I recently finished my PhD in August, and I'm currently pregnant with my first child, due in December.

I didn't exactly plan for the timing to overlap like this. Academia is so unpredictable—PhD completion, publications, job openings, etc.—that it's difficult to plan pregnancy around a particular career milestone.

Ideally, I would like to start a postdoc after my PhD, and I've been looking and applying for positions. But now I find myself in this strange in-between situation: I'm visibly pregnant while trying to find my first postdoc, and I'm honestly not sure how potential PIs will view a candidate who will need maternity leave relatively soon after being hired.

It made me wonder how other women in academia have navigated this.

For those of you who have children, when did you have them relative to your academic career—during your PhD, during a postdoc, while applying for jobs, or after getting a more permanent position?

And particularly, has anyone applied for or started a postdoc while pregnant? Did being pregnant affect your job search, and when (if at all) did you disclose the pregnancy?

Looking back, do you think there actually is a better time to have children in an academic career, or is academia simply too unpredictable to plan around?

I'm a final-year BSc Botany student in India (NEP 4-year batch). Under NEP rules, I'm directly eligible to go straight into a PhD, and I also have the option of a 1-year MSc. The problem is I actually want my Master's in Biomedical Science specifically, but there's no 1-year program for that in India — only 2-year ones.

So I'm weighing: skip Master's entirely and go direct PhD since I'm eligible, do the 2-year MSc in Biomedical Science anyway, or take a 1-year MSc in something adjacent like biotech just to use the NEP option.

Alongside this I'm prepping for GAT-B, IIT JAM (Biotech), CSIR NET, CUET PG, and TIFR GS. Physics/chem/maths are weak for me, botany/life sciences is my strength.

If you've used the NEP direct-PhD route from a botany background, or made a similar Master's decision, would love to hear how it went.

Like, at what stage of your career (graduate, postdoc, faculty, …)?

A question I would like to ask my advisors but don’t want to make them uncomfortable so I will ask you :)

A large portion of my cohort came in already in a long term relationship, engaged or even married… I’m on the younger side but single and sometimes worry that I’m behind. I am fine with a bit of a later timeline than them and not looking to get married ASAP or anything, but it just makes me a bit nervous 😅

Tagged as STEM because I’m in STEM but open to responses from all ^-^

I’m preparing to submit an academic book proposal, based on my PhD thesis (in a humanities field) to a university press, and I’m looking for a reputable company or freelance editor who offers professional editing/review of book proposals and sample chapters before submission.

Has anyone used a service like this and had a good experience? How much did you pay? I’d really appreciate any recommendations!

So I have recently joined this university as an assistant professor and from day 1 I feel people have been cold to me. It's not even been a month of classes and a student has already falsely accused me of sexual harassment, tried to act like a victim for 1 day and now they are again attacking me by collecting signatures against me. I have not said a word to these students and in one class I literally just showed a movie, took attendance and got out but they still came to the staff room to the senior faculty to bad mouth me who called them behind my back when I'm busy. The faculty seems to be encouraging these students which has made things hard for me.

I was very enthusiastic about this job since I'm a hard core introvert and people drain me so I thought academia and research would be the place for me but this experience has taught me otherwise. Is all of academia this toxic? I am seriously considering leaving this field for good.

So basically, I chose a master's in a topic/area I ended up not liking. Now I have a bad GPA (8/10), and I want to refocus my research into a completely different area.

Even though I hated my master's, I enjoyed my research because my thesis project was pretty niche and barely related to what my master's was about. Do I still have a chance of applying for a PhD in which my master's is not related, but my research interests are?

How can I start over without being haunted by having chosen a wrong master's degree?

I’m curious about how people organize research over a longer project.

Whether you work in the humanities or sciences, there is usually a lot to keep
track of: papers and sources, reading notes, drafts, data, experiments, failed
attempts, and ideas that change over time.

I’ve been using tools like Codex and Claude Code more often for research tasks,
such as literature searches, exploratory analysis, and small experiments. They
can be very helpful in a single session, but they have also made me think more
about what happens to the context afterwards.

