 Hi everyone, thank you for joining today's webinar, careers outside of academia. We have four panelists joining us today who will give their insight into how they made the transition from an academic science-based career into a non-academic career. There's just a few things that I would like to bring to your attention before we start. So firstly, this webinar was partially organised through the Working Group on Careers, Jobs and Funding, which is a group of early career scientists that EGU are sort of co-organising with to be able to provide more information and skills and representation for non-academic science paths. And so this is the first webinar that we are doing as part of this. If you want some more information on the Working Groups or for any early career science information, then take a look at the EGU website. So with that, I will now introduce the panelists and well, I ask them to introduce themselves really to the webinar today. So I will start with Dr. Liam Branigan, welcome. You are a senior data scientist at a start-up company in Belfast. Yep, thanks Jenny. Yeah, so my name is Liam Branigan. I did my PhD in physical oceanography in Oxford, followed by a postdoc between Oxford and the Oceanography Centre in Southampton, and then a further two-year postdoc at the Meteorology Institute in Stockholm. At that point, I felt like I wanted a bit more life stability rather than facing another not-be-sure postdoc and fellowship applications and faculty applications. So I got in touch with a recruiter in Belfast, and then I was astonished at the pace that things move outside the academic world, that I sent my CV in a Saturday, I had an interview on the Tuesday, another interview on the Tuesday and the Thursday, and a job offer on that same day that I started two weeks later. So I've been the first data scientist at academic extensions, and the work has been super diverse in the two years that I've been there. For example, this year I've been building a search engine for investigative journalists, doing geospatial analysis of air pollution dispersion, looking at computer vision analysis of videos taking up the seafloor, looking at analysis of DNA sequences and so on and so on. At times it's felt like you're starting a new postdoc every three or four weeks and you've just got to frantically get up with what literature you can get and get on GitHub and get the new code. So that's, and then this year I was made senior data scientist, so it's been a great transition for me that we started a family sort of two year and a half ago, two years ago, and it's given a really nice kind of change in work-life balance and it's also just been a really kind of interesting and fast-paced change that has been built on the skills that I learned in my PhD. Okay, thank you. That's great. Now I'll introduce Carly Mattis. She is a researcher in schools physics teacher in Greater Manchester and her PhD was in the atmospheric field. Hello, so yeah, thanks Jenny. I'm Carly and as Jenny says, I am currently a teacher but with researchers in schools. I started off with a PhD in meteorology at Reading University and while there I was engaged in lots of student outreach, lots of activities and I was really enjoying getting the kids engaged in science and I started to enjoy that towards the end a little bit more than my PhD, I'm not going to lie. So I started to look for teaching jobs that I could potentially do and I stumbled across because there's Teach First and there's other routes into teaching if you want to go straight into the classroom, but I stumbled across researchers in schools. I'll just give you a little bit of information on those. So they are a charity part of the brilliant club funded by the government to get people with PhDs into schools to try and improve student education and access to higher education in the UK. Just some stats, one in four students from a highly, from an advantage background go to highly selective universities in the UK, but only one in 50 from a disadvantage background to get picked. So part of the brilliant club and researchers in schools is to try and up those numbers. So that's based in a deprived area of Manchester. At a school that has a lot of challenges to try and get those kids to see that they can go to university and they can apply to these highly selective universities. What also I found interesting about the researchers in schools program is that you in school four days a week, learn in your first year, getting your QTS, learning how to teach, which a lot of it comes natural if you've done demonstrate and then things like that doing your PhD, it's quite easy to adapt. But then the other day, the fifth day of the week, you are for the first two years, you can continue to do your research and you're paid to do that. So it's a nice, if you're not sure whether teachings for you. It's a nice stepping stone. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to, even though I wasn't enjoying my PhD at the end. I just want to see the back of it. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to leave research behind fully. So it was nice to be able to do one day a week doing my research. This year I'm now in my third year of teaching. I have since parked my own research and I was in meteorology and I've actually started to do some educational research, looking at how we learn and how we can engage with our students more. So I've gone more the other way. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Now I'd like to introduce Ashley Massam, who is a process architect at JBA Risk Management. Ashley. Hi, I am a process architect at JBA Risk Management. Like Jenny just said, JBA Risk Management is the global leader in flood risk science. So, for example, we were the first to make global flood maps available commercially and science is always at the heart of what JBA Risk Management does, just making things available commercially for industries such as insurance, reinsurance and financial sectors. A process architect, I'll give it like a sort of explanation of that because it's a bit of a difficult term to get your head around sometimes. A process architect is essentially a person who assesses a process or methodology and designs a leaner, more efficient template for that process without affecting the quality output. The process architect then oversees that template development into broad scale production. So, for example, at JBA, I lead the development of templates that aim to redesign our current processes required to use on our hydraulic model. And sometimes it requires redesign, sometimes it requires