Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. Natalie Garrett, Private Secretary to the Chief Scientist at the Met Office. You can find out more about Natalie on the Met Office website, and the British Federation of Women Graduates scholarships.

Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses

Podcast transcript

1 00:00:10,880 --> 00:00:23,690 Hello and welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter Doctoral College

2 00:00:23,690 --> 00:00:27,050 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree.

3 00:00:27,050 --> 00:00:31,490 I'm your host, Kelly Preece, and today I'm going to be talking to Dr. Natalie Garrett.

4 00:00:31,490 --> 00:00:35,900 Natalie currently works as a private secretary to the Met Office chief scientist.

5 00:00:35,900 --> 00:00:41,120 So, Natalie, are you happy to introduce yourself? My name is Natalie Garrett.

6 00:00:41,120 --> 00:00:45,980 I work at the Met office as the private secretary to our chief scientist.

7 00:00:45,980 --> 00:00:48,650 I've been in this role since January of this year.

8 00:00:48,650 --> 00:01:01,070 So more than half my time in this position has now been spent working from home, which has been an interesting kind of journey like before January.

9 00:01:01,070 --> 00:01:06,530 I was working in the international climate services team still at the Met office,

10 00:01:06,530 --> 00:01:12,480 and I had been in that position for, I think, the best part of four years.

11 00:01:12,480 --> 00:01:17,400 And the purpose of that role was essentially to manage a project that was all

12 00:01:17,400 --> 00:01:23,820 about translating climate science into actionable information for decision makers.

13 00:01:23,820 --> 00:01:31,260 But prior to all of that, I was a postdoc at the University of Exeter working in the Biomedical Physics Group.

14 00:01:31,260 --> 00:01:39,150 And you might notice that there's a bit of a Segway there from biomedical physics to climate and weather science.

15 00:01:39,150 --> 00:01:45,480 And it's not necessarily immediately apparent what exactly unifies those two areas.

16 00:01:45,480 --> 00:01:54,790 But broadly, what motivates me at work is to do something that's meaningful and that will have a positive impact on society.

17 00:01:54,790 --> 00:02:05,950 So the work I did at the university was primarily translating biomedical advances into kind of taking physical interpretations of them.

18 00:02:05,950 --> 00:02:16,650 So one of the major projects I worked on my role was to provide mechanistic validation for the claims that were being made in patents for novel

19 00:02:16,650 --> 00:02:21,210 nano medicines that were aimed to treat things like alzhiemers and brain cancer.

20 00:02:21,210 --> 00:02:27,690 And having lost a family member to brain cancer, that was obviously an area that was very close to my heart.

21 00:02:27,690 --> 00:02:33,200 So sometimes I feel like my career has been a little bit of a random walk.

22 00:02:33,200 --> 00:02:39,140 But ultimately, I've always done what I thought sounded interesting,

23 00:02:39,140 --> 00:02:46,230 and I perhaps naively assumed that job opportunities would make themselves apparent to me along the way.

24 00:02:46,230 --> 00:02:54,160 And I've been very fortunate and privileged that that has worked out for me.

25 00:02:54,160 --> 00:02:58,120 That's brilliant and really interesting to hear about that.

26 00:02:58,120 --> 00:03:06,700 That from kind of being a postdoc in researching inside inside a university to moving outside.

27 00:03:06,700 --> 00:03:11,710 I wondered if you could talk a little bit about your experience of that transition.

28 00:03:11,710 --> 00:03:17,980 So what it was like kind of moving to applying for jobs outside of academia and and how you

29 00:03:17,980 --> 00:03:26,780 find how different you find working in it in a different kind of research environment is.

30 00:03:26,780 --> 00:03:36,470 So I had been working as a postdoc at the University of Exeter since late 2009.

31 00:03:36,470 --> 00:03:42,050 And by the time I left, it was January 2016.

32 00:03:42,050 --> 00:03:48,650 So that is quite a substantial chunk of my professional career was spent working,

33 00:03:48,650 --> 00:03:55,100 doing the whole postdoc merry go round where you go from contract to contract without much job security.

34 00:03:55,100 --> 00:03:59,660 I think a lot of people in academia can empathise with that kind of situation.

35 00:03:59,660 --> 00:04:06,110 You don't have much job security. You're trying really hard to set yourself apart from your peer group to improve your

36 00:04:06,110 --> 00:04:13,170 chances of perhaps getting a lectureship or getting a fellowship or a grant and.

