Transcript: Academia et al S01E03

Female voice 1 00:00:02

You're listening to an IOE podcast. Powered by UCL Minds.

Female voice 2 00:00:23

This is Academia et al, the podcasts for anyone and everyone figuring out life in academia.

Alina Pelikh 00:00:38

Hello everyone, you're listening to Academia et al, the podcast for early career academics by early career academics. My name is Alina Pelikh. I'm a research fellow in demography at the UCL Institute of Education. I'm one of the co-hosts for this podcast. In this episode, we'll be talking about real success in academia - what does it look like and how do we get there? Covid hasn't been easy for anyone.

As an early career academic one of the things that I missed most was an opportunity to network, to meet new people, and simply chat about life and career in an informal off-screen setting. Am I doing it right? What are the next steps, do I see my future in academia or not... sound familiar? Well, these questions didn't get easier. We have two guests joining me today. My first guest is Dr Jake Anders.

Jake is associate professor and deputy director of the UCL Center for Education Policy and Equalizing Opportunities. His research focuses on understanding the causes and consequences of educational inequality and policies aiming to reduce it. Jake is principal investigator of the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunity study looking at impacts of the pandemic on the life chances of young people across England.

My second guest is Dr Andrea Gauthier, associate lecturer and research fellow at the UCL IOE Knowledge Lab. Her research investigates how the design of visual media can manipulate the ways in which people think and behave and how game based learning environments can help future learning and decision making. Andrea is also currently teaching an MA Educational Technology programme, focusing on research methods related to the design and evaluation of multimedia educational tools. Welcome to the podcast! I'm a demographer and I absolutely love talking to people about their life course and turning points in life. So before we dig into the tough questions let's start with the basics. Let's start with you, Jake. When did you realize you wanted to be an academic?

 Jake Anders 00:02:33

Oh, it's a good and big and scary question, isn't it? I don't know that there was one particular moment, I feel like it's sort of a series of steps you take that get you deeper and deeper into realizing it's what you want to do. I finished my undergraduate degree and was kind of looking around for what I wanted to do. I had a job but it wasn't necessarily what I saw myself continuing to do, and I was lucky enough to apply for and get a studentship at the IOE to do a PhD, looking at inequality in access to higher education, which is kind of where my research journey began. I carried out that, I don't think I necessarily knew at the outset of that that I wanted to stay in academia at the end, but when I came to the end, I found myself, you know, looking for positions that were academia or academia adjacent.

I spent some time in a research institute rather than a university before returning back to UCL, but I guess the moment was somewhere in there wasn't it? I just don't know where exactly it was.

00:03:44 Alina Pelikh

Did you consider yourself an academic when you were doing a PhD already? Would you call that part of your life already being an academic?

00:03:50 Jake Anders

I guess in some ways it is. I mean, it's definitely sort of an apprenticeship to be an academic, isn't it? I think as much as anything else you are definitely doing the things that academics do, but you are perhaps not yet fully an academic, so I think similarly, it's sort of you definitely become one at some point during that process. It was a, you know, I thoroughly enjoyed my doctoral experience, so I know it can be, you know, tough and certainly there were tough moments, but you know, looking back on it, I really enjoyed that and I think that's you know, an important part of why I wanted to carry on having the freedoms that you do in academia compared to some other jobs, and you know, working in the way that that you can within academia.

00:04:38 Alina Pelikh

That's a very rigorous answer, so you basically already told me what you like about being an academic and I didn't even ask you but thank you. Ok, Andrea to you now. Your academic journey started with a bachelor degree of Applied Arts in Illustration and led you to PhD in Medical Science. That's very unusual to say the least. Can you tell us a bit about how that happened?

