Graduate students and postdocs are often asked whether they will pursue academic or non-academic jobs. As someone with a purely academic trajectory so far, I bought into this view of the job market. However, I have realized that this mindset is fundamentally flawed and heavily biased.
Having carried out dozens of informational interviews with professionals in government, consulting, business, NGOs, and international organizations (not to mention academia), it has become clear to me that asking graduate students to choose between academic and non-academic jobs leads to a misrepresentation of the job market.
This may seem obvious to many people out…
How can we achieve a minimum standard of living for the world’s growing population, while reducing our carbon emissions to curb climate change and limiting our impact on the planet’s ecosystems to stop the current mass extinction? How can we protect and manage our natural resources such that people across nations and generations have a more equitable access to them? How can we create a more inclusive and pluralistic society that provides equal access of opportunities to all of its members? …
Applied Scientist @DescartesLabs . Climate risks, sustainability, remote sensing. Frmr. @Stanford postdoc, @Princeton PhD, @Columbia BS. My own views. Mexican.