37 00:04:13,170 --> 00:04:18,720 I was in a situation where leaving Exeter wasn't really an option for me.

38 00:04:18,720 --> 00:04:27,470 So I was thinking about how I could give myself the best chances of securing a lectureship.

39 00:04:27,470 --> 00:04:35,490 at Exeter University and a lectureship position came up in my research group working for different P.I. and I went for it.

40 00:04:35,490 --> 00:04:45,270 And although I scored highest at interview and my presentation, I was told that I couldn't bring added value because I was already there.

41 00:04:45,270 --> 00:04:50,850 And that was quite a bitter pill to swallow at the time that I can see what they mean in hindsight.

42 00:04:50,850 --> 00:05:04,350 And if I had applied to other universities for lectureships it may have been more feasible for me to negotiate or leverage contract at the university.

43 00:05:04,350 --> 00:05:12,660 At any rate, I was encouraged to apply for fellowships and I was given the opportunity of a tenured position at the end.

44 00:05:12,660 --> 00:05:17,730 If I were successful in that. But ultimately I started looking at other opportunities.

45 00:05:17,730 --> 00:05:23,630 I saw a job at the Met office. Now, my background did not involve coding.

46 00:05:23,630 --> 00:05:32,060 It did not really involve modelling. So I was quite surprised when I saw a job advert that I felt I could apply for.

47 00:05:32,060 --> 00:05:37,410 Hence, this role was titled Senior European Climate Service Coordinator.

48 00:05:37,410 --> 00:05:45,710 This is quite a mouthful. The skills they were looking for those the usual planning organisation,

49 00:05:45,710 --> 00:05:50,330 time management, which if you have a PhD and you've actually managed to complete it.

50 00:05:50,330 --> 00:05:58,160 You have that in spades. But it also specifically said that they needed good interpersonal skills with evidence of communicating with and developing

51 00:05:58,160 --> 00:06:06,110 productive working relationships with a range of stakeholders and also communicating complex information into plain English.

52 00:06:06,110 --> 00:06:17,060 Now, interestingly, during my PhD, I had been very, very keen as an outreach ambassador of the university.

53 00:06:17,060 --> 00:06:23,750 I was in the STEM network and I participated in things like I'm a scientist get me out of here.

54 00:06:23,750 --> 00:06:32,150 And soapbox, science and three minute wonder pretty much any scientific outreach competition that you could engage in.

55 00:06:32,150 --> 00:06:36,380 I had a go at and I was very passionate about scientific outreach.

56 00:06:36,380 --> 00:06:45,890 In fact, the Institute of Physics had me as a guest lecturer and I was travelling all around the south west of the UK giving talks to some.

57 00:06:45,890 --> 00:06:49,550 I think in total it was about two thousand schoolchildren talking about my research.

58 00:06:49,550 --> 00:06:53,120 So this is something that was very, very passionate, was very passionate about.

59 00:06:53,120 --> 00:06:59,840 But my boss had said to me, you only need to do one piece of outreach a year for it to count on your CV.

60 00:06:59,840 --> 00:07:04,310 And at that point, you should stop and focus your efforts elsewhere.

61 00:07:04,310 --> 00:07:08,660 I didn't really listen to him and I just carried on doing what I wanted to, to do what I was passionate about.

62 00:07:08,660 --> 00:07:15,260 And in the end, because of that, it put me in a really good position to apply for this job at the Met office.

63 00:07:15,260 --> 00:07:17,150 Additionally, what I was doing, my postdoc,

64 00:07:17,150 --> 00:07:25,490 I founded the early career researcher network within the college and that was bringing together early career scientists

65 00:07:25,490 --> 00:07:33,800 and helping people work together to improve the quality of the jobs to improve their chances of securing funding.

66 00:07:33,800 --> 00:07:37,940 We had career workshops. We had the guest lecturers come in and give seminars.

67 00:07:37,940 --> 00:07:45,180 We had occasions where we bought pizza and blitzed the Internet trying to find funding opportunities.

68 00:07:45,180 --> 00:07:49,310 Because I built that network, I had experience of network management.

69 00:07:49,310 --> 00:07:53,670 I had experience of engagement. And I'd set up a social media channel for that, too.

70 00:07:53,670 --> 00:08:00,090 So I had all these communication stakeholder network management skills, which made me the ideal candidate for this job.

71 00:08:00,090 --> 00:08:05,620 And this is all stuff that was done in the margins. I was discouraged from doing so.

