Hello and welcome to Pivot Points. This is the podcast about the pivotal moments that have shaped our academic, professional and personal lives.
I'm Sam Cooke, your head of communications at Wolfson College. And I'm all about creating ways for you to share your stories like this podcast.
For this month's episode of Pivot Points, I spoke to geophysics professor Tara Eunice in Mare, who studies seismology,
and he gives this really insightful snapshot of what it's like to juggle a busy
academic career alongside family life when you're deeply passionate about both.
Yeah. So I. I guess I can reveal I have a very specific family situation and that the children live an ocean away.
Mhm. And it requires me, you know, a lot of it takes a lot of, a lot of logistical effort and energy and time and money to, to actually just see them.
And these times are really important to me. So the kind of balance is,
is a bit off because it sort of is a full on or full off meaning I'm here doing academia or the kids are here or not, I'm there.
And then it's sort of along with with family life and it's sort of basically full on energy all the time.
So it's a balance is a strange word.
So it's sort of balance on a long timescale, but not not on a daily timescale because yeah,
I have these periods worth basically full of work and, and periods where it's full on family and.
Yeah. Getting that right is difficult and I'm still working through that, basically.
Yeah. And how old are they now? They're teenagers. Teenagers now.
13. Okay. So your pivot point was around the moment they were born?
Yes. So what was what was going on in your life at the time when that happened?
I was so when the older one was born, I was a PhD student.
So midway through in the States, which are longer pages and I put two years away from graduation.
It was a very intense moment. I was again, an ocean away from my parents.
Thousands of miles and kilometres away from the in-laws. And also my my supervisor went through basically terminal cancer.
He died a year later. But but at that stage when my son was born, he was already diagnosed with basically having no chance of survival.
So I was sort of simultaneously looking into, you know.
The situation with my supervisor,
who I really appreciate and cherished every single moment with and seeing life sort of death in life sort of at the same time Scotland.
But but sort of back to to the birth of the children. It's just it's something that that you always have in mind before it happens.
And and you think you can prepare yourselves with these sort of parenting classes and nothing else that matters once that happens.
And and it's just this incredible just emergence of a new dimension in your life.
And it's I don't know. I mean, everyone has connections to the people before them.
And it's could be love, could be siblings, could be fractures, relationships, could be friendships, very, very deep, shallow, anything.
But that connection I've had is such a different level and is really different dimension because it comes with this,
you know, deep responsibility for that person's will be all around and and I think merged with that fragility of a baby.
And so it's just it's just so touching on all levels. And and I think it sort of it sort of condenses the whole point of being a life.
I mean, if you go with Darwin, just think of science. And that's what life is all about.
Reproduction, that's, that's all there. It's basically and and every other species would agree basically.
And so in the end, I think that very moment when it happens is just where you've really sort of got the rest of the planet, sort of.
Falls off or falls away. And it sort of really brings to light what my life is all about.
And what does that do to your relationship with your work?
Because I think academic work specifically can be very complex and kind of the opposite from that.
And you can get very kind of tangential about things.
So when that happened that, you know, we were looking at pregnancy and and having a child at the time and I was doing a PhD.
Obviously the question come up is a good time or a bad time. And in academia there's never a good time.
So I don't I wouldn't recommend that, you know, being a bad decision or a good decision.
It's just whatever happens, it happens. And I think it's great. And the only important thing is that one must free time.
I'm not even this is not even the right thing to say. It's not free time.
I mean, time ought to be there for family in the first place, I think.
And work is basically to facilitate family life in a way.
I mean, why do we work? We work to have shelter or to have a purpose to to feed ourselves and to feed our families.
But but that is the purpose. And, you know, you can you can be incredibly passionate and in love with your work.
And it's great. And I think I think everyone should think about finding finding a profession of that kind.
But in the end, it's it's for the provision of the basics of life.
And and I think when when birth happens, that has to be a focus point where you really say, like, you know, this is what it comes down to.
And, you know, that being in the middle of a PhD. So I mean, I guess like everything in life, it had positive and negative connotations.
The positive was actually a lot of flexibility. So having a very general supervisor meant that he said, you know, whenever they tried to say,
just take your time off and, you know, come in and leave whenever you want, whatever suits this family situation.