inventing completely new processes. So, over the last year, I've worked on templates that cover how we can create and quality check inputs more uniformly, playing with boundary conditions on a hydraulic model to look at how we fundamentally predict flooding, and also managing and steering the development of an automated system as well. My PhD was in ice core science. I was developing a numerical model to estimate the age depth profile of ice cores. So my background has always been encoding numerical modeling and software development, and that has lent itself quite well to the process architect role, as well as also using some of the skills that you learn from a geography degree as well. Okay, that's great. Thank you, Ashley. And finally we have Dr Robin Andrews, who is a freelance science journalist with a background in volcanology. Hey, so yeah, I always wanted to study something about volcanoes ever since a video game, when I was 10 convinced me that death mountain was a real volcano and I could go see it and, you know, there was lava pouring in from the walls and everything was kind of crazy and obviously, that's not how volcanoes work, but it basically put me on the path to wanting to study volcanoes and that's what I've stubbornly wanted to do. It's got a weird thing to do in the UK for a lot of people I think because my loads of teachers are asking me like, well, you know, there aren't any volcanoes in the UK, which is kind of the point. And eventually I did go on to do my PhD. It was at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and I looked at what was in experimental volcanology, which meant building weird experiments with explosives in a lab or in the desert or, you know, disused bunkers to work out why certain volcanoes just kind of explode like bombs underground. Don't know, still don't know, but it was fun. But I really, I, during the PhD it became very clear that academia was not for me for a few reasons. One of which was just the fact that I felt like I had no control over where I was going to live for a decade, which I loved travelling, but that was, that seems, you know, that seems quite lonely existence for me. So I, and other than that I was quite impatient, you know, I much prefer telling people who weren't scientists about what was going on in science rather than spending years and years on one problem. So I transitioned to science journalism quite quickly actually I didn't really do anything in between I kind of whilst doing the PhD was distracted by a few friends of mine and doing like blog posts for certain websites and I had to go for a bit and quite liked it. So, when I graduated my PhD I for a year basically was back in the UK trying to work out how it held to get into this properly and after a bit of freelancing I ended up working for a news outlet for a while that it was that was great in some ways and just terrible and others. And a couple of years ago I decided to go freelance. I had no idea if it would work on a financial professional level I just felt like I just have to give it a go whilst I could. And it turns out it does work if you're quite resistant and, you know, I guess if you're not terrible writing about things like volcanoes and yet now right for anywhere that will basically let me write about weird rocks doing weird things so anything for volcanoes and earthquakes to entire planets sometimes stars doesn't really count. And right now I'm writing a popular science book on on volcanoes, which, hopefully is a bit of a sort of PR corrective because most people see volcanoes as sort of, you know, rocky terrorists who just explode and kill people whenever they feel like it was actually most of a volcano is awesome and cool and great and tell us a lot about the planets they belong to and that's kind of the point of the book. So, so yeah, it's great fun and I'm certainly glad that I did take those risks to get me to that point rather than just decide that academia was what I was supposed to do. Okay, thank you. Thanks so much for those introductions. Very broad variety of backgrounds and also current roles that everybody is in now. And I think I'll start the discussion by bringing up something that one or two of you kind of touched on in your introduction. And that was what are the skills that you learned during your PhD that you think has either made your job perfect for you or a relatively easy education, or what are these transferable skills that we hear quite a lot of. And how do you think that from your PhD, you learn these skills that people might not be aware of if they just see themselves as a researcher. So we'll start with with Liam, do you have any, any input for that. So soft skills definitely how to present technical stuff is a big part of what I do. The kind of mode the other parties in terms of the hard skills was that I started using Twitter and looking at data science Twitter, and realize that there are people in companies doing kind of software engineering processes which would make my science better. So I started getting involved in open source software and that's kind of one recommendation that would make the people is that if you get involved in open source software, you'll learn how to be a much better software engineer and do better scientific analysis. And then you'd also learn a lot of more like industry kind of skills by getting involved in those processes in terms of using version control in terms of doing testing and more kind of rigorous, not just one scientist hacking away. So that was a kind of a big plus for me when I came from my interview that the company afterwards told me that they saw that I've been involved in that kind of thing and it gave me a sense that I wasn't just a classic kind of like I've been doing my PhD scientific hacker who's just bashing away kind of terrible code but had kind of developed some skills that would actually make that transition a lot easier. Okay, great. And actually you also said something quite similar to that in terms of software and having a background in sort of modeling. How did you find the transition with these sorts of skills. I would absolutely agree with Liam, actually. So my background from my PhD, like I really considered myself like a modeler and quite good at coding but yeah when I started in the like private sector, one thing that I realized was that version control and open source software, being able to handle Git repositories and also like rigorous testing like unit and system test systems, they were completely over my head when I first started. So you do really actually become a much better software