Understanding self

Nancy Kline (2024), author of Time To Think, observes that ‘The quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking that we do first.’ Thus, rather than launching straight into a range of activities that may support our careers, we encourage first a pause to discover more about ourselves, our values, our motivations, and our aspirations.

This section on “Understanding Self” includes several Academic Career Conversation prompts that you can use to have a conversation with yourself, or with another/others to reflect on what is important to you. This will help to create a focus for the investment of time, energy and money that you will invest in your career development and ensures that you focus on creating the most value from this investment.

Academics have described the many different starting points for their careers. Some began as early career researchers, some joined from business, industry, further education or other professions, some began with a focus as teachers. Expectations of academics have grown and are now expected to be engaged in research, education, practice, enterprise, and administration (Harding, 2012) and many in the current study felt that in developing a rounded portfolio of academic work, they had multiple identities, with other focusing more on a particular specialism.

Whatever the starting point and whatever their current activities, whilst some academics described their careers as following a linear path according to the structure set by their institution, some others highlighted the lack of structured support and how the development of their career was more ‘accidental’, unplanned, or the result of ‘luck’.

Whilst some shared their lack of confidence, others were able to clearly describe ‘what got me here’, and this was sometimes the result of conscious choice, focus, experiences that triggered a step change, advice, inspiration, or support from their wider community. Authentic passion, personal agility, and hard work also played a role.

Nevertheless, many had aspirations, some appreciation of the impact that they wanted to have, what they value, and what motivated them. However, it seems that that amidst the busyness of an academic role, much of this self-awareness and interest can remain hidden or dormant; some even described how it was decades later before they discovered their niche, with some regret over the time wasted in not discovering it sooner.

We invite you to explore the conversation prompts in this section to discover what career means to you; what has brought you to this point in your career; what you value; what motivates you; the kind of academic role or experience that you aspire to; and your strengths, areas for development, opportunities ahead and what could derail you. This exploration can be a helpful springboard before accessing the other conversation prompts in the other sections of the Academic Career Conversations tool.