Join Natalie Berkman *18 and Ph.D. student Hellen Wainaina for an engaging and personal conversation about how priorities can shift during graduate school, and how a supposed plan "B" can turn out to be a plan A. You'll hear about how a Ph.D. in French prepared Natalie well for a management level position, and the ways her post-Ph.D. life has included a continuation of her research agenda, as well as advocacy for career diversity. (n.b. Natalie has asked us to note that she misspoke: it was Calvino who translated Queneau, and not the other way around.)

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Hosted by Princeton graduate student Hellen Wainaina, the GradFUTURES podcast centers on the futures of PhDs: both those in training at Princeton, and Princeton graduate alums who are in and beyond academia. The podcast is shaping new narratives about success with a Ph.D. by telling the professional development stories of graduate students, graduate alums, and those who partner and collaborate with them. 

The podcast is available on a range of platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and Pocket Casts.

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Transcript: 

Eva Kubu: Welcome to the Grad Futures Podcast, produced and hosted by graduate students at the Graduate School at Princeton University. I'm Eva Kubu, Associate Dean for Professional Development. We're on a mission to shape new narratives about professional success with a PhD to help graduate students everywhere envision and create their futures.

Thank you for listening and subscribing.

Hellen Wainaina: I'm your host. l Helen Wainaina, a New Media Fellow at the Graduate School and a PhD student in the Department of English at Princeton. Today I'm speaking with Natalie Berkman. Natalie Berkman is a higher education specialist and an award-winning scholar, currently working as the Instructional Design Manager at ESSEC Business School.

Trained as both a literary scholar and a mathematician, Natalie completed her PhD in French Literature at Princeton University. Natalie, welcome to the GradFUTURES podcast. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Both your degrees are so interesting, the combination of the two, and I thought we might just start with a broad overview of your educational and academic background. [ 00:01:00]

How did you come to Princeton as a graduate student? What was your journey to Princeton?

Natalie Berkman: The way I describe my educational background is , I was indecisive. I was really, really interested in, in creative writing and math. And so when I was looking for colleges, I ended up finding Johns Hopkins, because, well, I probably would have enjoyed being in a small liberal arts sort of environment. Liberal arts programs tended to either be really strong in STEM or really strong in the humanities, and since I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to end up, and I had these strong interests in both, I felt like I needed to go to a sort of larger research university that had very good programs in both. [00:02:00]

And Hopkins was really great. It stuck out because it had one of the strongest and most interesting undergraduate creative writing programs, a very strong math program, and it also had music because I played flute and was really, really serious about music.

Hellen Wainaina: What an astute high schooler. That you were thinking of, oh well, maybe a liberal, I, you know, I was also very sort of indecisive when I was beginning my journey, , but I was so, uh, put off by big schools that the, really my only consideration was liberal arts colleges, I thought, I'll get the both of us.

Natalie Berkman: Well, honestly, honestly, me too, and I was looking at the liberal arts colleges, especially since I liked music, I was looking at places like Oberlin, um, but. It was either very humanities heavy, or the STEM wasn't good, and since math was such an important focus, and since, honestly, I had a bit of pressure too, math is the discipline where you can make money, whereas creative writing, probably not.[00:03:00]

And so, because of that, um, I really wanted to find a school that felt liberal artsy, um, but still had the, these The STEM and the humanities are very strong. And Hopkins, when I visited the campus, it felt like a liberal arts college. It was small. Um, even though it was in a city, which wasn't something I was looking for at the time.

I was from a small town. , the campus felt secluded. It felt like it had a real community feel. It felt like a liberal arts college to me, which is why it ended up staying on my list. And I was lucky enough to get in.

Hellen Wainaina: I mean, that's so, that's incredible. So then you. You go to Hopkins, you graduate from Hopkins, and what do you do immediately after? Do you go straight into grad school?

Natalie Berkman: Well, even before that, so I got to Hopkins and I said I wanted to double major in creative writing and math. And they told me, declare creative writing first, because creative writing is such a popular major, and you need to, you need to get priority for the courses.

And besides math is so hard, you probably want to take differential equations and see if you can [00:04:00] Do it before you, major in it. Both my parents had wanted to be math majors and failed differential equations and then ended up econ majors. So they had told me, no, no, no, definitely, definitely try it out.