00:04:59 Andrea Gauthier

Yeah, sure it is actually kind of unusual and when I started my undergraduate degree in illustration, I had no intention of ever doing anything in academia beyond that in fact. But during my illustration undergrad I had a teacher who had done her Master’s degree in Biomedical Communications, which is essentially an extension of medical illustration and it kind of came off to this might sound kind of cheesy, but it came off to me as a very noble use of artwork, if that makes sense. So I kind of caught that bug of medical illustration and then pursued a Master’s degree in that which is actually biomedical communication, and then I caught the research bug when I was in medical - in that medical illustration programme. Just kind of this curiosity about understanding why we make the design decisions that we do and how those decisions impact how other people perceive and behave and learn from the things that we create.

00:06:01 Alina Pelikh

That sounds very exciting. Sorry you keep mentioning biomedical communicator, I'm not sure that everyone understands what a biomedical communicator actually does.

00:06:10 Andrea Gauthier

Yeah yeah. So the term biomedical communication stems from this Master’s degree at the University of Toronto, that's called Biomedical Communications, but what it essentially is is medical illustration, ‘plus’. So it was founded in medical illustration in the beginnings, but now we don't just look at illustration, we look at the design of animations interactive modules, games, web pages, anything that you can think of that requires you know the visual communication of complex science and medical concepts. So that is essentially what in a nutshell, what biomedical communications is.

00:06:49 Alina Pelikh

That sounds very interesting, it's just how I love it. As a demographer you get people ending up in academia via all sorts of routes, and you know, the more the merrier. Sounds great, so thank you Andrea. And now moving on to talk about a bumpy road of academic journey. I want to talk about something that's not being discussed very often – failures. But most importantly, ways to become strong and resilient to failure. Jake, you’re involved in a piece of research which showed their parents support and belief in children’s academic ability can actually affect their grades and overall academic success. Do you think something similar happens in academia too?

00:07:28 Jake Anders

Yes, I think that's probably a good way of thinking. I think it's important in all walks of life really, isn't it?But failure sort of is brought to the fore by certain aspects of the structure of academia we go through. These rounds where you know just we, we're set up to fail and it is sort of thrust in our face, rounds of applying for funding, which has a low probability of success. Applying to, submitting articles to journal which have high rejection rates. You know you almost in some ways you managed to talk your way into thinking things are a failure whatever way you do with with that, I always think with journals if you submit your work somewhere where it kind of gets accepted too easily, then you think “Oh no, I've failed to submit it somewhere sufficiently challenging”, whereas if you submit it somewhere with, you know really high rejection rates then probably it'll get rejected and then you move on to the next one you sort of feel like you can't win.

Either way, you do have to, just you know you definitely have to develop a thick skin for the kinds of comments you get from the reviewers, and it's absolutely vital I think to have a kind of support network around you. If you're facing that sort of thing on your own, then that's really tough, and I think you know, maybe I felt a bit like that more particularly, during my doctorate, you feel like you're you know you have your supervisors there and you know they can help talk you through it, but they are in a very different position to you. You sort of feel like you are doing this thing to a certain extent on your own and when people come back to you and say, “Oh yeah, no, that's not good enough” or there's this problem with it, or that problem with it, it can be tough to hear. I think it does get easier as you move into academia. Partly that's maybe practice. Partly that is that you are more likely, I think, to be in teams. You're working with other people, and even if it's work you've done on your own and it's not work that they're part of, you can compare and kind of complain about these things, it's not necessarily your parents in the same way as the work that you referred to of mine, but it's definitely that support network, and having people there who you who believe in you who understand the work that you're doing and the journey that you're going through with trying to get it published and get it out there and having impact and all of that.

00:09:54 Alina Pelikh

What would you recommend to someone who's currently lacking this support?

