23 Oct 2025 - Amy
I have been a research fellow at The University of Manchester for 23 days now. They have been 23 big days, a lot has happened, but at the same time they have flown by. On Tuesday, I attended an induction for my fellowship cohort, and it was made clear that this momentum would continue, because it always does in academia. As it will fly by, and as I am no longer employed on an ERC-funded grant where once a month I fill in time sheets where I outline my achievements that month, I have decided I’m going to try and document the process in this far less official form. One blog entry a month, for the next three years. It might be too optimistic, but I am an optimist.
Given that the purpose of these blog posts is to be reflective, I am not going to attempt to outline my goals for the next three years. That being said, most of this month has been eaten up by new job administration (online training courses, formatting laboratory procedures) and so I don’t have much I’m particularly eager to reflect on. So instead, I thought I’d focus on what came before: my summer off.
The job market is tough at the moment, not just in academia, and as I neared the end of my last position in January I was at the sharp end of it. I kept getting close to the finish line, but never making it across - I was the reserve for at least three positions, I had a grant come in at 1% below the funding threshold, and my attempts to cast a wider net and look beyond universities kept hitting a brick wall of “we’re not hiring at the moment”. I struggle most winters anyway, I’m not good at life when I can’t be outside as much as I’d like, but last winter was a pretty low ebb. So, I hatched a plan to take a summer off, and reflect on whether or not all this rejection was worth it.
Long story short: I did what any sane person would do, and I ran away to the Lake District.
The Lake District has always been a happy place for me - a place of beauty and tranquility and glimmers of sunshine even on the wettest, most miserable day. It is also a place I associate with a life on pause, and I think a pause was just what I needed. It also just happened to be somewhere a job was being advertised that I knew I could do: working as a receptionist in a youth hostel. I knew I could do it as I’d done it countless times before - it was the job that kept food on my table when I was doing my MSc, it was the job that filled my summers long before that, and it was a job that got me out of the city.
My story is a happy one. I had a summer that, in many ways, healed me and reminded me what I value about where I am and where I’d like to go next. My story is a happy one, but it was not an easy one. A lot of people let me down this summer. People cut me off entirely once I was no longer of use to them. People who I thought were my friends, and I regularly went out of the way to help, have not even made an effort to check in on me. I have accepted that, and I have learnt the people I can rely upon.
All I can say if that I could have this beautiful summer in a beautiful place that healed me, imagine how this summer could have gone if I was sat at home facing rejection after rejection. That is many people’s story, and I don’t want my happy story of a summer off to mask the very real toll that precarity places on early career researchers. I made something beautiful out of a dark situation, not everyone else is as lucky.
So, I guess I write this as a reminder. Please look after your researcher community, especially when they’re unemployed. Reach out, let them know their value. It might not be a comfortable experience, but it is a meaningful one. I think it says a lot about the state of modern academia that everyone who did reach out was nearing the end of their career, late-career academics if you will. Mid-career researchers, here is your reminder - please don’t let fear of an awkward conversation keep you from reaching out. It will more than likely mean the world.
I am not, however, saying any of this to call anyone out, or to make anyone feel bad. In fact, as my father would always say, I think the people who let me down are more to be pitied than blamed, and I imagine they have their own reasons for not being in touch. Being entirely cut off meant I had a clean break, I existed completely outside of academia for 6 months, and that isolation bought many reminders. I remembered that true work life balance is finishing your shift and not thinking about your job. I remembered that actually, it’s not good to waste the day away in an office. Having a quick lunch at your desk might be efficient, but it’s not going to be the lunch break you look back on fondly on your death bed. I remembered that science, research, when it’s something you’re doing just because you love it and not because you’re in a big rush to cvmaxx, is one of the most satisfying ways to pass your time.
Now, unfortunately, I am not of a nature to not think about my job in my evenings off. I’m hopeful, however, that I can make some other changes. Einstein used to play the violin to find time and space (this is kind of a good pun, non?) to think through his academic questions. For the next three years, I hope to learn that lesson - good research comes from giving yourself the time and space to think. I don’t think I’m going to learn the violin, but I am going to do what I’ve now remembered matters to me: I’m going to get outside, and feel the sun on my face. Well, if it’s there, although it being Manchester that seems unlikely.
I have no plans to make these reflective posts more useful, they will be more of a diary than anything else, so it seems unlikely anyone but me will read it. That’s fine though, because as I said, this endeavour is for me, to reflect on how far I’ve come, and to hopefully celebrate my little successes. Perhaps, in a best case scenario, someone finds themselves in a similar situation and chooses a similar adventure. Or, perhaps, someone finds themselves on the outside like I did and just needs to talk, if that is you my contact details are on my homepage.
I’ll see you next month.