It didn't take the pressure from me away to to finish this puberty, and it did finish within the same time scale.
But I find it also has this maybe it's this adrenaline and focus that a lot of
people talk about when you have children and you just focus in a different way.
And I think it gave me a lot of sort of, you know, energy to focus on.
Like like it's even more important to finish that because I need to have this, you know, work on the responsibility and carry on.
Yeah, that's interesting.
And as they've got older and they're, you know, their personalities have evolved and their role in your life has changed as well.
Like how how is that? So how has that changed? And I guess like what, what more have you learnt from them as they've aged.
Yeah. I mean, I thought one of the one of the most amazing things is the sort of sweet innocence of young children who are just not,
you know, subjected to things yet at some stage.
And, you know, it comes with a lot of, you know, potential influence towards them, but it also brings out the very basics of life.
So they they come up with this, you know,
pragmatism and and and just total freedom in how they think and act and look at people and and just question things.
Ask questions. Yeah, exactly.
And I mean, I find it literally, intellectually, it's some of the most stimulating moments of life I've ever had is sort of answering,
you know, how do you how do you actually properly answer some of these questions or threads of questions?
And what are some of the best questions they've asked you?
Well, I mean, the simple ones are just why I continue to ask why and virtually every direction, yeah, whatever direction goes,
I was always at my limits and way more than any student questions or colleagues questions I've ever had.
Yeah. Yeah. Which is amazing.
And then once they grow older, of course, they sort of be subjected to more and more constraints from society and and, you know,
all the good and the bad of society and all of that, actually, I think and and it sort of,
of course changes their ranges of influence and the radius of life.
It sort of grows beyond my confines. And, and I don't think that's negative.
It's kind of beautiful to see them grow inside this dynamic between everything they face in life.
I guess every parent has a sense of, you know, letting go is is difficult.
In my specific situation, I'm sort of, you know, I've been forced into the situation where I had to sort of temporarily go every so often.
And and so I hope I might be growing into that in a different way.
That makes it probably easier. But, you know, so far, even being, you know, just brings it brings out a new component of them basically thinking,
well, parents are not the end and be all in your life and they might want to have moments alone.
And the thing is, when I was a teenager, I was I was adamant about thinking, well,
whatever I'm going through, I want my parents, I want myself as a parent to go through this.
I mean, I want my myself as a parent, too, to realise what I've been like as a teenager.
Yeah. So I've tried to recall that to myself all the time. Well, going back to that, so you as a as a teenager,
your second pivot point was around attending a concert by The Pogues was when you were a teenager?
Yes. Yeah, right. Middle. Talk me through that. That's something.
Yes. It was actually the very night before my Sweet 16.
And it was a time when the music was basically everything for me in a way about school to it was sort of music in a sense.
I had played actively in a band and we wrote music, we wrote lyrics, and we took that very seriously.
And that concept was basically I didn't know that much about the music, actually,
but I went there with a friend from my class or two friends, and then they brought their sort of old childhood friends.
And that was a web of six, seven, eight of us who most of us met for the first time, all of us, the group.
And we're still the best friends to this day. And this was 30 odd years ago.
So we see each other all the time. And so all of them, each single one of them this summer, actually, and and it's a fantastic bond.
And that was created that very night. Yeah. And a bond also triggered an incredible passion for Ireland.
And through that music, Pogues being sort of Irish folk and speed basically.
And so we travelled to Ireland after that many, many times and there was, you know,
its formative years in your late teenage years when you first go on your trips,
you explore places, you're experiencing just a different environment, different cultures.
It's really formative. And to me what it really distilled was the combination of these wild, windswept, rough landscapes,
absolutely stunning in the West of Ireland, and combined with this incredible kindness and generosity of the people.
So this was in the in the nineties when Ireland wasn't doing that well.
And, and you could see poverty in a lot of places.
And we went there as kind of rich kids from continental Europe.
And not rich by all means. Didn't grow up rich. But.
But in a comparative. On a comparative level.
Yes. And so we went there and we're just we're just blown away by the generosity of the people and how,
you know, maybe there there a sort of realisation that that life is is about very central things and.
How that didn't take anything away from their happiness and your generosity towards us as your visitors.
Yeah. That were allegedly from a much better place in quotation marks.
