218 10 JULY 2020 • VOL 369 ISSUE 6500 sciencemag.org SCIENCE
WORKING LIFE
When I started my postdoc, I aimed
to become a professor at a liberal
arts college. But as time wore on,
I had doubts. I didn’t want to do
a second postdoc, which I feared
would be necessary to land a fac-
ulty position. My partner and I
were also settled in Chicago after
5 years of juggling a long-distance
relationship, so the prospect of mov-
ing to a new city didn’t appeal to me.
Yet cultivating connections and
exploring career options outside
the lab proved difficult. My weekly
calendar was always filled with
seminars, student presentations,
and lab meetings. I felt guilty tak-
ing time away from my work—but
just as guilty about neglecting my
future. So when an email circulated
about the career development sym-
posium, I signed up.
As I stood awkwardly in the
lunch line that day, I chatted with a technology transfer
specialist. We found a table together and met a medical sci-
ence liaison, who told me about how much he enjoys com-
municating medical research with health care providers.
That piqued my interest because I’d always enjoyed com-
municating science, but I hadn’t seriously considered it as
a career option. He told me to check out a science writing
panel that afternoon, where he’d be a panelist.
A few hours later, I spotted him up on the stage. He and
the other panelists—all of whom had Ph.D.s—clearly loved
their jobs. They made frequent use of skills they had honed
through their graduate training: critical thinking, project
management, and the ability to learn quickly. I sat in the
audience feeling I, too, could be a medical writer—and that
it would suit me.
I knew that I needed a varied, intellectually stimulat-
ing career that would keep me on my toes. I wanted tospend time thinking about how
to present data, because that’s
something I enjoyed doing in aca-
demia. The more I thought about
it, the more I felt science commu-
nication might be the perfect fit
for me.
It took me 2 months, but even-
tually I reached out to a medi-
cal writer who had served on the
panel, and she agreed to meet for
tea. As she spoke about her job at
a medical communications agency,
time flew by and I wanted to
know more. I asked her for advice
about how I could launch my own
medical writing career, and she re-
sponded by asking for my resume.
One week later, I had a phone inter-
view with her agency. Two months
later, I started a new job as a medi-
cal writer working alongside her.
I’ve been at the company for
1.5 years now, and I’m thankful I found a career that’s such
a good fit. I work collaboratively with my colleagues on
projects that communicate medical research for our cli-
ents, mainly pharmaceutical companies. And I use many
core skills from my scientific training, such as rapidly sift-
ing through the literature to find relevant information and
communicating data visually.
During my postdoc, it was challenging to figure out
where my career path would take me next. For me, the cata-
lyst was talking to people. I realize it can be hard to get out
and network in person these days. But virtual networking is
always an option—and you won’t even have to worry about
missing a train. jKelsey Hodge-Hanson is a medical writer at AMICULUM. She’s based
in Chicago. Do you have an interesting career story that you would like
to share? Send it to [email protected].“Cultivating connections and
exploring career options outside
the lab proved difficult.”
The day I left the lab
I
finished my experiment and hurried to store my samples. I had a train to catch, and I was cut-
ting it close. “Ugh, I should just stay in the lab to get a few more experiments done. I’m not even
sure what I’ll get out of the career development symposium,” I thought to myself. I had started a
postdoc position 8 months earlier and needed to gather preliminary data to bulk up a fellowship
application and extend my postdoc appointment. But I also knew that I needed to cultivate con-
tacts in industry, in case I wanted to pursue a career outside academia. A friend working in bio-
technology had told me, “Sometimes you need to get out of the lab to make meaningful connections.”
He was right, I decided. I washed my hands and headed to the train.By Kelsey Hodge-Hanson
ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER