Non-traditional career paths: The importance of persistence

Academic career paths are not all the same. People may not always believe in you, which can be demotivating ... but believe in yourself. Success stories come in different forms. If I had listened to the people who told me how unlikely it would be for me to succeed … well, I didn’t. This is my story.

My career path has been non-traditional, lucky at times, but fun in many ways. Growing up, I played a lot of soccer, enjoyed working with tools - mostly building things out of wood - and almost never did my homework or kept track of my class notes. I finished school in Germany at age 16 (middle school) with reasonable, but not stellar, grades, and it felt natural to pursue a blue-collar career.

At 16, I started a full-time apprenticeship in Industrial Mechanics for Machines and Systems at Siemens, which lasted three years and ended with an official degree/certificate. I learned how to weld, solder, file, and mill metal, among many other things. I continued working full-time for Siemens in the Power Generation division for four additional years as a quality control manager in a calibration laboratory. My job involved calibrating mechanical measurement devices - micrometers, thickness gauges, calipers, thread plug gauges, and many more - used in manufacturing gas turbines.

While working as a quality control manager, I attended night school, finishing a technical high-school diploma and completing one semester of computer science and three semesters of mechanical engineering, although I didn’t finish the latter two. The technical high-school diploma qualified me to study at universities of applied sciences (technical colleges), but by then I had become less interested in mechanics and more drawn to philosophy, psychology, and sociology. These subjects are hard to find at universities of applied sciences.

There is, however, one university of applied sciences in Germany that offers a Communication Psychology degree. I applied, but didn’t get in because my high-school grades - despite my new dedication to studying - were just below the competitive cutoff. Fortunately, persistence helped. In Germany, you are legally entitled to an education, and one way to check whether a university has more spots available than initially announced is to sue them (which, luckily, is relatively inexpensive, about 150 Euro for the steps I took). So I did, and a few months later the university informed me that a spot had opened. I later learned that this was one of the rare years when several accepted applicants declined their offers, leaving a single place open for me. I can’t imagine where I would be without that bit of luck.

At 23, I enjoyed being a student. Communication psychology was great, and I learned a lot. Within the first two year of my studies, I more and more enjoyed the idea of pursuing a career in academia, although, at this point, I only felt that cognitive neuroscience seemed interesting since it combines cognitive psychology with my earlier interests in technology. However, universities of applied sciences don’t offer basic science programs and don’t have PhD tracks. Because of this, I was often discouraged from pursuing academia - at least without an additional master’s degree from a “real” university that would make me eligible for a doctoral program.

Ignoring the administrative hurdles and discouragement, I spent one semester as an intern at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. Based on this internship, I was offered the chance to conduct an MEG study for my diploma thesis (MSc equivalent) at the Max Planck Institute. Although some people at my university of applied sciences were not thrilled that I wanted to write a thesis in basic rather than applied science, I found a professor who supported me. Still, a degree from a university of applied sciences doesn’t directly allow entry into a PhD program at a traditional university. I had to earn top grades, take additional classes, and find professors willing to sponsor me and believe in me so that I could finally meet the requirements for a doctoral program.

From then on, I was on track for an academic career: completing a PhD (although even at my defense I heard comments about my Communication Psychology degree not being from a “real” university—as if that mattered at that point), doing postdocs in Germany, the USA, and Canada, and eventually becoming a scientist and assistant professor at the Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest Academy and the University of Toronto. I developed a strong interest in hearing and cognition in the context of aging and now enjoy working with other creative scientists at different career stages.

Based on the specifics of the German education system, I shouldn’t be here. Several people along the way told me it would be nearly impossible for me to pursue an academic career because my degrees didn’t seem to qualify me or because my path was too non-traditional. They could have been right, because the odds were not in my favor. Luck played a role, and I could easily be working on something else today. But persistence - and creating my own luck by being ready to take on opportunities when they appeared - helped me push through. In doing so, I’ve ended up working in an area I enjoy and with a set of unique experiences to share.

This story is meant to encourage you to persist and to keep pursuing your own ideas about your life. It’s also meant as an example of how individuals with non-traditional career paths can succeed.

~ Björn Herrmann ~