Yeah. And that. Yeah. Combined with the sort of, you know.
Roll music plays and singing together and doing music as a community in pubs, for example.
It just never left me that I'd hold that whole combination of kindness between, you know, in the midst of things,
just the sort of, you know, space and landscapes and then the connectivity of communities and music.
Well, on the on the landscapes, I think something that struck me in your description of this pivot point was how you seem very
drawn to the landscape from both a kind of scientific point of view and an artistic point of view.
Yeah. And that makes me think that you have this deep drive to just understand the world around you and any discipline that enables you to do that.
So I'm also curious about how your academic work helps you understand your personal life and your own connection to the world.
Yeah, great. Great question. So in the school system, I was in Germany, we had to choose two main subjects for the last two years,
sort of A-level equivalent, and they were freely chosen.
So I chose physics and fine arts.
And to me, that was just natural because those were the two subjects I found most interesting and the ones where I thought I can do well in,
and turned out that for many years before and then afterwards, hundreds of pupils have never chosen that combination.
And so I talked to my art teacher, a physics teacher, and they also said, like,
you know, it's not necessarily a contradiction, but it's just really rare.
And only then I realised that it's seemingly uncommon, but to me there were kind of very similar dots and even even writing lyrics in music,
because in the end I thought it was just a way of describing the outside world in a way.
I mean, I am a scientist through and through,
and I think we have obviously a case for robust evidence and repeatable experiments and so on in doing science,
in describing the world, and hence we have technology.
And I think, you know, this is the factual basis by which we should do decision making in society, including climate change.
But when it comes for the personal level to describe the world around you, I don't think that should stand out.
I think I think the way of, you know,
coming up with a visual rendition of the world around you or a musical or poetic is all the same and in some deeper sense,
religious as well, which I'm not really part of. But but I think I have the same respect for that.
It's just making sense of things. Yeah.
And, and with whatever sort of toolbox you use, whether it's mathematical or a sort of a paintbrush, you know, it's,
it's just sort of trying to make sense between where you stand with your emotions and your understanding and your sort of,
you know, rational and emotional self and what what you absorb from the outside, all the different senses.
Yeah. And yeah. So I think that that sort of in Ireland never really, really copy the sort of intensity of that landscape.
It's just, just very deep. Yeah.
And you mentioned also that that experience kind of prompted this idea that you could move to the UK or to Britain and feel at home.
Yeah. Do you do you feel at home here? Yeah. So home is a very interesting concept I lived in some of my families were international to start with.
My parents are German and Norwegian and they met in California and settled in Germany.
So grew up there. But then my children also have Canadian background and Cypriot tech and Slovakian and and I've lived in five countries since.
So I felt like home is not singular a you could have homes and I felt every place that
I've moved to and also where I have family reasons like Norway are all partial homes.
They're sort of a mosaic of the whole and a piece of the mosaic.
And basically wherever I've gone, I've sort of experienced things I like and dislike in ways that I hadn't seen beforehand.
So each place I've moved to has sort of taught me about myself,
would actually like sort of each step has really distilled what actually I'm really looking for in having moved to the UK nine years ago,
I guess I knew more already than any of the previous moves.
And also I guess you move at a certain point in your life and you look for different things, different aspects of life.
And and yes, I certainly feel absolutely. And I felt home very quickly, I think, and partly because of this realisation of of,
you know, having seen the Irish lifestyles, I don't want to conflate Ireland with England.
There's a distinct difference.
But I mean, there is some aspect of similarities with, you know, between the weather and geography and language and pop and music and so on.
Yeah, so all of that. I think that immediately being part of it.
Yeah. And how does that varied sense of home work with academic careers for you?
Because in academia you frequently have to move somewhere new for the sake of an interesting job that comes up maybe for a short time.
So for me, all these these moves, geographic moves, they they're basically part of me in a way.
And I think even in my high school journal, we were asked about what's your next step?
And I put put that full and phrase into it and said, studying abroad is I think it's always had the pull to to go.
Yeah, that served me well, but it doesn't serve everyone.
First of all, obviously, nor necessarily I settled on life with my family.
And I wouldn't want to put any causal link between the family situation, I mean or not.
But but but it can make things very difficult.
