A Rather Privileged Perspective on my Post-Doc

I have found neither time nor energy lately to write a longer entry¹. Which most probably had to do with my move to Montréal for a half-year residency at TAG². There was a lot to prepare and plenty of temporary goodbyes to be said, and then there is of course stuff to be done to arrive here. I do collect some material over at Montréal 2025, but it’s just brief notes by now and it will grow over time.

One of the tasks that I took with to Montréal is figuring out what I want to do after my doctorate. These past weeks, even months, I had many discussions regarding that questions. It’s not only me who is concerned with it, but actually most of the people in academia. Getting a secured (aka tenured) position at an university is mostly unachievable these days, except for full-time, lifelong researchers that did nothing else for most of their life. Which also means that they come from specific class-strata. For the rest of us, academic work is usually project-based, with limited time frames and constant grant writing. Which includes everybody in my research project as well. And since those grant applications take time, writing them usually starts halfway through ongoing projects.

In my specific case, there is also the issue that I’m rather old-ish for an academic career. Often people start out doing university and then figure out if they want to stick with it, or go working in the industry. For me, it was the other way around. I worked my ass off until I was finally debt-free, then pivoted into academia. First as scientific software developer, then as undergraduate and graduate student. Coming from a vocation-based education and having had worked for most of my life, I definitely feel a difference in habitus when I’m around academic people. This is not necessarily something negative. It’s just that my thought often rather drifts towards the practical than emerging in discourse between me and my peers.

To answer the question of what to do after this doctorate, I need to disclose the reasons why I started it in the first place.

1. To prove my traumatised past self that I’m capable and intelligent
2. To take the time for myself to follow my interests

Personal Context

My school years were rather unpleasant, having undiagnosed ADHD and a unsatisfiable quick-witted curiosity. My primary school teacher was physically and cognitively violent with my unruly schoolkid-me, and recommend having me go to the branch of schools for the underperforming. The rest of my time in the system followed a pattern of barely passing. This curse got finally broken when I passed the entry test and became a Mensa member in my mid-twenties. Having it on paper that I’m intelligent changed my perspective on my past fundamentally, but a lot of damage was already done. Depression, prone to substance abuse, a large pile of debts.

I was utterly lucky to find myself in good company starting in my thirties and being able to recover and rebuild. I successfully finished my BA with 33, paid off my debts with 39 and defended my MA with 41. It’s 2025, and I’m in Montréal on state money, halfway into my PhD. I’m thankful about this trajectory and all the support and luck I had until here, and I think about “what if it went wrong somewhere along the line” at least once a week.

This brings us also to an answer to the first reason I’m doing a PhD. I’m privileged as fuck, by now. That is not a new realisation, but it rose once more to my conciseness one evening last week, while relaxing in the close by Park Préfontaine. I also started to actually feel and believe it. I can’t say if it’s because I’m living on my own and can better listen to myself, or if it’s the laid-back nature of the people here in Montréal. But I had to tell myself (and my traumatised past self) that it’s probably time to chill out. I don’t have to prove myself anything any more, and I should stop being my own worst critic. My motivational motto was once that I can do everything I set my head to, I can become anything I want to. But now the question is, is everything I do really me?

And this enables us³ to discuss the second reason for this PhD. Getting here involved me saying yes a lot. Yes to financial opportunities because I wasn’t one to choose, yes to people wanting me to work for or collaborate with them because my weak ego equated such inquiries with being liked, yes to engagements I didn’t feel like participating in but must, or fear economic or social exclusion.

I experienced my BA as a liberating moment, of finding a balance between being me and being able to give back to society. Despite some mishaps, my MA ventured into similar territory, with the school promoting extrapolating personal interest into something of social relevance. And I’m pursuing a PhD partially because it enables (or forces) me to take time for myself and the things that interest me. It’s in a way a saying yes to myself, or a saying no to other things. The latter is something I have to practice anyway, according to my therapist⁴.

Although being able to pursue my own special interests with a lot of freedom during my doctorate, I still feel limited to some extent. This most likely has to do with the initially outlined shortness of safe work and the constant need to oversell yourself and your work. It’s like a structurally enforced need to say yes. But that comes with the job, if research is seen as just another type of work, and not as a utopian ideal of science. Money is sparse, and hence you need to sell yourself.

TL;DR! Now what about that Post-Doc?

I do not feel like I need to prove myself to myself. And, I do not feel like that a post-doc (the next step in an academic career) will bring me closer towards finding a balance of being me and giving back to society.

Academia is not the place where I will earn my daily bread for the rest of my life. If it so happens that I get hold of a post-doc position at a university or a research project that will be in accordance with me needs, so be it. Otherwise, I will rather strive for a source of income that enables me to stay practical and stray epistemologically.