SEASON 2, EPISODE 6: GUT FEELINGS

This episode is about using your intuition to figure out what you want. Sometimes, what you want is in conflict with the demands of the environment around you.

I revisit a journal entry I wrote in June 2014. I was coming to the end of the 5 month extension of my contract and I was trying to make decisions about my long-term future in academia…and whether I should stay in Germany as an expat.

I reflect on what happens when your intuition/gut feeling tells you one thing but the world around you pushes you a different way, why I wanted to keep living in Germany as an expat and why that was the right decision, realising I didn’t have original research ideas, and how I wish leaving academia would be normalized in academia…because it IS the norm!

Timestamps:

[00:00] Intro

[02:50] Journal entry

[08:18] Wanting to stay still when things around you are forcing you to move forward

[09:41] Gut feelings that tell you that you are living inauthentically

[11:10] Why I wanted to stay living in Germany as an expat

[13:51] I realised I didn’t have original research ideas of my own

[15:33] Weaknesses in one context can be strengths in another context

[16:44] I wish there was more support for me to leave academia without it feeling like a failure

[19:53] The culture in academia about leaving academia needs to change

[20:33] Outro

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