I'm grinding hard, every day, to secure a permanent job in academia. I don't want to be a postdoc for life.
We live in a world that doesn’t reward slowness. It fails if a project doesn’t show results within the first week. If a business isn’t booming after six months, it’s labeled “not working.” If a relationship isn’t instantly fulfilling, people leave. Everything is urgent. Everything needs to be optimized, efficient, and fast. We’ve come to expect flowers every day, or we discard the plant.
Yet, i feel I'm getting better positioned year after year, nurturing my collaborations, mentoring junior researchers, growing my role as an impactful researcher... I feel like it will pay off, sooner than later.
But life doesn’t work that way—not really. Significant change takes time. Real growth happens underground, unseen. Anyone who has worked through grief, built a skill, repaired trust, or healed from something difficult knows this. The best things require patience. Often, they don’t appear to be much while they are becoming something.
Will all this time have been worth it? For sure, I'm enjoying the ride. But where will my destination be?
@remindme in 1 year.
What are the things you have been working on where perseverance is key? No immediate results, yet, it paid off? How did it pay off?