Hi! I have a professional question if you're okay with answering stuff like that, and sorry if not! I'm a student planning to go into a pretty niche field for a career in academia (developmental biology), and the job market and everything is of course very rocky right now. I still have a few years, but I'm wondering if this is a good idea at all. I know you're a herpetologist, which is pretty different from my field, but it's also a niche academic area. I wanted to ask, is it sustainable? Are you able to keep working in this for years, without the work getting exhausting due to financial issues or lack of opportunity? Basically, do you like what you chose and would you recommend a similar life for students like me, too?
Firstly, Developmental Biology is one of the most important biological fields, and if I had not gone in the evolutionary direction, I would also have gone in the direction of developmental biology. It is the coolest shit, especially with modern methods. It has extremely broad relevance, and the employment prospects are, I think, much better than many other fields. In evolutionary biology we are often making hypotheses but not satisfactorily able to test them. In developmental biology, you can test hypotheses directly, giving concrete results than can have major implications in many other fields. Consequently, many breakthrough papers of our age are coming from teams that have developmental biologists prominent among their author lists. I strongly recommend Stephen Jay Gould's 'Ontogeny and Phylogeny' for a little perspective on why development is critical to our understanding of evolution. But also read some of the hot new shit, like this fucking bonkers paper that established the developmental basis of patagium formation in sugargliders and other gliding mammals.
Secondly, you asked 'Is it sustainable? Are you able to keep working in this for years, without the work getting exhausting due to financial issues or lack of opportunity?'
This is such a tough question to answer. Fair warning: I am going to be brutally honest here, because I think you need to hear it from somewhere.
You are surely familiar with the Mark Twain line 'Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.' But this has a corollary: if your job is what you love, you will always be working. I don't know many successful academics that have a healthy relationship with work hours, or can sustain themselves on a 9–5. It can be straining on personal relationships, families, and your own health.
It can be exhausting, and frustrating when you are up against the funding machine. And that machine is brutal, especially in the current political climate—if you are in the US, the future is extremely uncertain; even well established colleagues of mine in the US have lost funding for their labs, have lost their own fellowships, and have even lost their jobs. But even in Europe, it takes a lot to break through and make it sustainable. Permanent jobs are extremely rare, and this can lead to it being cutthroat at times, and heartbreaking at others. This leads to a lot of employment anxiety, which for foreigners like me, can also lead to existential anxiety about your residence status, when it is dependent on your having a job.
Additionally, if you are working on academically interesting things with no obvious benefit to humans or society, you will always be questioned as to why your work should be supported, and the battle for funding will be especially hard. I face this all the time, because in Denmark, the same pot of money that funds basic science, also funds e.g. Alzheimer's research. I myself would find it hard to justify why they should fund research on tiny frogs, when they could be working on therapies that could save lives. I have to add relevance to human-related topics to my grant applications, even when I am *deeply* disinterested in that relevance—for me, it is the pursuit of knowledge and curiosity-driven investigation that motivates me, and not e.g. the bullshit about innovations in biorobotics that I sometimes have to add to my funding proposals for them to have a shot at getting funded.
So do I recommend a similar life for students? That's a tough one. If you are burning for this subject, do it. Academia was always the direction I wanted to go; since I was a tiny kid all I knew was that I wanted to have a PhD and to work in herpetology. I didn't see myself as having any other choice. And because I have this singular hyperfixation, I am convinced I would be absolutely useless in all other capacities in society. If you are just interested in having a 9–5, and living outside of work, then I am not sure it is the right thing to do. But if you want to figure out how and why Life is the way it is—if this gets your mind whirring, and you are burning to break into the field, academic pursuit of developmental biology may be for you.
I hope that helps.
