The middle years of my life and career: balancing two experiments at once
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After reflecting on how the mid-career and midlife stages interact, Yu Tao developed several habits that he practises as a mid-career researcher.Credit: Benjamin Smith
One afternoon in November last year, two e-mails landed in my inbox minutes apart. The first was from my son’s school, reminding parents that the transition to secondary education would begin in a few months — a date that suddenly felt shockingly close. The second was from an academic programme that I had long admired, announcing its call for visiting fellowships. I opened the e-mail with excitement, only to find a line in the eligibility criteria saying that applicants must have received their PhD less than ten years ago.
The two e-mails made me realize that at the same time as my 11-year-old child was entering secondary school, I was officially ageing out of ‘early career’ status. Somehow, the timing of parenthood and my career had synchronized, and I found myself stepping into unfamiliar territory on both fronts.
I suppose that important life events lining up in this way and my feelings about the situation are hardly unique. The mid-career and midlife stages often unfold in parallel. Both arrive after years of hard work. Progress in this career stage is no longer measured by fresh beginnings but by the steady effort to keep advancing many things, such as projects, people and hopes.
For me, this shift became apparent around the same time as I received those two e-mails. I was juggling a new teaching responsibility, a junior colleague’s request for mentoring and a grant deadline while also trying to be fully present for childcare in the evenings. None of those demands felt optional to me. My tendency to say yes quickly, take pride in being reliable and meet every expectation with a can-do attitude — which I had once treated as a strength — now needed recalibrating or I would struggle to cope with these competing demands.
Collection: Resources for mid-career scientists