engineer by working as part of I guess part of a team and a team of software developers is one massive bonus. I was thinking in terms of like soft skills that you developed during a PhD that transfer really well into the non-academic, like a non-academic role. When I was going for a job, quite often I got like one of the questions that I would get in the interview is how are you at prioritizing things. And I remember at the time feeling like, like still being quite academic in my thinking, just being like how do I answer that, like that's obvious. Like of course I can prioritize stuff, but you don't realize actually like through a PhD, like three or four or however many years of a huge project, which is also part of another huge project with other people working on different elements. You automatically learn how to prioritize and triage tasks and work to so many different deadlines that actually that works in your favor massively when you get into a non-academic role because they really care about knowing that you can do that. And I think also like critical thinking as well is a massive one. It's like that sort of open term of what is critical thinking, but being able to challenge somebody else's idea in a meeting and being able to really, yeah, put forward your own opinion. It's something that is also really valued when you join a, I guess join a company as a PhD. Okay, great. Thank you. Then with Robin and Carly, I guess your roles seem more communication based. You have to be very good at communicating either to the public or to children. So Carly, you mentioned that you'd picked up some of that from doing outreach during your PhD. What sort of specific skills were you thinking of? Yeah, so when I was doing outreach or even demonstrating I suppose to an extent, although university students are very different to children. Just the skills like having the confidence to stand in front of them, it's very different to stand in front of academics, to stand in front of children, no matter the age. I personally couldn't work with primary this gaming, but secondary are quite challenging and so doing outreach with secondary built up that confidence to have conversations with them and how to communicate with them. I think as well my PhD helped because as soon as I've been doing lots of CPD for my school and because I've because I'm used to reading journal articles for my PhD. That's followed on into teaching so I'm constantly reading articles to improve my teaching and I'm taking them back into school. So my school aren't used to it because they've never done research based teaching before, which is a big change for our school. But they're enjoying it and I'm enjoying learning new techniques. So again, it's something it's transferable and papers you can read papers in any profession I'm guessing and bring that in and bring changes and things like that. Okay, yeah, great. Thank you. And Robin, I will ask you a similar question but we already have a question for you on the Q&A that kind of ties in with this with this question. Did you have to learn the writing skill, were you already quite talented in terms of writing for a public audience, or is that something that you have had to develop? I definitely had to learn as I went. My writing now is, I still feel like I'm making others go along but I feel like it's a lot better now than it was when I started. It wasn't too long ago, but it was a lot of practice. I had to kind of unlearn the way that scientific papers are written and that really kind of intentionally kind of, I guess, dry away where you have to kind of just really state things and try not to, you know, I remember my supervisor kept telling me after using too much flowery language and things and I'm thinking maybe I'm not as best suited to writing scientific papers. But yeah, I had to learn as I went along. I mean, the thing that comes from the PhD stuff is that I find super valuable is that kind of scientific background. So having a background in vulcanology means that people kind of automatically trust you to know what you're talking about or writing about quicker, which means that you can kind of get interviews set up quicker and get certain stories quicker or get in with certain editors quicker and it helps me recognize what's good science and what's just bullshit. It also helps you recognize uncertainty is a massive thing and communicating uncertainty to the public as is really clear at the moment is so difficult no matter what field you're doing in but, you know, that applies to things like, you know, volcanoes and earthquakes and stuff too, as well as a pandemic so that was really helpful. So yeah, I mean the writing bit actually kind of I had to learn as I went along, the same with just how to do journalism, like I you know just random terms or how you start a thing and each publication has a different style. So even though they want your voice to be kept they basically require you to set things out in a different way and I just learn on the fly. The science was stuff that really kind of stuck with me from early on and I would always say to people if they're interested in doing science journalism, even though having a background in journalism is great, you know if you're qualified as a writer that's great. But if you want to have a niche in science having a science background really prepares you for reporting on stuff even before you've got the writing stuff to get out you kind of learn that as you go I'd say, but I'd always say prioritized that kind of thing so the writing stuff seems kind of esoteric and like how do you start writing it and you basically the answer is you just have to start and practice and when editor say hey that's pretty good you should work up why they said that and then built from it's kind of, it's a lot of improvisation, I have to say for that writing there. Okay, great, thank you well hopefully now anyone who's keen on writing something can take put pen to paper I'm sure the EGU journals would always welcome blog writing. Okay, so the next question that I'm going to ask also some of you sort of touched on but Liam, when you have experience in both postdoc and non academic work afterwards, what would you say the biggest difference in terms of the job interview when was there anything that you were not expecting in terms of your interview compared to maybe in an academic field. In terms of the interview that we, it was much more structured, it's a set of questions, and it was more about about fitting into a team than just about the academic review is are you a smart person can you just get on