And I got an A plus in differential equations. And so I said, okay, I'm going to be a math major. , and so I added, I was taking these two classes and as a requirement for creative writing, I had to take a foreign language for the intermediate level. And when I, was starting at Hopkins, I I had this desire to take Italian because I'm of Italian heritage.

I had grown up with my great grandmother who was an immigrant. From the south of Italy, and, right before coming to Hopkins, I had, taken a trip with my family to Paris, and I realized that all these years of learning French, I didn't speak French. And, I was shocked.

Hellen Wainaina: Nothing like being in the culture, too.

Natalie Berkman: Well, I was shocked because I had gotten perfect grades in all of my classes, and, you know, when you're a high school student, you get perfect grades, you think, I'm good at this, and I realized, oh, I, I have perfect grades in French, and I don't speak a word of French. I can't carry on a conversation with a living, breathing human being here in [00:05:00] Paris, and so I decided to take French as the language requirement for my creative writing degree. And I was in a French class, with this, with this TA, well, I guess graduate student who was just on an exchange for the year, and she found out I was double majoring in creative writing and math, and she said, oh, have you heard of this thing called the Oulipo?

And I said, that doesn't sound like a word. And she said, oh, it's this group of authors, and they're also mathematicians, they write with math. And I said, that sounds so cool. And she said, yeah, authors like Raymond Queneau. And I said, oh, I love Raymond Queneau. I had no idea. I was reading him in my creative writing classes.

And then she said, Andy Del Calvino. And I was like, we're reading him in my creative writing classes too. I love these authors. I didn't realize they knew each other. Um, since it was a creative writing class, we weren't necessarily thinking about the, literary history, I hadn't really thought Queneau and Calvino were contemporaries since they're from two, uh, different countries.

I never thought they, they knew each other, but they knew each other. They were friends. They were a part of a group together. [00:06:00] Queneau translated Calvino, um, Calvino was inspired by Queneau's work with the Oulipo and became a member of this group. And I was so fascinated. I decided to study abroad in Paris, since the group still existed, and I thought I could attend the meetings, see a bit more about what it was like close up, and while I was there, I really worked a lot on my French, thinking this is the only chance I'll ever have, to, to live abroad, but I was wrong, spoiler alert, and, And when I came back to Hopkins, I thought, this is just the coolest thing.

How can I study this more? And I asked my math advisor, could I do a master's in math and, and study how this group is using math in their writing? And he said, well, no, when you do a master's in math, you, you do a master's in math. And I asked my writing advisor, well, can I do a MFA in fiction writing?

And, Study how this group, and he said, well, now when you do an m FFA in fiction writing you, it's workshops. You write your fiction, you could write like the group, but you, you can't really study, study that, study the group. And I was telling a French professor about how much I like this group. She goes, why don't you do a PhD in French literature? [00:07:00]

And I don't Well, yeah, but I, I didn't even have the light bulb moment because I, I'm not from an academic family. I was like, but don't I need to do a master's before I do a PhD? And she said, oh, well no, you most programs you, you can do the master's on route. And I said, oh, but isn't not expensive.

And she goes. And I had no idea in the thought of someone paying me to improve my French, to learn other languages, to read books for years. It just sounded like a dream. And that's how I ended up at Princeton.

Hellen Wainaina: So then, you have your conversation with your French professor, and you learn about the PhD and what it looks like.Was that your experience of the PhD when you came in, that it was this kind of miraculous, uninterrupted reading and exploration? Or how, how did your introduction into PhD program change as you did the program?

Natalie Berkman: At first, that's exactly how I did it. Um, I, at first, I just thought, Things couldn't get better than this. [00:08:00]

I mean, at the end of my first year, they, they paid to send me to Avignon, um, and do this. I got to go back to France and Avignon every summer has the world's largest theater festival and I'm a real theater buff. I walked through the streets and there were 10 plays going on simultaneously.

The whole, the whole city becomes an open air theater. Um, I got to improve my French, discuss literature with all these scholars, um, I was learning Italian and German, but I did get to learn Italian, like I originally wanted to, so that I could read Calvino, and it was a dream.

Hellen Wainaina: But how did your parents take the PhD, because you mentioned very briefly earlier that money was a concern, which is partly why, you know... Do the math. Think about the math. Consider the math and not just the literature. So what, what is the, what is the reaction?

