My Tip To Early Career Researchers: Teach Well, Take Risks, and Love What You Do

My Tip To Early Career Researchers: Teach Well, Take Risks, and Love What You Do

In academia — unfortunately — you are often measured on your research outputs. For most, you can be an amazing teacher, but if you are not producing research papers and getting in grants, you can be seen as not quite making the mark. Career progression for many academics is thus often focused on the quality of your research outputs.

Well, in a year where I became a Principal Fellow of the HEA and was awarded a Best Lecturer award in the School of Computing, I can vouch for the fact that an academic can have both a research career and still love teaching:

For me, research and innovation must be at the core of pushing us forward. It drives us to learn new things, and where we try and understand the boundaries of our world. It thus stimulates our minds in continually thinking about solving problems, and, many cases, solving problems. Unfortunately, when I first got into research, no-one actually told me why I was doing it, and it is only years later that I now understand why I do it … to make things better, to debate and find solutions, and to receive and pass on knowledge.

And so, for early career researchers, I say that you should try and write and create software, and take risks in both your research and teaching. Always be creating in whatever way you are most comfortable with, and hopefully, people will read what you say, and give you advice on how to improve your work. Every piece of feedback you get should make you a better researcher. While negative feedback can hurt, it is normally there to give you pointers in how you can improve your work.

We live on a small planet, but education and research binds people together with a common drive to improve things. People with talent can achieve their full potential, and education opens up so many doors that many close. It gives people the confidence to take ownership of their lives.

You should never sit back on what you currently know, and you force yourself into new areas. At times, especially when there is virtually no knowledge around, you feel like you are free falling, but you catch yourself and find yourself leading rather than following.

A few years ago, I decided that I was going to teach and research the thing that I truly loved: cryptography. I read Bruce Schneier’s book, and I could see a new world evolving. At first, I was a novice, and the squiggles of maths were just a distraction, but I stuck with it and tried to find simple explanations for the core principles. To me, these complex methods provided the solution to our flawed digital world. And so, I’ve forced myself to continually read new papers and to learn areas which were new. For every new method, there’s a time that researchers around the world are reading a new idea. You are then at the starting gate with others, and it’s a race to see if the work you have just read is going to change the world or just another research output in someone’s career. Unfortunately, research outputs have become rather like a race too, and the increasing focus on metrics is possibly suppressing true creativity and risk taking in research.

And so, my tip to early career researcher is to teach and research into something which you genuinely love, and where your students will feel that you are passing on new knowledge, and not just trawled from the Internet.

I have never tried to put research before teaching, and I never will. But research is a core part of stimulating my interesting in my subject, and it makes me both a teacher and a student. I continually learn from others, and then I compile, and find my own viewpoints, and fit new things into current and old things. I can see the track, and the future, and see how our societies can be improved.

Education is one of the most important things in our lives and for the health of our society. Innovation, too, will play a core part of our future, and research must play a core part of this. So, go write that patent, go read that just published research paper, go write that machine learning code, go write that book you always wanted, go register for the MSc you always wanted to do.

In fact, go do a PhD, if you have one … it is one the best things I ever did in my career, and I have never regretted one second of the time doing it. And, take a few risks, and question the status quo. Our world is flawed, you can make it better.

Well, I leave it to the fantastic Tim Minchin:

“Please? Please be a teacher. Teachers are the most admirable and important people in the world. You don’t have to do it forever, but if you’re in doubt about what to do, be an amazing teacher. Just for your twenties. Be a primary school teacher. Especially if you’re a bloke — we need male primary school teachers. Even if you’re not a Teacher, be a teacher. Share your ideas. Don’t take for granted your education. Rejoice in what you learn, and spray it.”