00:09:57 Jake Anders

It's a difficult thing to find. I think it's a really important thing for academic communities, academic department centers, whatever, the sort of relevant structure is to try and develop and if it's not something you feel you have where you are, then you know maybe that's because kind of the community around you isn't the right one for providing that support, that's you, know much easier said than done and there can be maybe some more direct ways as well. Trying to form kind of self help networks you know the IOE’s Early Career Network I think you know one of the things that I hope it's doing is forming communities like these ones that that help to support one another through the kind of rocky experiences of early academia, and you know, I always encourage all early career academics at the IOE to get involved in that new status and so on when I'm talking to them so you know that creating your networks, finding your networks, finding research communities to be part of are all really important, I think for helping with that.

00:11:06 Alina Pelikh

Thank you and thank you for promoting the IOE Early Career Network. So for those of you who are listening and don't know what it is, please go and check out and we welcome earlier academic careers, early career academics at any stage and we provide help, support and just a friendly community so please come and join us. Thank you, Jake. Andrea I have a related question for you, but I'll start a bit from afar in your doctoral thesis. You looked at how game mechanics can be designed to promote productive negativity among students. So that's pretty much what we just talked with Jake, but can you tell us a bit about your findings and what's first of all, what productive negativity is?

00:11:50 Andrea Gauthier

Yeah, of course. So it's very much like Jake was saying it's a simple concept that you take on board failures and negativity as a learning experience. So in my research I was looking at productive negativity as a mechanism for cognitive change or at a lower level of helping students transform their misconceptions about complex science concepts. So you may or may not know that often students have misconceptions that molecules within cells don't necessarily move randomly, so all molecules move randomly even inside of a cell, and but it is really counter-intuitive to understand that if everything moves randomly inside a cell, how does a cell actually function so efficiently? You know, you think about the cells are so efficient, but then you think of randomness and you don't think well random randomness cannot be efficient so how does how is that connection made between those kind of contrasting concepts? And so it's this really difficult thing for them to overcome, is this misconception that cellular molecules move in some sort of directed way, and so my research was looking at how can we get them to experience productive negativity within gaming environments so that they have the motivation to actually overcome these misconceptions. So the really important part about productive negativity is that you need to have the motivation to change, so I think that's very similar to how it is in academia. We take these negative experiences of having a paper rejected, but we have feedback and we have the motivation because, well, usually hopefully because we want to do well in our jobs and get that published and get that recognition for the for the work that we're doing and communicate to the public, and so we take that on as a learning experience and improve ourselves.

So with science misconceptions, that's not necessarily always the case. So if you're embedding that within a game based learning environment, hopefully you're giving them the motivation to want to incorporate these correct concepts into the way that they're playing, so you set up these challenges so that they need to demonstrate the correct concepts or knowledge in order to succeed, to see what's coming next, to complete the story, to get rewards, that type of thing.

00:14:13 Alina Pelikh

Wow, that's sounds great. That sounds like a great concept and it's much easier said than done. I mean sometimes all we like all we do in academia is just keep failing. I certainly do feel this way and then you have to get up and keep on moving. So you mentioned that you have to grow thick skin and you need to kind of learn from your failures. So how would... how do you personally cope with setbacks and what would you say to a fellow early career colleague who's just struggling to remain positive, especially now when the pandemic is still not over?

00:14:45 Andrea Gauthier

Yeah, that that's that's a good one. I always think in terms of the more you learn, the less you know. I don't know if that makes sense, but you know, the more the more you learn about something, the more you realize there's so much that you'll never be able to learn, and there's too much to learn, and so you just kind of have to embrace the fact that you're never going to know everything and just kind of sit in wondering curiosity at all of this uncertainty and not get bogged down by everything that you do not know, and just keep trying.

00:15:20 Alina Pelikh

Yeah, keep trying. It's a good one.

00:15:22 Alina Pelikh

Yeah, just brought up that famous quote from Socrates: “I know that I know nothing” so something he said when he was dying, so that's exactly what you said. The more you learn, yeah, the more we learn With the less we know. Right, thank you now moving onto another interesting topic and we touched upon it a bit earlier. One of the biggest obstacles that early career academics face is getting their own funding and Jake you and your team recently received funding to launch an exciting new study exploring the effects of the pandemic on inequality and life chances among young people. So can you tell us a bit more about the project?

