The idea of giving advice and why taking them sometimes is a bad idea

 


On the picture above I am in my early twenties. The picture was taken around two years before I decided to pursuit my dream to become a historian. Becoming a historian was never easy choice, due to that I lived in a society where the humanities were often seen as useless and leading to unemployment. Eventually I however took the step, finished a one year masters and a couple of years later I was admitted into a PhD-programe at Malmö university. During my PhD I was basically constantly stressed about the future and many PhD-students was prone to believe in doomsday, that after you finished your PhD it was basically game-over. For me, that did not happened. I got research grants before I was done with my PhD and after 1,5 years as a scholarship-based post-doc I got a temporarily job at Linneaus university, were I am currently a senior lecture even though I probably have a long time ahead before gaining tenure. 

What I, however, have come to learn during this journey is two things. The first thing is that you can't plan a career in academia, rather it is something you have to work for and be open to the doors that eventually will open for you, because they will. Another thing I have learned is that taking advice from people is often generally not a very good idea, since people only can give advice on what worked for them. Life, whetever or not it is in academia, do however takes different routes depending on your point of origins, your goal and what you do to achieve those goals. 

A couple of months ago I started hanging on threads, a substitute for X. What I came to learn is that there is a large amount of PhD:s out there that tries to formulate general rules or similar to follow. Often these rules are based on their own life experiences and quite self-aggrandising. In other worlds: they are pure bull-shit. Here are is the only advice I can give:

Time in the market beats timing the market. 

Lots of people is going to say that they found that great position on the first try. When you talk to them it however becomes evident that they often have failed multiple times on their different tries. For instance: it is in Sweden highly competetive to get a PhD-position. I myself had to apply four times before eventually landing a position, even though I throughout these recruitments always among the top five candidates out of 20-30 people. What I did was consistancy and re-working my project until I got accepted. A similar thing is with positions whetever they are post-doc, senior lecturer or assistant professors. What you always see, and what people like to talk about, is the times they got the job or funding. Behind all that is however most often several tries and glorious failures. 

Thankfully the tendencies towards giving this sort of advice seems to be limited to a few scholars on threads, but they do however get a large amount of re-posting. If you are young person thinking of applying my main advice is: apply, apply and apply. Fail, fail again, fail better and ultimatly suceed. If you are PhD-candidate reading this and is worried about the future: dare to try. Things in life often turns out good, but not always the way you think. And lastly. do not feel pressure by advice. Find your own route. 

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