I’ve been meaning to write about my experiences as a molecular biologist in academic science for some time, and one day I might. However, despite now tackling questions that truly inspire me, I am not quite finished processing my failure to gain the independence I strived towards for so many years. My plant science career ended in a mental breakdown, directly related to the toxic academic culture and a system that allows individuals to be used and abused. Yet here I am doing another PhD. But this time it is different!

Every time I engage in Twitter exchanges about academia and the PhD experience, I am reminded how very different the US and Europe are and how different biosciences and the humanities are. In the US I was paid a salary while working on a PhD in plant sciences and was expected to produce publishable data, much the same as a postdoc (but with the lower expectations and smaller pay cheques that are justifiable for trainees with less experience). I went on to become a postdoc in the US, UK, and Germany. During that time was lead author on a few academic papers. I even earned a prestigious Marie Currie Postdoctoral Fellowship (which I regretted writing because I felt pressured into accepting it in exchange for the higher paid contract I already had as a postdoc in the same lab).

Despite these achievements, congratulations on ‘my’ papers often acknowledged the PI first (e.g., ‘exciting new research from PI Name’s lab’). In many instances first authors do not take the lead in writing, and sometimes they simply perform the experiments they were told to. So essentially, it is only once you are corresponding author that the world truly knows you can do science and that you can write! I left plant sciences wondering if I could write and doubting everything about myself.

And for me the biggest difference is the level of independence and agency I now have. My anthrozoology PhD is my own. I have a wonderful PhD advisor who I trust is not going to take credit for all my ideas or insist they are on my all papers. Of course, I am conscious that I represent my university and keep my advisor in the loop regarding my academic side-projects (I now have 4 single author papers under my belt). However, I no longer feel like a child who must get permission before they do anything. And for the first time in my academic career, I feel free to succeed or failure on my own.