And I think it's it's not a good thing that that you're forced to move.
Yeah, I think, I think academia should allow um, career paths.
Mhm. In a much, much closer environment. I mean not the least because of climate issues.
It's, I think it's, we really have to look at ourselves for moving and flying too much.
It's not a good thing. And I'm as guilty as many, I think, of having, you know.
Having had a carbon footprint, it is way above even contemporaries in our own countries.
Well, for both of those reasons and for family reasons and climate reasons.
Was there ever a point where you considered not having an academic career?
Yes. Yes. So it sort of touches upon a third pivotal point, actually.
I saw my job as a geophysicist is very closely related actually to oil exploration.
No, sorry, I shouldn't say my job. Geophysics as a discipline is a core discipline that is used in your discretion.
So as a consequence, meaning that, you know, hydrocarbon exploration is an absolute gigantic market,
financially speaking and everything else, they offer a huge amount of jobs.
And it just so happens that a lot of geophysicists go into that industry and and
they're kind of they're kind of visible when you when you study that subject.
I was completely unaware of that when I went into it.
So I studied physics at first coming from my high school interest only because I figured there's probably easier way to a job than doing fine arts.
And I said, Oh, keep finance as a hobby. But going from physics, I thought physics was to detached from the planet.
So I thought, what could I do instead to be close to, you know, studying something closer to the planet?
And I found something called geophysics and I thought, that's cool. It's sort of the same mindset that applied to the Earth.
And only then I found out that a lot of it was possible extractive industries, which is not my thing.
But anyway, so as I was kind of exposed to that, to that industry and they offered me jobs as well.
And the thing is, it's actually scientifically extremely interesting what they're doing.
And there are a lot of very good people, even morally good people. And and so I think total condemnation is the wrong thing to I think we must stop
as possibly can to exploit any fossil fuels but condemn condemning person people.
Individual is not it's not my thing and I understand so many life trajectories because of these things like you have to feed a family,
you have to be someplace. And and you look at your skill set, you look at the offers you have, and it's just a very complex balance of things.
And, and so one wouldn't want to blame anyone individually, but so yeah, I've had to stop many times to.
The sort of excesses of academia are extreme where you really you but you're basically in it all the time.
You cannot really leave it. I mean, you go on holidays, you could turn off your inbox and so on, but but in the end, your mind never shuts off.
And and it's just because the job is all encompassing.
You're sort of passionate about yourself. And it's so multifaceted.
So so you just you have the responsibility for running a group, which is I find it almost like a family with children on both ends of children.
But I think it's a similar responsibility responsible for someone's professional career in a sense.
And and it comes with with, you know, with with personal and pastoral care as well, of course.
And that is one thing. And then sort of make sure that the ship is running and then you're constantly being judged.
And I think that that is something that I've really. I over the years, I find more and more annoying to deal with.
I have to basically worry less and less about it because my career, you know, I'm not in a stable job unlike many others.
So I'm very grateful for that. But the fact that one is constantly judging, Piers,
is something that I've realised is detrimental not only to workplaces but also to scientific progress, I think.
Do you see that in younger academics? So those who you were supervising, maybe.
Do you see that kind of judgement between peers? I think so, but I wouldn't want to blame them.
It's basically the pressure of the system that suggests only by moving ahead, by being faster and better and higher.
And, you know, all of it, you will you won't be able to find any job in that realm.
And and I think it doesn't bring out the best in us.
That's one thing I think it's morally not not good, but it also just doesn't bring vessel in science.
I think the best of science is when people have time, trust and space to collaborate.
And I think collaboration is totally underappreciated and how we value and judge science.
So whenever we value something that judge something in research proposals, handing out jobs, for example, it's always based on individuals.
So all these industries that we judge by there, they're based on on pillars, sort of sort of monolithic achievements.
So sort of individual prizes, individual grants and so on.
And it's much rarer that someone says, okay, what's great is that network of collaborations and people, you've, you've sort of.
Brought in or sort of, you know, supported as part of the network?
Not not necessarily the head of the network. And I think that that is how the best signs move ahead.
If you managed to to talk across many different disciplines in a language that's
that's applicable to all and that doesn't really value that much in science.