Natalie Berkman: I wouldn't say the money was a concern, but my parents are pragmatic people.

They both studied econ. They both have their PhDs. Sorry, not their PhDs. I'm the only one with a PhD. They both have their MBAs. Um, [00:09:00] and you know, when your kid says, I want to study creative writing, of course they say, oh, yeah. Okay, but you're also really good at math. Why don't You can double major. Just have the practical major that can get you a job and pursue the writing.

You don't lose anything. Right. Um, and I appreciated the, that pragmatic advice. Um, when I told them I was going to pursue the Ph. D. Uh, strangely enough, my mother, uh, was Well, no, I guess both of my parents were, were, were really supportive. My father was someone who loved, uh, learning languages, who, who loved France, who loved French literature, who read all the time.

And, um, the, the thoughts to him of, uh, pursuing a PhD sounded like a dream and he wanted to live that dream vicariously through me. Right. Um, and my mom, uh, thought it seemed like a good idea, too, as long as I could get into a top school. She didn't want me to just, uh, study for years, only to find myself without a job at the end.

Since my family wasn't an academic family, I don't think either of them would have gone into it thinking, [00:10:00] um, she'll never find a job with this, especially since I got into Princeton. It was sort of an implicit understanding that we all had, well, PhD at a place like Princeton, you'll, you'll get the tenure track job you want, and that's, and there's, there's no problem, right?

Hellen Wainaina: So the first couple of years are idyllic, they're amazing. What, what are the changes that are happening as you're realizing maybe what your prospects might be, or what are you thinking about your third, fourth, fifth year?

Natalie Berkman: Well, I think the first thing that changed drastically during my Ph D. was at the beginning of my second year. My father was diagnosed with stage four malignant melanoma. And, uh, at the time I was really young. I went straight from my undergrad to the Ph. D. I was 22 years old and I didn't know how to ask for help or anything. And, and second year in our department at the time was hell on wheels.

It was a generals teaching your first time five days a week. So we teach language, taking the full course load. [00:11:00] I was Constantly up till three, four in the morning trying to read all the stuff for my generals. While trying to visit my father as he was dying, as much as possible. He died that January.

And then I... I'm so sorry. And then I kept studying for my generals. Um, and it was, it was a really stressful year, um, I still enjoyed what I was doing. Right. But it was a lot. And I think that was the first year where I sort of felt like, okay, um, I, it's not necessarily a dream. It's not. bUt my priorities shifted a bit, especially since I, I feel a bit like I missed out on some of my father's last days because of what I was doing.

That's a, that was also me. Due to his wishes, he was the one who sent my brother and me back to school and said, you're, you're not going to sit around and watch this.

Hellen Wainaina: I think that's a conversation that I've been having. So I've just finished my second year, but this is a conversation I've been having with my friends, my colleagues [00:12:00] about the thing that you can't anticipate about graduate school necessarily is how your own personal life will change in that time .

And there are different kinds of challenges that you're dealing with, you know, whether it be, you know, maybe you get married, maybe you have a child or your parents are aging and you know, something unexpected happens and you know, like a, um, like the diagnosis of cancer, right? That's the conversation that we've been having in that you say, so that's one change that

Natalie Berkman: Um, yeah, and then the second change was in my third year.

It was my first year where I didn't have to take coursework anymore. I was really starting, uh, very thoroughly on the research component. And I was, teaching and we had a shared office for teaching. And so I was sharing the office with, uh, a student. on the job market. I started speaking with him a lot.

He was very, uh, he, he was like most PhDs who are on the job market, the academic job market, I should specify. And, he was very sort of, disillusioned and, at one point I, I don't know why I had the, Bright idea to say it. What would you have done differently if you were at my place? Uh, how as a third year? [00:13:00]

Um, can I start to prepare myself? And he gave me a whole list of things and it was probably the, the most useful advice, uh, I've gotten. Uh, he said, oh, well, you should at this point, you should start, looking to present at, uh, your, your Subfields national conference. You should try, you should read this.

You should go to career services. And like I said, when I started the PhD, I had this just implicit idea in my head that if you do your PhD at a place like Princeton, um, you get a job at the end and there's absolutely no issue. What you were saying before, too, about how you don't realize how your life and your priorities are going to shift, I started my PhD at 21.