72 00:08:05,620 --> 00:08:12,800 Yeah, it's an interesting one. I don't know if it would always work out that way. But ultimately, do things that matter to you?

73 00:08:12,800 --> 00:08:17,060 Is that what I would say if you're considering academia?

74 00:08:17,060 --> 00:08:21,590 Ultimately, you may not find yourself in a position where you have a science communication job,

75 00:08:21,590 --> 00:08:28,100 but the skills you gain doing science communication, are massively transferable outside of academia.

76 00:08:28,100 --> 00:08:33,170 So I was surprised when I was offered the job at the Met office.

77 00:08:33,170 --> 00:08:36,120 I'm always quite negative about my performance in interview.

78 00:08:36,120 --> 00:08:41,720 But actually, my new boss said that it was one of the best interviews he's ever sat in on.

79 00:08:41,720 --> 00:08:46,700 So I think that might be typical of academics.

80 00:08:46,700 --> 00:08:51,650 I think we are quite hard on ourselves and our performance and always focus on

81 00:08:51,650 --> 00:08:55,910 what we could do better and not necessarily so much of what we've done well.

82 00:08:55,910 --> 00:09:03,730 I think that's an area that I'm trying to work on in terms of personal confidence and that feeling of imposter syndrome.

83 00:09:03,730 --> 00:09:11,310 Moving from academia to the civil service, because the Met office is where within the civil service was very different.

84 00:09:11,310 --> 00:09:21,510 And my first day on the job, I got on an aeroplane to go to Paris for the Kick-Off meeting for the project and had an overnight stay.

85 00:09:21,510 --> 00:09:25,780 And it was lovely meeting all these wonderful people that are very passionate about their work.

86 00:09:25,780 --> 00:09:30,060 And the next day we came back to Exeter and they said, well, you've had quite a busy day.

87 00:09:30,060 --> 00:09:37,210 You should probably take some time off in lieu. This is not a concept that usually gets in academia.

88 00:09:37,210 --> 00:09:52,450 The actual contracted hours. So my second day on the job, I came home mid-afternoon and ran myself a bubble bath with the blessing, nay the

89 00:09:52,450 --> 00:10:00,340 It was it was pretty great. It was pretty great. And to be honest, that feeling that you should be working, you should be writing.

90 00:10:00,340 --> 00:10:03,640 More that you should be doing. It took a while for me to get over that.

91 00:10:03,640 --> 00:10:09,340 And I think about two months into my job, I was walking through town one day and I glanced up.

92 00:10:09,340 --> 00:10:16,120 If you've been in Exeter High Street and you look up the hill to streatham campus at the university, you can see the physics tower.

93 00:10:16,120 --> 00:10:19,420 You can see it from everywhere, in Exeter You can never get away from its shadow.

94 00:10:19,420 --> 00:10:26,200 If you feel like, oh, I should be working on my paper, I should be working on my thesis. That's the first time that I looked up at that.

95 00:10:26,200 --> 00:10:29,740 This has no power over me. No, I'm allowed to have fun.

96 00:10:29,740 --> 00:10:35,980 I'm allowed to have a work life balance because there's so much in there that I think is really,

97 00:10:35,980 --> 00:10:41,580 really important about, you know, feelings of imposter syndrome and work life balance.

98 00:10:41,580 --> 00:10:48,490 And I think of somebody as well that used to be an academic and admittedly is in an academic related role.

99 00:10:48,490 --> 00:11:00,210 There's something about different roles that are kind of more amenable, perhaps, or more easily to to a better work life balance.

100 00:11:00,210 --> 00:11:03,310 Well, having you know, you said about going from kind of contract.

101 00:11:03,310 --> 00:11:09,910 So you've obviously had a few kind of applications and interviews for academic or academic research roles,

102 00:11:09,910 --> 00:11:18,820 as well as the Met office was the application and interview process, particularly different to your experience in academia.

103 00:11:18,820 --> 00:11:23,320 So although I have had multiple postdoc posts at the university,

104 00:11:23,320 --> 00:11:28,240 they were all working for the same PI because the work I was doing was so specialised.

105 00:11:28,240 --> 00:11:33,760 So I did have to apply and go through the interview process that given that there were

106 00:11:33,760 --> 00:11:37,570 basically at the time a handful of people in the world that could do that job.

107 00:11:37,570 --> 00:11:43,280 I didn't feel that worried. So, yeah, that was pretty straightforward.

108 00:11:43,280 --> 00:11:48,190 So the Met office interview was quite nerve wracking by comparison.

