Tag: leaving academia

  • [Career Break] Taking in all the BIG changes

    [Career Break] Taking in all the BIG changes

    How does it feel four months into a career break? I’m turning 40 soon while taking time for myself after decades in academia. Here are some highlights of what’s been going on the past few months since starting my break.

  • Blogging from Home Quarantine: My 2023 Year-end Report

    A year-end report of my progress as a scientist on the year I left academia. Writing my progress at the end of each year became a habit, to remind me of how far I’ve actually come.

  • Last Day at University

    Last Day at University

    My faculty room was almost empty, save for my desktop computer which needed reformatting. I checked my work inbox on that computer for the last time. I logged out my Google and Apple ID accounts, and erased all contents. I knocked on my tenure-track mentor’s door to say goodbye. Six months ago, he and I…

  • [Career Break] The First 30 Days

    [Career Break] The First 30 Days

    I’ve now taken 30 days off work. It’s the first time in my adult life that I’ve ever taken a vacation that lasted more than 10 days. Most of my time off have been for the year-end holidays, usually still hectic, and all the time never enough. Some trauma and burnout The past few years…

  • I’m finally on break!

    I’m finally on break!

    I did it! I submitted my resignation letter. I’m officially counting down to unemployment freedom my career break. In Japan, the general rule is to give notice a month in advance. But, I have a hefty 34 days of paid holidays left, so I filed my resignation 2 months early. A week after filing it,…

  • A salute to the classroom

    On the day I wrote this, I submitted the grades for my last class in the university. Of the many, many things an academic does, I have to say, teaching has been the most fulfilling for me. I have no idea how many are like me, but it definitely brought me joy when students took…

  • an unattached academic’s household of 1

    an unattached academic’s household of 1

    I spent my postdoc years with a colleague who turned into a really good friend, let’s call her V. She, like me, and many other postdocs and young faculty, was living solo. I don’t have hard numbers, but this is roughly the norm within my broader circle. In 2016, she attended a conference in Denmark…

  • [Learning Data Science] WQU Applied Data Science Lab Project 2

    I want to document the skills that I am learning from my WQU Applied Data Science Lab course. The course features 8 projects for instruction and experience in working with real data. This is how Project 2 went: About Project 2 Housing in Buenos Aires In Project 1, we learned how to analyze data and…

  • [Learning Data Science] WQU Applied Data Science Lab Project 1

    I want to document the skills that I am learning from my WQU Applied Data Science Lab course. The course features 8 projects for instruction and experience in working with real data. Let’s dive into my first ever Data Science project! About Project 1 ‘Housing in Mexico’ Project 1 uses data on properties for sale…

  • I enrolled in a Data Science course!

    I enrolled in WorldQuant University’s Applied Data Science Lab (it’s free!). It was recommended to me by a friend who walked away from her PhD program in South Korea, and spent a good part of her break learning Data Science. When I asked her what “Data Science” is like, she said “it’s just like processing…

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started