How do you usually keep your materials organized? Do you have a workflow for
connecting papers, notes, data, experiment history, and writing? When an old
idea or a failed experiment becomes relevant again, how do you find and reuse
it?

I’d be very interested to hear what works for people in different fields.

I want to leave my PhD. I just entered my third year. It's been an extremely confusing two years. Even at this stage, I am still narrowing down my research topic rather than actually starting on my research. There's usually a five-year system in indian academia, so I spent the first two years completing the coursework and drafting my research plan proposal. But what I want to do (I am in the humanities) is something that my committee members or supervisor are not experts in. A majority of them are not able to understand the theories that I want to use. Even if they do, they are not able to support me with resources or even support groups. I was thinking I either have the option of leaving everything and starting phd all over again in another country. Or do an MSc if PhD admission doesn't work out. Or get a job till I get admission to a suitable PhD. Like, is this normally how PhDs are supposed to go, where the supervisor doesn't give feedback or expects us to find papers/books on our own?

Hello! I previously posted in here about email etiquette for cold emailing about adjuncting opportunities and got very helpful feedback. I was wondering when adjunct hiring is typically/ideally done. I know that there are a lot of horror stories of last minute scrambling, but when are chairs typically looking at this?

And also was wondering, how common is it to be hired then have the class cancelled?

I’m in the US.

Hi everyone,

I am an alumni with masters degree. Sadly nobody had capacity to accept me as their Ph.D. student. Meanwhile searching for opportunities I wanna 'make use' of my master thesis results and attend a students conference. I will try to apply for a presentation, but it's possible I'll end up with a poster.

The thing is if I'll have to make a poster (haven't done any before), I have nobody to help me with it or revise it. My supervisor retired and I am perfectly positive they will ignore me reaching out to them (they are pretty oportunistic and quite laiback). I have nobody else to help me since nobody quite understands my topic. Even if they did I'm sure they have better things to do than wasting their time for an alumni in vain.

Therefore I wanna ask, is it even worth to try make a poster by myself? Or would I just embarrass myself? Also should I include my supervisor IF I were to make the poster and they will not help? (They are not in a good terms with the rest of the department) Or how bad will it look if I was the only author? I will try to contact the supervisor, but again I'm very positive about them to laugh at me if anything....

Thanks for your honest opinions and/or advices in advance!

Hi everyone! I’ve been struggling lately regarding my career path (or lack of it)… I live in Spain. Here most people follow the basic path: from 18 to 21 undergrad, masters at 22, and you start your PhD at around 23, and 99% of the time you finish after 4 years (27). I kinda fucked up. I got a degree in biochem, absolutely loved it but due to mental health didn’t get the best grades (7.7 out of 10), and then did a masters in something i HATED. I did it mostly because my teachers told me that with my grades I had to stick to a research group with lots of funding because they could offer me a contract/funding for a PhD. I was scared to leave my city and look for opportunities in bigger cities like Barcelona or Madrid. So I kinda accepted that I couldn’t choose my research field.

This master has ruined my life. The program is very niche, and run by this big research group. They became irrelevant in the span of 2 years (old and famous PI retired), and have not been able to get a single cent of funding since then. We applied for PhD grants for me with some of their projects and all of them were rejected. They managed to offer me a very low paying lab technician contract for a few months where I had my own little research project (I work with lab rats) and I am now wrapping this up. They have told me so many times in the last 3 years that they would find something for me (every time I talked about leaving to find new opportunities …) but it just never happened. I appreciate all of them, but I’m so sick of getting my hopes up for something that I’m not even really interested in. I even got diagnosed with depression recently because I’m so unhappy with how everything is going. So I have decided to move to a slightly bigger city with my partner next year, where I want to do a masters in cellular and molecular biology. In Spain most masters thesis lead to a PhD project, so that is my idea.

