Transitioning out of the sprint
With Prof. Kristen Brennand
From the outside, Kristen’s research career looks like the perfect trajectory without a single faux pas, even though we fully know these do not exist. The metaphor of styles of running emerges in our conversation; running a sprint versus running a marathon is a valuable anchor in getting us to explore how we want to navigate the research environment. Building endurance in research careers becomes even more tangible during the transition from being a Postdoc to research group leader
From an early drive about working with the best people, in the best places, doing the best science, her energy has shifted towards being motivated in supporting her research team; connecting people and seeing the synergy that emerges from bringing together people with different expertise. The motivation is still about doing faster, bigger and bolder research but through the full synergy with her teams.
Kristen shares that it was only several years after she became a PI, when she was feeling she was losing the battle to have some balance between home/ work that she started to believe things could be different. A conversation with her husband got her started in experimenting with working less hours than she had before. This was a personal challenge that shifted her perspective. The pace of working, the goals she was setting for herself, the amount of time spent at work- a lot of this could change if she started to experiment with a different approach.
We are set to believe that we need to follow the paths that others have led before us. Our belief of what it takes to become an independent and successful researcher is based on how others have done it before. Their beliefs shape their mentoring approach. Learning to mentor differently is part of what is needed in research environments. We may want to navigate the research environment in our own way, not the way our mentors have done it.
More about Kirsten
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:
How the “too many good advice of others” may not be what we need
How believing that we have choices in our way of working can create our new reality
What resilience could look like for you when your research does its usual up and down looping
““Focus on your science. But if you do that, if you stop doing the things, the hobbies that bring you joy, the relationships that give you stability, when science inevitably comes down, your whole self-esteem comes down with it. So, it is so important to have an identity outside of your science to give you that resilience to weather the storm. Having family, friends, hobbies, passions. The things that make you a whole person. I think that’s where the resilience comes from””