Um, I've... Most people expect their life to shift at the end of undergraduate. Instead, I found that my life as a PhD student was relatively similar to my life as an undergraduate. And since I was so relatively young, I didn't expect major changes in my life. I didn't expect, for instance, my father to [00:14:00] die when I was twenty three years old.

Then throughout my PhD as well, I, I met someone, I got married, uh, he lived in another country. Um, that's. suddenly shifted my perspective as well, because when I started my PhD at 21, I thought, Oh, it would be really cool to, to just end up somewhere that I never expected. Um, to, to be a visiting professor here, to, to do a postdoc here, to be mobile.

And then suddenly, by the time you're 25, 26, you're getting closer to the end, you're like. I never want to move again. I never want to move again, but I have preferences. I have geographical preferences, I have salary preferences, I have, uh, I have all sorts of preferences that I hadn't had when I had started. And, uh, and so that also influenced a lot of the choices I made.

Hellen Wainaina: Was there something specifically that you were looking for that you had in mind that you wanted to do? Like, like an example?

Natalie Berkman: I really liked the idea of working in an edtech company. Um, since I was doing research at the border between STEM and literature, I thought that it seemed like a no [00:15:00] brainer.

And, and I had great admiration for companies like Khan Academy. I thought that it was, it would have been really exciting, to work like that. Something that, What kept coming up was the term instructional designer. But I didn't know what it was at the time. And, I was really looking to get that foot in the door with edtech.

And so I started, finding sort of side gigs. I, started, teaching for a Chinese edtech company that taught English to young kids. It was pretty cool. It was more to see how online teaching works, to teach on an online platform, to see how that curriculum design works, um, for, that level of learners and in an online space.

I also started working with another Chinese tech company, uh, called ViaX that, uh, provided research opportunities for, um, for Chinese students who were looking to study in the U. S. And that was also really interesting and much more lucrative, too.

Hellen Wainaina: So what it, do you still go on the job market or had you already decided prior to getting to your fifth, sixth year that you were going to [00:16:00] look at ed tech and go that direction?

Or was it, was the door open like on both ends?

Natalie Berkman: The door was open on both ends. I still had a preference for academic jobs. It was what I had originally wanted. I still thought it was the right career move. , And so. In my fifth year, I thought I'll stay a sixth year if I can get a fellowship. Uh, 'cause I thought if I can get a fellowship for me, that was, that would've been an indication that maybe I would be able to get a tenure track job.

At that point, I had come to the realization that, just doing the PhD at Princeton wasn't going, wasn't any sort of guarantee. And so I applied and I got a fellowship, and so I was able to, I was, I would've been able to say either way, but I, I felt more comfortable staying a sixth year. Right. During that sixth year, since I had the fellowship, I thought I'm going to go all out academic markets this year.

During that year, I also participated in the MLA pro seminar just to continue gathering more information about, careers outside of the academy. But my main focus that year was the academic job market. I applied very broadly and, um, I was a finalist for a [00:17:00] tenure track position, at William and Mary.

I also. I got an offer, um, to teach in this, uh, very unique interdisciplinary program in Germany, um, which ended up being unfeasible. They made me the offer in December, and I kind of wanted to see how things were going to go with William Mary. I was in no position to defend my dissertation, so that I unfortunately had to turn down, um, and I was also a finalist.

Uh, for the, uh, Princeton Writing Program, uh, lecture position here at Princeton. Uh, unfortunately none of the Princeton, uh, lecture position or William Mary didn't work out. I, I was a finalist for William Mary. I did the campus visit, and, uh, it was, uh, f Of course, devastating not to get it, uh, but I think it was really a blessing in disguise, uh, because it really showed me this is the kind of tenure track job I want.

Right. And once I had a taste of that, I wouldn't have settled for anything less. Right. And so the following year when I was applying more broadly [00:18:00] academic and, uh, and not academic I, I got an offer for, um, the job that I ultimately took in Paris, and at the same time I had the plane tickets booked to go to Alabama for a campus visit for a tenure track job, um, with a 4 4 teaching load where I would have been the only professor of French in the entire school.

And when I got the offer in Paris, I, I canceled the campus visit. I was like, what's the point? I don't even want to go for the campus visit. No offense to that school in Alabama. I'm sure, I'm sure it would have been. And I still think that I would have loved being a professor, but it was a huge difference.

