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The accidental academic

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The idea of pursuing a PhD — let alone becoming a professor — was once beyond the realm of my imagination. In my environment, university served a single purpose: training for a solid, practical profession. It was the only path I knew. I followed it faithfully, earning a degree in a health-related field. Yet a sense of unease persisted. What followed was a ten-year odyssey through various specialisations — working with children, stroke patients, adults with intellectual disabilities — each move an attempt to find a niche that suited me. None ever did. The outcome was predictable: a severe burnout. A decade in the wrong career is a recipe for collapse.  Yet, within that breaking point lay an unexpected gift.  The catalyst that forced me to abandon the original path entirely and begin constructing another — one that led, improbably, to where I am now . I decided to study languages, purely out of interest, with no career in mind. To my surprise, I discovered I had a talent for it ...
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Perhaps a little beyond you?

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Some time after that first, painful conference — where I had been interrupted in public and yet was still offered a position — I received the description of the research project I would be working on. It lay in front of me, full of jargon and technical terms: the kind of text meant to impress funders and peer reviewers. I felt uncertain, seeking reassurance and hoping my doubts would be dispelled. I walked into the office of one of my own professors. I showed him the document and said, “It all sounds very technical.” He took it, read a few paragraphs, looked up, and asked, without a flicker of emotion, the question that floored me: “Don’t you think this might be a little beyond you?” No genuine concern. No inquiry into my motivation. No, “Let’s see how we can prepare you for this.” It was a verdict. An academic way of saying:   Stick to your lane. Was he protecting his own status? Or that of the field? Or was I really as incapable as I feared? Years passed. I became a professor my...
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