with things by yourself. Can you start your own research group, whereas in fact we, we have questions that are basically set up to say, if there is a dispute and your boss thinks something different, will you eventually after all discussion just do what your boss tells you, because if you're going to work in the industry, you've got some sort of hierarchy and how are you going to use collaborative collaborative tools and how are you just going to be part of it, and just a wider infrastructure rather than just kind of bashing way as a postdoc on your own. So it's, it's much more in that sense, it was big difference. Okay, thank you. And Carly when you went for the researchers in schools. What was the application process like was that quite fast or do take a while. So for researchers in schools really quick, like Liam said once you get into the real world that everything is quicker. So researchers in schools have deadlines every half term if you're a teacher. So because people finish their PhDs at different stages, so you fill in a written application, they invite you along to an interview within a week. So you come during term time because they have to see you teach. So you because you've never taught before it's only a 15 minute lesson and they give you a topic. So I was given energy, so I had to talk about different kinds of energy but you have to try and the biggest problem for me I think being an expert as I'm classed as at school is trying to turn it down for the kids. And yes, so then it was a day interview and then I found out I had the job that day. But researchers in schools what they do over the summer holidays is a two week. It's not happening today this year because it's a residential, but there's other doing it all online this year but a two week residential where you get to know all the other people who are doing researchers in schools. So you get to build a community together and it's your initial teacher training so when you start on the first of September you are straight in the classroom teaching. So it's a very quick, very quick turnaround. Okay, yeah that seems to be one of the clear differences that we're hearing so far the turnaround for interviews. And now this is a question similar but on the same sort of topic for you Robin. What was sort of the process like in going from a journalism role that was not freelance to more of freelance position. Yeah it was. It was again quite made up as I went along you know I knew I wanted to leave the company was that for a bunch of reasons but I like to say I didn't really know if it would work financially on or you know again just professionally because it's really individual people's freelance careers aren't there's no track to doing it like here's how you do this thing. But whilst I was working at my old company I started to chat to well actually the first thing I did was just say some nice things about people's work in other publications just them on Twitter, you know, through tweets or dms or whatever. And one of them took a compliment well and they said well why don't you try writing something for gizmodo. So I did and then they said that's good when you write another thing and basically it kind of snowballs from there if you show to one publication that you can write something on the subject. Eventually another publication will be like oh well if you can write for them why didn't write something for us. You have to be quite you have to put yourself out there a lot is in you have to email editors persistently like you know here's me. Here's some ideas I have for articles here's my background and why I'm qualified to talk about this. You know getting touch blah blah blah and it just takes persistent persistent emailing and I think a really the really big break for me came in. Later in later that year when Nat Geo said do you want to try writing something about this volcano. And I was super nervous, breaking it but like, if I'm thinking if I do that and it doesn't mess it up and maybe it will continue to go well from there and then a few months at the New York Times at the same thing and then it just, it just kind of again snowball from there but it. It takes doing a good few articles to some outlets and building on that success to kind of work for other outlets and basically becoming kind of like a reliable source for that kind of thing so even though right about earthquakes and plants and all kinds of things normally if there's a volcanic event somewhere in the world, I'll be asked to write about the kind of science behind it by certain organizations like that. So even though I'm a freelance and they have loads of staff writers. I'm kind of their volcano person for a lot of stuff and basically that's when I kind of realized that was the case, I felt a lot more secure and like okay maybe maybe this will work. And it yeah it does it just, if you just keep that up kind of thing. It does and once you kind of maintain that base and you kind of get that level of like, people know you as that kind of right for this thing. You can afford to that longer projects and longer things like worrying like oh my, am I going to be irrelevant is someone else going to kind of write something better than that and then it. Yeah, it's the initial stages of it basically quite chaotic and frenetic it's you know lost a lot of sleep trying to work out what the hell is going on and got some nice advice from my editors but yeah it's kind of. You do kind of feel like you're on your own a bit, you know you just recognize that once you get into another outlet. That's another success and you kind of build on that kind of thing so yeah it's. There's no one way to do it, but that's a general way I think most freelancers do it is they start somewhere that gives them a break and then if they prove themselves there, it kind of stacks up so yeah. Okay thanks well it's nice to know that you're still sort of the expert in in, even though you're not in academia where people get called experts, you're now in journalism but you have an expertise still that's there. Yeah, although half of it is telling people that Yellowstone isn't about to erupt. That's 50% of the time it's like nope. It's not yet not yet I'm tempted to say, oh wait, maybe but I don't feel that would be good for my reputation. So yeah. So actually you already mentioned a few things about about the interview process that you had. So maybe you could sort of give us a clue on how you found your job, how it was advertised or how you went about applying for it. Yeah. So when I sort of made the decision to, I guess, cross from academia to a non