So I think I think that's. Yeah, I have a lot of beef basically with judgement because I think,
I think it's being thrown around all the time and it's sort of counter to what the scientific method should be.
Yes, it's very subjective. I mean, it's impossible to judgement objectively by definition.
And and I think we should basically retract from it as much as we can.
I mean, of course we have to. If we have more applicants for one job than, than jobs, then we need to make a decision.
But yeah, but we should do just as little as possible.
Well, just going back to that point, though, when when you decided to go into academia,
so that stemmed from a lecture that you attended and some advice that you were given by the lecturer.
Can you walk me through that move? Yes. I mean, stay in academia ended up being basically saying, okay, if I get a job,
offer a permanent one in a place that is good for the whole connection between family and the family and everyone's well-being and,
you know, access to things then. Yes. And that happened basically.
And so so we did it basically. But but like I said, I could have could have had sort of a backdoor out any time.
And I think. I think what isn't helpful either is to sort of pretend that anyone who doesn't
continue on an academic path is somewhat of a failure of quotation marks.
And that's that's a very common sort of undercurrent, I think, when people talk about this.
When I went to look at my graduates and my actions in my the people I've had the pleasure to collaborate with, it's really the only way to put it.
There is absolutely no correlation with how good they are driven, how how perfectionist, how anything and where they ended up.
Hmm. You know, the past, whether they go to industry or governments or charities or academia,
they're down to so many parameters and some of them just feel like they have these options available so they go for it.
There's no there's no correlation between any of that.
So I think I think that's another judgement that we should pull out from is to say only academia sort of,
you know, you use sort of intellectual achievement. It's nonsense.
I think especially in my technical fields, some of the companies pull the best people automatically, especially in machine learning and so well.
But yeah, that relates to another question I wanted to ask, because in academia,
sometimes things can move very, very slowly and in industry things can move quickly.
So what role do you feel academia plays in actually solving real world issues and making things happen?
And where do you sit with. Yes, I'll go back to that pivot point you asked about.
You've never answered. Yes. So it's everything around you.
So, right. I was talking about in my Ph.D. times, I forgot when exactly was I could probably look it up,
but I had the pleasure to attend a lecture by Jeffrey Sachs, really well known economist, because he's economist by training.
At that time, he worked a lot on health. He also worked with the Russian Soviet Union at the time, but also about climate change.
And he just gave this amazing lecture on, you know, the problems of.
Balance of power between the global north in the US and Europe versus Africa and the five stations one.
And how that relates to health problems, geographic disparities and climate change as far as I remember.
But after his talk was a reception that I went to and I had the pleasure to to just stand in front of him.
So I just asked is asking the question because I was in the middle of my PhD in maybe sort of a mid
PhD crisis I think like every single gifted student and that is like what to do with my life is,
is well worth it and we have a going with it. And so I was in the midst of, you know, being,
being sort of confronted with with oil industries as a place of doing something that I don't
agree with morally in places that I'm not considering my most desirable place to live.
This was Houston, Texas, for the most part, and but also doing incredibly interesting,
scientifically interesting work with amazing resources, very good people.
And so what I asked him was obviously he was very passionate about doing something good to the planet and climate change and so on.
I should say I don't agree with all of his views that have happened recently, but.
So I asked him if I want to contribute something positive to the planet, especially in the context of climate change.
With my current background in geophysics, which means sort of physics related to any earth problem.
What would you advise as a career path going to the auto industry and trying to change from within?
So push moving about, pushing the industry towards sustainable green energies or going into governance and decision making or media maybe,
or activism or academia.
And he admitted, said, Oh, you did. I think he hesitated for one moment as an interesting question.
And he said academia. And I was a bit surprised by that because at that time I thought, yeah, academia is exactly what you said.
The slow moving thing is sort of people just sort of retract to an ivory tower and you don't really know what it says forward with it.
You never get any of these things can be translated to actual action, he said.
It's what we need in this debate, our independent voices that are based on evidence and those need to be loud and clear.
So he he made the case.
It doesn't help if you retract to, you know, an ivory tower being an ivory tower, but then make your voices clear, be a science communicator.
But he also said that what we need is is complex thinking, long term thinking, and also education.
Basically, as you know, the next generation comes into this planet that we've we've,
you know, managed to almost destroy to make sure that that generation.