That job description versus teaching in a large and well funded department in a liberal arts college that was public, that had a real emphasis on research and Still a, reasonable teaching load. It was 2-2 at William Mary and, and so I [00:19:00] said it, we were talking about priorities before. William Mary was also in a location that I would have felt comfortable living.

Alabama, maybe I would have loved it, but I, I had no experience, uh, in, I have some family in Atlanta, but I had never actually, I don't think I'd ever set foot in Alabama and I had no family there. My husband is French. He was living in Florida. I was in Paris at the time, it takes time to get a green card, so I would have had to move to Alabama alone, where I had no family, no support system.

Hellen Wainaina: Right. I'm the only French professor teaching 4/4.

Natalie Berkman: Yeah, in my first job. Right. And, and, so I think it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me in not getting the William Mary. I think that if I had gotten the William Mary job, it would have been fine. I would have been perfectly happy, um, teaching at that school.

I probably would have stayed forever, and that would have been great. But since I didn't get it, it... It made me realize that, yes, I wanted to be a professor, but I wanted to be a professor in a certain kind of school, with certain kind of conditions. And I, it gave me the confidence to say, I'm not going to settle for less than what I want. [00:20:00]

And I think that was, that was good for me to experience.

Hellen Wainaina: And so then you take the job in, in Paris. Yeah. And. When do you start to feel sort of settled and to sort of have, an understanding of what your academic and Ph.D. training brought you, like the value of that training?

Natalie Berkman: That's a really good question.

Hellen Wainaina: How long have, well, let's I mean, maybe we can even back talk a little bit about the timeline.

Natalie Berkman: Yeah, I completed my PhD in 2018. I started the job right after I had my graduation in June. I started the job on July 2nd. As for recognizing, what the PhD had brought me, I don't know that I did right away.

And I don't know that I could pinpoint what moment I figured it out. But I can say that I arrived at this company. And, I had applied to a job title of academic coordinator, thinking it sounds kind of boring, but I'd like to be in Paris, the [00:21:00] salary was, acceptable, the school sounded really interesting, it was this creative media college, it was a French school, but part of an international network of schools.

It sounded really interesting on that level, the, the work sound, the, the coordination sounded boring. Yeah. And I thought. That's okay.

Hellen Wainaina: More administrative than you would have liked, or?

Natalie Berkman: Well, but then I get to the campus, uh, to sign my contract, and the contract in French had a different title. Academic Director.

Hellen Wainaina: Wow. Yeah, that's, that's different.

Natalie Berkman: That's a, that's a real difference, and,

Hellen Wainaina: And are there other directors on the campus level? No,

Natalie Berkman: well, there was the campus manager, um, who was my, my boss, um, and I was in charge of, um, everything related to academics. And that I had not realized when I was applying to the job.

They had asked questions about my project management, about team management. But they, I I don't know if it was my misunderstanding because it was my first role. Uh, it was my first job at all, really, if we don't consider the PhD a job. So I don't know if it was my misunderstanding or if the, it wasn't clear, but for some reason it wasn't clear to me that I was the number two of the school. [00:22:00]

And you laugh when I told my mother she laughed. She's just, you can't be the number two of the school, you just finished school. And it's true. I felt... Very unprepared. And then I, I started in July and one thing you need to know about France is no one works in the summer. But I was working. I didn't have vacation days yet.

I hadn't accumulated any. And so I start, since it was quiet and slow, I start looking into what had happened. And I wouldn't have phrased it like this at the time, but I was using My research skills that I developed in my PhD, I was analyzing, um, what had happened, and I spent maybe a month analyzing the student success data, analyzing, uh, the, the printed documents, learning about these subjects that were being taught because I knew nothing about audio engineering or film production or video games [00:23:00] or VFX, um, meeting with the students, listening to their issues, and assessing where the school was at and What needed to be fixed, right?

And at the end of that month, I remember my boss had a monthly meeting with the heads of each of the services. So it was me, the head of marketing, the head of admissions, the head of finance, and we're having this meeting and No one really knew me yet because I, I'd only started a month, a month earlier and he said, Oh, why don't we start with Natalie, uh, even looking into the academic situation, what do you think?

And I said, uh, well, uh, the academic situation is dire. And their eyes got wide and I explained why I said that there were, there were students who were missing grades, um, who were nearing the end of their studies, who risked not getting a diploma. Um, there was, um, a misuse of their learning management system.

