Every experience is either a good time or a good story...
I’m hoping the last few months will make a good story one day.
--
March in Seattle is a particular shade of gray.
This is the eighth March that I've spent in the city, and each year I think it will be different. And each year, as the “big dark” lifts, as we finally return to days that are mostly daylight, I feel the weight of all those clouds.
It’s not just me. My therapist says many clients scrape the bottom of their Vitamin D barrels come March. And that was before NIH grant cancellations, mass federal layoffs, tariffs, trade wars, and a looming recession. That was before my dad was diagnosed with cancer and started chemotherapy. Before I was untangling a late Autism diagnosis while working a full-time job and running a business simultaneously.
All this is to say, this hasn’t been the easiest season of my life.
Maybe you can relate?
Seasons, quarters, and cycles
Seasons are a fitting metaphor to describe the changes that are part of life: our moods, our friendships, our age. Seasonality is even baked into the workplace.
Many businesses have a built-in busy season: tax prep, holiday retail, summer tours. Those are the harvest seasons, the hard quarters, where you have to grind to survive into the next year. There’s nearly always a respite afterwards, a period to slow down and reflect.
That time is now: April, the start of the second fiscal quarter (Q2). The time when companies review their roadmaps from the previous three months and assess what’s working. Sometimes they stay the course, other times they pivot completely.
As for me, I set two big goals for Q1:
- Redesign my website. Done ✅
- Launch TRANSFERABLE…
TRANSFERABLE is my brand new workshop that I’ve been developing since Christmas. It’s the ultimate synthesis of everything I’ve learned over the past 3 years—coaching hundreds of PhDs, landing 4 industry roles myself, and building my business from the ground up. It’s a workshop with one goal: fix your industry applications and start landing interviews. I knew this workshop would be a game changer for PhDs.
And that’s why it hurts for me to say this:
I missed my goal. TRANSFERABLE is coming this Summer (Q2/Q3).
Disappointing me, disappointing you
I’m not one for missing deadlines, even self-imposed ones. It’s the former academic in me who can look at my calendar, see objectively that I have too much on my plate, and still feel deeply disappointed that I couldn’t get it all done. That unrelenting pressure to perform has softened since I left academia, but it’s still there, buzzing in the background.
But what’s harder than disappointing myself is feeling like I’ve disappointed you.
Over the past few months, many people have asked me when TRANSFERABLE would be ready. I get it. The job market sucks right now. Support is hard to come by, especially when universities are fighting for their own survival. That’s why I wanted to show up for you, and why I felt so disappointed when I couldn’t.
But in sitting in these feelings, I asked myself:
How would I coach someone else in this situation? Would I tell them to push harder? To sacrifice just to hit a date on a calendar?
Of course not.
I see how many of us hold ourselves to unrealistic standards. As though the plans we set in January should still be achievable in March, no matter how much the world has shifted beneath us (and wow has it shifted). So, In case this doesn't go without saying:
It is not kind to push yourself in these conditions.
I would know. In the early days of my business, I pushed myself to the worst burnout of my life, one I’m still recovering from. I thought I had something to prove - I thought missing deadlines meant I had failed. That’s why, although I could have pushed myself, once more, to finish TRANSFERABLE before Q1 ended, I didn't. I’m making a kinder choice this time.
And I want to offer you the same.
After Academia Essentials
Essentials is a streamlined, high-impact version of what I used to teach in my full After Academia Incubator program. I launched the Incubator in November 2023, and over the past 17 months, more than 150 PhDs have gone through it to begin their transition out of academia. It was, by all accounts, an amazing success with many job placements.
But when I built the Incubator, I had no idea how demanding it would be for me to run as a neurodivergent person. That's why I paused enrollments and started working on TRANSFERABLE. Since that's not done yet, I got creative:
I took the best parts of the Incubator program–the lessons, the exercises, the core strategies–and turned them into a self-paced course with async support inside our private community.
It’s simple. It’s effective. And it’s available today.
And if you enroll in Essentials today, you’ll also get free access to TRANSFERABLE when it launches this summer - along with a few other bonuses I haven't announced yet 🤫 If you’re feeling stuck, if you’re tired of applying and hearing nothing, if you want to start making real progress, right now, this is for you.
I know it’s hard right now.
But your life, I hope, is a long one. You have time. You will weather this season, as you’ve weathered seasons in the past.
Even in Seattle, it doesn’t rain all year. And you know what April showers bring.
🌻
