Welp good night folks! I think this is the end of my academic career
Surprisingly, and with little fanfare, I learned that the second year of my postdoc will be cut. I work on infectious disease in a red state, so maybe I should have seen it coming. Still, it was a huge blindside.
My contract now ends on May 31st — just a month away. This really sucks because my project timelines were built around a two-year contract. Honestly, I wouldn’t have started so many projects if I’d known this was going to happen.
I could try for another postdoc, I guess? But there’s a hiring freeze. And I’m just exhausted. I don’t want to keep moving every two years — it’s expensive, and my wife and I don’t want to do long-distance.
What really hit me is how abruptly it ended. No warning. No renewal. Just a quiet reminder that academia can toss you aside with zero regard. And because postdocs are on yearly contracts, I don’t even qualify for unemployment benefits.
I don’t regret my PhD. It was the happiest time of my life. I met my best friends. I met my wife. But I do regret how much I suffered during my postdoc — and now, it feels like it was for nothing.
I might have some temporary funding lined up (though even that’s uncertain), but I’m done with postdocs.
So here’s my advice to newly minted PhDs: Don’t sacrifice everything for your postdoc. A lot of the time, it’s just not worth it.