They were using Canvas. Um, there were [00:24:00] sort of translation issues between, um, what was being imposed by the regional strategy, um, what was being imposed by the regional management, which was in Barcelona, and the local laws, and what the local team wanted, the local team's vision, because there's a... different reality in France than there is in Barcelona, than there is in Australia, which is, the whole company was owned by an Australian company and we were being managed by a team in, in Barcelona. Um, so there, there were lots of conflicting, um, interests, viewpoints, things like that. And, um, I wouldn't have used

I wouldn't have talked about my cross cultural knowledge, um, and sensitivity, and how I was able to manage these, these differing opinions between all these people of different nationalities, and, and just. Very, on a very practical level, speaking different languages, speaking French to the local teams, speaking Italian to some of the people who were managing us, uh, speaking English, for when all the stakeholders were [00:25:00] present who all spoke different languages.

I wouldn't have, I didn't recognize, I, I think that. These were all skills that I had developed during my PhD, but they, they clearly were. Right. And and also having a long term vision and being able to say, I'm going to plan out a five year project, which is just what doing a PhD is. Right. Um, but you don't think about it like that when you're doing the PhD.

You don't think, you don't use that vocabulary of project management, five year plans. But it was what I was doing, and, uh, I started putting into place academic processes and policies.

Hellen Wainaina: Well, you just come from the boot camp of academic processes and policies, which is...

Natalie Berkman: Yeah, and so I don't know when I realized that the Ph.D. had prepared me very well for a management level position, um, but, but it, it clearly had.

And all I know is when I got there, I felt very overwhelmed thinking this is going to take forever to [00:26:00] fix some of these issues I had found. I was able to fix them relatively quickly. Um, I think a year and a half later, everything was running so smoothly. I remember September 2019 we had the best intake ever.

We had opened four new programs that I had developed with industry specialists in the video game industry. What had been a 90 percent audio school with 10 percent of other creative media fields was suddenly More like 50 percent audio, 30 percent video games, and 20 percent other things. And I remember I was sitting with my boss saying, This is our year, this is going to be great.

And then we had 46 days of non stop public transport strikes in Paris that year, which brought our academics to a halt because we were very, very... Dependent on in person training since it was, these were technical fields and then COVID. Right, yeah.

Hellen Wainaina: But I remember very clearly

Natalie Berkman: September 2019 going out for drinks after our orientation was over going, [00:27:00] This is going to be our year.

Everything's going so well. Everything's clean. The processes work. The troubleshooting is done. The rug out from under us.

Hellen Wainaina: You know, it's, it's interesting because when initially you'd said that it was a director position and you're in charge of academics, I was really more thinking about the work that you had done in ed tech of like designing curriculum, which doesn't sound like not what you were doing.

But it sounds a little bit a step above or a step removed from sort of managing the team.

Natalie Berkman: It was part of what I was doing. Yeah. Uh, when I say academic director, it was a really broad position. It was also because it was a small company. So I, my job was managing the department heads. My job was hiring and firing teachers.

My job was, ensuring, our certifications. My job was liaising with our industry and, educational partners. My job was curriculum design and development as well, the, the creating those four new industry, video games programs, for instance. That was something that I had, done, with, in conjunction with, with the department heads that I manage to make sure that they were. [00:28:00]

They were up to industry standards, that the students, could benefit from, from these programs. I used my pedagogical expertise to create a project based approach, things like that. So that was all really interesting. I did instructional design too, even though that wasn't my title. I helped.

The teachers teach better. I ran teaching workshops. I showed them how to use the LMS. I implemented the LMS from A to Z, during COVID. And, we, we flipped the classroom. We, were able to take, a large part of the theoretical training, that we were giving before and put it online so that we can maximize the number of in person hours for these practical workshops.

So, yeah. I was doing an awful lot of things, the management definitely, I, I suppose I talk about it the most,, also because I think I, I'm proudest of it and I think it's, I think it's something that I want other, uh, Ph. D. s to, to know that they, can manage. They can be bosses and I think it's [00:29:00] really, it's empowering because going from telling my mother, Oh, I'm the number two of a school and having her laugh in my face to, to actually, yeah, overhauling everything and Seeing the results and measuring the results and feeling confident in my management, \ it's empowering. And I don't think I'm alone in being capable of that out of people pursuing Ph. D. s. I think that we're capable of a lot, but often feel infantilized with titles like Ph. D. student, academic policies pertaining to Ph.D. students. Uh, that sort of put us in a, in a hierarchical position that's a bit difficult, um, where we don't necessarily have very much agency, especially with the job market too, where you feel a total loss of agency, and I, I think maybe that's why I mentioned the management more than the rest, but it's true that I was doing a lot, in that position, not just, uh, not just managing.

