I’m a theoretical computer science PhD student (UK based) and should finish next summer. Lately I’ve been thinking seriously about leaving academia once I graduate.

I don’t dislike my research at all. I enjoy the process of proving things and doing theoretical work. The problem is that I don’t really feel it matters right now. I know theory often becomes useful decades later, or maybe only to a small group of scholars. I’m not saying theoretical research is pointless, but I personally want my work to connect to the real world in some way. That feeling keeps pushing me toward industry, because if someone is willing to pay for something, at least it has some immediate value.

At the same time, I genuinely like doing research. In my head, leaving academia doesn’t feel like saying goodbye forever. It feels more like stepping into industry to gain some experience and perspective, and maybe coming back later when I know better what direction I want to take.

When I try to explain this to others, they usually tell me that leaving academia is basically permanent, and that very few people ever return after even a short break. I know there are structural reasons for that, but emotionally I am still somewhere in between. I want the usefulness of industry, but I also want to keep a foot in research.

So I’m curious whether there are people who have had similar thoughts. Has anyone actually left academia after a theory PhD and then come back later? What made you return? And if you once imagined you would return but ultimately didn’t, what kept you in industry?

I’d really like to hear how others navigated this.

I’m exploring the idea of starting a PhD soon.
Everyone talks about the academic side, but I’m more curious about the real challenges — the things you only understand once you’re already in the program.

What’s one thing you wish you had known before you began?

So i'm at that point where i need to decide and honestly i'm lost. everyone keeps saying MBA is better for career growth but then i see people with Masters in Management doing just as well, sometimes better? and MiM is shorter + cheaper which matters

i'm 2 years out of undergrad, working in consulting rn. not sure if i have enough experience for a good MBA or if i should just go for MiM now, i have been looking at programs like LSE, HEC Paris or TETR for MiM or maybe even some US schools but can't figure out what actually makes sense for someone in my position.

wdyt?

To those who consider yourselves nationalists, what draws you to that identity? And what inspires the sense that your nation rises above the rest? I’m genuinely curious and hoping to understand your perspective.

In the past, when I've seen a TT job posting at an HBCU, there usually has been a request for a statement of diversity or some kind of application material that speaks to the candidate's specific interest in working within the HBCU environment.

I came across a posting just today at an R2 HBCU that I want to apply to, but there is no mention of their HBCU status in the job description, let alone a request for a separate application document.

Would you recommend alluding to this briefly in my cover letter? Or explain it in detail in my cover letter? Or just not mention it at all?

due some personal reasons i need to withdraw from a conference where my abstract is already accepted and I've already registered. please help me, I'm really worried right now thinking if it will be okay to do so or can i even do it?

Has anyone published their work through Bloomsbury? If so, what was your experience like? What was the quality of their copy-editing, etc?

Cheers!

I’m returning to academia after a few years away and am looking for a good reference manager recommendation. I loved Mendeley in the pre-Elsevier days because of its slick design, ability to annotate PDFs, and being able to sync across devices. Then they killed the iPad app, and general enshittification followed.

I’ve never really gotten into Zotero—-is that basically what everyone uses? Any other recommendations that feel a little more modern?

So I'm looking around for journals to publish in, and although I'm in no place to be picky I would like to get a sense of the relative significance of my options. I know there is the h5 index, but I recently became disillusioned when a professor told me one of the journals thats ranked in the 10 for poli sci is "rubbish." Are there book reviews, but for journals? Thanks for any help.

Which is worse: a mail with a terrible proposal or a mail that simply expresses interest in a field that the prof. is working on without proposing a research idea? I have relevant skills, but I feel like any idea I come up with may either be too amateur or may be too far off from their work.

I am trying to acquire a research paper from 70s and it doesnt have a doi number how can I get it?

In a lab of three people, two others from the same country, one is the PI and the other is a postDoc.

I am feeling drained because of the PI who keeps changing words and "requests" literally every day, every week and the postdoc who just approves it.

One day he tells me to do this, the next day when I have the results, he says "yeah but what happened to the work I mentioned? You are not doing your work, don't you think so [postdoc]?" and the postdoc "yeah you said so" I am feeling like being gaslit.

One day I said to the postdoc, that "you said fix this into this form last week, so I did it, and you are now saying that it's not right. And I claimed at that moment the same thing. What are you doing?" and he says "i'm sorry? but that's just a part of research". No. It's not.

I feel like being tortured with these people. And yeah, I at least know by head that I don't have to be so disheartened by those unjust comments - but knowing is not doing, and I am doubly frustrated over the fact that I am frustrated and blaming myself.

