It's all a matter of perspective.

Human beings are remarkably adaptable creatures. In fact, our ability to adapt to different climates and environmental circumstances has allowed homo sapiens to colonize virtually all of Planet Earth. Essentially, adaptability is our evolutionary advantage. 

Adaptability is a double-edged sword, however. We often become so accustomed to a particular state that we forget what a different state can feel like. Biologists might resonate with explaining this in terms of homeostasis, where the body seeks to maintain a steady state of internal conditions (think temperature, pH, etc...). Our brains are no different. A neuroscientist might explain the "homeostasis" of our minds as habituation. In its most classic form, habituation involves our minds becoming accustomed to a constant stimulus to the point that it is not perceived after a period of time. A good example is the texture or feeling of our clothes on our skin. There is certainly a stimulus being applied but it becomes essentially imperceptible as we habituate to its constant presence. In essence, our conscious minds filter out this stimulus as it is not new, novel, or salient enough to devote attention to.  

Both our perception of external stimuli and our behavior can become habitual. Our ability to interpret and react to the world consistently produces a habit. Stimulus produces response almost reflexively when a habit is formed and conscious thought of why a particular action was taken is often absent. Habits are often useful as they free up cognitive resources and allow "routine" actions to proceed automatically. No need to think about how to walk once you have developed the action and, at a higher cognitive level, bicycling or driving to work everyday ultimately proceeds on autopilot after you have been using the same route for a month. Because of this amazing capability of our minds, we can think about other issues and goals during our commute as the "automatic" processes of our brains take over to get us from home to work. 

​The unconscious nature of habits means that we are often unaware of why we make choices or take actions that have become habitual. We may not even be aware or able to resist engaging in actions that are objectively "bad" or harmful. A classic example is drug addiction. One hallmark aspect of being addicted to a drug of abuse is that use of the drug becomes habitual (automatic) and that addicted individuals continue their drug use despite negative consequences. This occurs because drug use has become habitual in a biological sense, often triggered by stimuli in the environment that prompt craving and use in a powerfully unconscious way. There is strong evidence that habit and "wanting" drives drug use more than "liking" in once a drug has become addictive. 

Drug addiction may be one of the most stark demonstrations of how corrosive and destructive habits and the unconscious processes between stimulus and response can be on us and our lives. It is far from the only problematic behavior fueled by the environment acting on core neurobiological processes. Our modern world has resulted in the development of a variety of problematic habits, many of which are driven by the ability to obtain entertainment and content in an instant. Our attention is also sapped by a plethora of digital signals coming from our screens and attempts to appeal to our basal instincts of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance. The effects of technological proliferation on our brains and behavior is being studied and a particular focus on how it is shaping the minds of adolescents' during their development is critical. 

Personally, I feel patience and taking the long-view is in short supply these days. The current climate leads many to think feedback or "results" should be instantaneous in all aspects of their lives. We expect response to rapidly follow action in the 21st Century but all aspects of life are not as quick to give us the feedback we want as clicking "buy  now" on your smartphone. Overcoming these modern temptations is a challenge because of how easy it is for them to tap into habitual behaviors and our core needs of resource acquisition, human acknowledgement, belonging, and more. Fortunately, however, we have the ability to consciously frame our experience of the world in positive, constructive ways and take steps to behave accordingly.  

Humans are exceptionally good at allowing their perspective to construct their version of the world.

In our modern information age, one can often be captured by negative headlines. And while certainly negative information is more attention grabbing (ie, salient), it does not mean there are no positive narratives to speak of. 

In addition, many events or outcomes we experience are not objectively ALL negative or positive. Rather, there is a perspective that can often be taken that sees the positive in mostly negative events or the negative in mostly positive ones. 

I believe some human beings are wired to be more drawn to the positive or negative aspects of an experience...seeing the flaws in nearly all things or viewing the world through rose-colored glasses. Indeed data show individual differences in the experience of stimuli as positive or negative which may have a biological basis (see also). Through conscious decisions and processes, however, we can regulate our innate biological tendencies to focus on the negative or positive. 

Our perspective and view of the world ultimately shapes how we interact with it. If you feel the world is a hostile place and that everyone around you is motivated by their own self-interest, you will begin to take the same perspective. On the other hand, if you believe most human beings are altruistic and get fulfillment from helping others, you will perceive your interactions differently.

This can perhaps best be illustrated by thinking about the many instances we encounter in day where we are trying to discern a person's intent or motivation. This can be especially difficult if it comes in a form of communication where tone and other cues are absent - email.  

When you receive an email with a comment or request you project onto it your own belief about what the person intended to communicate. It is critical, then, to try to "read" the message from multiple perspectives and not assume that it was written with either ill intent or effusive praise. 

When we are faced with fear and uncertainty, I think it is even more important to keep our perspective and not spiral into a negative state. Indeed anxiety and stress heighten our negativity bias. A tendency to engage in cognitive reappraisal, or changing the way one thinks about potentially emotion-eliciting events, can mitigate these effects, however. 

Another concept that comes to mind when thinking about perspective is the impact a growth versus fixed mindset can have on our willingness to learn and develop. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck coined these terms and her and her colleagues have researched how growth and fixed mindsets impact us. Those with a growth mindset believe that, with effort, perseverance and drive, they can develop their natural qualities and "improve". In contrast, those with a fixed mindset believe talent and abilities are fixed/innate and, thus, less likely to expend effort to try to enhance their skillsets. 

A similar concept is that of locus of control. Locus of control describes the degree to which individuals perceive that outcomes result from their own behaviors (internal locus of control), or from forces that are external to themselves (external locus of control).  

​We could all do better by developing a growth mindset and internal locus of control as we navigate a complex world. 