00:15:59 Jake Anders

So we're really excited to be launching the COVID social mobility and opportunity study or COSMO for short. It's designed to be a new cohort study fitting into the family of cohort studies that already housed at the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies in the UCL Institute of Education. We applied for this funding to set this up because we thought that there was a gap in the existing cohort studies for this particular age group who have been so adversely affected their education has been so adversely affected by the pandemic and moreover, they've been affected in really unequal ways by the pandemic. So the aim of this study is to recruit and then hopefully follow over the coming years, around 12,000 young people from across England, and we've just launched last week, the first round of field work for that, trying to encourage them to fill out the surveys online and then with follow up face to face, if we don't succeed with the initial sort of online approaches.

Asking them to share with us their reflections on what's happened during, to them during the pandemic, but also information with them and from their parents and from their school about their kind of family background so that we can understand and tie those things together and understand the unequal picture that we suspect from other studies that have been going on, but at a single point in time is developing as a result of the disruption to education and other aspects of life through the pandemic. And then, as I say, we hope we will be able to continue following them in coming years to understand how those experiences that they've had during the pandemic are associated with what happens to them next in life as they continue in education or move into the labor market in the coming years. We think it's, you know, a a really important generation to hear from they've, you know, really shouldered an exceptional proportion of the burden of this pandemic, given that they, in terms of the health risks, they're relatively low for this group, but they've faced extraordinary disruption to their life. And we think it's absolutely vital to understand what's happened to them and the consequences of that and then further to advocate for policy that will help to address some of the inequalities that that are caused by all of this.

00:18:37 Alina Pelikh

Absolutely, that's so important. I mean, being teenager in a regular year is not easy. But in the pandemic and finishing school, and thinking about your life, curious like wow and great, that's congratulations on the grant again. So something else that I wanted to ask you in the beginning of the podcast and forgotten. How did you pick the topic of educational inequalities? So how did that happen? When did you realize that it's something that you're passionate about?

00:19:03 Jake Anders

Yeah I have always you know cared about educational inequality. I think the experience that got me particularly interested as I mentioned, my PhD was looking at inequality in access to university and one of the reasons that I was particularly interested in that was while I was doing my undergraduate degree I became quite involved in activities around kind of outreach from university, trying to go into secondary schools to encourage people to apply to university apply to higher, more competitive universities. You know those sorts of activities and you know in some ways I probably did some of that without necessarily fully feeling I understood all of the issues that that raised, and that were important in terms of, you know why we would be doing this, was this the right way of doing things? Was it going to be effective? All of that sort of thing and I was really passionate about the work and you know, continue to think that's an important part of the picture of what needs to happen. But I also kind of wanted to understand, yeah, what more there was to it than that the fact that really you know a lot of the inequality in access to university builds up at a much earlier stage in education. I think you know, by the point of access, but by the point of application to university, it's too late to do a lot for some of the you know ways in which young people are selected into universities.

And that was a big part of the studying I did in my doctoral work was looking at, ok so what are the inequalities in access to university? And what about when we take into account what GCSE's and so on young people took, the test they took at age 16, for example, so that we could try and understand a picture of where that that inequality was emerging, and perhaps therefore what would be better ways of targeting this kind of thing?

So it started from kind of an interest and a sort of, you know, general feeling that this was, this was important, but without fully appreciating all the complexity and issues involved and you know, I've just become more and more interested in and passionate about the issues the more I have studied and understood the complexity of the situation, and quite how much there is we need to do in order to tackle these.

00:21:31 Alina Pelikh

Coming back to funding so I understand you started working on funding applications fairly soon after you finished. Can you tell us a bit more about how did you get into that and how did you think it's affected your career afterwards?

