The Postdoc Plight

Caroline Doyle, PhD & Guilherme Moraes Balbim, PhD - Cardiovascular SIG and Sleep SIG

One day, a group of us were driving across the Canada - USA border to attend a conference. The border officer asked our graduate student driver what we were going to do in the USA. He quickly replied, “We are students going to a scientific conference.” Later, he apologized for calling me a student and explained that he did not want to tell the officer I was a postdoc because that would likely prompt a follow-up question: “What is a postdoc?”

Postdoctoral fellowship, or “postdoc”, is the liminal space between receiving one’s doctoral degree and… something else. In theory, the “next thing” is a stable and better-paid job (we hope!). Most people agree that a postdoc provides an opportunity to expand, deepen, or increase the breadth of one’s skills and become more competitive for the job market. However, there lies another important opportunity within this liminal space. The postdoctoral career stage is a time to ask yourself questions such as: Do I want to continue down the same line of research that I followed in graduate school? Do I want to pivot? Do I want to expand that line or transform the line? Why do I do this anyway? Am I going where I would like to go? With some reflection, it can become an opportunity to grab the wheel and control of what comes next.

If you feel like you are languishing in your postdoc, asking the following questions is a good place to start. As Bilbo Baggins says in Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the only way out is through.

• Are you Big “S” sad? Or little “s” sad?

Watch yourself in action as you move through your days. What tasks are annoying and hard to get through, leaving you drained and relieved when they are over? This may be staying up later than usual to finish a grant or paper. This is little “s” sad: a temporary feeling of discomfort that gets you over the hurdle onto the next challenge. A good night’s sleep, exercise, and time with friends, for example, may help alleviate little “s” sadness.

Big “S” sadness is different. This is a heavier, more existential sadness you may feel after completing a task. Which tasks are not just annoying to get through but leave you feeling like your effort has been poured into a void and means nothing? Although one might identify this with the feeling of getting a grant rejected, it is not necessarily so. Big “S” Sad is something you feel after working on a grant or a paper you do not care about. Big “S” Sad is a sadness caused by a lack of meaning.

If you are little “s” sad, consider pushing on – you are doing the things you love and working towards those goals, even in the face of rejection. If you discover you are Big “S” Sad, you may want to take stock and consider a pivot. Assess your values and consider changing some of your goals in accordance with those values.

• What makes you Big “H” Happy?

Little “h” happy is the unexpected cupcake in the office kitchen. The social media likes of life. But what meeting, activity, or moment in your day lights you up? What makes you feel more energized or dare we say, makes your heart sing a little? That is Big “H” Happy. Maybe it is the one-off guest lecture or the summer program that left you feeling passionate about teaching, or the synthesizing that fluidly comes to mind while writing the discussion section of a paper. These moments are something to pay attention to and take seriously. Work to understand what is going on in the activity that makes you Big “H” Happy (“Do I like teaching? Do I love writing?”), then act on it. 

Ultimately, a postdoc is an opportunity – in more ways than one. It is a chance at the very start of your career to figure out how to shrink the roots of your Big “S” Sad and expand the roots of your Big “H” Happy. It is a time to rediscover, or perhaps discover for the first time, your authentic professional self. Although it can certainly be challenging, if you are willing to take a good look, there is a bright light waiting at the end of the postdoc tunnel.