In an increasingly polarized and atomized United States and world, considering other's perspectives becomes a critical skill in short supply. It takes more cognitive resources and effort to consider other perspectives and ideas. This contemplation requires us to slow down and not rush to judgement. The process also requires decoupling our perception of a person's intentions from that individual's actual intent. As we've discussed, it is easy to fall into negative assumptions or construct narratives of ill-intent or maliciousness. While those assumptions could be true, starting from a negative space is rarely productive or effective. 

I choose to carefully reframe my perceptions of interactions before responding. To take a measured approach and understand the other party's position and viewpoint. While this takes time and effort, changing our default perceptions and habits can lead us to a more productive relationship with others and the world. 

Related Items from the Blog:

• Wanting, Liking, and Dopamine's Role in Addiction
• To Be Rather Than to Seem

​
Further Reading:

• Brain health consequences of digital technology use
• ​The impact of the digital revolution on human brain and behavior: Where do we stand?
• Where do desires come from? Positivity offset and negativity bias predict implicit attitude toward temptations
• Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion (PDF)
• The psychological and neurobiological bases of dispositional negativity (PDF)
• Propensity to reappraise promotes resilience to stress-induced negativity bias (PDF)

 

• The Impulse Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification (book)
• Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab at UNC Chapel Hill (led by Barbara Fredrickson, who developed the Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions)

Life Advice, Professional Development, Personal Perspective

I have a lot of ties to the state of North Carolina. My mother was born and raised there, both my parents met at college there, I received my Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, and ultimately took my first job after my postdoc in North Carolina (at NC State University). 

I have always found North Carolina's state motto - ​Esse quam videri: To Be Rather Than To Seem - to be quite inspiring. I also think this motto is a good way for us to think about navigating our current (often online) world where it is relatively easy to seem a certain way but much harder to be real and present in the physical world. Furthermore, being involves - at least to come extent - action and doing versus projecting "action" through online signaling and seeming engaged​. 

Furthermore, in an age where it is easy to post one's opinions and thoughts online, to critique and pile-on, and to signal authority without real expertise, we as consumers and distributors of information must work to be rather than to seem...to be critical consumers of content and to work hard to be honest and effective communicators of information. None of this is easy...being in the real world, with all its messiness, never is. However, only in being action oriented can change happen both in our lives and in society writ large.   

In a world with many systemic issues (climate change, inequality, discrimination), we must work to be change agents rather than to seem concerned and virtue signal without taking real action. 

It is quite easy to be a critic, to point out the flaws in systems, institutions, and other's arguments. It is more difficult to be the change that is needed through involvement and engagement.

​I firmly believe most systems can only be changed from within as knowledge of a current system helps inform how it could be improved...and the barriers to this improvement.  

Systemic Issues in the Higher Education Workforce

​Recently, many have pointed out the flaws in the United States' higher education system, specifically how the system is broken and exploits contingent labor (adjunct faculty, postdoctoral scholars) and graduate students.
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While these points are well-founded and certainly providing living wages to graduate students and postdocs is critical, what would change look like in the current system? That is a post for another time (but see my Reimagining the Postdoctoral Experience opinion piece written earlier this year for some thoughts) but what I do want to say here is that without being embedded in a system, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to understand the various factors that have led to a current state of affairs and the barriers to change. One can only be pragmatic through carefully assessing the limitations others within a system face when making change. In the example of academic labor, recently the University of California System's postdoctoral scholars reached a tentative agreement for higher salaries and other benefits but it is currently unclear who will pay for this. If the institutions push the additional cost of supporting a postdoc on faculty research grants, this will necessitate research cuts in other areas. And if there are less funds available to support research efforts in these groups, couldn't that have a negative impact on the postdocs involved in the research? So, while this seems like a positive development, it has not necessarily changed the various systems and institutions associated with the academic research enterprise. Although this is still a developing story, it seems one approach the University of California System could take is shifting the burden of covering the increased postdoc compensation package onto faculty supervisors who are already burdened with funding their work under the current system. 
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​Change is challenging and multi-layered...when you solve one issue you introduce others. 

Let's take a step back from higher education and academia, with its own unique issues, and look more generally at societal challenges around seeming vs being and reflect on the need to change current incentive structures that undermine human flourishing for many. 

In this modern age we need...

To be...real.

Crypto and $ Trust...
The recent news of the collapse of FTX and reports that the company leveraged its self-created digital token to shore up its finances seems at first unbelievable. How is such a thing even possible? One can create a digital "asset" out of nothing and assign it value? Well, yes. This is essentially what cryptocurrencies are - digital assets that have value because a group of people believe they have value. While the cryptocurrency bitcoin can point to the fact that it has scarcity on its side (ie, mathematically, only so many bitcoin can be "mined" and produced), many other digital assets have no constraints. 

​And while certainly all fiat currency is based on belief in a system (ie, government issuing it), there are often security measures in place to ensure the currency is protected and maintains a stable form of value (see the US Federal Reserve System and FDIC insurance as examples in the United States). 

This is not the case with cryptocurrency. So, why did it gain so much popularity over the last few years? Mostly through rampant speculation but also it centered around a story many wanted to believe - that decentralized financial systems represent the future. And why that narrative may prove right over time, the largest flaw in this system is that while it points to the fact that it does not rely on trust in governments to keep currencies afloat, it does still involve trust in individuals to believe the currency has value. Money is ultimately a human trust exercise centered in belief with little tangible "realness" to any of it. Though trust may be stronger in some assets than others, especially at the current moment.

Ultimately, I think many recent cryptocurrencies exploded in value and popularity the past few years because they seemed like a great concept and way to speculatively grow one's assets without offering anything of real value. The collapse of FTX is yet another lesson in being critical and discerning in one's investments and not blindly buying into hype and groupthink. 

