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TL;DR
Hi! My name is Meren. I am a Professor, and I set aside one hour each week for early-career researchers (ECRs) outside my group who want to meet me to discuss non-technical professional questions. If this sounds like something you may benefit from, please read the rest of this page before scheduling a meeting.
In this context the definition of ECR includes all PhD students, plus anyone who (1) graduated from a PhD no more than 10 years ago and (2) do not hold a permanent position in a research institution. These do not describe you, but you still feel like an ECR? Well, that’s OK, too. Be rebel. Schedule meeting.
Reasons behind this
A few years ago I conducted a survey of ECRs, which helped me to be more mindful regarding the struggles of ECRs. The life of an Early Career Researcher can be difficult. Uncertain employment periods, difficulty of making long-term life decisions, increasing expectations both in the quantity and quality of publications, struggles with funding, time and energy it takes to write grants that may never get funded, issues with supervisors, administrative hurdles are some of the things that may push an ECR to a point where they feel completely powerless.
It is not that senior scientists are not struggling with equally difficult choices and considerations almost every day. I can tell you, both from my personal experience and the experiences of my colleauges around me, that they certainly are. But arguably we are often better off, in large part thanks to the time we have spent in science, during which most of us have developed skills that makes us better navigate the high seas.
By creating a means for ECRs from outside of my immediate surroundings to contact me, I wish to maximize my chances to be useful for someone who may have questions that may benefit from a discussion with a senior scientist who is not responsible for their training.
It would indeed be a fair question to ask how someone who is not involved in another person’s training could still be useful to their career. I think this distance would help both parties to have an open and pressure-free conversation, and sometimes an open conversation is all it takes to recognize a new perspective, an alternative path, or find a means to put something to rest. The best use I can think of for these meetings is to discuss situations that require complex judgment calls where experience matters more than formal knowledge, and where an outside perspective is crucial. Apart from that, I have no expectations for the contents of these meetings, and there is no need for any prior connection to schedule one.
My goal is to simply offer a professional space for open conversation, but I have some disclaimers and requests from those who may wish to give it a try.
Disclaimers and wishes
I am currently a Professor and have navigated through science and academia in multiple disciplines (computer science, microbial ecology, marine microbiology) in multiple countries (Turkey, United States, and Germany). I see myself as someone who is technical but also strategic, who is far along the academic path to have a perspective, but not so far to have forgotten what it is like to be an ECR.
I can’t promise you whether I will have all the answers you are looking for, but I may be able to give you useful advice and my 2 cents on various topics, including but not limited to,
- Share my input on how to navigate difficult professional situations,
- Help you appreciate unwritten rules of science in Europe or North America,
- Tell you whether you are being unreasonable to expect something from your PI,
- Tell you whether you should prioritize X over Y,
- Tell you whether your instincts are correct, or you are likely misreading a situation,
- Explain what it means to go from one career stage to the next,
- Discuss your desire to stay in or leave academia without judgement,
- Discuss what it means to be an international researcher, and so on.
In an ideal world, you would come to our meeting with well-defined questions. I would certainly welcome random chat sessions, too, but the limited number of slots may push those who may have a specific need from these meetings to wait longer for a discussion, and I would like to avoid that.
Even though I am almost certain this is overkill and none of you deserve to go through this, I would still like to keep a list of things to shed light on what these meetings are not for:
- Our meeting is not to answer technical questions or get into topics that are outside of professional life.
- I cannot comment on legal matters or health concerns.
- I cannot solve problems I have no authority over or intervene.
- Our discussions should focus on your situation and choices, not complaints about specific colleagues.
- I cannot write recommendation letters, offer positions, or agree to tasks that would require time outside of our slot of discussion, and,
- We cannot have recurring meetings (since it would defeat the purpose of this).
If you are still with me, please feel free to schedule a meeting :)
Schedule a meeting
If you have read everything on this page, and feel that this could be useful to you, please schedule a meeting using this link:
In case you are wondering how the scheduling works: I have one slot per week on my calendar specifically for this. At any given time, you can book a meeting up to 4 weeks out. If no slots are available, it would mean that I might be on a break, I might be traveling, or all slots for the next month are already taken. Please check back again a few days later if you are still interested.
Thank you for your interest, and I look forward to talking to you!