Author: iobizarro

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What’s after grad school?

Insomnia is a bitch. I’m anxious. I’m not surprised that I’m anxious, this year has been going non-stop and all of a sudden I feel like I’m floating. I graduated this past Sunday with my Ph.D. I know it’s only been two days but I feel stagnant – like nothing is happening. Of course it’s unreasonable for me to think things will happen two days after I achieve a goal I’ve been working toward for the past 5 years, but I’ve been trying to make things happen for much longer than that.

I know I need to live in the moment and just breathe. I’m a firm believer that what is meant to be will be, but that doesn’t stop me from throwing mental temper tantrums as I wait for things to happen. I’ve written to myself in the wee hours of the morning before, wishing I could turn my brain off at will. So many nights I’ve been up anxiously ruminating over fear of the unknown – worrying about the future. Tonight does feels different though. I’m still anxious, but this feels more like anxious excitement – definitely more positive than in the past.

How does one become more patient? Does this happen over time? Is patience something people are either born with or not? I’m being impatient waiting to hear whether or not I get this job I really want. Not surprisingly, I’ve been thinking a lot about jobs and careers lately, and specifically about why I want this job. It is a good job on paper, with good pay and for a company with a good reputation – a company that is poised to grow and seemingly ready to invest in things that are important to me. I’ve been on the job market for a while now. I’ve had informal conversations, screenings, writing assignments, formal interviews, etc. But none of those other experiences have felt like this, which is why I’m being so impatient about the outcome.

I hate to admit that this job has such a hold on me. I know my self-worth cannot be tied to a job – especially my first job out of school – but I want it bad. I haven’t wanted something this bad in a long time. I’m not even sure I wanted to get into graduate school this badly.

For a long time in graduate school I felt like things had all happened as part of this happy accident. I wrote a journal entry years ago when I was deciding what to do after college about whether or not I really wanted anything – how it was so easy to say that I wanted things that I knew people wanted to hear, things that I wanted to be true. I was all over the place trying to chase passions and it wasn’t getting me anywhere. I eventually landed on IO Psychology and ended up at UCONN. People in academia talk about imposter syndrome starting once you get your degree and are finally on your own. For me, imposter syndrome started pretty much on day one of grad school. I was embarrassed by how little I knew about anything to do with my newly chosen field of research, and everyone else seemed to be so well informed.

Now, I feel like I have found a real path for myself. For the first time I feel the thing I want, I’m not just trying to feel the thing I say I want. That’s why this job feels so important, and I think this process has helped me realize what a career could be. The notion of a career is something that has taken me a long time to define for myself. I know what one is, I have read and done research on careers. I have friends who are embarking on great careers and speak openly about what it means to them, but I haven’t really been able to pin it down for myself. This job feels like it could be the start of a career – one I can be proud of and pursue passionately.

So back to the impatience. Maybe it’s not the job that has such a stronghold on me. Perhaps I’ve reached a moment of clarity about what I’m looking for and what that should feel like. I’m still impatient to know the result of this interview process if only for the validation of my ability to get a job, but what is meant to be will be. I will be disappointed if I do not get this job, but that certainly is not the end of this new-found path. Wanting the job may have served as a catalyst, but my next step forward is not contingent on getting this particular job.

There are two things I know about myself to be true: 1) I am fascinated by and believe in the power of introspection, and 2) I never regret making life decisions based on gut feelings. These two things are what brought me to this blog tonight instead of the journal by my bed.

I started this blog as a New Year’s resolution in 2015 because I felt like I had something to say. I wanted to contribute something meaningful. I certainly did not write as much as I thought I would, and there are several unpublished drafts behind the scenes of this blog that were never organized into a coherent mission. Regardless, I am glad to be writing this entry now and have a feeling this might be the best place for me to sort out my thoughts as I embark on this new journey.

So maybe people will read this and maybe they won’t, but at the very least I can try to hold myself accountable for starting the next chapter of my life in the most purposeful way possible.

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Silos

In both industry and academia terms like silo and ivory tower are commonly used to describe work that is isolated within a community, department, discipline, or function. Even though this type of set-up can be very efficient and productive, too much work in isolation further exacerbates the misalignment between science and practice.