academic role. I, it was location that was the main driver for me location and being able to do science still. So I to find my like role as it is now. I actually, I just looked for essentially geography and consultancy businesses in a range like you know within a range that I was willing to commute. And one of them was JBA that I found. And, but once I found JBA I actually just emailed them my CV and they kept it on file. And then when they found like, they were putting jobs like they were advertising jobs. And they also would go through the sort of stockpile of CVs. And so I actually was offered the interview for my job. And whilst I was going through the interview process for my job I was also offered an interview for another job in the same company. So the interview process, mine was quite lengthier actually like from then what Carly and Liam mentioned. And I submitted my CV. And then once I was invited like to sort of go through the application process I had to complete an assessment within like a set time frame and to prove that I was sort of like capable of the job. And like the basic skills that they required. Then I was invited to attend a, like a sort of telephone interview sort of stage one. And then I was invited to essentially spend the day at the business or at the company. I was given a tour I had my main interview I had to present a sort of seminar to some people as well. And then I left sort of like a mess, like really stressed and tired from like quite an intense day. But once I had got through all of those stages, I was then offered the job within 24 hours. So they turn around is quick but the process for some consultancy companies is a bit longer. But yeah, in terms of finding the role, it's okay. So having to know what you want to do, I guess to some extent. If you have an area of science or research or writing, I guess, and teaching. If you know that that is the sort of field that you want to try and apply your science in still, then that can drive you at least most of the way to find the job that you need. But yeah, I think the market for post PhD jobs can sometimes just seem very large and overwhelming. So you do need to start kind of get whittle it down and know what, know what it's going to drive to the right place, I guess. Okay, great. Thank you. So maybe I'll also stick with you Ash for the next question. What would you say the biggest challenge has been in your career in terms of this, either the difference to your PhD or the transition to the non academic role. Okay, so I think it took me quite a while to actually build up the confidence to go from, I guess, almost like subordinate to senior colleagues to an actual, you know, same level colleague. I think when, because I went through, like all through education, university and straight into PhD, and I always had a supervisor for any, anything that I wrote or created or like researched. And I think being that, like, as a PhD you sort of assume that you're just that bottom rung of a ladder and everyone above you can tell you what to do and you're just like there to gain the experience and that's it. And once I got into, into a role where actually having a PhD puts you, like, firmly sort of, you know, shoulder to shoulder with more experienced colleagues. It was having to learn to sort of put that imposter syndrome to one side and be comfortable to put your opinion across and sit in a room where you have senior colleagues and managing director clients who you really need to impress. So I think able to say, no, I disagree with your opinion, and this is why. And so I think that was the biggest challenge, but then in a, like in the private sector and in the sort of role and the company that I joined my personal development was really is cared about and it's not just me who cares about it but the company does as well so as I said, I don't really feel comfortable with this immediately my personal development had like lots of soft skill training so like project management and courageous conversations and like just building up all of those skills I needed. And so yeah, I think. Yeah, I, I would say probably the imposter syndrome is quite a big one. Yeah. Okay. Oh, it's unfortunate to hear that imposter syndrome sticks around academia. I don't I would confidently say that I don't have it anymore. Well, that's good. That's really good. And Liam, what do you find the biggest challenge going into a non academic role after quite a few more years in the post up world. It's a change in mindset. So with my job, there's definitely a very much a research element where it's all about creating new stuff and using deep learning on text and doing doing very exciting stuff. But that's for our development process we build a product. Once we're delivering that product, then no one wants to hear about your crazy new idea that they want the product that's been contracted to be delivered on the whatever of September to be and that you've got to just then knuckle down and really focus on getting that done and if you as you're doing you could have some exciting new idea but you've got to just be able to kind of be disciplined and resist the kind of temptation and just actually sort of focus on getting the thing that it says on the piece of paper that you will deliver before anyone's lawyers get involved and everyone walks away happy and then you can come back to them six months later but you're crazy new idea as a as a next stage but not just following your instincts in the same way you're trained to be as a scientist. Okay, great thanks. I will point out some of the questions I'm asking are from the Q&A box so I am trying to get around some that's around 30 questions in there at the minute so we definitely won't have time for all of them but thank you so much we're still checking them so feel free to send them through. We are asking asking some of the questions to the panel. So the sort of similar to this Carly, you kind of have at least some aspect of academia still in your sort of day to day role on one of the days of the week. And what how do you feel now that you've you've done this research part research part non academia, where do you lie on how you feel about going back into academia or do you think you'll stay out. So where do I lie to be honest I really don't know. I love I'm a physics teacher so I love the fact that my job secure for life now. And they're only ways up and I can stay where I want to be and I'll always have a job so that's always a bonus. But because I've done the research is in school method. I was speaking to some people who did it couple years before