How (not) to get a job in geology, part 2

I never saw myself as a university lecturer, and in a few weeks' time, I won't have to any more.

The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown all sorts of things into chaos. My departure from academia this summer is not one of them: all the paperwork has long been signed off. However, it has shone a few new kinds of light on the situation, made me even more certain it is the right thing to do, and finally pushed me into writing the second part of my geological careers advice post. It isn't quite the post I was going to write at the end of last year.

Blackboard that says 'Careers' (Wikimedia Commons)

I mentioned at the end of my last post that impostor syndrome is something that has dogged me throughout my academic career. I highlighted my hidden shallows on here more than a decade ago, and yet my geological university life rumbled on, from Aberdeen to Newfoundland to Durham to York and finally Hull.

Only in the last few weeks have I gotten my head round it. I have finally accepted what I have long known: the reason I have always felt like an academic impostor is because I always have been. I cannot be happy and successful in higher education, as the education skills I have do not match what university management regard as valuable.

I have no interest whatsoever in writing grant applications. They are phenomenally time-wasting and almost certain to be unsuccessful. I have little interest in writing research papers either, because I'm told constantly they have to be 'high-impact' but have no idea what that actually means. I'm a palaeontologist working mostly on Palaeozoic Problematica and burrowing worms. How high-impact can my work ever be? Perhaps most crucially, though writing is one of the things I love the most, I find paper-writing really boring.

It's been quite curious taking part in the current Research Excellence Framework (despite being contractually ineligible to be submitted to it) as I've learned that some of my research work is regarded as quite good. I learned also that most of my colleagues have written very good research papers, but that the capability and time to actually assess the research properly is pretty limited. The whole REF process is staggeringly time-wasting and generates only questionable results (hmm, much like my scientific career, perhaps).

If you don't show yourself to be REF-able, then universities demand that you be TEF-able instead. And if REF is bullshit, the Teaching Excellence Framework is an entire bovine sewage processing plant. Assessing the excellence of teaching in higher education is a not-unreasonable ambition, but TEF assesses only how many students at an institution complete their degrees, how happy its final-year students are, and how big its graduate salaries are; none of which are even an indirect measurement of teaching excellence.

So I don't care for REF, and I can't stand TEF, and I have no interest in trying to climb the muddle-management ladder to facultative associate deanery or pro-vice-chancelloridity, and the higher education model is presently one which seems capable only of measuring success in that manner. So yes, I am an impostor.

I would like to clarify at this juncture that I am EXTREMELY pro-chancelloriids (Wikimedia Commons)

Maybe 30 years ago I would have been fine, but whilst UK universities still need people like me, who enjoy teaching and admissions and outreach and collegiality, they do not actively want them, or want to reward them. It has taken me a very long time to stop sitting on the nail and sobbing quietly, hoping it will somehow get better. When my university announced its eagerness to pay its staff to exit voluntarily, I said yes please, and - even now the rest of 2020 is smothered in uncertainties - I am delighted I did.

I could now spend the next few hundred words critiquing my experiences of working at the universities of Aberdeen, Newfoundland, Durham, York and Hull, how I got each job, and what my experience at each place was really like, but I doubt it'll help anyone much. Aberdeen is a vastly grander city than I had ever thought, and I met and worked with so many wonderful people. I'm really glad I moved there. Newfoundland is an even more extraordinary place, where everyone should spend time if they get the chance, and where I was inordinately lucky to work with a scientist of the calibre of Duncan McIlroy (along with a load more wonderful people). I also met some great people at Durham, most of whom have now left, and working in the Centre for Lifelong Learning at York really helped improve my teaching.

But I will save the best - Hull - till last.

Geology Hull is the greatest Earth Science team I have ever had the pleasure of working in. A group stacked with smart, dynamic, supportive, creative minds: gender-balanced, student-friendly, research-brilliant yet teaching-centred. We have built something of truly exceptional quality in a really short time, and no longer being part of that is the one thing that has made me question whether leaving academia is the right decision.

But it is, and I am. Having caused all my remaining lectures, practicals and fieldtrips to be cancelled, the Coronafucker has now ensured that I am pretty much certain not to see any of our student groups again before I leave, which is very sad, as Hull students have been among the very best and most rewarding to work with. I keep my fingers crossed that a summer staff social might still be possible, but right now, in the apocalyptic first year of the reign of Johnson the Shit, who knows?

The real problems of this country (Wikimedia Commons)

So, what happens to me next? I guess you could watch this space, but I don't blog very often, so it'd be enormously dull. Instead, keep an eye on Hidden Horizons, GeoEd Ltd, and the Yorkshire Fossil Festival over the coming months and years. If you're in any way interested in the geology and palaeontology of Yorkshire, nay the world, I have a lot of very exciting things lined up...