Having spent a majority of my professional career thus far in an academic setting I’ve seen first hand that different disciplines operate in their own silos and often develop theories and ideas alongside each other rather than with each other. The idea that these silos exist in industry as well, even within the same organization, is relatively new to me. I’m not surprised that they exist but I am curious about why they exist, whether the silos within industry and academia operate in the same way, and what this means for the science-to-practice conversation.

So what’s the point? This post seems a little dry…

I mentioned already that I’ve been working in Organization Management and Development, which is part of HR for a large organization. The team I work on is commonly referred to in the field as a Center of Excellence or Center of Expertise (COE). This week I had the pleasure of meeting a new co-worker for the first time. He was excited to join the COE after working internally with the HR Generalists and Business Partners. I was curious to hear about his experiences working in both realms of HR and why he was eager to be part of the COE again. Based on our conversation, the major benefit of working in the COE is the level of creativity and freedom you are allowed in your work. He used the phrase, “Your time is your own,” which, ironically, is what I hear from many people touting the benefits of a career in academia versus industry.

Here is where the silos come in. In our conversation, my co-worker brought up the potential risk of the COE becoming too isolated and ultimately less valuable to the larger organization. Over the past decade or so HR functions have been undergoing transformations on how to address inefficiencies and a general lack of strategic focus in HR and perhaps these transformations could provide insights into a the broader science-to-practice conversation. Seeing how transformations play out over time could be an interesting experiment on what happens when one of the silos is completely overhauled.

It’s relatively easy for an organization to initiate a change (compared to science trying to initiate a change in industry or vice versa) especially if they have reason to believe it will improve their bottom line. But these silos exist for a reason. There is comfort in being part of a tight-knit community of colleagues. When comparing yourself to others in your silo it’s easier to see where you stand and/or demonstrate your value. What happens when these silos are broken down? Do you risk that someone else is doing something similar to you? Are they doing it more efficiently?

Words like streamline and centralization can be nerve-wracking for people who are worried about becoming obsolete. Perhaps this is part of the science-to-practice problem. People generally agree that collaboration and cross-disciplinary research is desperately needed but we are reluctant to change. If academia rethinks the way research is rewarded and published are they risking the integrity of their science? Would reworking these silos derail careers?

 

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3 Not So Simple Questions…

Where do I start?

What do I bring to the table?

Will anyone care?

I wrote these questions at the beginning of a document on my personal computer called StartABlog.doc. So, for the sake of humoring myself and finally launching this blog, I’ll start by answering them below.

Where do I start?

I suppose I should start by introducing myself. My name is Andrea and I’m a doctoral student in Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology. For those of you who aren’t quite sure what that means, I/O psychologists study the behavior of people at work and how work influences other aspects of life, including stress and family relationships. Our research focuses on topics relevant to society as a whole and also provides us with unique opportunities to recommend interventions or changes on a manageable scale that have the potential make real change for individual employees and their families.

What do I bring to the table?

For the past 6 months, I’ve been working in Organization Management and Development, part of the human resources (HR) department at a large organization. I’m fortunate to work at a company that not only understands the value that I/O research brings to HR, but also has the resources to employ entire teams of I/O psychologists. Even with these resources, it remains difficult to fully capitalize on every research opportunity that could inform decisions that impact our employees.

While the limitations of applying I/O research to a real world setting can be frustrating, I can’t help but think of the vast majority of organizations that don’t have these resources and the graduate students and professors in academia struggling to find real-world venues to collect data. Partnerships between academia and organizations exist today, but the relatively few I’ve experienced personally have suffered from competing priorities and a lack of alignment between the academic and the industry agendas. We can do better. We can find a way to rethink these partnerships and realign science and practice to achieve a true science-to-practice model at any scale.

Will anyone care?

Through this blog I plan to explore different ways of engaging people in a larger science-to-practice conversation – a conversation that is much larger than I/O Psychology or the even the HR field. While my personal view and experiences are grounded in I/O, I want to have a much more philosophical conversation about research and how a new generation of scientists can rethink the science-to-practice relationship. So will anyone care? I am excited to find out.