me and they've gone back into academia after teaching for five years as like lecturers and things like that because you actually as long as you keep publishing while you do any researchers in schools teaching, then it's basically like a postdoc and you paid that more than a teacher would be paid. So you paid a postdoc salary. So it's a different kind of postdoc if you keep publishing and going to conferences and things like that. So I know some people have walked in back into academia quite easy. I'm swing more to stay in teaching I really love my job. So first time in my life I drive home and I think I love my job I used to cry after my PhD sometimes. I've never cried over teaching and you know it's just got a better work life balance for me. My biggest struggle just going back to those was the strict times being told I have to be at work for quarter past eight was a massive change for me. I was a person who some days I was quite lazy and would work from home but as long as I hit my targets and as long as everything done that week for my supervisor meeting, my supervisor didn't care you can't do that when you're not in academia not all the time, especially teaching. Even in lockdown I have lots of different meetings I have to get in and lots of deadlines which is very different to when I was doing my PhD. Okay, great. Thanks. And Robin, I guess you still have some in your in your job because of reading papers and synthesizing them. But do you also get to go to conferences or still interact a lot with the researchers. Yeah, I mean it's so the travel opportunities for a freelancer a bit different from someone on staff like someone on staff can theoretically get sent places a bit easier but because I'm local to Europe it means that I can be sent a lot of basically right for all American all the publications right for an America that I'm not entirely sure why that is I think that's just basically where the money is and where a lot of the outlets are. And if there's something happening in Europe that is relevant to what I write about they would send me to these places rather than send someone from America to these places. Obviously that's kind of complicated now during the pandemic I almost got stranded in I mean it's obviously not in Europe but though I was going to see some volcanoes in Ethiopia and I was very close to being stranded there for many months. And which would have been bad, but you, but you do get to travel the things if you can kind of justify it and if you have an editor that likes you, and likes what you do they can, they can basically promote the idea of going to, you know, see volcanoes in this place or the other. Yeah, I can go to conferences whenever I want sort of thing. Often as a journalist, you, you know, you don't have to pay to go to these conferences the entrance, the entry is free. But you some you often have to pay your travel there so it's kind of, you know, a mixed thing. Yeah, there are, there are kind of some grants you can apply for for conference travel but, you know, sometimes it's really easy, like EGU is super easy for me to get to. AGU is a lot more expensive and last year I decided not to go just because I kind of figured that as much as it'd be nice to see all these scientists and people I've written about and spoken to, I'd basically be earning the same amount as I would be paying for the airfare. So it kind of is, it's kind of like a, it's, you do get to travel but you kind of pick your battles sort of thing. And if you do like a geoscience thing and you're on an assignment and you want to write a feature on something and it's convincing enough then you get to travel to, you know, see earthquake zones and volcano and things like that. And it's kind of unpredictable. Often it's just like the Ethiopia thing came up the week before. So I didn't know that was happening and it was something like, do you want to go here and do this thing? Like, yep, and then, but then the lockdown happened. So it was a bit, a bit jarring, but these things can happen quite unpredictably. So, so you still get to go to all these things in the way that like scientists do, but I would say it's a lot more, you have to have a lot more flexibility in the way you, the way you live your life because these things can come in at weird hours at any time. You know, if you write for American publications, they can often come through really late your time. So it helps to be a night owl. But yeah, you're still welcome and scientists kind of like it when you say, hey, tell me about your research. And it's kind of nice that someone outside of academia is saying is interested in it. So you often get invited to field work that they're doing just because you want to write about their stuff. You know, whether it turns into a story or not is like at the end of the thing. So it's kind of, yeah, it's again quite unpredictable, but you kind of take opportunities. You think that's a good opportunity. I'm going to travel there to do that. You can take it and I will tell you that no, you can't do that because if you're a freelancer, you don't really have anyone say you can't do that for a story. You just do it. One thing that's changed in that respect is that I think five years ago, a few left science, you had basically left departing your friendships. So in addition, if you're on Twitter, like I follow everyone on photography, Twitter, I see all the new papers that are coming out. I see all the discussion that I feel quite linked into the community. I kind of discuss with people things that are happening. And it's not like you're just you're gone the way you would have been gone a few years ago that it's now moved into open kind of online forums in a quite a different way. So you don't have to feel like you're just depending it for the rest of your life. Yeah, I feel like I get half my stories from people chatting about that. Well, from scientists on Twitter, I know just going like, holy crap, or I didn't expect that or saying something like that. I'm just being like, that's interesting. So you don't feel like you've been exiled for sure. You just feel like you've just taken a step away from it, but you still got one foot in it in some ways. And Ashley, I think you also can still attend conferences and things through your work, right? Yeah, so this year, there were five of us who had abstracts accepted for EGU, but obviously couldn't attend in the end. And our abstracts were accepted, but our work is still in like the sort of the air science and the geosciences domain. And so we actually collaborate quite a lot with universities. The