109 00:11:48,190 --> 00:11:52,200 I mean, they were very lovely. They did everything they could to make me feel at ease.

110 00:11:52,200 --> 00:11:58,060 But I think from a very young age, I've always been thrown into the mix with a variety of different people,

111 00:11:58,060 --> 00:12:01,180 different ages, and just encouraged to socialise.

112 00:12:01,180 --> 00:12:08,050 My father was very active in local politics and I was kind of co-opted into helping him out, handing out kind of things at events.

113 00:12:08,050 --> 00:12:16,500 So the idea of talking to strangers, I just lost all fear of that and talking to thousands and thousands of people about my science,

114 00:12:16,500 --> 00:12:21,370 a kind of public speaking becomes second nature when you do that enough.

115 00:12:21,370 --> 00:12:25,550 So interviews didn't have the same kind of effect on me.

116 00:12:25,550 --> 00:12:33,880 And I've discovered a tip, a trick. If you convince yourself that you're excited rather than afraid, then it becomes a lot more manageable.

117 00:12:33,880 --> 00:12:39,400 And then you can actually enjoy it. So if you ever have a public speaking engagement and you feel nervous, you go, Oh, I'm so excited.

118 00:12:39,400 --> 00:12:43,420 Imagine it's like a roller coaster or something. So, yeah, the Met office interview

119 00:12:43,420 --> 00:12:51,160 I was massively overprepared. I identified the area that I was weakest up and that was in my climates where

120 00:12:51,160 --> 00:12:55,540 the science knowledge and I did an online free training course beforehand.

121 00:12:55,540 --> 00:13:02,920 And I printed off my certificates and I brought with me a folder with all kinds of things,

122 00:13:02,920 --> 00:13:07,400 like copies of papers that published copies of my reference letters.

123 00:13:07,400 --> 00:13:13,030 There's a whole range, a barrage of information. And none of it came out of my briefcase during the meeting, during the interview.

124 00:13:13,030 --> 00:13:18,790 But it was there and it helped me feel prepared. That's what I was going to ask because I do something similar.

125 00:13:18,790 --> 00:13:23,800 When I prepare for interviews, I do. I prepare and I have this kind of folder of lots of stuff that I never refer to.

126 00:13:23,800 --> 00:13:32,320 But it's it's not necessarily about the kind of using that knowledge I need to be, but the feeling of it's kind of like psychological armour.

127 00:13:32,320 --> 00:13:39,370 Yes. Yes. I think a lot of my life I've just expected there to be gatekeepers.

128 00:13:39,370 --> 00:13:44,110 So I've never been able to consider myself to be an artist or a photographer.

129 00:13:44,110 --> 00:13:49,750 But now I've had experience writing poetry to explain climate change with community groups,

130 00:13:49,750 --> 00:13:53,740 and I've had prizes for the photographs that I've created myself.

131 00:13:53,740 --> 00:13:57,700 So I know once said to me, hey, go, here's an award, here's a certificate.

132 00:13:57,700 --> 00:14:03,940 Here's an exam that you've passed. Therefore, you can call yourself a photographer, you can call yourself a poet or an artist.

133 00:14:03,940 --> 00:14:10,180 And because I've been so used to gatekeeping, because academia is all about gatekeeping,

134 00:14:10,180 --> 00:14:16,510 I think it's that does foster the whole imposter syndrome mentality.

135 00:14:16,510 --> 00:14:24,940 If you take yourself out of that headspace and realise, oh, maybe I can actually do these other things too, maybe I don't need someone's permission.

136 00:14:24,940 --> 00:14:32,320 What's your experience of that, working in the civil service? Does it still have that sense of gatekeeping or does it feel a little open?

137 00:14:32,320 --> 00:14:39,490 It's interesting this so well, I guess there's a lot of bureaucracy in academia that my experience in academia was.

138 00:14:39,490 --> 00:14:45,670 It's very much the academics were doing everything they could to avoid, bureaucracy, as far as possible.

139 00:14:45,670 --> 00:14:54,700 Whereas my experience of the civil service? Is that bureaucracy is sort of embedded in the ways of working, and sometimes that's for good reasons.

140 00:14:54,700 --> 00:14:58,840 And other times it's just because that's how it's always been done and people haven't questioned it.

141 00:14:58,840 --> 00:15:04,720 So it makes change quite difficult at a corporate level.

142 00:15:04,720 --> 00:15:09,560 If you have people's ways of working and mindset so embedded in a particular way of working.

