Emily chats with Dr. Mohamad Nadim Adi, who opens up about feeling the pressure to be perfect, the detrimental health impacts of a micromanaging Postdoc supervisor & how the deterioration of his confidence led him to leave academia for a few years.
CW: Weight gain, civil war, and a death in the family
This discussion includes:
- Laughing about the challenges of switching from architecture to programming
- The pressure to be perfect affecting ability to complete simple tasks
- Trial by fire professors
- No prior family members having done a PhD
- The difference between studying for/passing exams and experimentation
- Doing reports last-minute and redoing them because they weren’t ‘good enough’
- A micromanaging postdoc supervisor
- Weight gain during the first year of Nadim’s postdoc that made him unhappy
- Nadim learning to do what he could and adjusting only if necessary
- Making the difficult mindset shift of letting go of perfectionism
- Working in consulting for 5 years
- Using knowledge of ‘learning by doing’ in Nadim’s company outside of academia
- Leaving academia for a few years, missing it, and deciding to return
- Imposter syndrome
- Lacking confidence to write funding grants
- The soft skills learned while doing research, like juggling a million balls in the air at once, critical thinking, and problem solving
- Volunteering in organisations to help you feel good about yourself – if you can find a low stress environment where you receive appreciation as a volunteer. You might also see the immediate impact of your input, which can often be difficult in professional settings
- Acknowledgement of an unhealthy ‘workaholic’ coping mechanism
- Regret for holding the mindset that taking time off after a death in the family wouldn’t leave a good impression
Nadim is also available on LinkedIn
The full transcript of the podcast is available here, with many thanks to Dan Ranson
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Recorded 14/01/2021.
Sound: Mindset and Hard Sell by Ketsa is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, available through Free Music Archive.