abstracts that we had accepted, they like we were lead authors, but we also had some collaborations, for example, with Bristol. And just recently, I'm currently on a paper, which is currently under review with some partners at the University of Cambridge, UCL and some research institutes in Kuala Lumpur as well. So we get to collaborate with people all around the world, and we publish papers, we attend conferences. But I think also a really interesting aspect of not just still participating in academia is as well as being able to conduct novel research of the standard in academia. We also get to apply that science in a real world context. And so as well as, you know, modeling flood, for example, and on a small location, we model it for an entire country or for the entire planet. And we can make that commercially available. So we're, we're taking the latest research or we're conducting the latest research, but we're also applying it as well, which is really cool. Okay, great. Thanks. We are slowly running out of time. We've been talking for around 40 minutes. So I think maybe I'll ask the final question for the panel and then for just any final tips they might have. So I'll start with you, Carly. What do you think is the best thing you take away from your current role now? And do you think that your work-life balance has improved because of your job? So I'll start. I'll do the work-life balance thing first. Definitely has improved. I mean, I know people say teachers get lots of holidays. We do work-throw holidays and not just 13 weeks off. But I don't work weekends anymore. I don't work evenings. I keep to my set times. So what was, sorry, what was the other bit of the question? Key tips? Was the other bit was what you think the best part of your current role is? The best part of my current role is probably, so I, because I've been in university for 11 years, I push my students a lot to take them on to trips and to make them do, just aspire to be better. I get told a lot in the area where I teach that they can't do it. They're not clever enough. You're a girl. You can't do it. The amount of people that say to me, I thought Dr Mattis was a man is appalling. And my favourite part is taking them to places like Oxford University, Cambridge, Manchester Leeds. And they love their days out. And they love, like, I remember one kid walking around Oxford just like eyes wide open and jaw drop. Do you really think I could go here? And I'm like, yeah, you're getting grade nine, so you might be in a deprived area, but you're clever enough to go here. But chances of Oxford looking at his application are very slim, which is sad, but just getting them to see the other side, I suppose, is my favourite part of the job. Okay, that's great. And Liam, you touched on the fact that you've got a family at home, and that was kind of one of your reasons for leaving. So what is your work life balance like now that you're not in academia? It's great to be honest. So normal times I do nine to five, and I drop down to 80%. And that's a genuine 80%. So during the lockdown, for example, that's when I've made the switch down to 80%. So I do an hour's less work every day, whereas I know I've got friends who are academics and they were offered the same 80% deal during the lockdown. And they were saying, you know, you're not offering me any less work, you're just offering me a pay cut here. So I don't have to work evenings. I don't have to work weekends. I go to the office every day, get my stuff done, and then I go home and take care of all the crazy matter stuff that has to be on at home. So it feels definitely a lot less workload and gives more family time compared to my friends who are doing more faculty jobs. And Ashley, when you mentioned the application process, you sort of said that you limited it by an area. So I guess the same question for you really, you know, what was your deciding factor for moving to academia and what your work life balance like? Yeah, it's great. So I made the decision. Like I wanted to basically be closer to my family, like my parents, my sister, and my grandma, and that's exactly what I did. So by the time I got to the end of university, I'd lived in Northern Ireland, I'd lived in the south of England, I'd spent time in Norway and the US and all over. And I enjoyed traveling, but I was done, essentially. And I missed out on sort of staying local and hanging out with my family. And now, well, not during lockdown. But now I do get to go home every other week. And I get to spend time with them and like, yeah, chill out with my nephew and stuff. And it's been really good. And I think in terms of work life balance. Yeah, when I finish work for the day, like, I'm done. I'm not checking my emails. I'm not picking my laptop up to finish stuff off. And like I work, like 830 till 430, because for some reason I just can't last to five, like I've just never been able to. But they're fine with that. And I work, like we have core hours as well. So we are flexible and I actually only have to be like present between 10 and three in the day. And actually any time around that I can work if I'm a morning person or an evening person, you can work around it. And it's great. Like, yeah, when you book a holiday and you put your out of office on the understanding is you're out of office. Yeah, it's wonderful. So I have a feeling that Robin, your answers to this might be a little different as you've already mentioned. Yeah, what is your life balance like out of academia? It's like, it ranges from brilliant to abysmal. I would preface that by saying I love this job so much. I regret nothing and I don't want to do anything else. I literally can't imagine anything else. However, stuff happens all the time, whether you want it to or not. And I, you know, volcanoes have erupted two days before Christmas or whilst I've been away. And I can say no, but I kind of feel impelled to write about them. And as I write for a lot of American publications, I've really weird hours. So I, so in some ways, like, if you just decide, no, this week or month, I'm going to have off, you can just do that. And no questions asked and you can, you can just, you know, bow off for a month to do whatever you want. But when you're in the, in the kind of phase of just like writing for these places, you know, they're embargo journals that are kind of releasing papers and, you know, things happening in the real world that you need to write about. You know, I've, I've been up super late, crazy hours, you know, sometimes I've, I haven't seen me until like 3pm the next day because I've been up doing