CoffeeTime Science: Going on Sabbatical

Removing yourself from your comfort zone will benefit your career 

Katja, Narges and I are having coffee together – over Skype. “So how’s the new lab?” Narges asks me .“Have you settled in yet?” We’re having coffee on a Saturday, and at different times of the day to accommodate the time difference between Boston and London. “Yes, people are very nice and I’ve started doing new stuff already. It’s fun to do something different in the lab, and I’m sure it’ll benefit me in the long run”.

Leaving your current position to start over somewhere else for a short period of time might seem like a risky maneuver to some, and I have to admit that I was very fortuitous to get a maternity cover position in London in a very good lab for the exact time frame of my planned sabbatical. However, I think that challenging yourself by venturing into unfamiliar situations can be very beneficial both personally and professionally, and I know that the skills I am currently learning will be of use to me in the future, whether directly applicable to any future positions or not.

It is very easy to get into a comfort zone and stay there. Being in your comfort zone can be great: you are confident, knowledgeable, and – ideally – not likely to get overly stressed or flustered, as you are on top of things and know the people you are interacting with and how they are likely to react to certain situations. But it can also make you lazy, less motivated, even bored.

Deliberately taking yourself out of your comfort zone helps you to be flexible, adaptable, and means that you keep learning new things, which ultimately makes you more motivated and productive, and in my opinion more satisfied.

Going from a position of relative seniority to being ‘the new kid’ in the lab can be a little stressful – suddenly, you have to ask people how to do things and where things are, and you feel like the rooky in a profession in which you are anything but that.

However, once you figure out the new lay of the land of that particular lab, you will find your groove again in no time and will have also reminded yourself how to negotiate unknown territory, gotten to know your new colleagues, and probably learned a new variation of a technique you hadn’t done in a while. In the best case scenario, you’ve learned something entirely new that adds points to your CV.

“The other thing that happens when you start somewhere new is that you are incognito for a while” I mention, thinking of what the Telly Monster^* told me about his experience. “How do you mean?” Narges wants to know. “When you’ve been somewhere for a while, people come to you with questions a lot, sometimes leading to the fact that you get hardly any work done due to constant interruptions. As the new person, it usually takes a while before people know your expertise, so you are left alone much more and can get a lot more work done in the process” I explain. “I can see how that would be a nice thing,” Narges says with her face frozen as the Skype connection re-buffers. “Well, I’d say by the time you’ve entered your comfort zone in your current position, it will be time for you to get a new one and reap all the benefits of changing positions again” she adds, now back in real time. “Cheers to that,” Katja says as we drink our coffees.

^* This code name is misleading, as this person does not, in fact, watch lots of TV.

My name is Christine, and I am an immunologist. After my undergraduate studies in Oxford, I moved to London for my PhD and first postdoc. After 7 years in this magnificent city, I was ready for an adventure and decided to go to Boston for a second postdoc. Six years later, I’ve made Boston my permanent home, but I am currently on an 8-month sabbatical back in London, where I am learning new things at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine before returning to Boston. In addition to doing research, I write a series of blogs about conversations and discussions I have had with other scientists, with topics ranging from the inane to career goals and options, our research, new techniques and technologies and the like. I would like to share some of those topics with you in this blog. Want to join in? Grab yourself a cup of your favorite caffeinated beverage, read along, and leave comments.