's how I ended up going to Einstein.
Speaker: And it was one of the most, the most challenging times of my life, but it was also an amazing learning experience and a wonderful time of growth, you know?
Speaker: Evidently, evidently, I mean, you've made a career out of it and, you know,
Speaker: in a weird way, that was always the goal, but just in a different manifestation.
Speaker: So one thing I would also, as we kind of close up here, I know that you definitely came out and were like, hey, I didn't like research, I wanted to know yes or no, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: But I'm just curious to know a little bit more about your research and the kind of work that you were doing as a scientist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So my thesis project was on the effects of drug abuse on neuroinflammation in individuals with HIV in a broad sense.
Speaker: More specifically, what I did was I studied a particular type of immune cell that enters the brain and causes neuroinflammation and how
Speaker: dopamine, which can be used as a proxy for drug abuse because a lot of drugs of abuse cause dopamine bursts in the brain.
Speaker: Dopamine is a neurotransmitter.
Speaker: And you might have heard about it as like the feel-good neurotransmitter.
Speaker: And if you want to know more about stuff like that, just as an aside, Andrew Huberman has a wonderful podcast series on all kinds of nerdy stuff about how our brains work and things like that.
Speaker: And he has an episode on dopamine that's really cool.
Speaker: Anyway, so I studied the effects of dopamine on this one type of immune cell that was a major contributor to neuroinflammation in individuals with HIV.
Speaker: And a lot of it was about the way that these cells moved as they leave the circulation across the blood-brain barrier and go into the brain.
Speaker: And yeah, and that was pretty much what my thesis project was about.
Speaker: The lab that I was a part of that was like the neuroinflammation and HIV was really the big overarching topic that that lab was focused on.
Speaker: Talk about wanting to make an impact.
Speaker: I mean, this is really, I guess, very impactful research, what you were doing.
Speaker: And how long did it take you start to finish in your PhD?
Speaker: Four years.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: It was right around four years.
Speaker: I will say that my mentor, Joan Berman, was great when it came to creating focused projects for her students.
Speaker: There were stories of folks in other departments who had been, you know, seven years going on as a grad student.
Speaker: I mean, there were lengthy, lengthy times there for some students, and my mentor did not do that.
Speaker: Like she was very good about helping us get through the program and get done with a very good project.
Speaker: These were still robust projects, but we didn't like go off on these tangents and do things that didn't actually support like the core framework of the project.
Speaker: So that was wonderful.
Speaker: And I wanna add that part of my experience in grad school, I think was that my mentor also didn't give me a hard time for wanting to leave.
Speaker: You know, I've heard from others that, you know, they felt uncomfortable mentioning that they didn't want to stay in academia because, you know, their PIs were very unsupportive of that sort of a career path.
Speaker: And I was very fortunate to have a mentor who was supportive of me, you know, wanting to leave academia.
Speaker: And I just wanted to acknowledge that, that, you know, I recognize that that's not common necessarily, at least it wasn't when I was in school.
Speaker: I don't know if that's changed now, but
Speaker: You know, these are all factors, I think, that color, like, you know, our perceptions, especially when we look back.
Speaker: You know, I look back on grad school as very challenging, but I don't feel a lot of bitterness about it.
Speaker: And I know that some people do.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: Yeah, so that was my experience with grad school.
Speaker: Well, you get my medal of acknowledgement for having the shortest PhD yet on the show, as in four years.
Speaker: Good for you.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: It must have been a very intense experience.
Speaker: Four years, I imagine.
Speaker: Mine took seven, but I kind of dragged it out a little, even though I had an extra semester's worth of funding that I didn't get in the form of a summer stipend, which I was a little bit, I was like, but why?
Speaker: I'm saving you guys lots of money.
Speaker: But in terms of bitterness and stuff too, of course you're not bitter.
Speaker: I mean, look at our conversation today.
Speaker: It's been such an inspiration across the board for PhDs and for anyone to
Speaker: understand the feelings that we have, especially maybe those negative feelings and take inventory on them, including bitterness to turn it into something as fuel or as like a road, as a roadmap for where we can move forward in our life.
Speaker: I'm sure undoubtedly you've hinted at lots of other amazing things that you've been up to, um, researching and sharing with your, your clients.
Speaker: It just seems like incredibly valuable and timely.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: It's fascinating to just hear a little bit more about your research and about your motivations for going into academia in the first place.
Speaker: Because again, so many of us look at that life and just think, dang, that is like a way where I can kind of have it all.
Speaker: And it's just, I'm so happy to speak with someone who has been able to kind of integrate that loss of
Speaker: identity, maybe a loss, even if we want to call it a delusion.
Speaker: One of my guests called it a delusion, which I think is valid too.
Speaker: You know, like, oh, if I do this and this is a meritocracy, right, then I'll end up on the other side and I'll have that life that I wanted.
Speaker: And the answer is no, but your whole, what I'm getting here from you, overarching theme time is that that's okay.
Speaker: How do we move forward?
Speaker: How can we move forward into a life that, you know, actually is in line with
Speaker: who we are now that we know a little bit about who we are based on what we don't want to do.
Speaker: And I think that's really powerful.
Speaker: So closing remarks here, I guess you've done a really great job of giving advice for anyone that could be listening.
Speaker: But I'd like to know if you could give baby Jackie, if you could have told her anything when she was just starting out, walking onto the campus of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, right?
Speaker: Yep, in the Bronx.
Speaker: What would you have told her?
Speaker: I think the one thing that baby Jackie didn't know that would have benefited her is to know that it's okay to not have it all figured out.
Speaker: It's okay to try things and redirect that making one decision about your life doesn't lock you into one path.
Speaker: It's not a forever thing that you're always able to take a new path to redirect.
Speaker: And that there's no right or wrong answer that, that, that really like you're, you're the architect of your life.
Speaker: You get to chart the path, you get to decide what you do.
Speaker: And whatever you decide to do is okay.
Speaker: Beautiful and profound advice, no matter where you are on the PhD journey, or for listeners out there who aren't even affiliated with academia, maybe for you too.
Speaker: So thank you so much again for tuning in to another episode of Academic Defectors.
Speaker: I am your host, Dr. Jillian Marshall.
Speaker: Catch you next time.
