Julie Gould 00:09
Hello, and welcome to Working Scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. I’m Julie Gould.
This is the third episode of the series called The last few miles: planning for the late-stage career in science.
Julie Gould 00:29
People who are scientists often do so because they felt a calling at a young age. I’ve lost count of how many scientists I’ve spoken to over the years who said they wanted to be scientists from when they were kids, watching snails in their gardens or something similar.
But that means that being a scientist is not just an ordinary 9-5 job. It’s an all-consuming part of who these people are – it’s a major part of their identity, which is understandable.
But when it comes to retirement, a point at which you might leave a lot of what it means to be an academic behind, it can often leave scientists feeling unsure about who they are, or who they are going to be. And that’s what we’ll explore in this third episode of The last few miles.
Some people are very happy to retire, like Roberto Kolter, professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School in the USA, who embraced retirement with open arms, and sees it as a chance for him to explore new things in his life.
Roberto Kolter 01:25
Yeah, for me, it’s an enormous amount of new opportunities. It is a change in the way I live my life because research was such a big part of it and overseeing, training a group of individuals. In many ways, for me, it means broadening enormously what I can do, in terms of my scientific interest, and the people that I interact with, is becoming much broader.
So I see it nothing short of really a very expansive move, that gives me the freedom to explore many, many, many, many more areas than I ever did before. It also gives me a little bit of control, a little bit more control over really what I love to do versus what I think I have to do.
Julie Gould 02:15
It sounds like you’re enjoying it a lot.
Roberto Kolter 02:17
And the answer is very much.
Julie Gould 02:19
Oh, good, I’m so pleased.
Roberto Kolter 02:20
Absolutely.
Julie Gould 02:22
But, of course, everyone is different. So, it’s not like this for everyone.
This is what Shirley Tilghman, previous president and emeritus professor at Princeton University in the USA, found as she worked on a paper for the American Society of Cell Biology on second acts.
As part of the research, she spoke to many retiring and retired biologists, and found out that when there’s talk of retirement, it’s understandable that there are some concerns, maybe even fears, about what it means for who they are and who they’re going to be.
Shirley Tilghman 02:51
I think there was a lot of fear. I think that was one of the things we heard, even from those who had sort of embraced the idea of retirement early.
And we attribute this in large part to the fact that science is such a demanding career, that if you weren’t doing academic science, and I think this actually applies whether you’re, you know, a well-recognized principal investigator, or whether you are a research associate in someone else’s laboratory, science is pretty all consuming. And it didn’t leave people, and this is their perception, a lot of time to think about what is ahead.
Julie Gould 03:38
Inger Mewburn, director of research and development at the Australian National University, thinks that some of this fear is deeply rooted in academic culture.
Inger Mewburn 03:47
We came from monasteries, like so maybe that’s just really deep in our culture. That idea of a vocation, of that’s your life’s work.
And there’s something about work that helps people, that’s incredibly compelling, and gives you a sense of purpose, and a sense of being valued and a sense of belonging to something bigger than self, than yourself in the kind of face of all the existential angst. Which let’s face it, the world is full of, so much existential angst.
If you can focus on, every day going and doing a job where you feel like, you know, you’re unpacking the mysteries of the universe, you’re teaching someone how to be a better doctor, you’re, you know, uncovering manuscripts and the like, there’s, there’s a lot that’s compelling, and it’s meaningful. And I think, I don’t know how you give that up, really.
Julie Gould 04:40
Pat Thompson, a part time professor of education at the University of Nottingham, agrees, and says it’s part of who you are when you’re an academic.
Pat Thompson 04:48
I guess it’s about professing isn’t it? I mean, you know, I’m a professor, we profess things.
So, you know, you profess either as a scientist in your passion for science and getting things done, or in my case, you, you profess about education through writing about it and doing it. So it is about, you know, what else you are.
Julie Gould 05:08
Dame Athene Donald, the current master of Churchill College at Cambridge University in the UK, is going through this right now.
In September of 2024 her term as the master of Churchill College ends after a 10-year period. This will be her second retirement of sorts. In 2020 Athene retired from her professorship position at the university, where they have a mandatory retirement age of 67.
As an aside, the University of Cambridge, Oxford University and St. Andrews University in the UK are the only universities here that have a mandatory retirement age.
Okay, back to Athene.
Athene Donald 05:43
At that point, I certainly had no choice but to retire from that role. It was during the pandemic, so I just kind of faded out. So, you know, you can imagine there was no, nothing to market, if you like, it just, I ceased to be a professor, got a pension.
I did feel there was a loss of identity associated with that. I find it very strange that I felt like that given I had another job, which technically wasn’t full-time, but it was very absorbing. And yet I still felt, you know, you’re an academic for so long, that that when it ceases, particularly it ceases, without any rite of passage that, you know, a formal party in the department or, you know, my retirement conference would have been, there was just nothing, I just sort of ceased to be in a certain way.