Signaling Status...
The rise of social media over the past 10-15 years powered by a smart phone in virtually everyone's pocket led to rise in individuals signaling "success" or satisfaction on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. An outside observer would be left to believe that nearly everyone on these platforms had amazing lives but, as we know, social media posts are really curations of one's daily/weekly "highlights" and not really what one's life actually looks like. New platforms have emerged to try to foster more "realness" on social media - see BeReal - but the fact remains that most people want to project a version of success and contentment to others. 

As such, spending too much time on these social media platforms can produce unwarranted envy, depression, and other mental health issues in adolescent and adult consumers who weigh their current lives as deficient compared to what they see online. 

To be...present.

The proliferation of modern, on-demand media and the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic moved programs and events online have resulted in many individuals not engaging in "real time" with content and programming. This trend leads to a lack of community building and reduces social and community ties. I see it first hand in the work I do offering career and professional development workshops to graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. 

It is so easy to sign up for workshops or events and then either not attend and wait for a link to a recording or resource or to "attend" but not really be present - the dreaded Zoom event where everyone but the presenter has their cameras off. While certainly some of these workshops are focused on information transmission which one may argue does not necessarily require "engagement", there is the hope individuals use the time to ask questions and engage not only with me but with each other. 

Why is this important? Well, it is easy in our online world to feel alone while being virtually connected. Making space for individuals to engage with one another around topics like career exploration, having difficult conversations, the job search, etc....allows attendees to see they are not alone in their struggles and self-doubt. It is easy to think you alone are experiencing challenges and setbacks if you don't interact with other human beings for real and make space for authentic conversations.  

If when one felt down or uncertain all one did was Google terms for "help", one would unfortunately often be presented with results that would suggest there is a clear way forward by following steps 1-X as outlined by expert BLAHBLAH. Sure, that advice could be helpful but reading cold insights online detaches you from the personal nature of the many challenges we face as human beings. The information shared might work for the individual sharing it given their unique situation but might not work for you.

Finding communities of support to engage with authentically is critical. And technology can help make these connections. In the end, though, you need to connect with others on a more personal level to have them open up about their own struggles, doubts, and experiences. Ultimately, these individuals may also be able to offer more personalized advice by engaging with you one-on-one (informational interviews). Most people want to be helpful but first they have to get to know you and trust you.

To be...involved.

Involvement in institutions has dropped precipitously in the US over the past few decades. The 2020 book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam brought an issue that had been simmering for years to the forefront. Social capital and involvement in civic institutions in the US has plummeted and the pandemic only made this worse. 

Getting involved in a group or organization helps bring meaning to our lives. Human beings need community and belonging to thrive. This can look different for each of us but the benefit of involving yourself in organizations or groups whose causes you care about provide an opportunity to meet and interact with others and the ability to bring change to the world in areas important to you. 

To be...the change.

Speaking about change is quite different than driving forward change. The later is difficult and filled with challenges. Real, structural change involves work. Ironically, though, it is often by overcoming large obstacles and challenges with instituting change that we feel the most fulfilled. Making change when it is hard means we have overcome something and fought for what we believe in even if there was a chance that change would not come. In fact, change might not come from your efforts initially but perhaps you spark conversations and reflection within organizations that eventually lead to change. These changes may not even occur in our lifetime. While this sounds deflating, humanity's evolution can sometimes be an incremental process. Changes can result from small beginnings in the past. 

I think of scientific advances as a good illustration of this concept of effects sometimes not being realized in real time. Scientific theories and ideas often cannot be implemented until other breakthroughs occur that make the technology needed to execute them cost effective and/or there is collective need to implement the science to respond to global challenges. The science that ultimately led to mRNA vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 (corona) virus was developed over 30+ years, though it took a global pandemic for it to be fully realized as a tool to swiftly and efficiently create vaccines targeted to the specific genetic fingerprint of a virus.  

To be...content.

Learning to be truly content is difficult. It is not the natural state of human beings and especially not the case in cultures that strongly value growth and progress over nearly anything else (ie, Neoliberal capitalism). 

You could also rephrase this as being present. Too often in modern society we are either super focused on the next task, item, or goal or we ruminate on past choices and decisions that can't be changed. Living in the present moment is challenging but is also the most actionable course to take. You control your present in many regards while your past is, well, past and the future is unpredictable and, frankly, unknowable. 

To be...vulnerable. 

The not so dirty secret of being "real" and authentic is that it makes one vulnerable. Similarly, being involved, present, and invested in change and the betterment of systems means you are bound to encounter obstacles and setbacks. In short, "being" involves the potential of failure. We must acknowledge this fact and try our best, despite our human nature, to embrace it. ​

To be...optimistic about the future.

In summary, while it is easy to stay in your comfort zone and seem engaged, involved, and like you have it all together it is much harder to be involved in the real world and a change agent...to push for progress despite setbacks and face the potential that your hard work might not have an immediate impact. 

​Certainly there are challenges we face in our current world and it can be easy to get stuck in the mindset that structural challenges and barriers are too large for us to overcome. This can lead to paralysis and detachment...in fact we are seeing it in the data. Americans' confidence in major institutions are near all-time lows (measured since 1973), according to Gallup.   

Percentage of Americans reporting great deal or quite a lot of confidence in:

• Congress: 7%
• Television news: 11%
• Big business: 14%
• U.S. Supreme Court: 25%
• Large technology companies: 26%
• Banks: 27%
• Public schools: 28%

The average confidence in major US institutions reached an all time low of 27% in 2022. For comparison, average confidence was 36% in 2020 and 43% in 2004. So, in 18 years we saw a confidence decline of ~37%. 

A new survey, conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association, tells a story of a stressed nation facing uncertainty about the future. From their report: 

A majority of adults (62%) disagreed with the statement, “our children are going to inherit a better world than we did,” and 63% disagreed with the statement, “I feel our country is on the path to being stronger than ever.”

More than three-quarters of adults (76%) said that the future of our nation is a significant source of stress in their lives, while 68% said this is the lowest point in our nation’s history that they can remember. 