143 00:15:09,560 --> 00:15:18,460 Like my boss, the chief scientist was keen to get my impressions of the job within my first six months because he said, you come with fresh eyes.

144 00:15:18,460 --> 00:15:23,590 You can tell us all the things that we're doing stupid or that don't make sense or that could be optimised.

145 00:15:23,590 --> 00:15:27,900 But once you're in the six months and you stop questioning stuff.

146 00:15:27,900 --> 00:15:33,320 Yeah. I completely yes, I can completely understand, we're saying.

147 00:15:33,320 --> 00:15:40,670 So the. The job that you do now as a as a P.A, isn't it, to the chief scientist?

148 00:15:40,670 --> 00:15:45,060 Is that right? So it's a weird one. It's called private secretary.

149 00:15:45,060 --> 00:15:52,580 And so it's just to academics. They focus on the secretary and think that it's an administrative job.

150 00:15:52,580 --> 00:15:58,610 Whereas if so, my boss is the head of the chief scientist at the Met office.

151 00:15:58,610 --> 00:16:03,320 He is also the head of the science and engineering profession at the met office.

152 00:16:03,320 --> 00:16:08,600 That's said. And that comes under something called government, science and engineering profession.

153 00:16:08,600 --> 00:16:16,310 And he's also on the chief scientific adviser at the CSA network with Patrick Vallance as its head.

154 00:16:16,310 --> 00:16:21,530 So. So Patrick Vallance is one of my boss's bosses, if you like,

155 00:16:21,530 --> 00:16:28,880 and I regularly attend meetings to represent the met office at the chief scientific adviser network meetings.

156 00:16:28,880 --> 00:16:36,200 So the purpose of these is to make sure that all the science within the civil service within the UK is all joined up.

157 00:16:36,200 --> 00:16:41,630 So you'll see these quite regularly with UK. All right.

158 00:16:41,630 --> 00:16:48,620 It's it's baffling how many connections and how many partners and how many stakeholders there were that the met office is involved with.

159 00:16:48,620 --> 00:16:53,810 A large part of my job is liasing with government and the government office, the science.

160 00:16:53,810 --> 00:16:58,280 I'm translating quite complex requests with very short deadlines.

161 00:16:58,280 --> 00:17:01,540 Finding the right people within the met office to answer those questions.

162 00:17:01,540 --> 00:17:05,360 Summarising the information into a briefing, giving it to the chief scientist.

163 00:17:05,360 --> 00:17:09,920 And then. Asking him what he wants, what action he wants to be taken from it.

164 00:17:09,920 --> 00:17:20,150 So, for instance, I've seen in the news the Academy of Medical Sciences report that was that was created at the request of the Patrick

165 00:17:20,150 --> 00:17:27,770 Vallance and Chris Whitty for looking at what's the reasonable worst case scenario would be for COVID this winter.

166 00:17:27,770 --> 00:17:36,410 So the Met office fed in regarding seasonal forecasting and air quality and aspects that relate to met office expertise.

167 00:17:36,410 --> 00:17:41,010 So I was involved in helping to coordinate our input to that report.

168 00:17:41,010 --> 00:17:45,740 And my boss was also present at the sage meeting where this was being discussed.

169 00:17:45,740 --> 00:17:49,770 So I had to help coordinate minutes and taking and so on.

170 00:17:49,770 --> 00:17:58,520 So it's that's just one aspect of the roles I take. I also produce regular scientific updates for within the Met office that we produce quarterly

171 00:17:58,520 --> 00:18:03,440 briefings for all of us scientists we have in the region of six hundred scientists at the Met office.

172 00:18:03,440 --> 00:18:08,690 And my boss is kind of at the head of that that up triangle.

173 00:18:08,690 --> 00:18:13,820 And so we have to try to provide updates to everybody on a regular basis.

174 00:18:13,820 --> 00:18:19,590 And it's just incredibly varied. I think about 50 percent of my my job is reactive.

175 00:18:19,590 --> 00:18:21,710 So I never know what's going to come into my inbox.

176 00:18:21,710 --> 00:18:27,290 We might have a request coming straight from government asking us to provide a briefing on a particular topic,

177 00:18:27,290 --> 00:18:31,850 or it might be just regular normal work that's just going along,

178 00:18:31,850 --> 00:18:38,720 producing minutes for scientific management committees or for met office board meetings.

