Reframing My Academic Journey

From Grief to Growth: Reframing My Academic Journey

Turning Setbacks into Pathways of Growth

The Original Vision

I entered academia with a carefully charted course. My training was deliberately sequenced: a PhD in Psychology, where I worked with animal models in behavioural neuroscience, postdoctoral positions in developmental and behavioural neuroendocrinology, and finally, an invited researcher role in government studying neurotoxicology. Together, this work created a foundation in Neurobehavioural Toxicology, a field where biology, psychology, and neuroscience intersect to ask how the environment and toxic exposures shape the brain, behaviour, and mental health (Rice and Barrone, 2000; Slotkin, 2004).

It was the backdrop against which I imagined my career unfolding, with outcomes firmly rooted in biomedical research. It was exciting, demanding, and deeply tied to my professional identity, and it shaped not only what I thought I would study, but who I imagined myself becoming as a researcher.

But careers don’t always unfold as planned. Over time, I found myself pulled in a different direction, and with that shift came not only growth, but grief.

The Realities that Shaped My Path

Momentum is critical in biomedical research, and mine was repeatedly disrupted. Just days before giving birth, I received notice that my school would not be supporting my application for tenure and promotion. I carried that news throughout my maternity leave, trying to advance research that could strengthen the halted application, even as I adjusted to life with a newborn.

Alongside this, pandemic closures and multiple relocations of my laboratory space further eroded the continuity that bench science demands.

Being situated in a small school within a larger faculty added additional pressures. The faculty was not structured to support researchers building and sustaining lab-based programs, and even as a junior professor, much of my time was devoted to administrative responsibilities, leaving little bandwidth for the intensive demands of maintaining a lab physically located on a different campus than my office and teaching responsibilities.

At the same time, caregiving responsibilities placed significant demands on my time and energy. Early on, I was navigating the simultaneous care of my autistic stepdaughter and my newborn son, even though their father and I did so together. Later, during the pandemic, caregiving expanded to include supporting my husband after his terminal cancer diagnosis, alongside caring for my children.

These combined personal and professional demands align with research showing that parenthood, especially for mothers, can sharply reduce short-term productivity and disproportionately affect career progress (James et al., 2021; Morgan et al., 2021). Even policies intended to support faculty, like stopping the tenure clock, can carry unintended career penalties when institutional cultures still assume uninterrupted productivity (Manchester et al., 2010). What is rarely acknowledged is how difficult it is to rebuild momentum in fields like biomedical science. When we return, it is often as if no time has passed, expected to immediately perform at 100% in teaching, research, and service, without recognition of the cumulative costs of disruption.

Without strong institutional scaffolding, regaining lost momentum proved nearly impossible, and it became clear that the kind of biomedical research I had envisioned was becoming less and less feasible to sustain.

The Pivot

Gradually, I began to ask whether continuing to push in the same direction was truly sustainable, or even the most meaningful path forward. In that space, I began exploring psychosocial approaches. At first, it felt like a compromise. But I quickly realized that these methods opened up possibilities I hadn’t fully appreciated: ways of generating knowledge that were translatable, connected to lived experience, and aligned with both my research interests and my family life (Antecol et al., 2018; Morgan et al., 2021).

My interdisciplinary training in biology, psychology, and neuroscience meant that I wasn’t stepping into this work empty-handed. Instead, I was able to approach psychosocial questions through an integrated lens, bridging the biological and the social, and framing research questions in ways that felt both rigorous and relevant.

This shift was not only pragmatic, it became intellectually rewarding. I could see the immediate relevance of the work, the conversations it sparked, and the impact it might have beyond academia.

The Grief

Still, I would be lying if I said the transition was only positive. I mourn the research I didn’t do. The experiments that never made it out of my notebook. The projects that might have shaped my career differently, advancing knowledge from the laboratory bench outward. I invested years of training, energy, and identity into that trajectory.

Letting it go felt, at times, like losing a piece of myself. The identity of being a biomedical researcher that I had worked so hard to build. There are moments I feel the weight of what could have been. And I’ve learned that it’s okay to sit with that grief, it’s real, and it deserves acknowledgement.

This grief echoes broader patterns: academic identity is so tightly bound to professional roles that even transitions we initiate can trigger profound identity threats; academic physicians near retirement describe apprehension, loss of meaning, and system indifference (Onyura et al., 2015).  In higher education more broadly, grief during professional transition, whether unexpected or anticipated, often remains hidden, even as it deeply influences how individuals move forward with purpose (Simula and Elue, 2023).

The Growth

At the same time, I’ve come to see what this shift has allowed. I’ve developed new methodologies, collaborated in unexpected ways, and pursued questions that are deeply resonant with my life as both a scholar and a caregiver. While I carry the grief of the path not taken, I also carry gratitude for the chance to reframe my academic journey in a way that feels both intellectually and personally sustainable.

The grief and the growth exist together. One doesn’t erase the other. Holding space for both grief and growth aligns with models of career adaptability, which emphasize how individuals manage transitions through rediscovery and coping resources, not just goals and outputs (Savickas, 1997; Rudolph et al., 2017).

Closing Reflection

I still think about the research I once planned to do, and sometimes I miss it. But I also recognize that the work I am doing now matters, not only to me, but to the communities it touches. If you’ve ever grieved the career you thought you’d have, you’ll understand that these dualities are not contradictions. They are simply part of what it means to live, and to keep moving forward, with purpose. 

-- Anne TM Konkle, PhD

References

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James J, Bourgeault I, Gaudet S, Bujaki M. Care and Academic Motherhood: Challenges for Research and Tenure in the Canadian University.    Canadian Journal of Higher Education | Revue canadienne d’enseignement supérieur. 2021; 51(4): 85-99.   doi.org/10.47678/cjhe.v51i4.189061.

Manchester CF, Leslie LM, Kramer A. Stop the Clock Policies and Career Success in Academia. The American Economic Review. 2010; 100 (2): 219–223. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27804993.

Morgan AC, Way SF, Hoefer MJD, Larremore DB, Galesic M, Clauset A. The unequal impact of parenthood in academia. Science Advances. 2021Feb; 7(9): eabd1996.    DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abd1996.

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Rice D, Barone S Jr. Critical periods of vulnerability for the developing nervous system: evidence from humans and animal models. Environmental Health Perspectives. 2000 Jun;108 Suppl 3(Suppl 3):511-33. doi: 10.1289/ehp.00108s3511.

Rudolph CW, Lavigne KN, Zacher H. Career adaptability: A meta-analysis of relationships with measures of adaptivity, adapting responses, and adaptation results.  Journal of Vocational Behavior. 2017; 98: 17-34.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2016.09.002.

Savickas ML. Career Adaptability: An Integrative Construct for Life-Span, Life-Space Theory. The Career Development Quarterly. 1997; 45: 247-259. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-0045.1997.tb00469.x

Simula BL, Elue C.  Navigating Grief in Higher Ed Career Transitions.  Inside Higher Ed.  2023; Oct 16.  Consulted via https://www.insidehighered.com/.

Slotkin TA. Guidelines for developmental neurotoxicity and their impact on organophosphate pesticides: a personal view from an academic perspective. Neurotoxicology. 2004 Jun;25(4):631-40. doi: 10.1016/S0161-813X(03)00050-0.