Certainly the data don't point to a rosy picture but, as I have been saying, perception (seeming) is sometimes different than reality (being). There is also data showing that, objectively, many aspects of the human experience have improved as a result of technological innovations over the past century and even the past few decades. Steven Pinker's book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, illustrates clearly that technology and innovation have made many citizens of the world better off. 

As the graph above shows, in 1950 approximately 63% of the global population lived in extreme poverty. That percentage in 2015 was ~10%....a massive decline. United States Census Bureau data also show a historical decline in poverty from the mid 20th Century to now. The poverty rate in the US in 1959 hovered at 22% and was down to ~12% in 2021. And while certainly inequality is on the rise, the US and the world are arguably wealthier and healthier than we have ever been.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenges (opioid crisis) we have encountered over the past decade or so only highlight the amazing power of science and technology. In less than 12 months we went from sequencing the coronavirus to APPROVING mRNA vaccines for distribution in the US. A remarkable scientific achievement. Just as easily, however, scientific advances can produce powerful, highly addictive opiate medications that can destroy the lives of many who find the modern world unbearable. 

What all these finding show are that humans have the capacity for innovation and adaptation...that we can push forward technology and change (both societal and environmental) with the power to create or destroy.

​It is in our mindset and perception of the world, however, where we choose what path to take: a hopeful future where change happens for the better or a pessimistic view of humanity torn asunder by its own envy, discontent, and detachment. One requires action and individuals stepping up to be the change they want to see in the world...the other is, frankly, easier on the individual - let entropy and chaos reign.

​Will you stand by and feel disempowered and disengaged or find ways to contribute in tangible, real ways to the lives of others? 

To be is to do...

Being implies doing. A recent article in The Atlantic by the fantastic writer Derek Thompson illustrates nicely that while innovation and advancement are nice in and other themselves, it is in their implementation that they truly impact society. A focus on action is critical to making the world a better place. Furthermore, this action has to take place in the real, physical world with all its messiness and limitations. Practicality must be considered and various stakeholders engaged to drive forward lasting change. 

This is because for a society to really change and advance it has to see the value in the change. It has to be bought into the notion that, on balance, the benefits of change outweigh the risks.

Doing requites putting oneself out there in the world, literally, and connecting and working with others to accomplish shared goals. 

To close, I hope you find ways in 2023 to engage more with the "real" world, with others, and with your real self...to be rather than to seem. 

For Further Reading
From the Blog

• Why You Should Get Involved In Things Outside the Lab/Work
• Cultivate Serendipity by Giving Back and Getting Involved
• Find Your Passion? Finding Meaning and Purpose in Your Work and Life

Online reads

• Why the Age of American Progress Ended
• What Happens When Americans Don’t Trust Institutions?

Books

• The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life
• Better Together: Restoring the American Community
• Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
• The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

​Human beings are by nature risk averse. The field of behavioral economics has demonstrated unequivocally that loss aversion is a real and powerful force. Specifically, we have a loss aversion bias where we tend to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. When the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky presented this and other findings in their 1979 paper on Prospect Theory they challenged established dogma that human beings are rational economic agents. 

To summarize the loss aversion thesis: Losses Loom Larger Than Gains  
An equivalent loss is subjectively perceived as “worse” than the same amount of gain. 

Our aversion to loss makes sense in an evolutionary context as the loss of resources could be severely detrimental for survival. However, there can be severe repercussions to a bias of avoiding loss over seeking gains: we sometimes don’t take the chances we should. 

Kahneman and Tversky also found in their prospect theory research that people tend to over-weight both low and high probabilities and under-weight medium probabilities. We often perceive events with relatively low probabilities as more likely to occur than they are. So, any risk that is non-zero is perceived as risky, even when, objectively, risk probabilities vary quite a bit from the extreme ends of a distribution when compared to an intermediate level of risk. 

Combining human loss aversion with our over-weighting of low probability events, one can imagine that when the potential for loss intersects with an event with a <100% probability of success, human decision making becomes even more warped relative to what would be expected in a purely mathematically-based, objective world. Rationally, pursuing an opportunity with a 5% chance or failure is far better than if the chance of failure was 25%. Both are relatively low probabilities but the 25% failure rate is 5 TIMES that of the 5% rate. However, most people will perceive a 5% failure rate as HIGHER than it actually is. 

Taken together, then, potential losses that occur at relatively low probabilities are perceived as more likely to occur and, thus, avoided at a higher frequency than one would expect “objectively”.  

​What does all of this have to do with one’s pursuit of a career? 

Well, we can all get very comfortable with the status quo and what we “know”, often at the expense of venturing out and exposing ourselves to new experiences. This is especially true if there is a risk of “failure” or “loss” in pursuing new avenues or experiences AND even if the frequency of those losses are not high, we will perceive the risk of loss as HIGHER than it actually is. 

How this can manifest for graduate students and postdocs is that their current work and experience in an academic setting is a 100% “known” quantity (whether or not it is supportive, a good fit, or well-liked) and therefore may seem not to pose the risk of the unknown. Venturing out to even explore alternative environments can often seem relatively risky in comparison, and may feel disproportionately scary due to the element of risk introduced by the unknown. This can manifest itself in things as low stakes as attending workshops or events that are not “related” to their research/scholarship. 

​Why go out of one’s way to attend that networking event or workshop on a “transferable” skill? 
What if it is uncomfortable? 
What if I am made to do something I am not familiar with or that challenges my sense of self-worth? 

Growth involves pushing oneself beyond what you know or feel comfortable with. However, in many ways technology and the readily available amount of online information can lead one to think less risks are needed to map a path forward in your career. It is important to realize, though, that some of the most useful information and insights related to career progression cannot be found online but instead through human conversation, connection, and experiential learning - which may involve some level of risk or vulnerability. 

