“I’m just doing my job” is how I literally lied to myself for years!
I remember saying it. So many times. All the time. I said it to my colleagues, I said it to my friends. I kept saying it to myself inside my head too! I was trying hard to make myself believe it.
Glad I failed!
You know, in theory, it sounds like a humble and reasonable thing to say. Something a good academic would be: humble and reasonable, right? Not trying to prove anything, no grandiose dreams, just living the good office life with crappy instant coffee from a machine with like-minded friends.
In hindsight, I now know that was not the (whole) truth.
I was scared.
It’s painful to admit it was just a defence mechanism—against what? Against the very real possibility of failure.
Of course, I wanted to be good! I wanted so desperately to be safe and succeed!
We all want to be seen…. but what.. if it all fails?
“What if academia doesn’t work out for me?”
That was the inner monologue. So I double down and looked down on academia. I told people I’m just doing a job here. Nothing special. No big dreams. Nothing personal.
But every damn reject and accept was of course personal!
Buckle up and get ready to dream bigger.
The real danger of “just a job”
Cutting straight to the point: Some years ago I didn’t really believe I could stay in academia.
Objetively, we all KNOW it’s tough out (t)here.
And my defence mechanism was looking at all I do as somehow mundane and meaningless, as “just work.”
( NB: Academia 100% is WORK, and one of my early mentor’s (big HCI name now) solid (paraphrased) advice was “Just do good work, consistently, for a long period of time, and it will all be OK.)
But what I mean here is I could easily spend a day, week, or sometimes even a month working on things that helped others more than me. Of course, co-authoring and helping people are important, again, not saying they’re not. But it makes sense to always have goals and aims that are 100% aligned to make academia work for you, not for them.
And there are even worse kinds of things than helping others that you start to do when it’s all just work: polishing documents nobody reads, tweaking tiny things in some codebase, perfecting a slide deck endlessly, even if you will only present it once in your life to 7 people in the room…
Because, hey, it’s just work! And you get paid to do it! Why not!
Oh God how silly I was.
But all that made me feel useful and fulfilling what I was there to do.
Just work. Telling myself it’s all fine. Secretly wanting to succeed bigger anyway.
And all those wasted months… all because I was too scared to sit down and work boldly on my own thing. To sit down and chat with myself about what do I really want but am too scared to pursue.
all-in.
If I fail at polishing slides nobody sees, who cares? If I fail in this whole academia thing, who cares? Just a job! Jobs can be replaced!
So I played it safe. It took years for me to see it.
What changed?
External validation matters, just don’t wait for it
It was my big mistake. All it took to start really enjoying this race was a few external signs. A supervisor who believed in me. Seeing others “on the same level” with me get Tenure Track positions. Or, after mustering the courage (through frustration) to apply for positions, panel statements validating I had done very well (unbeknownst to me, which is the sad part).
And little by little, people around me not telling me directly but clearly trying to give me a platform. A sign that… maybe they believed in me?
These are still emotional things to talk about. Even to write about.
But I made a mistake right there by holding on to wrong beliefs and wrong identity for far too long. And all it took was those small pushes, together, to understand “Maybe I can do this!”
And even that hurt, as I had to face the “wasted time” in my past…
Here’s a truth-bomb: Nobody is going to give you permission in academia. Nobody will tell you when it’s “safe to try” finally. Nobody, most likely, even notices the struggles you’re having.
Everyone is busy battling their own demons. Of course they are! And that’s ok. You have to forgive them for doing that.
We’re all just human.
Don’t wait for someone else to tell you when you’re ready. Just go (click for a directly related blurp on social media).
Choose yourself
Listen. Sit down. Stop being busy for just 10 minutes.
What do you want? Do you want to fare well in an academic career? Or are you, truly, just doing a job, for now, until something better comes along?
Because both are OK! If you’re here to stay, great! If you’re here to look for other avenues, great!
It’s all great! Can you see it? There’s nothing wrong with you or either of those motives.
As long as you are aware of what you’re after. Not knowing is not good. Hiding behind “just a job” is definitely not good if you’re secretly ambitious to stay, as that way you’re giving yourself permission to waste time on things that don’t move you forward.
So if you’re here with me to stay and have been telling yourself you’re “just doing your job”…
Stop.
That story doesn’t protect you. That story blocks you. That story makes you invisible.
I think you can start to choose yourself with just three tiny decisions:
1. Dare to admit what you actually want
It’s scary. I know. Even embarrassing. Imagine if you fail! But don’t worry. You don’t have to share it on CringedIn. Just write it down. Somewhere. A private Notion homepage for yourself is a wonderful idea (I’ll have to do a separate post about this alone one day…) What do you want to do with your career? If it feels awkward to answer this one, you’re probably doing something right.
Create a vision.
Face it.
2. Block time for work that is not just a part of your job
Not for “just job” but for your empire building (killer clip from Breaking Bad by the way) business. The type of work that helps you stay in the business, long term, to thrive! The kind of work you can be proud of, not “hey I got work done as that’s my job.”
Work with intent. Dream. And then build big.
3. Reframe the narrative
This one hinges on your success in the previous step. But when you start doing the right things, you can finally stop calling your work just work.
You’re building your future empire. What you learn, you can take with you wherever you go: papers, grants, courses you have been a TA or a teacher, connections, community work… it all stays in your CV and with you. Knowledge and expertise. You’re building all that, brick by brick, one meaningful work session at a time.
Bonus: Pay attention to descriptions: remember words are power!
I think sometimes the same insecurity making us call it “just a job” sometimes manifests as being overly humble… leading us to minimise the importance of some things.
Can you identify anything? Instead of “just analysing data” you’re building the skill that makes you 10x stronger in the future. Instead of “just finishing a mandatory review” you’re literally influencing the direction of the field and helping yourself understand what others are doing right now.
It’s all psychology. And you have the agency to harness it, or let it bring you down.
I think I could talk about this forever, but the word counter is already showing way too high numbers!
So we’ll talk more about something else next time then!