Burn-out II: The Weight of the World

As academics, we deal with big topics and huge research problems. From disillusionment about the impact of your work, to self-censorship, these natural features of our work can contribute to burn out. This post commiserates with you, but also suggests some coping strategies for managing.

Burn-out

This is an opening post for a series on "Burn-out". The content and reflections I present here are based on a workshop I recently hosted on "Academic mental health and well-being". In this workshop, we focused on two themes: burn-out and secondary Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). But given the depth of the issues we discussed … Continue reading Burn-out

Why do a post-doc anyway?

This may seem like a no-brainer for many early-career academics. You do your PhD, then you do a post-doc and then you get that prized tenure-track position at a university. But the structural changes that have been happening in academia over the last decade or so have made this path a lot less linear and a lot more uncertain. This post provides you with some pointers to help decide which path to take after your PhD.

Dealing with transience in academic life

This one is for all the post-docs out there. It's also for those of you thinking about pursuing a PhD. Here are some hard truths about life as an academic: it's nomadic, transient and sometimes lonely in the "in-between periods". But it is also (mostly) interesting, it is a global occupation like no other, and … Continue reading Dealing with transience in academic life

Finishing that thesis under COVID-19 lockdown conditions

So it looks like 2021 is going to be a continuation of 2020, at least for the first half of the year (if we're lucky!). And if you are somewhere in the last stages of your PhD, writing up your dissertation or pumping out those publications, this could prove challenging with many university offices and … Continue reading Finishing that thesis under COVID-19 lockdown conditions