There will always be some uncertainty when pursuing something new. And given both graduate school and postdoctoral training are finite periods that will end…you will be pursuing something new when your time as a graduate student or postdoc is over.

So, how might one de-risk the next step in your career? How would you know you are pursuing an appropriate path? There is no substitute for doing the job…you can’t fully know what it is like to be in a role until you are in it. However, there are a few steps you can take to begin understanding what roles might be right for you and thus “de-risk” your career choice.

Perhaps one of the most difficult risks we encounter as humans is putting our faith in others. And our fear of the unknown gets ramped up another notch when it requires us to engage with programs and people completely new to us. However, it is critical to engage in broad communities. There is also data showing that “weak ties” are critical in one’s job search.

A very practical place to start when seeking connections and career conversations is via informational interviews with individuals working in areas you are interested in learning more about. The University of Pennsylvania Career Services team has a superb guide to informational interviewing for graduate students and postdocs and you can also find a great guide available through ImaginePhD (create a FREE account to access this and other ImaginePhD resources).  Informational interviews can also be helpful for your faculty job search. I encourage graduate students and postdocs to begin their search for potential individuals for informational interviews through LinkedIn, leveraging their amazingly powerful Alumni Tool in particular. These conversations will be immensely helpful as you learn more about potential roles and get a sense of how you might make a career transition. 

​A step beyond conversations with professionals though, is to experience what it is like to work in a particular role or on a relevant professional task first-hand through experiential learning. You can also engage in experiences to build transferable, “work” skills through volunteer and leadership efforts at your institution, in your community, or via professional societies. While not traditionally labeled as experiential learning, these volunteer experiences can also be extremely valuable on a variety of levels - fostering belonging, building teamwork and leadership skills, and providing a means to “give back” and help others.   

Formal experiential learning involves applying concepts through active experiences to better understand the applications of one’s skills and knowledge to real-world problems. In addition, one’s self-reflection of the experience and how it aligns with one’s interests and values is crucial in helping inform future career choices.

Experiential learning can range from job simulations to internships and everything in between.

• Job Simulations
  • These prebuilt “simulations” are created by professionals to walk others through typical tasks/deliverables and give them a sense of the types of projects and work performed in certain professions. They are a great way to experience a “day in the life” and reflect on whether you could see yourself performing these tasks as part of a future career.
  • Explore InterSECT Job Simulations
• Job Shadowing
  • This relatively informal process involves spending a day or two with a professional to see what their work looks like. You might be able to leverage informational interviews into future job shadowing opportunities. 
  • Industry "site visits" provide a more high-level overview of an employer but also serve a similar function of allowing students and postdocs to experience an employer first-hand. See this publication for an example of one site visit model implemented in North Carolina's Research Triangle Region.  
• Internships
  • The most immersive of the options listed here often involves spending typically 8-12 weeks embedded in a work environment. While some graduate programs offer formal internship opportunities, not all do. 
  • Even if your institution does not have a mechanism to support internship programs, the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s INTERN Program provides supplemental funds for graduate students supported on NSF research grants to pursue up to six months of an internship experience in a non-academic setting. 

​Some of these experiential learning options require risk and uncertainty. Thus, starting with informational interviews to narrow your scope before pursuing more immersive experiences is a good idea. What I think you will learn after giving the process time is that the more you talk with and learn from others, the more information you will have on a potential career. As you delve further into understanding day-to-day activities and processes through job simulations and shadowing and potentially via internships, the more confident you will feel in pursuing a certain career path. You will de-risk taking the next step through these information gathering and immersive experiences. The ultimate goal is to be fairly confident that the next step you take is the right one for you right now. 

The right now is important to remember as our professional goals and needs will change over time. In most cases, the next job you undertake after graduate school or your postdoc will not be your last. You may eventually need to explore different professional paths. But, having gone through the process once, hopefully you will find it a little less uncertain and daunting the next time around. 

​To close, try not to be scared of the unknown, the unpredictable, the uncertain. Realize that in uncertainty often lies unexpected opportunity and discovery. For example, when I was a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt, I (reluctantly) took on a leadership role in our local postdoctoral association that seemed risky for me at the time - I was/am introverted and didn’t see myself as leadership material. I went from treasurer of our postdoc association one year to vice president the next to a professional working in postdoctoral affairs and serving on the National Postdoctoral Association’s Board of Directors a few years later. I built confidence in my leadership skills through each successive experience. If you had asked me as a postdoc if I would have expected to be here professionally seven years later, my answer would have surely been no. But, circumstances pushed me to step outside my comfort zone and ultimately I found a career path where I felt I could make a difference in higher education. Life is unpredictable and career paths are windy but one has to be willing to venture down new avenues of experience and exploration to gain a better understanding of what pathways may be out there for you. 

There is a big, wide world out there…bigger than any of us can fully appreciate. If only we are willing to step outside our comfort zones and take some risks. Being strategic, however, in how you approach the unknown, specifically seeking out opportunities for informational interviews and experiential or volunteer-based learning, can de-risk your situation quite a bit. However, at some point you will have to take the leap. Hopefully, though, you can do that with a bit more confidence and conviction, leveraging the resources and advice you learn along your career exploration journey. Like many, it took a lot for me to take the leap into a profession outside what I “knew.” Hopefully, though, the resources and methods shared here can help make that leap feel a little less risky for you.

Personal Perspective, Future of Work, Innovation

The rapid globalization and integration of the economy, including the power of technology to make work performed and done anywhere more accessible have resulted in our 21st Century societies finding themselves at a potentially critical moment in humanity's millennia-long story. 

Our world has shrunk considerably over the past 50 to 75 years. The end of World War II saw with it the birth of a more integrated global economy with capitalism gaining influence as communism waned into the early 1990s. The emergence of China from the 1990s to 2020s also reflects the triumph of global capitalism, albeit state-sponsored capitalism.

