1. "Happy Researcher Day"

Hello and welcome to 'The Authentic Research Experience'.

This blog is a place for all researchers to read and share stories about your experiences to help you navigate your career and workplace.

I am declaring today: 6 March 2020 to be Researcher Day - a day to celebrate you, the curious-minded, truth-seekers. This is a day to celebrate our love and passion for all things research.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), globally, there are 8 million employed researchers. So, it is fitting we have a day to celebrate those who revel in questioning the world around them and learning through experimentation or thought exploration. We share this day with some very appropriate causes including:

• Oreo Cookie Day: to enhance our sugar levels to get us over the line to finish that analysis, review, grant or report.

• Dentists Day: a tribute to some of our learned brethren.

• Dress in Blue Day: blue is the colour I wear for important occasions, of which I have no idea why. Plus, Oreo wrapping is blue.

• Speech and Debate Education Day: two of the many skills required to be a researcher.

• Employee Appreciation Day: oops, I guess there is a day to celebrate employed researchers.

Why a blog? Why this blog?

As you can probably tell, I am a huge fan of research. I love it. It is my calling.

I particularly love data; it is amazing to me that we can analyse numbers, get answers, and help people in the real-world. Although I love data, it’s the people and their stories that keep me interested in the work. Since I was a child I have believed that everyone on this planet has an interesting story to tell.

Although I love research, in the last couple of years I have felt lost and disillusioned in my career. This was and still is a strange feeling for me. I have always been committed to research. Research is the only career I have ever known, I feel at home at universities, I trained for over 10 years and gone into a lot of debt to become a research scientist.

Where was this feeling of uncertainty, ambivalence and directionlessness at my career coming from?

When I am searching for answers I turn to books. So I went hunting for some inspirational stories and guidance from fellow researcher’s and what they did when they felt lost in their job. I found stories on researcher’s who won Nobel Prizes or made groundbreaking discoveries, but I questioned 'Where are the stories of the other researchers?' Those who did not achieve this level of success.

This realisation reminded me of historical bias - where you hear the stories of the powerful, but not the every day peasants who were just trying to survive another day. Personally, the day to day lives of the peasants are far more interesting than the military or political strategy the rulers undertook to gain control or power.

This blog is my attempt to right this bias. To hear the stories from researchers, like me, who will (likely) never win a global prize for their contributions to research. I am proud to be one of these researchers. For me, it has always been enough to do research that may help people and love what I do when I go into work each day.

So happy “Researcher Day” to all my researchers out there! Do something kind for yourself and keep fighting the good fight.

I look forward to going on this journey together - to show the realities of research and figure out what we want out of our career and lives.

BB

References:

UNESCO link: https://en.unesco.org/unesco_science_report/figures

National Day Calendar: https://nationaldaycalendar.com/march/

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

I will write a new post every Friday about another aspect of the research world. Please email me to subscribe to my blog. AuthenticResearchExperiences@gmail.com

I am also an avid reader of start-up stories, or research a passionate person has embarked upon across all topics. Click here if you want some new book recommendations.