Be selfish with your career, advises academic blogger

Stephen Curry is a Structural Biologist at Imperial College London.  As well as conducting research and teaching, he also writes a blog, is a panel member for research policy reviews, and works with the Campaign for Science and Engineering, and Science is Vital to lobby for increased science funding.  Stephen argues, “it’s your career and it’s your life: you only get one shot at what you want to do.”

‘It was his experimental nature that no doubt led Curry to start a blog about being a scientist without asking for approval from his colleagues or seniors at Imperial. “Someone wise once told me that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” says Curry, who adds that he was nervous because of the prevailing notion that writing blogposts was trivial compared with writing papers or grants. “I do have to be mindful,” he says. “I don’t write blogposts during the day.”

The full article by Adam Smith about Stephen’s career was published in Research Professional on 22nd July 2015.

What do you think? Do you find blogs useful?! Is there a place for blogs as well as published papers?

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One thought on “Be selfish with your career, advises academic blogger

  1. Blogs are useful for sharing ideas, research and good practice. However, I find the suggestion – that the author has to be mindful not to write them during the day – to be damaging. This comes down to what constitutes academic labour, work-life balance… To not blog on so-called ‘company time’ is unhelpful. For many institutions and academics, blogs are a lively forum for dissemination, debate, discussion – we shouldn’t be afraid to say that blogs constitute part of our working day.

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