Corazon de Leon wrote:pjbetman wrote:Corazon de Leon wrote:jawafour wrote:Corazon de Leon wrote:Been grappling with the stunning realisation that it might be years before I’m gainfully employed in my profession, if ever. I really want a job.
As a doctor, Cora? Guess there's a ton of qualifications needed for that role. Is there anything you could fit in whilst learning?
I’ve finished my doctorate, as of June(I’m one of those scummy humanities doctors, not a medical doctor
). But now, with a doctorate in one of the more acceptable humanities/social sciences under my belt and four years of experience teaching varied subjects within my field, marking essays and exams, teaching students from first year to honours, there’s nary a sniff of a job.
I need publications to bolster my CV, but I also need to work 35 hours a week in a call centre to make ends meet, while preparing classes and lectures for the classes I do have, applying for anything that does come up, studying to become a fellow of the Higher Education Academy, applying for grants that I’m already at a disadvantage for getting as a formerly self-funded, non-affiliated graduate, attending conferences around the UK at weekends when I can afford to, etc.
I make it sound a lot grimmer than it is, of course, when I go on a woe-is-me rant. I think I’m just getting frustrated that I spent ten years trying to get the damn doctorate, and don’t even have a job to show for it 4-5 months after finishing.
You should've stayed in academia.
I'm trying to stay in academia. That's the whole point of my post.
And no, I won't be moving into secondary teaching. I'm a researcher and lecturer, or I'm not in the industry at all. I'd need a completely different qualification to do secondary teaching and I'm not going back for a PGCert that'll take 12-18 months. I'd rather be a civil servant at this point.
Good luck with your academic ambitions Cora! I sometimes regret not putting more effort into attempting to stay within academia, but when I finished full time work on my PhD I found myself in a similar situation as you describe. Trying to do as much teaching, research and publishing to bolster my academic CV but all the while needing to support myself by others means as there just weren't the roles out there for me.
In the end I decided it wasn't a sustainable position and took a job "in industry". My PhD was in Bioinformatics and my degree was Computer Science so I had a natural move into IT. I definitely think it was the right move for me at the time but as I say I do sometimes wonder what I could have been doing if I stuck it out, and I sometimes feel like jumping to industry has largely wasted the effort that I spent on my PhD!