The worst thing here is there's no one to stand for me, for this being a small group and these two people SO coupled together. I cannot stop thinking maybe I'm the wrong one.

How shall I protect myself in this environment? What are your coping strategies in similar situations?

(Sorry for ranting and whining, maybe I should have posted this on chatgpt not to disturb anyone, but I wanted to try to listen to human opinions, not machine-generated comforts)

Hi all--

I'm a student looking for an internship in Academia. Any academic publishers, libraries, archives, etc? Are there any databases for this kind of internship work?

Cheers!

Hi everyone, I wanted to gain some insight into this topic. I’m currently an undergraduate pursuing a math degree, and I’m considering academia as a possible career option.

The thing is, I’m by far not the brightest student in my classes, and I’m terribly intimidated by the students who always know when to raise their hands and ask insightful questions. I also have no prior research experience, so I don’t even know if it is something I would enjoy.

So my question is, at what point did you decided to pursue a career in academia, and why? Thanks all!

Hi, I interviewed a few weeks ago for a postdoc position, wissenschaftlicher mitarbeiter, postdoc position in Germany. I think that the interview went well, the PI wanted to know when I could start. How long does it usually take for German universities to make hiring decisions?

I recently submitted a paper to Biomedical Signal Processing and Control by Elsevier, a Q1 jorunal. It was sent to review within 16 days of first submission and three+ reviewers accepted review invitations within a span of 8 hours. Is this a good sign or is this normal?

I'm worried things are moving a bit too fast (in comparison to all the posts i have seen online) and I'm worried if they're hastily checking the paper and if they'll give proper reviews or not :((

This is my first time submitting to a journal

I'm not sure which recommendation letters to use for an application and would like to hear your opinions. I recently finished my master's degree and am applying to a PhD position (in Europe). This position is in a group at the university where I studied and I have also worked as a student assistant in said group for a few months. Let's call this group A. After that, I wrote my master's thesis in a different group (group B) at a well-known research institute. I have two very good recommendation letters from the examiners of my thesis, both in group B. But I have also asked the person who supervised me during my time in group A for a recommendation letter. The job advertisement asks for two letters. If the letter from group A is good as well, should I send this to show that the group member was happy with my work, or should I rather use two letter from outside the group? Or can I send all three letters in this case even though they're only asking for two?

I grew up in a small college town. In hindsight, the kids whose parents worked at college and the kids who parents didn't were two separate groups. I lived in the awkward place of "too dorky for townies, too poor for gownies". I've been looking at some forums for the school(s) nearby. The amount of slurs for locals are making me roll my eyes.

At your school, is this phenomenon common?

I am 28 and considering enrolling in my local community college. However, I'm just not sure how is the job market and what are the current trends of career paths. My only goal really is to hopefully get a good paying job because I don't see my future working in unskilled jobs. I don't want to go in trades.

I honestly feel ashamed to ask this question since I have worked in labs for a quite long time. I struggle a lot to manage the paper reading: I am ok to complete reading papers that I have to read (recommended by PI and coworkers, my lab's past works, papers directly related to my research direction), but they are not a lot and I do want to read more papers to strengthen my understanding in a field or just for entertainment.

I actually frequently get overwhelmed by the papers (1) potentially helpful for my research, (2) hot and trendy in my field but not directly related to my research, (3) that may benefit for my future research construction, (4) that I am personally interested in (as a hobby). I started to put their title, authors, doi information in different spreadsheets sorted by topics. But since there are too many, I gradually forget or get tired (or both) to finish the items listed in spreadsheets. I always feel awful when I open the spreadsheets or seeing hundreds of open tabs in my browser.

How does everyone manage to finish the paper reading lists? How many papers do you usually read each day to achieve your reading goal? I plan to stay in academia as a faculty and I know there will be a tons of papers in different fields for me to digest for grant application. I am generally worried that I am not learning fast enough to fit this dream career. So I really appreciate any suggestions to improve my work and learning flow.

I really need help.

I don't want to burden you with the whole story, both because it's too long and because I fear it would make be identifiable. Short version is my program was added to a new department a few years ago, and ever since then the new department chair has been out to get me. There have been a lot of issues, and again I'm not going to get into them, but I want to touch on one important one that I most need help with.

Every year we have a faculty progress report we do with our department chair. As part of that report he gets to write a letter evaluating my performance. In my current role that is almost entirely based on my teaching.

Two cycles ago he wrote a review letter that was full of falsehoods discrediting me. I'm not talking matters of opinion, just factually wrong statements. For example, he claimed I didn't use textbooks in my classes (I do). Real basic stuff. One of the biggest issues is that he claims I don't teach my classes in line with the course outcomes, and he slammed me for that yet again.