00:21:46 Jake Anders

Yeah, so when I finished my PhD, I mentioned earlier that I applied for kind of academic type roles and the place I went to as a Research Institute called the National Institute of Economic and Social Research or NIESA, which does a lot of research around economics and social research as you would expect, including the kind of educational inequality evaluation stuff that I've got increasingly involved in across my career. But this was a place without students. It was just research I'd been brought in You know not to lead projects particularly, but to get involved in a bunch of projects. But it became clear pretty quickly that if you wanted to kind of have control of what you were going to get to do in your time, if you were going to be able to work on projects that you were most interested in and most passionate about you had to go out and get them. And my boss on the first day I arrived said to me came in I'd, you know, started that day I was in, we were waiting for data to arrive, anyone who has worked on quantitative data as part of a project you'll know that almost always at the start of a project you spend a while waiting for data to arrive, and that's particularly acute in your first job because you know you don't even have other work to finish up yet, so I was there, I was new, excited. There wasn't any data so I was working on getting on top of the literature to do with this project. And my new boss arrived and said to me OK, how's it going? How's your first day? What are you doing? I'm oh, I'm just, you know doing this and he said, well, why don't you work on a uh funding application as well, and that hadn't really crossed my mind at that point to be honest, but I took his advice as I thought, oh, OK, right? Evidently that's the deal. I'd better I'd better start thinking about this and so I did and I was extremely lucky. And you know, luck is unfortunately a part of this process when grants are so competitive. But I was lucky to be successful in in the application I put together I raising applications of the Nuffield Foundation to look at the importance of subject choice in the inequality and access to university. So it was very much a kind of spin off from what I've been doing in my doctoral research, but taking you know a particular angle and and digging into it a bit deeper, I was lucky to get that and be able to have some time sort of, you know, that was undeniably mine as part of that job, I didn't have to just work on whichever projects came along, but I could carve out that space and start to be able to make a clear contribution from that.

00:24:38 Andrea Gauthier

May I ask a question Alina?

00:24:39 Alina Pelikh

Yes, of course.

00:24:41 Andrea Gauthier

So that's very interesting, and as an early career researcher myself, I've of course been trying to find funding opportunities and apply for funding. But it does seem that our options as non permanent staff members are somewhat limited, right? There are some particularly early career schemes, and there's fellowships, so I was just wondering what your approach was. Were you a Co-PI, or were you the PI Yeah, if you could expand on that.

00:25:11 Alina Pelikh

For someone who does not understand Co-PI: Core principal investigator, PI: principal investigator.

00:25:17 Jake Anders

Yes, so I was, I guess. Again, lucky in the position I was in, I was able to apply for those as a PI for that grant as a PI. I recognize that different institutions seem to have kind of varying rules around that, and different funders have varying rules around that. I think also, if I'm honest that sometimes there's a bit of kind of misinformation about those rules and people aren't always entirely you know, on top of and understanding what those rules are, which can be a real challenge because it's difficult when you're in that position to challenge this and say no I can go for this. I did experience that when I not when I was there but in another institution when I was in a specific research job and you know it was kind of implied well, you know, you can't, you can't go for that because you're not a lecturer, you're not a member of permanent academic staff, and I went and looked at the rules and you know kind of went well I can't see any reason why the funder thinks that's a problem that appears to just be something that this institution has decided. And I went back and challenged this and basically I don't think that's right, I think you know I can go for this and manage to win with that argument, but you know I shouldn't have to go and win that argument. I shouldn't be sort of in the place that an argument has to be won, and that's difficult. And you know, I don't have an easy solution for that sort of problem, but I think it is important and you know people should be able to go for funding, because if you can't go for funding, then how are you ever going to get into those more permanent positions?

