It was 2 years into my second postdoc, and I was burnt out.
I’d taken the position to keep my academic dream alive. Instead, I was sitting on the lawn outside my lab, watching campus life move around me, wondering how I was going to support my family. I thought about teaching high school. I looked into government jobs. Meanwhile, friends with “real jobs” were buying new cars and taking actual vacations.
6+ years post-PhD, the dream wasn’t working out. A few papers, a fellowship, but not a CV that was going to win a tenure-track position. Not even close.
Then I discovered medical writing, and everything changed.
The switch
I started by asking myself what I actually liked about academic life. It wasn’t the hypotheses or the experiments. What I loved was what came after the results, things like writing up papers, building presentations, and making a dense methods section actually readable. I liked the background section as much as the findings. I liked synthesizing complex science into something that could educate an audience.
Turns out, that’s most of the job description for a medical writer.
Starting up
I got moving while I still had a salary. Downtime between experiments plus evenings and weekends gave me enough runway to take the first steps. I picked up low-paying editing work to build a portfolio. I rewrote my academic CV, framing grants and papers as relevant experience. And I networked hard: several former colleagues had moved into medical communications, and through a series of informational interviews, I landed my first real medical writing gigs.
Within 3 months, I’d left my postdoc. (I was actually fired, but that’s a story for another newsletter.)
Things were slow at first. Then I caught a lucky break: an agency needed coverage while a full-time medical director went on leave. Twenty hours a week at a rate that exceeded my postdoc salary by a hefty margin.
Less than a year after first hearing the words “medical writing,” I was fully booked.