But it’s very hard to put one’s finger on what that meant. And I knew, I knew a long time ago that retirement would bother me, because I think one’s identity is tied up in it. I think, yeah, I have worked phenomenally hard during my life. And the idea that one day, it would just stop, you know, what are you meant to do after that? How does one almost justify one’s existence, after you’ve ceased to be contributing as a useful member of society?
Julie Gould 07:05
I can empathize with Athene’s perspective here. But I just want to add that Athene is still very much a useful member of society, and to the academic community. She continues to advocate for women in science, and last year published a book called Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science.
But now that Athene is approaching her second formal retirement, all these feelings and questions of identity are resurfacing.
Athene Donald 07:29
The feeling of retirement associated with leaving the department has faded, but I’ll just go through it again, because as master of Churchill College, I had a 10-year stint, and that is now is coming to an end.
So come September, I will have no formal job/ role at all. So yeah, I’m very much thinking, okay, now what?
And trying to work out what a suitable rebalance could be. Because, you know, I’m getting on, I’m not as energetic as I was. In fact, I had a very nasty infection over Easter, which I’m still recovering from, and I feel that’s, that’s taken a lot out of me.
So maybe I don’t want to work flat out. But on the other hand, the idea of stopping I find unnerving.
Julie Gould 08:26
So what can scientists and academics do to help ease that transition into retirement? What can they do to reduce some of those potential nerves?
Some people have things lined up ready and waiting for them. And this was Shirley Tilghman’s situation when she retired from working in the lab in 2001. She wasn’t worried at all …
Shirley Tilghman 08:44
… because I had something immensely exciting and challenging to look forward to. And this is part of, even though I didn’t plan this, it, you know, I had something that was going to occupy 110% of my waking moments.
Julie Gould 09:00
The work she’s referring to here is becoming the president of Princeton University.
Shirley Tilghman 09:04
When I finally became emerita in 2021, it was in the middle of the pandemic. And I was teaching on Zoom, or I was teaching with a mask on. Teaching during the pandemic I found really unpleasant, and it was exactly the push that I needed to say, that’s it.
Julie Gould 09:30
Some people have developed hobbies alongside their working careers that then become part of who they are, and that they look forward to spending more time doing. For example, Pat Thompson thinks that there are elements of her academic work that she will continue doing whilst being retired.
But her real focus is on something totally unrelated.
Pat Thompson 09:47
And I think the things I like about academic work are actually research and writing and teaching.
What I can do without: a lot of the institutional sort of requirements that you have to meet.
And I’ll probably continue to do some of that in writing and publication. But I would like I guess, just to, feel more in charge of what it is that I do, and actually spend more time doing other things.
Julie Gould 10:19
What sort of other things would you like to do?
Pat Thompson 10:22
Well, now we come to my plan. So I’ve always made things, even in performance, you know, I would make costumes and props and play around with the sound and the lighting and whatever.
So I’ve always done things with my hands. I’ve always been very, very busy. I hate having idle hands.
And I’ve also had a terribly, terribly expensive silver jewellery habit. So a few years ago, about five or six years ago, I decided that what I needed to do was to make my own jewellery.
So I went, I went to jewellery classes quite very regularly and did jewellery summer schools. And so one of the things that I want to spend a lot more time doing is actually making jewellery, before my hands get too decrepit to do it. I’ve got lots of ideas.
What I don’t want to do is a third career as a jeweler, and I’m currently struggling with how to manage actually making a volume of things, without having to get into actually running a business. So that’s my current plan.
Julie Gould 11:30
Another thing that Pat feels strongly about is her identity as a female researcher. She started teaching at a time when it was only just possible for married women to become teachers, and equal pay was becoming a reality.
Pat Thompson 11:41
And when I guess it was still considered really important for women to have a career, to be able to have a career, and to be able to do things on their own.
So I kind of feel like, you know, since I left school, I’ve always worked. And I’ve always had my own money. And I’ve always decided what I’m going to do with myself, and that’s been really important to my identity.
And so I think partly what retirement means is, you know, I’m not going to be working anymore. So what am I, what actually is it, that I’m going to be?
Well, I mean, you know, of course I’ve, you know, I’m not, I’m not going to be living in abject poverty. And obviously, I’ve still, you know, I still got an income that I can, I can take charge off.
But I think the notion of kind of work and my identity as a kind of educator, and as a woman in the workforce, has been pretty significant. And so I think that’s actually the hardest transition.
Julie Gould 12:52
So Pat is currently thinking about what parts of her working academic identity she’s able to let go of.
Pat Thompson 12:57
You know, occasionally I wonder to myself, if, you know, having this vast number of things that I, I still think I have to write …
I’ll just, you know, (slightly humble brag here) and say, you know, I’ve written 27 books so far, and I’ve got, you know, another four underway, and probably another four in my head. You know, that’s probably going to be the hardest thing to actually let go of.
I think I can let go of the blog fairly, in a fairly straightforward kind of way, and I’ve been, you know, publishing that every week for 13 years.
