As of lately, I have been having many conversations with current graduate students, predominantly Latinas, who are out there exploring their career options. I am grateful that you all choose me as one of your many guides and for having the courage to actively explore what you want to do with your life after your graduate studies. I am so proud of you all! <3 I think one thing we are often not taught in graduate school is how to purposely explore how we should use our PhDs post studies. I know the goal is to get people to stay in academia, but the reality is that there are not enough positions in academia for every single person getting a PhD to land an academic position. So it is critical that we learn the skills, processes, and, have the experiences that will help not only land a job post PhD, but land a position that puts you on a path towards becoming the best version of yourself. What do I mean by all this? Well, your career should capitalize ON and vibe with your strengths, passions, and the broader vision that you have for your whole life. Your next question now may be well…. How do I figure out how my career aligns with who I am and who I want to be, and the simple answer to this question is listen to how you feel and what makes sense and what doesn’t. I am going to break it down for you all. Okay… let’s dive in! Learn about your passion. Think about and picture how excited you were about the amazing big dreams you had when you started your PhD. I think once we are in graduate school we become jaded and often lose sight of that passion that brought us to graduate school in first place. For many, these passions may still stand and continue to be the reason why you want your PhD and how you want to use it. Other times… you may not be sure if your dreams and goals make sense and that’s okay. I was that student… I started wanting to be a professor to advise other young Latinas like myself, but slowly I realized that being a professor was more than training other students and I wasn’t sure if that aligned with who I was. And you want to know how I discovered that this path was not for me, by listening to my heart and the signs my body was giving me. When I started to ask myself what I wanted to do with my PhD, the idea of being a professor just did not sit well with me. It did not vibe with me and even more importantly grad school (and only as a student) started to take a big toll on my physical health. I couldn’t imagine a life where I was going to feel physically ill so often by forcing myself to exist in an environment that was not vibing with me. For you, this lack of alignment could manifest through mental health challenges, feeling unhappy, or just feeling that this is not right for you. Listen to those signs because they are not manifesting for no reason. In the process of figuring out your passion, you will know what your passion is because you literally will feel like a fire is inside of you and will be that thing that keeps you going on those days that seem cloudy and gray. For me, my broader passion is using my work to help me grow as a scholar, but also so that I can give back to underserved communities, which is why my current position as an SRCD Fellow at the Office of Head Start is perfect. I get to work on projects and initiatives that are directly impacting the Head Start program which directly serves tons of Brown and Black children in the U.S. What makes your heart sing. I always like talking to other students about this one! I think one thing we are not taught is how versatile our skills as researchers are in a world that is not academia. What I mean is that you have some amazing skills as a researcher and there may be a particular sets of skills that just make you really happy. For instance, do you thrive and love working with others? Or do you enjoy working independently? Is project management your jam? Designing and creating questionnaires is your area of happiness? You love developing a new research agenda? Or you may like just answering research questions that are pressing in solving a world problem? Or better yet you love running statistical analyses and could do that all day everyday (this is totally not my jam! lol)? Maybe you love teaching and working directly with students? These are just a small list of skills out of all the amazing skills we gain in our graduate training. It is important for you to take some time and reflect on which skills speak the most to you and which ones you are the happiest conducting. Determining the skills that vibe with you are the key to determining which career is best for you. For instance, I love project management, working on teams, and enjoy answering pressing research questions versus having my own research niche, which explains why federal spaces are a good fit for me because in this space I can capitalize on what makes my heart sing. So ask yourself these questions and be real with yourself. Discover the vision of your dream life. This is another one that can be easily overshadowed by graduate school. Once we become adults other adults like to constantly remind us that we are not allowed to dream big anymore. FALSE. This a major lie, you are always allowed to DREAM BIG and you should keep dreaming BIG! Spend some time literally day dreaming or writing about your dream career and life. Think about where you wanna live, how you want to spend your time in your career, your free time, whether you see yourself partnered or not, whether kids are in the picture or not, who you want to serve, how you want to give back to the community, etc. Literally imagine all the things that would make you the happiest. I also include the non-career parts of your life into your vision because believe it or not that also matters for your career and your well-being. For instance, I always knew I wanted to meet a man that I could spend the rest of my life and build a beautiful life with and who would be my biggest cheerleader of my career achievements. I met this man during graduate school and if I were too focused only on my career goals I would have not allowed myself to also fulfill this beautiful