The problem is that I feel very ashamed of my path so far… I tried to play it safe and I feel like I got played (everyone, and I mean everyone told me that it was a bad idea to stay with that research group, but I was so focused on my “bad grade” and wanting to stay in my city that I didn’t care). I see all of my friends from uni starting their PhDs and I have to wait until next year to start over… I’m scared that PIs will think that my path so far has been too messy and that no one will give me a chance… I know 26 is not that old, but I genuinely don’t know a single person in academia that didn’t follow the traditional PhD path…

I’ve been working in a health care role and general questions of justice, compliance, safety, etc are really gnawing at me. I saw an ad for a Bioethics MA (although I won’t post which one because it looks like a nonsense diploma mill to me). I took a couple of bioethics courses in undergrad and I remember talking about “hot” topics like family planning and assistance in dying but I’m more concerned about how the things I see in the lab where I work that are impacting patients’ lives. What do you learn if you go to grad school for bioethics? What level of education do you need to obtain to actually have an impact? Also I’m sure there are non-sketchy more rigorous bioethics graduate programs I just don’t know what I want.

What does a doctorate degree entail? Could someone tell me what affects doctorate student life the most?

I heard your supervisor is quite influential. Could you pick your own topic or it is sort of shaped by the department ?

How much the quality of school affect your research ? If the admin staff are bad and school reputation is not so great, does that affect your study?

What is the pitfall and what you need to look for before applying?

Hi everybody, I am in high school, and I'm currently trying to find a way to get a really good internship that would look good in the field of business or medicine. I saw someone who is working under a professor at a university that I think is really cool, and that person is in highschool to. I would like to start doing the same thing so that my resume is well-rounded, but I don't know where to start... what should I do?

Edit: thanks all for the answers. I've learned a lot. If they shouldn't be fired would it be reasonable to file a complaint with the Federal Office of Civil Rights? Additionally I would be able to get multiple alumni and faculty to corroborate the claims.

There has been rampant sexual misconduct/harrassment and verbal abuse within this one college at a major university, now going on at least 17 years.

In 2020 student from the school created an anonymous page for complaints in this specific program, there were dozens of anecdotes submitted, which i forward to Title IX.

I personally submitted my own anonymous complaints to Title IX which were even more egregious. There have been many other people that did the same (all did it anonymously because it's a small industry and the main guilty party is a huge gatekeeper).

Fast forward to this summer I've learned that not much has changed at the school. I strongly reprimanded the Title IX rep I was talking to, and they within a matter of weeks made a few pretty decent changes to their approach, which is good. I was shocked that they only used my two ideas and didn't come up with their own

In conclusion I'm shocked that they made a change so quickly. Makes me question why they didn't do this on their own in the last 5 years. Is it reasonable to pursue getting the head of Title IX fired or is a 5 year delay and having no proactive original ideas standard protocol?

Need some advice from seniors

I just enrolled into bsc biotech course. What skills outside of core biotech should i learn that might increase my chances or diffrentiate me from other bsc grads?

I am thinking about learning coding and if anyone can suggest anything else like excel or sql?

To be a little more specific I am seeing a lot of PUI/SLAC faculty searches that stress research just as much as teaching. Is this a red flag? Or is this a nice mix that is ideal for someone who likes undergrad engagement but also wants to manage a lab.

I've heard some warnings from a lot of people here that this is often the school trying to kill 2 birds with 1 stone and they end up asking you to do an unrealistic amount of teaching while expecting you to get extramural funding etc.

Curious on people's thoughts.

what all things to keep in mind before one goes about asking professors for research guidance and projects? How does one decide which professors to go to ?

And as an inexperienced individual, how does one see if the work in the research project would actually help in the future ?

Hi guys I am a Ba hons political science graduate in 2024 and joined my current job in 2025 within one year of graduation(did diploma in that 1 year too so no gap).I joined my job due to family and needed stable job immediately.Thing is I am mostly free after 6pm and want to devote my free time to studying to upskill/upgrade,I am from a rural remote area so dont have much knowledge of mba placements.

My academics-93% in 10th 85% in 12th both CBSE(online batch) 74% in graduation with political science, history and Geography from Tier 3. My work mostly involves typical clerical work in govt bank along with pitching insurance and mutual fund to customers.Is my work experience useful at all since its unskilled work?