You know, the quotation mark right track. So here's one quote.
Actually, from around that time, too, I had to be a lab assistant in an undergraduate classes.
This was in the States in Princeton, and it was called Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Natural Hazards, I think, in the class.
And we had to make sort of student or case studies for the question of what to do when a
hurricane hits New York City or when a volcano erupts near Seattle and things like that.
And so I was just a lab assistant as a Ph.D. student and at the end of the class, so this was what they called rocks for jocks.
So the American university system works very different from the UK,
where every student has to take classes from, from, I think, ethics and philosophy or science.
So they called this class in the Earth Sciences Department as the one that was taken by people from history and English literature and philosophy.
So hundreds of students and they all came from non-science backgrounds.
So after this lab assistantship, I was approached by a student who seemed very interested in the subject,
but I think wasn't really, really keen on the scientific context of it.
But he said, Thank you very much for this class. And now he believes that science is really important in decision making.
And when he becomes the president of America, [INAUDIBLE] remember that science is very important in decision making.
So his clear goal was to become the president of the United States and that [INAUDIBLE] remember evidence based decision making.
So obviously, as we've seen in the last ten years, that hasn't happened in all cases.
Yeah, but I think I think the value of education is not to be undermined and maybe universities is not at the right level.
Maybe primary and secondary is even more important. I don't know.
But but I think education is incredibly important. Yeah. An educated population get stuff done, I think.
And what what advice would you give to a younger academic coming to you with the same question?
None of which direction to go? Yeah, I would.
I would maybe try to be very careful with any advice because in the end, people have to balance their own.
It's such a such a multifaceted decision to do and to go into any job.
I think people have to feel good about what they want to do and it has to really satisfy those, you know, entire family environment.
So I think I think. I mean, it depends on what options you have on the table, but but if you say blank sheet, let me go for something.
First thing is consider who are the people that are important around you?
Is it to be family? You know, parents take care of could be children, could be partner, friends.
All of these things sooner or later matter a lot, I think. And if you just go completely away from everyone and of.
You know, don't really consider what is important to them. That's not good in terms of work life balance.
Like I said, academia is. It's difficult to tackle.
It also comes with a lot of flexibility.
So also in my current situation, I also appreciate the fact that it's the organisation of times, quite flexible.
So one can, can say, well, I define when work exactly.
Like I said, work is always with you in some way. But but it makes time organisation quite flexible as well.
It allows you a considerable amount of freedom with security once you have a permanent job.
So the sad fact of academia is that when life is incredibly intense and that is when people are sort of into thirties,
twenties and thirties, when they're trying to find themselves, trying to find long term partners and children and so on.
That's when there is a muslim insecurity in that in the job market. And that's really unfortunate.
So I think I think it's I would not want to give very strong advice towards any interaction because it really depends on the individual circumstances.
But when it comes to making direct change, I think I would now disagree with.
Jeffrey Sachs maybe, maybe two, 15 years later, we realise that I think the climate problem is mostly a communication problem these days.
So it's all the onus is also on academics to speak up a lot more.
But I think in the end the broad masses are not. Not going to be approached by science communication.
I think media. Mass media is a really big problem and communicating that that the sort of the reality of the crisis
and I think only then with the public being made aware and the way to go with education actually,
and and put enough pressure on policymaking.
So I think policymaking seems to be only reactive in the sense that we do stuff with lobbyists, talk to them.
Our population puts pressure. Yeah. And that's very much in line with George Bush.
And there's talk that he did here last year. Yeah. Yeah, I think I would agree with a lot of what he's saying.
Yeah. Yeah, well, from just him. And what do you feel is next for you?
Oh, good question. So. So I've tried to not plan ahead for too long.
Not tried to I think, I think I've realised that let's say research topics for example.
Research topics can come and go fairly quickly despite the sort of long reach in academia.
Sometimes other groups are working on something similar.
Sometimes you feel like, well, maybe my initial excitement wasn't quite matching how important or outstanding that topic really is.
So often when you first jump at an idea, you think, Oh, this is great, and but then once you think about it, you try to put it on paper, you realise,
well, maybe, maybe it's not quite as, you know, sort of cost benefit of doing it and investing a lot of time and it's not really as as important.
