Will I get a job more easily if I have a PhD? How do I find a project and a supervisor that I enjoy? What happens if it turns out that I am not suitable for research?

Many students struggle with these questions. Almost all of the master's students who attended Future Ecologists' networking meeting on February 7 admitted that they were unsure what to pursue after graduation: research studies or straight into the workforce?

Students, teachers and invited guests

Isabelle Siemers. Photo Margareta Ohné.

About ten students from the ecology program had turned up, as well as some of their teachers and a couple of study counselors from BIG. As usual, the meeting had been arranged by Niklas Janz and Birgitta Åkerman and they had also invited the following three people who shared their experiences.

Isabelle Siemers

Isabelle Siemers has been a PhD student at Zootis for six months. Getting a PhD was her goal, she loves being in the lab and absolutely did not want to leave the environment of the department.

Rasmus Erlandsson. Photo: Margaret Ohné.

Now she is participating in a project about how different environmental factors affect the life cycles of butterflies.

Rasmus Erlandsson

Rasmus Erlandsson defended his dissertation at Zootis in 2019 on a thesis on arctic foxes. He has also spent longer research periods in Tromsø and in Helsinki. Now he is at DEEP doing research on spiders in the tundra, thanks to a grant from Formas.

Cathy Hill

Cathy Hill. Photo: Margareta Ohné.

Cathy Hill attended the very first biology class that started in the fall of 1977 and can look back on a long professional life. After graduating, she worked at the Swedish Fisheries Agency's Freshwater Lab, but returned to the university in 1991 to do her dissertation on amphipods in the Baltic Sea. After that, she has worked in many places, including the Environmental Protection Agency, WWF, the County Administrative Board in Stockholm and Formas. Now she has her own environmental consulting company.

Long discussion

After the presentation, a long and good discussion took place where the students asked many relevant questions. Here follows a selection of the advice and views conveyed by the teachers and the invited guests.

- Through postgraduate education you learn a lot of general things that can be used in many workplaces. However, it is not obvious that a doctorate is an extra qualification everywhere, for some jobs a bachelor's degree is enough. Check out how to think about your dream workplace!

- There are several ways to prepare for the selection of supervisors and projects. It is not unusual to continue with the same supervisor and project that you had during your degree project. On the other hand, it is more of an intellectual challenge to change research groups, departments or even universities between different phases of the education.

- If you want to test other environments, it might be a good idea to do a research internship there. You can also ask if any researchers need help in the lab or in the field for a period. It might even be good to work outside the university for a while. Everything you do gives you experience and you learn a lot about yourself.

- It is good to try to get to know the supervisor before making a decision. Feel free to talk to other students who are supervised by the researcher you are considering.

- If you are going to email potential supervisors, you should spend time formulating yourself well. It must not look like a mass mailing! Feel free to be personal but not overly reverent.

- When your application is assessed, the thesis is of course important. But the grade you got on the work matters less, different institutions have such different criteria. The most important thing is the interview! References can also mean a lot.

- Don't just apply for one doctoral position, apply for several!

- It is important to be able to quit if you are not happy with your situation, whether it is at university or out in the workplace. But if you can: try to finish what you're doing, it looks better on your resume.

- The choice between postgraduate education and work outside academia is not a lifelong choice, you can work for a few years first and return to research. Think of Cathy!

The next network meeting will be on 11 April at 16:30 in E314 with the theme "The Ecologist's Role in Academia".