00:27:09 Alina Pelikh

Exactly. Well thank you for sharing. I think like you sharing your experiences given your expertise in and success in getting those grants like you mentioning that it wasn't always easy and you had to fight in the very beginning with institutional rules, that's something that I don't think everyone realizes that they can do, that may be something that they should do if they think that they can go for it. And it's definitely something that is very courageous and you have to fight the system a little bit, something that is very tough. So next thing I want to talk is about teaching. Andrea you recently got appointed an associate lecturer. Congratulations on that. You just mentioned to us that as a particular teacher played a role in your academic career and shaping, you know your thoughts and you know being an example for doing something different. What do you personally think it takes to be a good teacher or a good lecturer like lecturing if we’re talking about academia?

00:28:13 Andrea Gauthier

Yeah, well funnily enough, about lecturing, that's my least favorite part of it. I've always had, and I'm much better now, but I've always had a distinct fear of public speaking, and in fact, you know when I was doing my Master's, I get, I get so nervous just to present in front of my class that I'd stutter and have a little mini panic attack in front of the classroom. So that's really been something. But I've worked on over recent years over my PhD, presenting at conferences and such, but so I don't know if lecturing is the thing I'd focus on. I think it's really about the one on one with students and challenging them to question what they're doing. Question what other people are doing. And just being critical about the content or the research approach depending on what the course is and mentoring them to solve their own problems. That's something that folks during my PhD entering my Masters, you often go to your to your faculty members with problems, it would just be so much easier if you could just tell me what to do and that doesn't necessarily lead to the best learning experiences your student might be happy immediately, but I definitely learned by them challenging me to solve my own problems with a little bit of a nudge in one direction or the other, so I know I just started, but that's something that I really hope to bring into my teaching going forward.

00:29:39 Alina Pelikh

Right, and so you just mentioned that you know it wasn't easy for you and I just wondering like how if someone wanted to develop a teaching focused career, would you have any tips for them? You know, like you stated that you had a fear of public speaking, what other skills you'd say or you know, like skills or tips you could give to someone who's thinking about that?

00:29:55 Andrea Gauthier

Yeah, well, I guess it's about baby steps, you know. 5 minute guest lecture here. Little conference presentation here. Poster presentations are really helpful. I found at conferences if you're able to go to a conference and do a poster presentation as you know, a starter because it's a bit more informal and it just gets you in front of people talking about your work, even. Often institutions have those kind of three minute, 5 minute theses discussions or events. So those I think are good opportunities just to get the ball rolling that that doesn't involve, you know, giving a big lecture of 20 minutes or even an hour, and then it really just when I was thrown into my first lectureship position during my PhD, I was filling in for my supervisor who went on sabbatical. And just being thrust into that position and just having to do it. Really, really, just..

00:30:50 Alina Pelikh

Just go for it.

00:30:50 Andrea Gauthier

Try to just go for it. Just take any opportunity. Like I was even scared not scared I was nervous about doing this podcast today but you just have to, you know. Just launch yourself in and it tends to always work out.

00:31:06 Alina Pelikh

Me too. I mean, I think the motto of our conversation today was just go for it. Find an application, just go for it, lecturing, just go for it. Just battle your fears. Throughout your journey in academia what motivated you personally during the tough times? And did you ever want to quit?

00:31:23 Jake Anders

Who are you coming to?

00:31:24 Alina Pelikh

Who wants to go first, any volunteers?

00:31:27 Jake Anders

Shall I bite the bullet? I'm sure there have been, you know, moments where I've thought about quitting. It's generally when you know, just there is a lot on your plate. You feel like it's just more emails coming in. You know you can't reply to them as quickly as they are all stacking up and you know it's just one thing after another. I hope that's a, uh, a familiar feeling to other people.

00:31:52 Alina Pelikh

Yeah, familiar to everyone.

00:31:54 Jake Anders

It's not just me, but I think slightly what often gets me through in those sorts of situations, it can feel quite crazy, but in their similar way to what Andrea was just saying it's sort of baby steps, isn't it? I find I just keep chipping away at things and stuff does get done, stuff does calm down. You need to not look at your emails for a while to concentrate on you know, really, prioritizing what you need to, to get through and other stuff can wait a bit and that's what gets me through it. It sounds like a really mundane solution to it, but I do find that you know, not focusing on the big picture sometimes is important.