179 00:18:38,720 --> 00:18:47,220 So it's what I enjoy most about this role. Is that because I'm the private secretary to the chief scientist, people just answer my email straightaway?

180 00:18:47,220 --> 00:18:51,380 I think when I leave this job, that probably won't be the case anymore.

181 00:18:51,380 --> 00:18:58,070 So another point to mention is that the private secretary roles aren't typically what you would expect as a lifetime position.

182 00:18:58,070 --> 00:19:01,520 The half life is between two and four years. It's a developmental opportunity.

183 00:19:01,520 --> 00:19:09,500 So you get loads of opportunities to showcase your skills, which then enable you to better apply for a management position.

184 00:19:09,500 --> 00:19:15,920 That's the aim of the role anyway. That's really interesting and it's really interesting to have that kind of.

185 00:19:15,920 --> 00:19:23,360 Clear sense of. Clear sense of progression and direction, I guess, and I'm not saying that that,

186 00:19:23,360 --> 00:19:28,470 you know, there was a clear kind of promotion route in academia, but it's not.

187 00:19:28,470 --> 00:19:30,840 I think it looks like it's very clear cut.

188 00:19:30,840 --> 00:19:41,280 In fact, is not, I think well by, to be honest when I say so, I'm going to backtrack a it when I applied to the Met office.

189 00:19:41,280 --> 00:19:50,280 I tried to use all of the skills that I had been sort of instilled in me from the doctoral training college at the university.

190 00:19:50,280 --> 00:19:53,940 Like, you need to negotiate your salary. You need to do this. You need to do that.

191 00:19:53,940 --> 00:20:00,430 I went and tried this out with the civil service and now you can try and negotiate your salary.

192 00:20:00,430 --> 00:20:02,640 But this is as far as we can go. That's just not.

193 00:20:02,640 --> 00:20:08,910 It's so different to maybe applying for the private sector, you know, going to a business and trying to negotiate.

194 00:20:08,910 --> 00:20:14,550 You probably have a lot more leeway that the civil service is so tied down they cannot make exceptions.

195 00:20:14,550 --> 00:20:19,470 The met office doesn't have the flexibility to change the pay deal for new people coming.

196 00:20:19,470 --> 00:20:23,820 And that has to be everything has to be auditable and fair and fair enough.

197 00:20:23,820 --> 00:20:31,950 You know, it's it's taxpayers money. So I tried to negotiate my salary and completely failed.

198 00:20:31,950 --> 00:20:35,800 I said, well, how about this? You offer a relocation bursary.

199 00:20:35,800 --> 00:20:41,290 And I didn't have to relocate. Could you give me that instead? Is it? No, because that's all provided  onreceipts.

200 00:20:41,290 --> 00:20:46,980 OK. So I had to manage my expectations a little bit. Essentially, I took a 20 percent pay cut.

201 00:20:46,980 --> 00:20:51,870 Wow. To join the met office Yes. It was the very low end of what I was prepared to accept.

202 00:20:51,870 --> 00:20:57,430 Which was sort of annoying. But the compensation package was also really good.

203 00:20:57,430 --> 00:21:02,100 And it was a permanent job. So it was it's a tricky one.

204 00:21:02,100 --> 00:21:11,220 And it's not necessarily the right choice for everybody. But I've managed to it's quite competitive getting promotion within the met office.

205 00:21:11,220 --> 00:21:24,400 And it's a competitive. So depending on the year, if people who are regularly publishing scientific output in science and nature are up against you,

206 00:21:24,400 --> 00:21:30,770 you may not stand a chance of actually getting information because it's judged based on merit and output and everything's graded.

207 00:21:30,770 --> 00:21:38,330 So it's quite challenging compared with academia where it felt like you progress up the spine points and it's relatively straightforward.

208 00:21:38,330 --> 00:21:43,540 I mean, that was my experience of it as postdoc. It's not everybody's.

209 00:21:43,540 --> 00:21:45,380 So there seemed to be a lot of, you know,

210 00:21:45,380 --> 00:21:53,920 things coming out that are quite different about the working environment and the kind of work that you're doing and the kind of.

211 00:21:53,920 --> 00:22:05,330 What the similarities were. What really kind of carries across from your experience as a as a researcher at a university into the role you're in now?

212 00:22:05,330 --> 00:22:09,410 So the biggest similarity is the passion that people have for the work that they do.