​As with any change in how society is structured, there were groups that benefited massively from this shift to a globalized, capitalist (neoliberal) world and those who didn't. One of the main results of this shift was many goods became cheaper to produce and consumer prices, at least in the United States, remained low for decades. 

For nearly 40 years, the average percentage change in consumer prices in the United States barely crossed 5%. In fact, median "inflation" (ie, yearly change in consumer prices) was 2.8% from 1983 to 2021 (we are a far cry from those levels in 2022, though). Compare this to the growth of capital and investment returns over the same time period. The median rate of yearly return for the S&P 500 (a basket of the 500 largest US-based corporations) from the same period, 1983 to 2021 was 12.8%. While this is not perhaps the most elegant economic analysis, I think it demonstrates how much relative value in capital was produced relative to costs passed on to consumers...nearly 10% more per year. 

Clearly, the returns to capital relative to the costs born by consumers was the result of companies trading more expensive labor for cheaper means of production. For a time, this bargain seemed "good" for many...prices were kept (arguably) artificially low through low-cost labor. Many workers in more economically developed countries didn't see this shift in economic structure as a problem as it benefited many of their pocketbooks either via high rates of return on capital and/or lower cost goods. Some individuals, especially those working in manufacturing sectors in the United States, Europe, Japan, and other developed countries saw opportunities shrink in favor of increased outsourcing of their work to China or, at least in the past few decades, automation. 

For a time, a global, capitalist, and neoliberal economy seemed to produce more overall prosperity than what came before it. Millions were lifted out of poverty and provided jobs that allowed them to live a life of greater convenience and security. The emergence of China's middle class was the growth engine of the global economy for the past 20-plus years. In a cruel twist of fate, however, the continual pursuit of maximum profit, minimal cost, and "optimization" of a global, capitalist economy may end up resulting in an overall more impoverished world. Globalization produced ever more competition amongst labor markets and the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated that a complex, global supply chain only works when all its requisite components and inputs are allowed to flow across borders and oceans.  

Competition drives innovation. The market forces that have dominated western economies in the neoliberal area allowed corporations and organizations with more innovative products to increase their profits. In sum, the lives of those using these products also became better. However, those groups that could not innovate and adapt died, resulting in layoffs and loss of entire sectors of our economy. The destructive nature of capitalism is fundamental to its success. There must be winners and losers. 

A bigger philosophical question facing the United States in particular as we approach the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century is whether we will allow the innovative and destructive forces of capitalism to continue to affect our citizens' personal health and wellbeing. Deaths of despair (from suicide and drug overdoses) have risen in the United States over the past 15-20 years despite our overall gross domestic product (GDP) per capita continuing to rise relative to other developed economies. 

The juxtaposition of income inequality and high poverty rates in the US along with overall greater economic growth and productivity of our economy as a whole illustrates that our current form of "US-led, global capitalism" results in big winners and losers. 
​
Some illustrative data from McKinsey's Rethinking the Future of American Capitalism report drive home the point: 

• American firms rank among the most widely known and the most profitable globally: in economic profit, they make up 38 percent of the top 10. 
• In the United States, just 6 percent of counties account for two-thirds of GDP output.

​In addition, a variety of data available from inequality.org, sourced from OECD statistics and the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report highlight the enormous share of wealth concentration in the United States relative to other developed countries.

In exchange for our dynamic and growing "economy" (ie, corporate profits) in the US do so many have to be left behind?
​
What is the ideal balance between creative destruction, economic progress/reinvention, and the stability of our society? When should workers be protected at the potential expense of consumers? Will work as we know it be a thing in the future? And if not, is more time for leisure and creative pursuits for all a good thing? Will humanity fill the free time of a technology-laden future making the world better or worse?  

These are thorny questions and ultimately how things transpire is unpredictable but that does not mean we don't have some agency in shaping the future we want to see. ​

We have constructed a society in the United States where so much of the social safety net has been removed that we may ultimately become less innovative as a society. Who can afford to take the risk of starting a small business or company when they lack affordable access to health insurance or reasonable childcare costs? There is data supporting the notion that innovation is lower in more unequal societies. ​

Innovation also threatens many people's sense of value and contribution to society. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more capable at replacing work traditionally performed by humans, even white-collar work, many are left asking how they can contribute to society. The decline in American's confidence in institutions leads one to wonder whether individuals will feel the need to engage with larger societal structures in the future or choose to escape to some version of the metaverse (a la Ready Player One). 

Clearly, this is a time of immense change and uncertainty.
Will we become a less globalized and interconnected world, retreating inwards as societies and people?
Will the speed of automation and change result in many being left behind economically in the new world order?
​Will inequality continue to increase with potentially explosive societal consequences? 

A fundamental set of questions arises: Is our system broken? Can it be reformed? Must it be re-envisioned? Do we have the collective and political will to make real change?

The current structures of our society add further complexity to addressing the problems we face. What is "right" is not always what is popular making it difficult for a democratic country to push forward with changes that may be difficult in the short-term but lead to long-term positive impact. While pursuing my Ph.D. in neurobiology from UNC Chapel Hill, I looked at delay discounting behavior...the tendency for people and animals to discount the future. The future is "worth" less than the present partially because at an individual level the future is uncertain. You may not make it to the future and so why delay consumption now? The YOLO ("you only live once") choices of many young adults reflects the underlying basic instinct of all living things to prioritize the NOW over the LATER. It is in our nature to do this.  

In large part, I think our politicians and leaders have failed to articulate a truly promising view of the future and America's place in it. Rather, "othering" and blaming certain groups is used for political gain while real solutions go undiscussed and our two-party system fosters division and extremism. We have the potential to move closer to being a true melting pot of culture and ideas, welcoming immigrants from across the world who seek to better their futures and our country as a whole by leveraging American Capitalism and the innovative ecosystems it can foster.

