As I draw to the close of my PhD program, my thoughts have increasingly focused on my career. While I am fortunate enough to be doing my PhD within an active research unit, I’m still feeling unprepared for my next career step. I feel that I’m expected to go take what offers and opportunities ever come my way. But all the signs point further contraction of viable positions in academia. As romantic as being a struggling academic may seem to some people, I would like to NOT have to spend the rest of my adult life perpetually pursuing various nominal research grants to keep food in my fridge.
In the human and social sciences, there are a plethora of research groups based within think tanks and universities; although a lot of work is done is silos. So how do I prepare for my own eventual career? Getting academic information is easy; but career information? There is a lot of fumbling around in the dark on your own.
In my field of study, there are four traditional research career paths you can follow: academia; non-governmental think tanks and advocacy groups; working for the government; and doing political risk analysis for the corporate sector. Each path has different output expectations and ways to prepare; a doctorate is only necessary for academia. I have come across a few successful social scientists who move comfortably between the different sectors. All these people have the same thing in common — networks.
Networks are important, but I believe that they can be more useful if they are structured and intentional like “mastermind groups.”
Napoleon Hill conceptualized the idea of a mastermind group in his 1937 book “Think and Grow Rich.” He describes this group as being a union of people who will support each other in pursuing their goals. My goals are to produce high quality output and have money in my bank account. Both goals need support and some mentorship from those who have gone ahead.
I’m toying with the idea of creating a mastermind group for several reasons- the main one being my daughter, now in first grade. I witnessed her move to new heights in her academic abilities by working in groups. Her reading in particular has benefited from paired and group reading exercises. I figured if that achieved with a child why won’t it work for professors?
To me, it looks like the possibilities are endless. And you are not a lonely academic struggling for funds on your own.
But I have no idea how to start such a mastermind group. Do I go online? Do I just fall in with a larger research agenda? Do I go “sell” myself at conference?
If anyone has any experience of using a mastermind group to succeed in their post-PhD careers please share in the comment section below. Is it worthwhile to join a group or it is better to be a lone cowboy? How did you do it?
I will start this article, I’m fairly confident, the way that no good story has ever started:
I was standing in the line at home affairs last week. I happened to strike up the usual conversation one has at these places; “Why is the line so long? Do you need photos? (It amazes me that no one ever knows the answer to this question!) Are we going to be here so long that the sun will absorb all of our moisture and when our families come looking for us all that will remain is our tortured souls still hoping for our passports?” Having run out of things to complain about, I asked my fellow brave soul what he did for a living. He was a very high powered investment banker who also had a PhD. I learnt that day that education truly is not enough when ignorance is a dominating plague.
I wish I had told this man I was a struggling actor or an astronaut – but then again he would have had an opinion on that too. “An astronaut? Really? I heard the earth is flat and the moon is Gorgonzola. Is that true? Wait, I know it’s true. So don’t respond.” I didn’t though. Sadly I said I was a HIV researcher and his face darkened. A frown dug its way into his forehead and I could hear the 10 ton piano that was about to fall on me strain in its support. “You know,” he said in a suddenly condescending tone, “I don’t buy this whole ‘HIV’ thing. (He actually did the inverted commas with his fingers, which somehow made the whole thing worse.) I heard that it was the Americans.” I realised by the way he sneered the last part of his sentence that nothing I said was ever going to change his opinion. Valiantly I tried to explain that HIV was a zoonosis and had jumped species on at least 3 different occasions. (Read more about why this doesn’t happen that often.) I spent what felt like an entire lifetime trying to convince him about the scientific evidence. And in the end, the best line emerging from this conversation was his, “Well, you can have your opinion and I will have mine.”
The benefit of having a science degree is knowing that the most popular opinion is not always the right one. Having been trained to question everything, I’ve since understood, is not a skill everyone has. In society, the loudest (most obnoxious!) person is the one who gets heard (once again think Donald Trump) while in science you will get laughed off of a conference stage without any data. This is possibly the root of misunderstandings in science. The people listen to the strongest voice and all the while the white coats are in a corner throwing around statistics. Even when scientists are completely right, some rapper may still convince a few people the earth is flat (see this hilarious exchange between B.O.B and Neil Degrasse Tyson – thank goodness for him!).
Another huge contributor to the hall of misunderstanding and strange theories is the media. Now let me be clear; it is not just the journalists who misinterpret. It is the job of a scientist to simplify and explain their work. One of my science heroines Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (co-discover of HIV), who I was privileged to hear speak, said that at the end of your life you do not remember the journal articles you published or how high their impact number was, but the lives you have changed with the work. If you can’t communicate and translate your work, who will it ever truly benefit? I find that if you can explain your project to your Granny so she understands why you are doing it and how it may help the world, you really understand it yourself.
As a postgrad it’s easy to feel lost; to feel that your work is too far removed from any kind of real-world application. It is easy to think that you’re just doing this to get a degree. However, it’s good to communicate your science for lots of reasons: 1) you can prevent misinterpretation, 2) you can make people feel that they can engage with science and not have their heads explode, 3) you can help scientists in queues at Home Affairs retain their sanity when non-scientists begin to ask questions and 4) you can feel relevant. It’s important to remember it really is our duty to not lock ourselves in a lab, but to reach out: to teach not only the uneducated but the ignorant too. It’s up to scientists to add their voice, otherwise we may be drowned out by the loudest opinions. It’s up to us to build public trust in science. If we are only heard when there is crisis then we are never heard in calm (see this article by Tolu Oni).
How science communication works… (www.phdcomics.com)
There have been miscommunications that have done very serious damage too. One is most certainly the notion that vaccinating your child will result in autism (read here why this isn’t true). This has resulted in 100s of unnecessary deaths from measles in small children. Another is that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, perpetuated by our very own ex-president Thabo Mbeki. Some “facts” are even started out of fear as a rumour: in a small town called Vulindela, wonderful things are being done by the organisation we work with (CAPRISA), to try to reduce unwanted pregnancies and HIV incidence. One of the proposed ways to do this was to insert IUDs into young girls following extensive education on the matter. The programme had to be stopped because one of the girls told all her peers that maggots would grow internally. Naturally teenage girls were then hesitant about IUDs. A far more famous case of misinformation is what happened to Hendrietta Lacks in 1951. With questionable ethical practice, doctors treating this woman took samples of her cervical cancer and made a cell line (cells that are descended from one cell and have the same genetic features) that was able to be kept in culture indefinitely. This cell line is one of the most widely used in clinical trials today; a form of which we use to test the efficacy of HIV vaccines. This woman had no idea what these doctors and scientists were doing and many years later, her family thought that she was still alive because scientists had “immortalised” her cells (Read more about this incredible story in Rebecca Skoot’s novel).
Miscommunications in science can be deadly and disturbing and we have to find ways of changing this. As a PhD student it is my job to pick the hard questions and find answers but, it is imperative that I find ways to explain the hard questions in a way that anyone can engage with them. Solutions can come from the strangest places, even the line in home affairs.
SAYAS BLOG 