goal of mine. I am now married to Daniel, my husband, who wholeheartedly supports me personally and professionally. Meeting him and being in a long distance relationship for most of grad school honestly helped me learn to take more risks and aspire for more than I could imagine which translated to how I pushed myself professionally. Reflect on all the rewarding experiences you’ve already had. For this one, I think you need to update your CV and resume at least once a semester. Yes, I included a resume. I think having a CV is great and you have to have one while you are in academia, but what a resume does is help you talk about specific experiences and skills you have gained. I think it is a valuable skill to learn early on, especially if you are considering a non-academic career. If you do not know where to start with creating a resume just do a quick search online on how to create a resume, I am also happy to share past examples of resumes that I had in graduate school so you get an idea of how to put it together. Doing this regularly not only helps you stay up to date for whenever you are applying for internships, jobs, but helps you consistently practice how to communicate all the amazing skills and experiences you have had and what you could potentially contribute to the world. Seek experiences that will help learn and grow. Oftentimes, your passions or desires will not be fulfilled by the work you do in grad school and that is perfectly fine. But do not sit around and expect excitement to happen. Make it happen! If you are interested in keeping your passion alive and you cannot keep it alive with only your graduate experiences, look for ways to ignite it. For instance, I recently spoke with a student who was really passionate about community work. Like you could tell that working and giving back to the Latinx community is what sets her soul on fire! And I told her to connect with local organizations and volunteer maybe a few hours a week or attend their events to keep that fire alive as well as build relationships with folks that she could collaborate with in the future. She was so excited at this idea and had not thought about it. And she probably did not think about it because yes, grad school is stressful and takes up a lot of time but if your passion is really your passion you will pursue and prioritize it over projects or aspects of your grad work that may not align with your goals. If you are curious or in the process of learning more about your passion the best advice I can give you is to seek a new experience that helps you learn something about yourself like an internship, or like above volunteering a few hours with an organization, or finding a new project because these experiences will not only show you what aligns with your passion, but will help you grow your skill set along the way. And most importantly you are growing as a human being which I think is the most important experience you could have during grad school. Now you may be asking yourself, how do I connect with organizations or internships? Start sending those emails. Do not be afraid of rejection because yes some doors may be slammed in your face or not even opened at all, but by trying all the different doors at least one will open. I'll talk more about risk taking in the next section. Do not be afraid to take risks. Yes, my favorite! I love talking about risk taking because I think in grad school we become so afraid of failure because we feel that we always have to have on this front of success ALL THE TIME. And that should not be the case which is why I have become so transparent about sharing my experiences especially my failures. The failures were probably the most VALUABLE experiences than my successes because the failures taught some important lessons I needed to learn before I attained the goals I was going after. The other day on instagram I saw a post that said “people are out there reaching their goals, not because they are more qualified than you but because they are willing to take the risk and put themselves out there!” I couldn’t agree any more, you have to be willing to take risks to see how far you can go. And YES that means you are GOING TO FAIL and THAT IS OKAY. Failing is part of the process and as I mentioned probably the most valuable part if you do not allow the imposter syndrome consume you. You always have to remember that your successes and failures do not define who you are, what defines you as a person is how you treat others and give back to the world! The successes and failures are the yin and yang of life that help move you closer and closer to our ultimatest dreams by giving us the affirmations or lessons we need to have to get closer to achieving our dreams. I want you to remember that next time you are applying for a fellowship, an internship, an experience, or job. Do not get caught up in whether you are the BEST candidate, get caught up in how you COULD BE what they are looking for and you won’t know until you try. Take risks every day in the skills, projects, steps, research, and reflections that you go through, always aim to learn and grow. I hope this post is a useful starting place for everyone going through the grad school life crisis of figuring out your passion or how to use your PhD in this big world. Stay tuned I am also working on a resource guide for all those particularly interested in pursuing or exploring a non-academic career! I want to remind you all how proud I am of each and every one of you! I know you are out there doing great things that you do not give yourself credit for. I love you all so much and look forward to making academia and the world of PhDs better for everyone. As always if I can be of service, you know where to find me. I am so proud of you. You are a badass. Shine your light brighter. The world needs you! Lorena |
AuthorDr. Lorena Aceves unapologetically telling you the real deal about being brown in an academic world, but deciding she is going to be her authentic self and make her wildest dreams come true en esta vida! Archives
November 2022
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