​If we don't find a way to strike the right balance between growth at any cost and compassion for all people within our society, though, we could lay the seeds for the destruction of the future we all want to see. 

More from the blog:

• The End of Work as We Know It: How an Increasingly Automated World Will Change Everything
• The Challenges of Being an International Researcher: Implications for Advanced Degree Labor Markets
  • Part 1
  • Part 2​

For Further Reading:

• What exactly is neoliberalism?
• Book: Capital in the Twenty-First Century
  • See also the documentary on the topic
• Rethinking the future of American capitalism (from McKinsey)
• Inequality: A persisting challenge and its implications (from McKinsey)
• The social contract in the 21st century: Outcomes so far for workers, consumers, and savers in advanced economies (from McKinsey)
• Book: The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations
• Book: US vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism
• Book: Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters
  • More on this concept from one of the book's authors, Anthea Roberts on her personal website
  • Who wins and who loses from globalization? There are (at least) six answers (excerpt from the Book)
  • The Corporate Power Narrative: How Corporations Benefit from Economic Globalization (excerpt from the Book)
• Book: Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism 
• America's crisis of despair: A federal task force for economic recovery and societal well-being
• Book: Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy 
• Relevant political reads from The Atlantic:
  • ​How the U.K. Became One of the Poorest Countries in Western Europe
    • ​A cautionary tale?
  • The Wreckage of Neoliberalism
    • The postwar neoliberal economic project is nearing its end. The question is who will write the last chapter, the Democrats or the totalitarians?

Sites Worth Exploring:

• INEQUALITY.ORG (United States and global data)
• realtimeinequality.org (United States data)

Last week was National Postdoc Appreciation Week, an annual event organized by the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) to raise awareness for the work postdocs do and encourage the institutions they work at to show their appreciation. 

As someone who was a postdoctoral scholar and now works as an administrator to support postdocs, I know the value they provide to their institutions. However, many people - including those working at our institutions - either don't understand what a postdoc is or the impact they make through their research, mentorship, and teaching efforts.

The NPA has launched a whole campaign to try to better articulate that while postdocs perform important research and scholarship, they are also human beings like anyone else - mothers, fathers, leaders, volunteers, immigrants, and innovators. If you are a postdoc, I encourage you to share your story as part of the What's a Postdoc? initiative. 

The definition of a postdoctoral scholar (postdoc) by the NPA reads:
"An individual who has received a doctoral degree (or equivalent) and is engaged in a temporary and defined period of mentored advanced training to enhance professional skills and research independence needed to pursue his or her chosen career path."

The major task associated with postdoctoral scholars is helping lead and drive forward research and scholarly work at their institutions. And these institutions can range from universities and academic medical centers to national or government labs and corporations. My experience lies in supporting postdocs at universities which is what I will touch on in the rest of this piece. However, there is important emerging research that pursuing postdocs outside academic institutions does not necessarily preclude one from pursuing a faculty career. Perhaps a topic for a future post.  

​I ran climate surveys on our postdoctoral population at North Carolina State University in 2020 and 2021 as well as at Virginia Tech in 2022. In these surveys we asked how postdocs spend their time and the distribution of their work devoted to the tasks below were remarkably consistent across survey years and institutions.  

As you can see in the figure above, postdocs spend a nearly equivalent amount of their time performing research or scholarship related to their personal interests/goals and those of their supervisor(s) and that these efforts take up ~60% of their total work hours each week. It is great to see postdocs are working on their "own" research/scholarship efforts as a key point of the postdoctoral position is to develop as an independent researcher and scholar.

​Writing takes up another large portion of postdocs' time (~16%) with manuscript writing being the largest area of focus outside research/scholarship. Finally, mentoring junior colleagues (7%) and teaching (6%) were tasks most postdocs reported doing as part of their roles, although there was large variation in the distribution of effort on these tasks based on the disciplinary background of the postdoc. 

Clearly, then, postdocs do report focusing largely on research/scholarship but are also doing work beyond that, including mentoring others. There is data to emphasize that postdocs play a critical role in the development of research skills in Ph.D. students working in their groups. The authors of the PNAS study that investigated postdoc mentoring of graduate students discussed a "cascading mentorship model" where faculty supervisors' mentoring of postdocs allows for postdocs to then mentor their more junior colleagues. So, postdocs are both mentoring and are being mentored. 

Given many postdocs also seek to move into future careers where they will need to mentor others, increasing the development of effective mentoring skills in this population is critical. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's report and online guide on the Science of Effective Mentoring in STEMM is a great place to start. 

Many readers may wonder what is the purpose of a postdoc? How is it different from graduate school? These are good questions. Traditionally, a postdoctoral position was seen as a type of apprenticeship where aspiring faculty members (especially in the sciences and engineering fields) would be mentored by a more senior faculty member as they worked to develop the various skills (experimental design, analysis, manuscript and grant writing, people and project management, etc...) needed to become an "independent researcher". To achieve a faculty position at many research-intensive institutions a postdoctoral position is becoming essential. And data demonstrate that completing a postdoc improves scholarly productivity and positively contributes to securing a tenure-track faculty appointment. However, one can have too much postdoctoral training and experience diminishing returns from extended postdoc positions. 

Many postdocs do not ultimately land faculty positions and move on to a variety of careers, post-postdoc. Additionally, while postdocs are at their institutions, they contribute importantly in a variety of ways from mentoring students (as discussed previously) to teaching and assisting in the management of their research groups. Perhaps their most important contribution to their institutions, however, is driving research and innovation forward. 