213 00:22:09,410 --> 00:22:15,860 The Met office. It's just so lovely to log on and every day and locg on

214 00:22:15,860 --> 00:22:21,830 We have a platform online where people can discuss variety of topics is not quite social media,

215 00:22:21,830 --> 00:22:25,460 but people share things from, for instance, the pictures of their cats.

216 00:22:25,460 --> 00:22:33,670 We have a cat appreciation forum and we've also got weather photographs and people asking questions about science and technology.

217 00:22:33,670 --> 00:22:39,140 People are just so keen to help each other and they're so keen to share their enthusiasm.

218 00:22:39,140 --> 00:22:48,560 And you can end up going down rabbit holes. And it's really lovely that I think academia, you get paid essentially to think a lot of the time.

219 00:22:48,560 --> 00:22:50,290 This is how I've seen it.

220 00:22:50,290 --> 00:22:56,990 And there aren't necessarily that many jobs in the world where you get that freedom to just pursue an idea and see where it takes you.

221 00:22:56,990 --> 00:23:02,600 And we have a certain amount of time, I think, to add up to 20 percent of our time is for development.

222 00:23:02,600 --> 00:23:05,690 So if you agree with your line manager that you want to learn a skill in a completely

223 00:23:05,690 --> 00:23:09,920 different area that might one day align with where you ultimately want to go in your career.

224 00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:20,040 You have the freedom to do that. And that kind of freedom to learn and to develop and share your enthusiasm and.

225 00:23:20,040 --> 00:23:25,860 I guess it's peer to peer learning that that's very similar to academia.

226 00:23:25,860 --> 00:23:35,380 One big difference I've noticed is I've not seen so many examples of that kind of toxic.

227 00:23:35,380 --> 00:23:41,180 Relationship where some people appear to be friendly, and then we'll take your idea and then publish before you.

228 00:23:41,180 --> 00:23:44,530 I've not seen that at the Met office. I'm not saying it doesn't necessarily happen,

229 00:23:44,530 --> 00:23:52,480 but my experience has been that people are in it together for the group benefit rather than their own individual benefit.

230 00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:55,330 Perhaps that's naive. Perhaps I've just said a sheltered experience.

231 00:23:55,330 --> 00:24:02,980 But as a for instance, at one point I had a handover between two managers because one was leaving alone, was taking me on,

232 00:24:02,980 --> 00:24:10,240 and I was sat in a room and these two people were not quite arguing, but they were just very, very focussed.

233 00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:15,220 And trying to discover the best ways for me to develop in the direction that I wanted to develop.

234 00:24:15,220 --> 00:24:19,140 And I feel I've never had this before. I've never felt so and nurtured.

235 00:24:19,140 --> 00:24:24,010 I had a line manager is trying to find opportunities for me because before it felt

236 00:24:24,010 --> 00:24:28,420 like I was doing things whenever I found an opportunity that I knew would benefit me,

237 00:24:28,420 --> 00:24:30,820 but not my line manager in academia.

238 00:24:30,820 --> 00:24:37,030 I had to do the other stuff kind of behind his back because I knew that he would never give me the go ahead for it.

239 00:24:37,030 --> 00:24:44,890 And in fact, there was one occasion when I got a travel grant from the Royal Society to do some independent research in Australia,

240 00:24:44,890 --> 00:24:49,480 and my P.I. turned around and said, well, that doesn't benefit me, so you're going to have to do it.

241 00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:55,820 on your annual leave. Wow. And I naively thought that he was allowed to make that call

242 00:24:55,820 --> 00:25:01,720 But a few years later, I was talking to the head of school and mentioned this, and he said, well, that that's not OK.

243 00:25:01,720 --> 00:25:06,520 You should come to me about that. But I naively thought, well, he wouldn't tell me something that wasn't true.

244 00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:07,960 So another another top tip.

245 00:25:07,960 --> 00:25:17,380 A don't assume that your line manager necessarily has your best interests at heart or B knows what is best or what can be done for you.

246 00:25:17,380 --> 00:25:19,760 So do ask around to ask other people.

247 00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:28,330 And it's it's amazing that in spite of that pushback, you still continued with the outreach work and the ECR network,

248 00:25:28,330 --> 00:25:32,140 which actually became so fundamental to help you move forward.

249 00:25:32,140 --> 00:25:38,110 I was wondering what other things you did, maybe as part of your research, but also, you know, on the fringes,

250 00:25:38,110 --> 00:25:44,140 let that have been really important or formative in kind of helping you move forward with your career.

251 00:25:44,140 --> 00:25:55,150 So instead of procrastinating in the traditional sense, I used to just look for competitions and awards and things that I could.

