Looking Into Myself for My Next Career Step
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| Title: | Looking Into Myself for My Next Career Step | |
| Author: | Erica Riddle Taylor, PhD | |
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I must admit that I felt that I was a few years late to be searching for what career paths I’d like to pursue after I graduated with my Ph.D. After all, my college friends sat up until the wee hours of the morning, eating cheap Chinese food, trying get at this very issue while I sat smugly thinking "I’m set. I’m going to graduate school." There I was, with the blinding realization that going to graduate school has simply put off answering this question for a few more years. However, all was not lost. My time in graduate school planning and trouble-shooting experiments had taught me that you take a big problem/question/issue and break it into smaller pieces until you’re left with a simple question to answer. Before I could decide what I wanted to do professionally with my life (= big question), I needed to first figure out what I might be good at (= somewhat smaller question), and to do that, I should think about what skills I possessed (= simple question).
What followed was a series of written and verbal discussions with friends, colleagues, and family about what skills I had naturally, and what skills I was acquiring during school. Everyone knows that a Ph.D. in a life science field is skilled in that field of science plus a working knowledge in many others. What may not be so obvious is the fact that Ph.D.s gain lots of other skills that are easily transferable to any number of fields. I knew, without any doubt, that I could solve a problem. With only about 4 out of every 10 experiments working, most of my time was spent solving one problem or another, from the mundane (mislabeled tube) to the complex (how do I design the proper controls?). It was clear to me that this skill could be very handy in the corporate world, the government and education, since there are plenty committees, subcommittees, boards, focus groups, etc. formed only for the purpose of solving this or that problem – sometimes with questionable effectiveness.
One of the more noticeable skills that I was gaining was critical thinking. I had heard this term thrown about here and there throughout my education, but up until my 2nd or 3rd year in graduate school I couldn’t have given you a good definition of the term. While in school, however, I noticed that I no longer had to believe everything I read in a science journal article. I had made the rather dramatic transition from taking journals and textbooks as science gospel to questioning everything – even going so far as to claim that the data I saw didn’t necessarily support the conclusions the authors made. Wow! It was very liberating to feel empowered to question, to demand rigorous proof of, conclusions. What does this have to do with other fields? I learned that companies, agencies, think tanks, schools, just about everyone was clamoring for individuals who could do this well. I learned that this skill produced leaders in many fields in addition to science.
I also knew that I was learning how to communicate my work, not to just my advisor and lab mates, but to my 90-year-old grandmother, who has only a high-school level of education. I was gaining both verbal and written communication skills as my laboratory was particularly exacting in this realm. I didn’t need to do much research to know that effective communication is critical everywhere. All other things aside, however, what I realized was that I liked communicating my work. Specifically, I really liked and was good at discussing my project, with its relevance to liver disease, transplantation, and protein signal transduction, and making understandable to any audience. So, by answering this simple question, "What skills do I have?" I had stumbled upon something I could do, and enjoyed doing. Now we were cooking with grease!
From here, I started looking into careers that had a heavy and obvious emphasis on communication skills, namely, science writing/media, and teaching. For science writing and mass media, I toyed with the idea of working toward being a science and technology correspondent with a news source, distilling the latest scientific finds to the general public, or writing commentary for scientific journals, using my shiny new critical thinking skills. I found both internships and master’s degree programs and certificates that focused on the science and writing. Ultimately, this option moved further down the list of preferred career options, not due to its lack of merit, but because I found other options more appealing.
What I hadn’t mentioned is that during all of this skills assessment and options searching, I was involved outside of the laboratory in a number of mentoring, advising, and leadership activities throughout the university and I had significant contact with undergraduate as well as graduate students. Opportunities in teaching, and elsewhere in higher education held a lot of appeal for me. Firstly, I loved working with undergraduates. They have so much energy! They kept me sane and smiling when my lab work was particularly challenging. Secondly, I loved engaging their curiosity. They were thoughtful and asked hard questions, challenging me in my communication of difficult and complex concepts. I envisioned myself as a professor at a liberal arts college that had a large emphasis on teaching, inspiring the future generations of scientists – a rosy vision, for sure, but appealing nonetheless.
So, the possibility of teaching was high on the list of possible careers to pursue after graduate school. Around this time, my significant other was starting business school with a background in biomedical engineering. Our interactions fueled my research on what I called the "business of science." I looked into the career opportunities for scientists on business side of biotechnology, and science side of venture capital, intellectual property, and management consulting.
By analyzing myself, and asking those whose view I trusted to hold up the mirror for me, I was able to open up a range of career possibilities for further review. After looking into them, I found that I could piece together visions of careers that could be highly motivational in using the science I enjoy and the skills I love exercising the most. |
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Erica Riddle Taylor, PhD was born and raised near Detroit, MI and attended the University of Michigan, earning a Bachelor’s of Science with a concentration in Biochemistry, with honors, in 2000. In the fall of 2000, she joined Stanford University Immunology Program, conducting thesis research focused on gene therapy strategies to prevent liver transplant rejection. She earned her Ph.D. in December of 2005 and is currently the Director of Diversity and Outreach Programs for the Stanford Genome Training Program. |
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Copyright, 2006, Erica Riddle Taylor, PhD Published with permission |
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