This is part 2 in a series of 5 articles based on the PhD Career Transition Guide I’ve written to prepare for a career transition beyond the bench.

Lesson 2 is Let Go of What You “Should” Want. One of the biggest transitional obstacles faced by scientists desiring alternative, non-academic, and/or non-bench science career is the scientist’s own mental blocks.

These mental blocks form after years of conditioning about how a career “should” progress and how you “should” transition - as if there is a formulaic response that works for every scientist. If the scientist is geared to the traditional academic career, he or she can count a time-honored prescriptive path toward the tenure goal. But if the scientist is interested in exploring a career path outside of science or academia… there’s not much out there in the way of resources or support.

It comes as no surprise, then, that another career transitional stumbling block comes from the scientist’s question, “… but, how?”. If you’ve never done something before, you’re not going to have a quick or simple answer to “how will I do this?” - and maybe you will not be able to find an answer at all until you begin to actually do it! Yet it’s all too easy to get trapped in this question and psyche yourself out of doing anything at all.

Focus on what you really do want instead of what you should want, then find out as much as you can about everything relating to what you really do want. Keep your “shoulds” and “buts” in check and instead, channel your mental energy to what it is you want to make of yourself: before you worry about how you want to make a living, figure out what you want to make of your life.