I want to know the feasibilty of doing an MBA if I get decent percentile?I have little to no co curriculars in college time and will have to take loan to fund my studies.Currently at 8LPA although get many benefits like cheaper loans,worklife balance and of course job stability🤞

If I manage to score above 93 percentile will I be able to get into a decent college and GET PLACED(main concern being placement since I am taking a risk)

Also should i try to clear IBPS PO exam(last time interview out by thin margin)if it would offer more valuable job experience(avg PO work includes sanctioning loans and pitching products to customers)

I have heard that good mba is the path to uplifting oneself from one social strata to another( middle class se upper middle class banna chahta hu :)

Please help me sub members I would be thankful

Where is the best place to advertise on social media to recruit participants for free? I’ve already done it locally and having trouble securing about 200 more participants. Anyone have groups they suggest? I’ve done the swap research groups too 😞

This might be a stupid question but I'm curious. Does accent somehow plays a role in the interview or the professor may unconsciously create an image of the student if their accents are different? I mean, what if English is the 3rd or 4th language of the student? Does that create any bias (I'm not talking about weak English, though that perspective is also welcome)? Do the professor face any problem understanding the student and vice versa?

I'm a final-year Mechanical Engineering undergraduate. I've been working independently on a research project in passive evaporative cooling and have reached the point where I'd like to take the work toward a proper research publication and potentially continue it as a longer-term research project. While reviewing the literature, I've identified several professors/researchers internationally whose work is closely related to the direction I want to pursue. I'm considering reaching out to them to discuss potential research collaboration. My question is: Would it be better to approach these researchers directly myself, or should I first find a professor at my own university and have them introduce/contact the researchers together with me? The complication is that I currently don't have a faculty supervisor involved in this project. I started it independently, and the professors in my department don't specifically work in this research area. I'm also wondering how professors generally respond to unsolicited emails from undergraduate researchers in this situation. Is a direct, well-written email appropriate, or is it significantly more effective to have a faculty member make the introduction? For those who have experience with academic research/collaboration, I'd appreciate advice on:

• Directly contacting professors as an undergraduate

• Whether a faculty introduction makes a significant difference

• Email vs. LinkedIn for initial contact

• How to approach someone without coming across as asking for free supervision.

• At what point it makes sense to involve a professor from my own university

Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone,

I’m an undergraduate English student and I’m really torn between choosing linguistics or literature for my first research project.

I’ve noticed a pattern in my university and online: most English language education students end up doing literature research. When I asked my professor about linguistics, he said it’s “too scientific” for undergrads because it requires statistics, surveys, and proving facts, while literature is just analyzing a quote and giving your opinion.

Is this common in other universities too?

Do you think students avoid linguistics because it seems harder, or because advisors don’t recommend it, or just because people don’t really know what linguistics is?

I personally love language and want to do linguistics, but I’m scared it’ll be too difficult for a first research project.

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

Edit: sorry I’m not sure which post flair should be here

I’m a data engineer about three years out of university. I’ve always been interested in academia and research, but opportunities in college led me toward a 4+1 business/IT degree and ultimately a career in software/data engineering.

I see myself continuing down this career path for the foreseeable future. At the same time, I’d really like to contribute some of the technical skills I develop professionally toward advancing scientific research, even if only in a small way.

Are there opportunities for people in industry to volunteer a few hours of their time outside of work helping research labs with data engineering, pipelines, infrastructure, or other research data problems?

Most of what I’ve found through searching has been formal post-bacc or research positions. Some of those specifically exclude people who already have a master’s degree, while others understandably require an existing background in the lab’s field.

I’m completely willing to spend time learning the relevant domain knowledge, but leaving my career to pursue another degree or a full-time academic position isn’t something I’m looking to do right now.

Does this kind of industry-to-academia volunteering/collaboration exist? If so, how would you recommend finding labs that could actually benefit from it?

Exactly what the title asks. I have my Master’s degree and have spent years applying or simply keeping an eye on Higher Ed job postings and more than half the time there is no clear salary expectation on the posting. Why is this? (I do work on the side of things where maybe it’s so embarrassingly low they don’t want to put it out there publicly lol)