252 00:25:55,150 --> 00:26:01,270 It felt like it was wasting my time because I've been indoctrinated in the idea that if I'm not actively working on a paper in some way,

253 00:26:01,270 --> 00:26:08,600 then I'm not doing anything productive, which is quite a toxic one set in itself.

254 00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:13,570 So, for instance, I discovered the British Federation of Women graduates.

255 00:26:13,570 --> 00:26:19,830 Is that something you've heard of? No, never say I've never heard of it before until I was Googling for opportunities.

256 00:26:19,830 --> 00:26:26,350 So they offer scholarships for academic excellence and they also offer hardship bursaries.

257 00:26:26,350 --> 00:26:30,250 Now, I haven't actually checked that they still offer these. But in 2009,

258 00:26:30,250 --> 00:26:36,520 they sent me to it and I managed to secure myself five and a half thousand pounds for academic

259 00:26:36,520 --> 00:26:43,630 excellence as part of the Women British Federation of Women Graduates Academic Awards in 2009.

260 00:26:43,630 --> 00:26:52,480 And if you have experience of securing grant money, even if it's a competition like that, then that's always going to look good on your CV.

261 00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:58,690 And as I said, I got a international travel grant to go to Australia.

262 00:26:58,690 --> 00:27:02,080 So I went to Melbourne and I was looking at malaria.

263 00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:09,450 I'm trying to detect it using spectroscopy and weirdly using butterfly wings as a substrate for doing this.

264 00:27:09,450 --> 00:27:19,510 So that was quite a bizarre. When people say, explain what you did for your PhD, I kind of go hmmmm the experience of the early career researcher network.

265 00:27:19,510 --> 00:27:23,830 It also gave me the opportunity to apply for funding from within the university.

266 00:27:23,830 --> 00:27:32,380 And then I also ran competitions for outreach activities and online poster competitions.

267 00:27:32,380 --> 00:27:40,990 So I was then able to get experience of managing sort of grant funding so I could say that I've had that kind of experience,

268 00:27:40,990 --> 00:27:42,340 depending on where you want spend up.

269 00:27:42,340 --> 00:27:50,670 If you think I want to be able to tick various boxes for different types of job, I've these opportunities enabled me to do that.

270 00:27:50,670 --> 00:27:54,580 And in kind of roundabout way, even though my main main job didn't.

271 00:27:54,580 --> 00:28:02,170 I was also part of the working group for the Athena Swan Initiative at the School of Physics.

272 00:28:02,170 --> 00:28:07,070 So equality and diversity has always been very important to me to.

273 00:28:07,070 --> 00:28:11,910 And I think it's, you know, really interesting as several of the things you've said, like you said early on, about,

274 00:28:11,910 --> 00:28:18,960 you know, if you've done a research degree, you've got time management and project management and everything in spades.

275 00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:20,160 But actually, you know,

276 00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:30,900 there's other fundamental skills which in some ways you just do need to go outside of that initial kind of bubble of your research to develop that.

277 00:28:30,900 --> 00:28:39,390 And absolutely and it's really interesting to hear you talk about actually the motivation for that for you was just a follow.

278 00:28:39,390 --> 00:28:44,220 Follow your interests. Yeah, the things that mattered to me most.

279 00:28:44,220 --> 00:28:49,140 I think another thing that helped me was going to conferences by myself.

280 00:28:49,140 --> 00:28:57,380 And not with my research group and not with anybody else from the university, because it forces you to stop talking to the same people.

281 00:28:57,380 --> 00:29:03,760 Because conferences are massive networking opportunity. But it's so hard to make inroads.

282 00:29:03,760 --> 00:29:11,670 I struggled a bit initially because it felt very cliquey and it's hard as an outsider just to essentially barge in on someone's conversations.

283 00:29:11,670 --> 00:29:14,610 Hi. Can I introduce myself?

284 00:29:14,610 --> 00:29:25,770 But it was some it was because of going to a conference by myself that I met Baden Wood of Monash University in Melbourne.

285 00:29:25,770 --> 00:29:29,250 And he was the one that suggested I apply for Royal Society travel grant

286 00:29:29,250 --> 00:29:33,990 which is why I was then able to demonstrate some independent research and have

287 00:29:33,990 --> 00:29:38,580 a first solo publication without my P.I. from University of Exeter on it.

288 00:29:38,580 --> 00:29:43,020 So these chance meetings are so important.

289 00:29:43,020

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