Hellen Wainaina: I mean, it sort of sounds like the almost [00:30:00] perfect fulfillment of. The desire to be a teacher, like you're a super teacher. You are experiencing when you're teaching as a graduate student, a really small part of it, but you're living out the whole of it, right? From before you come to Princeton, believing that, Oh, I come to Princeton and then at the end, I'll just get a job.

And then. Going through the process and realizing that actually there's so many changes that happen in your life and how can, how could the system have, or the institution have supported you better when things were overwhelming or too much or, and then even how could the system support even better as you're looking at your career outcomes.

It's like you had the, you really had a bootcamp. In preparation, not only in your personal experience, but just in your experience of the, of the graduate institution itself and, and then be able to sort of translate that into, how you support students that are coming into your, into the program.

Natalie Berkman: And I hope more graduate students see that the way you do. Cause I, I think. I [00:31:00] feel like, at least the way I started in my graduate program, I started in a very passive way. And I think a lot of graduate students do, like, you're good at school, and you, you know you're good at this, and you see that shiny tenure track position, you know that that's something that It would be a nice, comfortable track, uh, to be on.

And I know that, I, for instance, when I mentioned my second year when the rug was pulled out from under me and my, and my father was diagnosed, I, I didn't think about, the school policies that might've helped support me through that time. , I just thought I need to keep working. Yeah. , and I, I think it's good that graduate students should think about that whole process and not just consider themselves as people on a conveyor belt through it, but that you have agency and, you should think how can I get the most out of what I'm doing, how can I, um, how can I ask for help when I need it, uh, how can the university best support me? And I know that, uh, Implicitly, this is something I was doing [00:32:00] when I sought out programs like the UAF or the MLA Pro Seminar.

Um, but explicitly, I don't know that I was doing it enough. And I think that's one of the reasons, too, why I'm just so thrilled to be invited back to here and advocate for programs like GradFUTURES  because I think it's fantastic. It's something that I wish had been in place. It was in the nascent stages, but I wish that something this robust had been in place when I was, um, when I was where you are, because, uh, maybe instead of coming to a realization because a sixth year student was, uh, in the depths of job market despair in our shared office, maybe I might have come to this from the point of view of, look at this the student, this former graduate student and this amazing career here she built. Right. You could be like that. Right. Cause I, I sort of got to this through, I should have a plan B, um, rather than saying, this might be a better plan A. Right, right. Now at, at 33 years old, I work at. a world renowned business school in a very [00:33:00] exciting position.

I live in a city I love, with my husband and our, and our child. Um, I have stability, but really interesting, things I get to do every day at work. And, I feel... , potential in my career that I don't think I would have felt, , if I had been on the tenure track because, you know, you, you get two promotions over the course of, of your career.

And I, I think it's really exciting and so I think the, the advice I'd give to others, is to really make the most of, these programs and these opportunities that are available, because they didn't always exist, but, It's showing that there's a new movement of institutional support, for graduate students that I think is, is really important and really exciting, and I know that I would, I don't regret, leaving academia and finding, finding fulfilling work elsewhere, and I I hope that, everyone will be able to find, fulfilling work, whether it be in the [00:34:00] academy or not.

Hellen Wainaina: There's more than one way to find your path and to find fulfillment in the, in the research or in the academic endeavors that you're pursuing here at Princeton. Exactly. This was such a beautiful conversation, Natalie. Thank you so much for your time.

Natalie Berkman: Thank you.

Eva Kubu: Thank you for listening to this episode. This is Associate Dean Eva Kubu again. The Grad Futures Podcast is brought to you by the Graduate School at Princeton University. Our team includes Executive Producer and Host, Graduate Student Helen Wainina of the English Department, Editorial Director, Assistant Dean James Van Wyck, Technical Director Elio Edward Lleo of African American Studies, Marketing, Promotion, and Logistical Support by Coordinator Amanda Peacock, and Audio Editing by Francine Henry

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