But I think it’s going to be the books that are going to be the most significant kind of indicator that I’ve actually stopped doing that, and now I’m somebody else, and I’m doing something else. That’s who I used to be.
Julie Gould 13:52
For Inger Mewburn, it’s not yet clear what she will be doing. Her hobby is podcasting, but her podcasts are about her job.
Inger Mewburn 14:00
You know, it’s not like a podcast about knitting, or kittens or something. So I think yes, that a lot of us are guilty of ‘myself my job’ and this is who I am.
I can’t ever imagine, when I think about retirement – to go back what you asked me before – when I think about retirement, it’s not not doing the work. It’s not doing the kind of minutiae and being a manager and all those kinds of things. It’s the intellectual side of it, I can’t ever imagine giving that up.
But I guess that’s part of retiring. I do often joke, and I’m not really joking, I’m semi-joking, that my next career is as a romance novelist. And, I try and write romance novels in my spare time, but I just can’t, like my brain won’t do it because I’m so used to writing boring stuff, right?
So I think well, maybe I just need to retire, so I’m not doing that, but I’m still a writer. So I suppose it depends what kind of bits of your identity you’re carrying through.
Julie Gould 14:54
Roberto Kolter, the emeritus professor from Harvard Medical School, spent a lot of time talking to his peers when he was preparing for his retirement in 2018.
And he heard many of them express their fears about it. He believed that it was because they haven’t experienced any things outside of their academic research. They focus so heavily on this scientific career, that they forgot to develop other interests.
When I caught up with Roberto this year, I asked him again how he felt about identity and retirement.
Did you ever have any thoughts about identity and your own self, and how you were, and who you were as a person?
Roberto Kolter 15:30
You know, every day I wake up I wonder, who am I? But that’s okay.
So the first thing, a little bit of insecurity is okay, you know, questioning whether it was the right move, it’s, it’s okay. It’s alright to question things, I think it’s a healthy process.
My advice for people who are beginning to think about it is diversify early. Really come up with different interests. So I was already thinking about museum exhibits and writing a book several years before retirement.
So whether it’s growing orchids, or, you know, wanting to design a new sun watches, I’d say some, some clubs, because I see some people do this.
Or whether it’s just simply being in a different activity, but still involved, in my case in microbiology, right. It’s what I do, I love it. But I knew that I had a spot that was the new me, as it were right.
And that was a transition, it wasn’t, it was a slow transition, it wasn’t from one day to the next. I think that’s key, that’s key. To begin to realize you’re not just head of a lab. And do that, while you’re still the head of a lab.
Julie Gould 16:38
Roberto, as we’ve heard in previous episodes of this series, thoroughly enjoys the new opportunities that retirement has brought him. He’s travelled, is still going to conferences, and in fact, when I spoke with him this year, he was in Denmark at a conference.
So you are currently, even though you’re retired from the sort of the employed part of your academic life, you are still heavily involved.
As we speak, you’re in Denmark at a conference. So, tell me a little bit about where you are and why you’re there.
Roberto Kolter 17:06
So I’m here at a conference north of Copenhagen, a conference on secondary metabolites and the ecological role secondary metabolites from bacteria play.
And it’s more interesting why I am here. So you know, one of the first things that I did after retiring is I received the fellowship for a sabbatical, actually a short sabbatical at the Danish University, the Technical University.
And Lone Gram was hosting me, and she was just starting at the time, this is 2019, a program on focus, a really big, big project, many labs, focused on what are the ecological roles of the secondary metabolites.
And so she asked me to come here and give the keynote address yesterday, last night. So that was wonderful, and lots of positive feedback from that talk. And I should say, the day before, on Saturday, I was giving a talk in Asti in northern Italy, on a completely different topic, which was the cities of the future and how we might learn from microbes and how they organize and how they’ve evolved to organize, in terms of city planning.
And just two days before that I was in Marburg, at the Max Planck (Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology), giving a talk on what can we do about the problem of antibiotic resistance.
All of that is to say, it’s not to brag, but it’s to say that one can be very active and can be a participant in the community, and it frees me to give strong opinions.
Really, because, hey, I can truly express my opinion without the concerns that people who might review my papers might not like what I say, you might not like what I might say, or, or somebody applying for a grant might want to get my favour because they know I’m…. So having all of that gone, it really gives a certain amount of freedom, in both what we talk about, what we speculate on.
Two days from now I’m gonna go to Germany and give a talk to youngsters on my career, you know, because people want to hear about what I’ve done with my life.
Julie Gould 19:16
In order to enjoy retirement like this, as we heard Inger Mewburn say in episode one of the series, is to make sure you’re prepared. But it’s difficult to make preparations on your own.
So in the fourth episode of this series, we’ll hear how people have reached out to others for help and advice when it comes to getting close to retirement, whether it’s from peer groups, or the institution that you’re working for.
Thanks for listening, I’m Julie Gould.