edits like seven in the morning. It can be crazy, but I would say that that side of it, if you kind of like the fast, crazy pace of things, that is kind of fine because you kind of make up for it with a the freedom to kind of go, right, I'm going to stop working for a month now and just have this thing off or week or whatever. Or if you want to work, you don't have to work, you can work from anywhere you have a phone and an internet connection. So I've worked from anywhere in London to like Berlin, I've worked from the Arctic Circle bit, you know, I actually remember except the right story whilst I was standing on a frozen lake up in the Arctic, you know, you can do, you can do work from anywhere, you can do anything, you know, you can anywhere can be your office and it is kind of thrilling to just be that flexible and unable to accept work or not if you get to a position where you are lucky enough to do that. But yeah, it can be like, if you like a regular, if you're particularly a morning person in the UK and all right for American places or if you like a really regular like nine to five thing really, I would not recommend like going into journalism of any kind because it really suits those who are able to be a lot more flexible and kind of kind of impulsive really in a way where you have to decide, you know, suddenly there's a thing in the news and you think, if I don't pitch this in 10 minutes someone else is going to get to work first, they have to make really quick decisions. But I'd say that the rewards are easily worth it is absolutely thrilling to be able to write stories for these amazing places and you know you can you can control what you do for your work, more than anything really if you're if you're kind of a freelance journalist in that way. But yeah there are points where you're, you can't really remember the last time you slept or had coffee or anything you know it's it can be a bit I'll say that roller coaster is worth it for that kind of thing but it's a personal choice. Thank you. Okay, just to wrap up then we will maybe just take your absolute top tip that you can give to people who are unsure if they want to leave academia and make that jump to nonacademic so I'll start with Robin what is your top tip. Oh, my top tip is you have to be you have to be persistent and know that lots of people have imposter syndrome so I don't know I still have it to very agree sometimes it doesn't exist and sometimes it suddenly appears. And I'll say that most journalists, I know, apart from a few psychopaths are have some degree of like how are they letting me still do this. And basically if you feel like you have no real kind of like how do I get how could I get started I don't know how to do this. You just have to start and most journalists really lovely and most editors are really lovely, even though they're obviously crazy busy. You just have to kind of get started and just give try out and be persistent you know it took. It took like 20 emails to the, the, the one of my editors to essentially give me a chance to be like okay okay okay or give you a chance you know, and then they were like hey great this works and and it does, you know, they generally quite supportive you know that and I'd say that like that persistence like don't matter how don't worry about how doubt that doubtful you feel about your own abilities and stuff just give it a go and if an editor gives you a chance you seize on that and you keep going you know don't don't let anyone or a or especially yourself tell you oh I can't possibly do this it's just try it you know especially now like during a pandemic you can see how vital like it's so obvious really obvious how vital like science journalists are and even though I don't write that sort of thing you know there's always a space for it because it's about telling things that are a often factually true with some interpretation, which is super valuable. But also, you get to tell these amazing son of grand stories that are also kind of, you know, unlike anything else in the world and it's great fun so you know just try it like just and be persistent like get the emails of editors and just persist. That's my top advice like just please don't give up in a month I think ours is not going to work it takes a while to build up that base but you can do it you're persistent and you tell you know an editor thinks you're not mad at it. Thank you. And Ashley, what is your top tip. Just do it like the rule out and that science jobs in the private sector are advertised on the same list servers as academic jobs. I, I've seen jobs I've advertised jobs, you know, on the likes of cryolist and like like atmospheric science list servers as well. So I would just not rule it out. And if you have an idea of the job you want to do, or if you have no idea of the job you want to do then just like investigate the adverts that come your way and just don't rule out the option of go in private because you do still get to do science. But you do also get some like bonuses like a work life balance and career progression and some stability and where you live in. So, yeah, just do it. Okay, great. And Carly, what is your top tip. Mine's very similar to Ashley's I was just going to say just if you think about something different to have a go. Because I know people who started researchers in schools with me they lasted a few months and went straight back to academia because teaching wasn't for them, but you don't know till you've had a go. And you might always wonder I wonder what my life would have been like if I tried this. Yeah, always change your mind. You can always keep looking on job adverts and getting a postdoc anyway. Exactly. You can always go back. So yeah, just have a go again. Thank you. And Liam, we'll conclude with your top tip please. My top tip would be to go to meetups. So things like Python are data science that kind of thing you'll meet a bunch of academics you'll have a beer and you'll be able to ask them kind of all the questions that are on your mind and and get some real life experience of what's happening and info what's happening in your area. And just where do you find these meetups. And they're normally advertised through meetup.com but you find them through Twitter or Eventbrite that kind of thing too. So I went after Python are data science meetup Google that for your city and then you'll find an advertisement online. Oh, perfect. Thank you. That's really great. So thank you ever so much to all of our panelists again for this really informative and also quite inspiring webinar for careers outside of academia.