Innovative programs that promote start-up company creation led by postdocs are gaining steam including those at Cornell University's main campus and Cornell Tech in New York City; University of Memphis; University of Washington in Seattle; Carnegie Mellon University; Duke University's Department of Biomedical Engineering; and now Virginia Tech. Postdocs are uniquely situated to help lead the commercialization efforts of new technologies emerging out of university research groups. It will be exciting to see in the years to come how these programs perform in allowing postdocs to spearhead the creation of start-up companies from universities' intellectual property. ​

While many anecdotes and assumptions exist suggesting postdocs are critical drivers of research and innovation at their institutions, I have found surprisingly little analysis of this topic. 

So, I set out to do a crude analysis myself. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) publishes a wealth of information on research expenditures and snapshots of the graduate student and postdoctoral scholar population at institutions across the United States. Specifically for this analysis, I leveraged data from the Fall 2020 NSF Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (most recent data available) and NSF Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey data from fiscal year 2020 (released in December 2021 and the most recent data available). So, we will be comparing research expenditures from the HERD Survey (both overall and federally-funded) to postdoctorate and graduate student population size in 2020. 

Caveats: NSF data on population counts are self-reported and institutions are left to determine the best process for counting their graduate student and postdoc population. Postdoc population counts can be quite variable (see this blog post from Gary McDowell for more on that). 
In addition, I removed three institutional data points as they vastly skewed the postdoc data in particular: Johns Hopkins (1,723 postdocs in 2020), Harvard (5,787 postdocs), and Stanford (2,446 postdocs) all had postdoc populations >2.5 standard deviations of the mean postdoc count of all reporting institutions in 2020 (mean postdoc count: 260, Std Dev: 520). In addition, Johns Hopkins research expenditures are nearly double that of the next largest institution (University of Michigan), making its data an outlier on both metrics - postdoc counts and research expenditures. With those outliers removed we are left with 200 institutions who reported postdoc counts in 2020. 

Let's look at the correlation between the number of postdocs at an institution and its overall research expenditures in 2020.

An R-squared value of 0.81 demonstrates a very strong correlation between the number of postdocs at an institution and its overall research expenditures in a given year. The R-squared value between postdoc counts and federally-funded research expenditures was 0.75. As a reminder correlation does not equal causation but clearly there is a strong association between research expenditures and number of postdocs at an institution. 

Plotting the same 200 institution's fulltime Ph.D. student populations against research expenditures we see a strong but weaker correlation. 

The R-squared value between number of Ph.D. students and federally-funded research expenditures was 0.59.
​
The trendline equations for the relationships plotted above can be used to "measure" how research expenditures associate with either the number of postdocs or Ph.D. students.
​REMINDER: This is an overly simplistic interpretation of the data as there are many factors we aren't looking at here but for sake of argument, let's run the math.

For the postdoc vs research expenditure trendline: y=1038.4x + 81898
Where x=postdoc number & y=research expenditure (in $1000).
If x=1; y=82,936.4
So, based on these overly simplified (and not to be taken literally) data, 1 postdoc equates to $82,936,400 in research expenditures & 1,000 postdocs to $1,120,298,000 or $1.12 billion in research expenditures. 

If we do the same math for Ph.D. students, 1 Ph.D. student equates to $48,629,790 in research expenditures & 1,000 Ph.D. students to $331,137,000 or $330 million in research expenditures. 

So, while this is a very crude analysis, hopefully it emphasizes the very strong relationship between postdocs and research "output" (ie, expenditures of funds on research) at institutions AND that this relationship is stronger than for Ph.D. students who also lead research will making progress towards their degree. 

While research expenditures are perhaps not the best metrics of "output" from postdocs or Ph.D. students, it is available data we have. Long term, we must do a better job of understanding the impact of graduate students and postdocs on not only research/scholarship and innovation but the teaching and outreach mission of many of institutions.

​I discussed the need to better measure the impact of postdocs in a prior blog post from 2020 and there is still much to do in that regard. 

Postdoctoral scholars do a lot. Clearly they play a large role in research output at their institutions but are also critical mentors for many working in research groups and universities and other academically-focused research organizations.

While it is difficult to fully capture the impact postdocs make, those of us who work in this space know it is large and often underappreciated. We must do better to measure and report on postdoc impact moving forward. Why? Because if institutions don't find a better way to understand postdoc impact, they will not invest in supporting them. This in turn, will make the postdoc path less desirable. In fact, that is already happening, with many faculty reporting difficulties in recruiting postdocs. Granted, some institutions - St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the Van Andel Institute in particular - are working hard to increase compensation for their postdocs but systemic barriers (grant budgets, organizational classification of postdocs as non-employees, etc...) make it challenging for compensation and benefits to be increased for many postdocs. Add these challenges to the opportunity cost in pursuing a postdoc and one should not be surprised to see Ph.D.s pursuing different paths post-degree.

It is my belief that we must think of creative ways to reimagine the postdoc experience to make it a more holistic training experience that sets those who pursue it up for success. The innovation postdoc fellowship programs I mentioned earlier are one example but I think a variety of creative solutions could be proposed. To begin with, though, we must all do better in collecting and reporting on data that allows us to advocate for postdocs and the critical roles they play at our institutions and beyond.

For Further Reading
From the Blog

• ​Measuring Postdoc Impact​
• Reimagining the Postdoc Experience
• Factors That Affect Career Choice and Diversity in Science
• Ph.D. Recipients' Employment Trends: Insights from National Science Foundation (NSF) Data
• Ph.D. Employment Trends: Insights from NSF Survey of Doctorate Recipients 

Papers and Programs of Potential Interest
United States National Postdoc Survey results and the interaction of gender, career choice and mentor impact

Career choices of underrepresented and female postdocs in the biomedical sciences

Surveying the experience of postdocs in the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

​A startup postdoc program as a channel for university technology transfer: the case of the Runway Startup Postdoc Program at the Jacobs Technion–Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech

​Postdocs to Innovators program (consortium of European universities and partners)

Virginia Tech Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship Program