00:32:39 Alina Pelikh

Absolutely. And did you ever want to quit?

00:32:42 Jake Anders

I was thinking about how to say - I'm sure there have been dark times and probably there have been if they have, I've, I think I've sort of blacked them out. I do enjoy working in academia. If there have been those moments they have been, thankfully, relatively fleeting because you know most of the time I enjoy academia. I enjoy what freedoms it gives you in some ways. The flexibilities it has compared to some other roles. I really value that and so I think that if if I I were to leave, I would probably regret it, so I'm glad that when there have been those times I've got through them and not dwelt on them too too long.

00:33:23 Alina Pelikh

Wow this is one big love to academia. Andrea, can you beat it so?

00:33:29 Andrea Gauthier

Well, I mean, I've only been working for about just over two years now, so during those two years I've not wanted to quit yet. So, so that's a good sign. But I can say that during my PhD there was a bit of a wobbly moment. So as we were talking before, my PhD is in medical science and that came with certain expectations on the type of courses that you'd take at the beginning of the PhD. And so one of the courses I was taking was biochemistry and this is me with my background in illustration and not having taken a chemistry course or a biology course since high school and not even remembering my amino acids or the periodic table very well. And so that was, if anything, that was an impostor syndrome. It's an experience of impostor syndrome being around these people who have done their undergraduate degrees and their Master’s degrees in this area. And I'm trying to keep up with them and that was probably the most difficult part of my entire PhD was just getting through this Biochemistry course. It was - I won't say it was fun, it was pretty horrible. It was a pretty horrible experience, but it was again one of those things you just chip away. It’s the worst mark I've ever gotten in my academic career, but nobody sees that. That's all right. I got through it. I learned something and you know fulfilled the requirements so.

00:34:52 Alina Pelikh

Well, it's productive negativity.

00:34:57 Andrea Gauthier

That’s right!

00:34:58 Jake Anders

I think that's good advice. You know, get on to the next thing. No one, no one remembers the marks from earlier.

00:35:06 Alina Pelikh

And never again, so yeah, learn from this productivity and never again. Another very last thing that I wanted to ask you Jake is to prepare a tip of the day for our listeners, what would it be?

00:35:16 Jake Anders

What I wanted to suggest to people is to remember that your calendar is not just for meetings or for teaching time. I find it really useful to block out time in my calendar to work on particular projects. It's really helpful to make sure that that's protected time for doing research. You know, doing an important core part of the job that otherwise, gets eaten into with more and more meeting requests.

00:35:43 Alina Pelikh

Excellent tip, thank you very much Jake, and Andrea, what would be your tip of the day?

00:35:48 Andrea Gauthier

Well, my tip of the day relates quite closely to my research, and it's about taking every failure as a learning experience, you know, be it a negative peer review or a failed experiment. These can all teach us something about ourselves and change the way we think about our research and about our teaching. So as Dory says in Finding Nemo, just keep swimming. Just keep trying.

00:36:14 Alina Pelikh

Just be a Dory. That's great. Thank you very much. That's a great one. I thank you very much, both for coming here. Thank you for listening to Academia et al, I'm Alina Pelikh and my guests today were Dr Jake Anders and Dr Andrea Gauthier. You can find the links to the Q&A pages for our guests in our show notes and links to Early Career Network Twitter at IOE_earlycareer. If you have suggestions for content or want to be part of our next episode as a guest, send us an email at IOEearlycareer@ucl.ac.uk. Thanks for joining!

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Academia et al is brought to you by the IOE's Early Career Network. This podcast is presented by Dr Keri Wong and Dr Alina Pelikh. The theme music was created by Roni Xu. Amy Leibowitz is the series producer, and Sarah-Jane Gregori is the executive producer.

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