When I first made the decision to come back to academia after my prolonged career break (five years), I almost immediately felt the need to write a blog about my experience. At the time though, my youngest was only about one year old and with two more children under the age of five, it just seemed too much of a commitment. The more I look back on my journey, the more I think it is useful to share the many ups and downs along the way. So here it is, I hope that my reflections will be useful to my mentees as to the wider academic world. At the beginning the task to get back onto the academic ladder felt like an impossible climbing feat. Everyone and everything else had moved forward in the intervening years whilst I had been away, not just in terms of career (research, teaching, funding and publications) but also spatially. My colleagues, my support network, had now moved to new institutions, almost invariably abroad. Where could I start to go back? I have been unbelievably lucky to have my mentor alongside me along the way. I have also been lucky to have a very supportive husband who also works in academia. So I think a key prerequisite is support around you and a good dose of luck to go with it. The first step was to talk aloud to other people about this possibility. After some initials conversations with my husband, I decided to fix a meeting with my mentor. Remember: meetings do not need necessarily to be in person, in fact, in my case, they are usually via Skype/phone or some other wonderful technology (Zoom and similar). At the meeting my mentor was extremely positive about my idea - that positivity really boosted my confidence. Believing in oneself and talking to others are other important steps on the journey back to academia. Once I made the decision to go back, the next hurdle was understanding how to go about it. Here my mentor had several ideas. The first was to identify funding and organisations supporting those returning to science after a career break, be it for caring responsibilities or other reasons. Second, she introduced me to a recipient of one of these awards who successfully returned to science (in her case via Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship and a stint as Daphne Jackson Fellow too). I was able to talk to her on the phone - that further ignited my confidence! On my next post I will talk about the following step on my journey.
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AuthorGraziella Iossa Archives
August 2023
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