I appreciate this answer so veryy much, thanks a ton! There's a lot to chew on here. I certainly am extremely passionate about this science, I have also seen myself working in such a career since I was a child, and if the world was a slightly better place I'd have no questions about my career choice. I do find it scary to try and decide whether my passion will be enough to overrule all the cons, as much as I want it to be. What if I'm just young and idealistic right now and ten years later I find myself wishing I'd gone for the money? What if I'm just too neurodivergent/mentally ill to keep up with the demands of the job, which is something I occasionally struggle with in college too? But I'm trying to find an intersection between pure academia and a corporate skillset, maybe study a course in Master's that still gives me access to private sector/corporate roles if I feel I have to shift paths. But either way, I do think studying dev bio further is what I wanna do, at the very least I'm trying to remember it's not a one-way path I embark on at 20, and can never ever branch out from, right? (God I hope I'm right.)
As for this subject itself, big thanks for the read recs, I'm gonna check those out. And you're so right about how deeply fascinating this field is, if I could spend my life simply learning brand new fun facts about something as awesome as fundamental organismal development, that's the dream. It annoys me to no end that research needs that human benefit angle in order to be considered valuable, but even taking that into account, dev bio has an insane potential and impact when it comes to human benefit. I hope opportunities and funding don't dry up too badly for this at least, with all it's potential to cure disease and improve lives.
Once again, thanks a lot for taking the time to answer :)
Nobody has the same journey through academia. Some people stay in, some people leave. Some people fight all their way through a PhD, and everything goes smoothly afterwards. Some people have a smooth PhD but decide to leave academia afterwards because they don't like the hustle. Some leave academia and come back years later. Some don't even start their Bachelor's until their forties or later, and go on to be successful late-entry scientists.
Academia is full of neurodivergent people. It always has been. You only have to pick up a history book for Your Chosen Field to hear how melancholic, manic, depressive, hyperactive, distractible, irascible, or scatterbrained your predecessors were. You would not be alone. Many people will share your experiences, but some may not, or may have fundamentally different challenges to those you face. Hopefully you will find an environment that is supportive and understanding of that. But of course, there is never a guarantee, and for some, the struggle is just not worth it. Only you can fathom what you might or might not be able to handle—but you also won't know until and unless you try (and I think plenty of people in industry/corporate/other jobs also have just awful working conditions!!).
Just another thing to mention: a PhD's contents in different places can be FUNDAMENTALLY different.
An American PhD is frequently six or more years, and you don't have a Master's beforehand (meaning if you crash out, sometimes you are left with NOTHING). In Denmark, a PhD is three years, and you can't even start without a two-year Master's. In Germany, PhDs are often four years, and you need at least a one year Master's to start. Edit: this means that, on average, American PhD graduates tend to be a little (sometimes a lot) older than European graduates. Age can affect job prospects later, even though it shouldn’t. I personally prefer the European version, as it is more focused and drags less (and has fewer distractions, read on)
In some places, you have to graduate with a single monographic, unpublished thesis (in some subjects), and you can have a gruelling four-hour private exam at the end (e.g. in the UK). In others, you have to publish at least one, sometimes at least three or more, peer-reviewed papers in internationally recognised journals during your PhD, but the defence is more or less a twenty minute formality (e.g. many places in Germany).
In America, it is expected you teach a LOT during your PhD, and many PhD students fund their whole PhDs by teaching. In Germany, I wasn't even allowed to TA, and didn't get a chance to do even a single lecture.
In many places (e.g. Denmark), you have to take classes/courses during your PhD, but in some places (e.g. some unis in Germany), there is no formal taught component at all.
In Germany as a PhD student you are actually a Scientific Employee (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) with full benefits and pension and everything. In the US, you are often more or less treated like a student and not a real employee, meaning you have very few rights indeed (lots of PhD students got royally fucked by COVID).
In America you have to do these things called Comprehensive Exams (comps); these don't exist abroad (probably because you are expected to have a Master's to enroll as a PhD student).
All this to say: you and I can be talking about PhDs, and mean totally different things. It is important when looking for PhD positions that you know what that means at the institute and in the country you are looking at.
