23 Oct 2025 - Amy
I have now been a research fellow at the University of Manchester for twenty-three days. They have been full days: a great deal has happened, and yet they have passed remarkably quickly. Earlier this week, I attended the induction for my fellowship cohort, where it was made clear—gently but unmistakably—that this pace is unlikely to slow. As in most areas of academic life, momentum tends to be self-perpetuating.
Because time moves quickly, and because I am no longer employed on an ERC-funded project that requires the monthly completion of formal timesheets detailing my outputs, I have decided to document this period in a less official way. My intention is to write one blog post each month for the duration of the fellowship. It may be an optimistic commitment, but optimism is not something I have ever found to be in short supply.
These posts are intended to be reflective rather than prescriptive, and so I am not going to attempt to outline a set of goals for the next three years. Much of this first month has been absorbed by the practicalities of starting a new position: online training modules, administrative tasks, and the formatting of laboratory procedures. It has been a month of slow progress that leaves relatively little to reflect on in a substantive way. Instead, I want to focus briefly on what came immediately before: a summer spent away from academia.
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 came close on multiple occasions without quite crossing the line: I was a reserve candidate for several roles; a grant application narrowly missed the funding threshold; and attempts to look beyond the university sector were repeatedly met with hiring freezes. I find winter difficult at the best of times—I am not well suited to a life lived mostly indoors—but that particular winter marked a low point. 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.
In many respects, my story has a positive ending. My summer, which I have already taken to fondly calling ‘my summer off’ was restorative. It gave me the time and space to reflect on what I value, both personally and professionally. That said, it was not an easy period. Over those months, some people I had expected to hear from did not reach out. Relationships that I believed were reciprocal fell away once I was no longer professionally useful. I have come to accept that experience, and I am clearer now about the people on whom I can rely.
I am acutely aware that the ability to step away and to make something meaningful out of that time was a privilege. Had I remained at home, facing continued rejection without change of environment or purpose, my summer off could have looked very different. That is the reality for many early-career researchers, and I do not want a personal narrative of recovery to obscure the very real emotional and structural toll of precarity. I found something truly beautiful to sustain me as I kept applying to, and being rejected by, academic roles-not everyone else is as lucky.
I write this, then, partly as a reminder. Please look after your research communities, particularly those who find themselves without employment. Reach out. Acknowledge their value. These conversations may feel uncomfortable, but they matter. It is striking to me that those who did reach out most consistently were late-career academics. To those in mid-career positions: this is a gentle prompt not to let fear of awkwardness prevent you from checking in. It will more than likely mean the world.
None of this is written to assign blame. As my father often says, people who disappoint us are often more to be pitied than blamed, and I assume that those who fell silent had their own reasons. There was, however, an unexpected benefit to that silence. For six months, I existed almost entirely outside academia. In that space, I was reminded of a number of things: that genuine work–life balance means finishing a shift and not carrying work home with you; that spending every day indoors is rarely healthy; that efficiency—such as eating lunch at one’s desk—is not always synonymous with a life well lived. I was also reminded that science pursued for curiosity, rather than urgency or strategic self-advancement, is one of the most satisfying ways to spend time.
I do not expect to become someone who never thinks about work in the evenings. That is not my nature. I do hope, however, to make some changes. Einstein played the violin to create the time and space (an excellent pun) needed for his thinking. I do not plan to learn the violin, and playing my old flute leaves me light-headed these days, but over the next three years I want to hold on to that principle: good research requires time, space, and room 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.
These posts are not intended to be especially useful or instructive. They are closer to a diary than anything else, and it is entirely possible that no one but me will read them. That is fine. This project is primarily a record—to mark progress, to acknowledge difficulties, and, I hope, to celebrate small successes along the way. In a best-case scenario, someone might recognise their own situation here and feel encouraged to take a similar pause. Alternatively, someone might find themselves on the outside, as I once did, and simply need to talk. If that is you, my contact details are on my homepage.
I’ll see you next month.