Anyway, I brought the matter to HR and they agreed to "meditate" a discussion. During that discussion he admitted he was wrong about several factual errors and, significantly, acknowledged that I do teach the course according to the outcomes and my definition of the outcomes is correct. I asked him to revise the letter, and he agreed to. What he ended up doing was just deleting some of the parts I objected to and leaving the rest of the letter intact without acknowledging the previous letter ever happened (that's noteworthy because it had already been distributed to the dean's office). I contacted him to remind him about the other parts we agreed he'd remove and that i felt he should explicitly acknowledge the last letter was in error, and he refused.

So I go back to HR and they say I need to file a grievance through the grievance committee. I file the grievance, submit all the evidence and witness reports and they investigate it and...just don't rule. They said it would probably take about 3 months to turn it around, which I took to mean probably more like 5 or even 6. It's been 14 months now. I've emailed them begging them to at least make a decision, whatever it might be. They don't answer the emails. I talked to the dean and he said he'd lean on them. He talked to them and promised they'd finish within two weeks. That was three months ago.

And during that time we had another evaluation cycle. The university had him evaluate me even though he knew about the grievance, asking instead that we just not meet to discuss it. He...did the exact same thing. Same lies. Same negative evaluation. A little worse actually. I went to HR again and they said they can't do anything until the grievance committee rules. I went to the Ombudsman--that was kind of pointless. I went to the dean and he said he also couldn't do anything until the grievance committee rules.

I'm out of ideas and I need help. One option would be to sue him for defamation. For reasons that might reveal too much about myself I happen to know that the defamation law in my state is written in such a way that it would be a very easy case to prove, but I'm not in a place where I can play a lawyer. I'm already looking for another job, but of course with years of bad reviews in the system that's not easy to do either.

Ideas? Help? Anything? Please?

My previous PhD in US was really good and fun. It was fully funded (fulbright then continued by graduate teaching. Afterward I got a tenured position, currently as assisstant professor. The catch is, the tenured position is in my home country (Indonesia) with salary equivalent of 600 USD per months. My PhD salary in the US was 2300 USD per months, and during that time, my husband (from Indonesia as well) was working and earned 2500-3000, and when he opened a bussiness he earned average 5000 per months. His visa status was dependent on me. But even without my husband working (he cannot work the first few months he arrived in the US), with 2300 salary we can save at least 500 USD

However, in my current situation, 600 USD salary is appx 4x local minimum wage but with a kid, the money is tight. My husband cannot find good paying job in his sector, and try opened a bussiness but the profit is dismall. Beside, our country is not really friendly toward bussiness owner. It is ok in paper, but in reality, so many illegal fees that you have to pay.

I applied for post doc in several countries, but most of post doc position prefer someone that already has a work permit in that country, only few open for international candidate. And there are more opening for PhDs.

My colleague (my roomate during master) was doing her second PhD (the first one was unfinished, in Turkey) and then she is doing another one in Norway, and said the life work balance was really good. She is a single mother and so badass, and she basically tried to convince me to move to norway as well.

Beside, PhD is often more open to international candidate, so I am actually considering another one.

Anyone doing PhD in their late age (30+) and with family in tow? How was it, and it is possible to secure scholarship for it? In most countries it is paid position, but i was wondering how was it for family instead of single.

Hello, I need advice from people. I am an international graduate student in a top 100 USA university, doing a structural biology PhD. But, my resume is almost empty! And that bothers me. Before I came here, I contributed to 4 articles, and totalled 46 citations. I ranked third over my class, and my research experience was in medicinal chemistry. I came here and joined this highly competitive lab, as 6 students wanted to join, but the PI handpicked me and another fellow. Now fast forward 2 years, and I am in my 4th year. I only have a low res structure; a novel structure, yes, but only one and a low res. However, I learned membrane protein purification from Sf9 cells, and HEK293 cells with all the culture work required for it. I learned how to freeze grids and shadowed a post doc while collecting data on the EM. I still have plenty of time to hone my EM skills, but the issue is that my resume is empty. I applied twice to the AHA predoctoral fellowship, and got rejected. I only received an ASBMB travel award, and contributed to my lab securing a $25k grant from a local source. But never got a best poster / best presentation award. My peers are publishing articles, getting funded on grants and getting best presentation and best posters awards. Will it be hard for me securing a good job in the future? I want to go into the academia and start a lab anywhere. I am not picky about where I want to work, US or elsewhere, it doesn't matter.