How did you know you wanted to leave academia? | Cell Mentor

Leaving academia is not easy. Though it may seem necessary, it can often feel impossible.

But researchers do it every day. At Cell Press, all our editors come from academia, so they've all faced down the leap from academia and thrived on the other side. In this Cell Mentor video, Brian Plosky, Elena Porro, Jessica Miles, and Mishtu Dey look back on that career-changing decision and the factors that helped spur the change. May their words help give you the inspiration to make your own career transition.

Cell Mentor—a new online resource from Cell Press and Cell Signaling Technology—empowers early-career researchers with career insights, publishing advice, and techniques on experimental processes and procedures. Now it’s even easier to tap into the knowledge and experience of experts who’ve walked in your shoes.

For more advice on how to Get Inspired, Get Technical, Get Published, and Get Hired, visit https://www.cellmentor.com/

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Brian Plosky, Editor-in-Chief, Molecular Cell

Looking ahead at what the path for me in academia could've been, turning from doing my own experiments to launching my own lab to starting to write grants and getting into research administration and making sure my lab was running smoothly, I thought, over time, I would spend less and less time actually being in the lab. And so, I thought, what are other kinds of careers where I can stay close to science but not have to run the lab? And not have to fight for grant dollars? That started me thinking about editing.
Elena Porro, Director of Strategic Initiatives, Cell Press

When I was working in the lab, I was always frustrated with focusing on one question. I wanted to know everything about everything. It was clear to me pretty early. I was a technician for 6 years, and when I was deciding whether I wanted to go to graduate school, I already knew I didn't want to run a lab.

So, I was looking for things I could do with my passion for science. My thesis advisor actually suggested that I'd make a good editor, so I started looking for positions, applying for them, and interviewing for them. Through that process, I learned a lot about it, and I liked the idea more and more.
Jessica Miles, Trends Publisher, Cell Press

I knew fairly early that I was more of a generalist than a specialist. I really enjoyed going to talks outside my area of study, and the idea of studying one thing for the next 15, 20, 30 years didn't have as much appeal. I started looking for potential things that would be really broad in terms of really interacting with a lot of different types of science while still maintaining that proximity to what was going on in the research.
Matt Pavlovich, Editor, Trends in Biotechnology

I think it's actually a pretty common story among editors. Toward the end of my graduate degree and into my postdoc, I think I realized that the part of science I liked best was presenting, writing, and reading. I loved those days when you could just go to the coffee shop, open your laptop, and design a poster or work on your article.

Not everyone feels that way. Some people like doing the bench work, some people like doing the experiments and the grant writing, but I pretty quickly realized that wasn't the part of science that was in it for me.
Mishtu Dey, Editor, Cell Chemical Biology and Structure

I really never thought I'd leave academia. I had a faculty position, I was in a large public university in the midwest, I really enjoyed teaching and interacting with students, I had a decent-sized research group. However, it was just fit that really mattered to me.

One fine day, I received this email saying, "Are you interested in a publishing position?" Without much detail, but [it asked], "Are you interested and available?" It was definitely a tough decision, but I was certainly never happy, and I didn't feel like my position as a faculty member was rewarding.

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