Leaving academia and a few unplanned career changes along the way

In most aspects of my personal life, I am very organized. But in my professional life, I’ve stopped controlling for every eventuality a long time ago. I suppose that this “let’s see what happens” mindset has been a strange consequence of me leaving academia and building a start up at 35. I say strange because you would think that changing careers entails long term vision boarding and hyper-management (at least that’s what all the career books say).

For me, building a business means leaving room to make mistakes and learning from what doesn’t work. I went down the PhD route, completing a doctorate in Political Science and was really not sure what I wanted to do afterwards. I got some research jobs in Europe, and decided to move around hoping that a particular location would capture my heart. Nothing as an academic felt natural, and so I took the leap and decided to quit.

Five years later and I have no regrets. I do miss the university community I had, but I get energized by the entrepreneurs and freelancers I’ve met in this new journey.

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