Jackie reflects on her career to date, from the early days of her A-levels, the challenges of doing a PhD and what finally led her to Lancaster. She also discusses that very common academic trait ‘imposter syndrome’ and reflects on the progress made around EDI during her time at Lancaster.

LEC Voices aims to provide a platform for sharing a diverse range of experiences of both staff and students across the Lancaster Environment Centre. For previous blogs please see here.



Who am I?

Well, I suppose that depends on who is asking! I think that the multi-faceted nature of being an academic means that different elements come to the fore in different contexts. At the moment, I have a big administrative role in the department, looking after our undergraduate programmes, and that occupies a big part of my life. While I took this role on because I’m passionate about supporting our students to get the most out of their time at University, I have discovered that a substantial part of my time is spent looking after the staff who deliver the teaching, and helping them to deliver the best teaching that they can.

This summer I will reach my 25^th anniversary of joining Lancaster University. It feels like a good point to reflect on my journey, and the changes that I have seen around me in that time.

How did I get here?

I took A levels in Geography, Maths and Chemistry. That last one was a last minute change in direction! I had been planning to take languages, but a presentation about the A level Chemistry course caused a change of mind the week before I started 6^th form. And the rest, as they say, is history. I was the only female student in my Chemistry class, and one of only two females in my Maths class. But that just fuelled the fire! I struggled to fit in at school, being “brainy” and academically motivated. However, by 6^th form, I’d found a kindred spirit and together we forged our own paths.

From there, I went to University to study Chemistry, again being one of 5 women in a cohort of around 35. I actually found the subject extremely boring, and questioned whether or not I was in the right place. However, two things kept me on track. I was able to study in the USA in my 2^nd year, and that year was incredible. I still didn’t really enjoy Chemistry, but I was able to explore some additional topics in the areas of philosophy of science and earth science (as well as meeting new people, going to new places, having adventures!). Secondly, I had a gap year job, which continued in the vacations, working in an analytical lab. We analysed plant samples from farmers, to enable advice to be given on issues such as fertiliser use. This job gave me the confidence to know that maybe Applied Chemistry was my passion.

I did a fairly random search for PhD places, with little advice from anyone about how to approach the task. I landed on my feet with my future supervisor, who lead a team researching radionuclides in the environment. My PhD concerned developing a new approach to measuring a short-lived, naturally-occurring isotope of thorium in marine environments. While the study of radioactive substances attracted me because I had long been interested in the environmental impacts of the nuclear industry, in this case, we were interested in using the thorium concentrations as a tracer of particle-export from the surface ocean.

Although I ultimately enjoyed this project, I really struggled for the first 6 months. I nearly didn’t go back after the Christmas break. I felt completely out of my depth, I didn’t know what I was doing, and was ready to walk away. After long talks with my parents, I got in touch with my former personal tutor from my undergraduate department. He talked through my worries with me, and gave me the confidence to go back. With the perspective of nearly 30 years hindsight, I can see that my experience was actually pretty normal – many PhD students feel out of their depth at the start of their project, as they try to get to grips with a completely new topic, and try to hide their confusion from their supervisors. It’s something that I think we should talk about openly.

I went on to do various post-doctoral projects focussing on the marine environment. I got to experience some fantastic field opportunities during this time, clocking up months of sea-time, on various oceanographic research vessels from the UK, France, Italy and Greece. I can tell you that the food is substantially better on European ships!

Lancaster University

When I joined Lancaster as a new lecturer, LEC didn’t exist and I joined the Environmental Science department. I was one of only two female academics (Jennie Gilbert was the other one!). It was a similar story in Biological Sciences and in Geography. I think across the three departments, there were only 6 female academics in total and none of the professors were women.

For a long time, I struggled badly with imposter syndrome. I constantly questioned whether I was in the right job, whether I could do my job, whether I should go and try something else. My work-life balance was terrible, and it felt like the only way to succeed was through securing large research grants. I don’t know at what point things changed, but a good part was in getting involved in “teaching development”. I took on more responsibility for leading teaching, and secured funding for scholarly research. I found allies from different parts of the University, and developed friendship networks that had nothing to do with the University (sometimes hard to achieve in a relatively small place).

Reflecting back, it’s great to see how far the University has progressed as a workplace – even if we still have plenty of room for improvement! We have much more active conversations now about the importance of diversity and inclusion amongst staff and students, and the composition of our workforce slowly changes. This week we saw the opening of a new baby care room for staff and students with young babies. Our male academic staff are starting to take proper periods of paternity leave, and we are covering staff absence when academics take any kind of parental leave. I look forward to seeing how we evolve next!

If you would like more information about LEC Voices, or would like to be included in a future blog please contact Dr Alexandra Gormally-Sutton a.gormally@lancaster.ac.uk

Related Blogs

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  LEC Voices presents Dr Suzi Ilic, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography and the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST) EDI Lead.

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  LEC Voices presents Dr Emma Cardwell, Lecturer in Human Geography and Director of Studies for 3rd Year Geography Students.

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  LEC Voices presents Gabriella Goodridge, MSci in Environmental Science, on neurodiversity at the University.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed by our bloggers and those providing comments are personal, and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of Lancaster University. Responsibility for the accuracy of any of the information contained within blog posts belongs to the blogger.