In 2012 I have shared some of my memories on career-related decisions and transitions I had made. With hindsight I can say I would not change a thing – but I would have wished that resources such as Dan Mullin’s Unemployed Philosopher’s Blog or Julie Clarenbach’s site Escape the Ivory Tower would have been available back then.

Comment from the future: Most links don’t work anymore and I don’t want to archive.org-avize so many links to a blog that the owner chose to “unpublish”. So do that yourself if you like :-)

Dan publishes podcasts on alternative jobs for academics regularly, mainly targeted to humanities graduates. However, I am always astonished by how well the advice and insights given by Dan’s guests would have applied to physics at the time I had graduated and would still apply – based on my anecdotal evidence from discussions on alternative careers in physics.

I like this Episode 6 in particular, as Julie discusses ‘career versus skills’ and the overarching but underestimated role of culture.
[Is ‘Episode’ alluding a bit to Star Trek? SCNR]

Above all, she encourages graduates not to be too modest and she tells you that some grieving and ‘panic’ is normal when you make a transition.

It’s simply good to know that a transition that might feel strange, alien and disturbing is very, very normal after all.

I would even extend the scope of this discussion and validity of advice to any major transition, that is associated with cultural changes – such as: leaving the global corporate world and turning to run a mainly local business, changing industry sectors, working self-employed after a longer period of employment or vice versa.