So I think when everyone says, Oh, now I need to write my ten year plan,
then that's just a snapshot of that moment when you think about these ten years.
And that's why I kind of pulled away from that,
because I think I think it's a continuous process where you continually update on what you want to work on.
So I sort of think in terms of naturally, because I supervise your student projects,
we have to think about two, three year plans, but not much beyond it.
And I think I think especially when I'm sort of veering towards being current biodiversity related topics,
which are a lot based on sort of data acquisition that works at an incredible pace too.
So sometimes, you know, it just could be just a satellite company coming around and just delivering amazing coverage.
And I think one has to stay open to that when someone comes around from a different side and
just finds a sort of complementary solution to something similar you've had than the worst,
I think it could be as an academic or a scientist is to say, Well, but I want to sort of become defensive and say, like, I want to do my thing.
Yeah, the best is to collaborate or to realise, well, maybe they've done it better and then,
you know, sort of say, okay, heard that idea to move on different direction. So I think it does.
I for me there's never a shortage of possible directions to go to. So it's sort of a time management topic.
You want to work? Yeah, well I suppose that creates openness for a pivot point, isn't it?
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
But yeah, I think I think in terms of sort of the next few years, I certainly want to focus on these topics that I've alluded to with, you know,
sort of how can I use my expertise in geophysics or seismology to to sort of look at some of
the data acquisition and machine learning of climate change and biodiversity related problems?
Yeah. So I think essentially, fundamentally, I think these, these ecological crises are so interconnected across any scale and any,
any sort of information process that even the vibrations of the planet are an integral part of this.
And I think we've sort of not looked into that carefully enough.
So so that's sort of why I think the next few years I want to look at and that relates to wildlife in Kenya as much as soil properties.
Yeah. So you have a lot on your plate. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I think, but I don't want to sort of put myself out.
There has been no exception to that.
But it's that the problem in academia is that we all end for the same thing over to the science and basically do a postdoc.
And that's what you being told is all you do. Science.
What comes like a like a like a like a tsunami at some point is is all the other stuff that we have to do in this job.
And that is sometimes incredibly frustrating for the level of management, administrative stuff that we have to do is is inevitable.
I know that we're running an institution like a department, but but also we're not trained for it.
And a lot of us are really not skilled, myself included, on many things like you have to manage budgets, you have to manage people,
your line manager, you have to you have to be a pastoral, you know, sort of emotional support for students and so on.
All of these things are essentially not what we're trained for.
And I think I think. It's not quite right that we have to do all of them.
Not because I'm lazy. I don't want to do that.
But but I think I think a lot of the stuff is actually really concerning, especially the sort of mental support for students.
I think that should be taken more seriously from a professional side rather than just dumped on on faculty.
Yeah. And and other people. So yeah, it's sort of this job sort of just grows where at the administrator of teaching.
I love teaching, by the way, but there's a lot of stuff around it which is again, administrative.
Yeah, but it grows to the point where that can easily fill 50, 60 hours a week.
Yeah. And then and then you kind of have to do that to make sure the place is running.
Yeah. And then research projects, you have to do that too because budget and overheads of research proposals have to be part of the game.
Yeah. And, and also just to keep yourself afloat in the community. Yeah.
But one can pull back from that much more easily than from the administrative side without getting into trouble with colleagues.
And that is for someone like me is, is really annoying because, because I'm really mainly in it for the science.
I think this is what drove me in the first place.
And, and, and so a lot of it is self-inflicted in the sense that I hear or realise that I could work on a new project maybe of like,
you know, the direction of something impactful.
Maybe then, then I cannot easily just say no to that because I feel like it doesn't really fit my schedule to passionate about it then.
Yes. So I don't know, I, it, it has to fit in and then I'll make it work somehow but but it keeps adding on.
Yeah. And that means design sort of becomes almost almost like a hobby that you do on evenings and weekends and that's not how it should be.
So I'm quite critical of the way it's going in a way and it's just a lot of stuff is being added to your plate.
Um, let's put it that way.
It, the biggest task to learn, I find, is to say no and to, to, to just, you know, make things really obvious and clear to everyone.
Yeah, well, I think that's very relatable to and on. Thank you very much for making the time for the podcast.
Thank you. Thank you.