Feeling disillusioned

[Beenthereboughtthetextbook]

I have worked as a postdoc researcher for nearly 10 years. Each time I've been lucky to have my 6 month/yearly contract extended. Except this time I don't know if I feel lucky anymore. 10 years is a long time to continue on short term contracts. It has affected both my maternity leaves as I've cut them short in order to keep my contract. I've exhausted fellowship applications trying to get a more stable contract. I work day and night and over lockdown this included weekends and working on my annual leave to get publications, grant funding, exams marked etc whilst balancing childcare. I've always believed academia to be a rewarding job and I make sure I assist staff and students deligently when approached. But I have increasingly failed to see this reciprocated and I'm now exhausted. I'm waiting weeks or months to get responses from people. I can't help wonder why I am forced to take things seriously when they can't. Maybe I don't know their full story but it feels like the lockdown period has highlighted just how unfair the whole academic system really is. No real question in this thread, but wondering if anyone has felt the same way.

are you in science? I'm guessing yes because I can't imagine 10 years of postdoc in another area.

But still, 10 years is a long time to be a postdoc. have you applied for permanent jobs? Not fellowships but lectureships.

very very few lucky people get a fellowship. it is an unusual route to success. Lectureships are much more secure & give you more flexibility.

And have you looked at the options outside academia? Industry / research charities etc. Think about what bits of the job you love & where you could get that.

Thanks for the reply. I'm in a STEM area and where I am, lectureships are rare. I know more people who were promoted via a fellowship. I know they're crazy competitive but they offer me the opportunity to establish my research field. I applied to a lectureship recently only to wait two months for a rejection. Same with industry, it's rare to find a position that fits my skills / experience but I still try to apply. I've built my academic career over the years, adding on teaching, supervision, admin, committee etc roles that I didn't see the years slip by. I thought with all the experience I have I'd have a very good chance at being promoted or retained as a permanent member of staff but it's never happened.

thanks for giving more detail, it is very tough isn't it. I don't know of any cases where a university will give someone a permanent research position without a lectureship/fellowship. And if your field doesn't have those, it is hard.

I'm not going to try an offer a load of unhelpful advice because I'm sure you've thought through the options. but you do have my sympathy.

do you have a mentor at your university? Or is there a mentoring program you can sign up to?

In the (fairly broadly defined) STEM field I work in, open adverts for 'permanent' lectureships have been fairly rare for the past ~10 years. The typical route to a permanent position now is to first get a long-term (Royal Society or Research Council) fellowship and then either the host institution or another institution creates a permanent position. (This is a financial thing, it's easier to create a permanent position if you don't have to pay the salary for the first 4 or 5 years). The competition for fellowships has also got tougher; the succesful applicants have more years of experience and have in some cases already held equivalent positions (e.g. junior research group leader) in other countries.

Coming back to the original question: if you've been 'going above and beyond' and it isn't being reciprocated then it probably is time to reassess long-term plans. But field specfic advice is crucial.

Thanks. I used to have a mentor but that was a long time before lockdown. Back then it was the usual advice: publish, apply for small grants etc.. I don't have a mentor anymore but I don't know what I'd say anyway that wouldn't be so negative. I already feel I exhausted all options.

@ehtelp
Aye that's the picture I get with fellowships too and aye I have begun reassessing long term plans too. The other issue with fellowships is that they often have an eligibility limit from when an ECR has completed their PhD viva.

There are parts of the job I adore (the flexibility, teaching and research) but there are other aspects that have finally gotten to me. It's not rewarding to continually be kept on short term contracts that it affects maternity leave, mortgages, holidays and any thought of long-term stability. And it becomes increasingly demoralising seeing a lack of recognition in excellent staff (I have seen many leave), and a lack of urgency to help staff on time sensitive projects.

Hi Beenthereboughtthetextbook, good morning. Old MN user, NC for this.

I quit academia in 2019. I just had to leave. I liked research and (to an extent) writing. However, I did not enjoy teaching and the endless badgering of institutions for money, the 'end prize' of a professorship was not a dream for me.

I also disliked, as you describe, how my professional life seeped into my personal life. I disliked how all the people I knew and my friends were somehow connected to my job and loathed the forced socialisation, conference lunches, networking, drinks receptions.'working the room'.

I felt more and more disengaged and started to see through a lot of the academic narrative, noticing the stock sentences and words, the fashionable subjects, the emptiness, the false friendships. The lottery that, ultimately, getting recognition is. I saw the number of the people from privileged backgrounds, people with no particular talent who could afford to have some professional permanence because they could sit a period of no grant or no temp job being supported by the family money.

I started to see the mechanisms of capitalism at work in academia, the unfairness you describe: research projects shipped to phds, and then creating phd researchers in subjects for which there was no job or demand, teaching a profession that was disappearing and no longer existed but that everyone still dreamt of. It felt increasingly like a fraud.

My epiphany came in the summer of 2019, I was at an international workshop, people would have killed to be there, I was one of the chosen few and I was just utterly disengaged.

In early autumn 2019 I just did it. I quit. Resigned. Cut contacts. Moved away. It felt as if I had escaped prison. I got an admin job, which required me to do a long walk to get to the office. Twice. In all seasons. I stayed there for a bit, to clear my head and then I got an 'industry' job whilst lockdown was still in place.

At first I felt the pain of having accumulated all that professional expertise, specialist knowledge and having dropped it, but the moments of growth, the research insights, for me were getting fewer and fewer and the frustration was increasing. I am now realising that I have not 'dropped' the expertise but am channelling it towards something else. Now I earn, relatively, better money as only work my contracted hours and have so much more time for myself and my family and my only regret is that I did not do this move sooner.

So, no real answers to your 'no real questions' but just an experience and my best wishes and heartfelt encouragement.

@FormerAcad3mic

Thanks for the reply. It's heartbreaking isn't it? A lot of what you said resonates with me. I don't have the heart to sever ties just yet. A lot of people I've worked with over the years have remained good friends. But I'm finding the leave from academia and move to industry more and more appealing. I will wait until my contract is completed and then I'll definitely not look for another contract in academia. Enough is enough. The thought of having wasted my experience was heavy on my mind but you've eased it as I can see instead that it'll be channelled and not lost. I'm definitely going to ease the overnight and weekend work too for my own sanity.
I'm glad things are working well for you and I hope I have a similar experience once out of academia too.