You're listening to Significant Impact, the podcast for early career researchers ready to take the next step toward independence. I'm Sarah Dobson, grant consultant and academic career coach, and on this show I help you navigate the transition from mentored K Awards to your first R01 without losing your mind, your focus, or your sense of purpose. If you're ready to move from I hope I'm ready to I know I'm ready, join the wait list for the next cohort of K2R Essentials at Sarah Dobson.co slash K2R. That's S-A-R-A-H-D-O-B-S-O-N.co slash K number 2R. Now let's get to the episode. You're listening to Uncharted Academia, a series about navigating research careers in a time of transformation. So over the course of this series, we've talked about clarity, focus, boundaries, collaboration, and redefining success. Now, in the sixth and final part of the series, I want to talk about sustainable ambition, how to stay driven and creative for the long game. So if you've been listening to this series from the beginning, you've probably noticed a pattern. Every skill we've talked about, resilience, communication, clarity, focus, collaboration, is ultimately about protecting your ambition. Because ambition at its core is fuel. It's what gets you up after rejection. It's what keeps you writing, what drives you to keep building your program of research even when the path isn't clear. But it's also really fragile. And when it's tied too tightly to external approval, it burns out really fast. So today I want to talk about how to keep your ambition alive, not by pushing harder, but by anchoring it to purpose, alignment, and especially hope. Over the course of the last five years, I think it's fair to say that academia has an energy crisis. And I mean human energy. And it's understandable. So many of you are tired of being resilient. You've adapted to every shift, every delay, every policy change, and you're still here. But of course, that resilience comes at a cost. Because when we tell ambitious people that they just need to keep producing, keep chasing without restoring the systems that sustain that work and without equitably supporting those inside the systems, we are burning through a generation of talent. So to make it through this period of transformation, we have to learn how to sustain ourselves differently. Sustainable ambition is fueled by curiosity, not by fear. Ambition that expands your capacity without draining it. It is definitely not fueled by scarcity or worry. It's the kind of ambition that reminds you why you started this work in the first place, that problem that you wanted to solve, the people you wanted to help, the contribution that you wanted to make. Over the course of this series, I've talked a lot about not waiting for things to go back to normal because they're not going back to normal. But I will admit that I hope I'm wrong about that. I hope that funding levels and pay lines are restored and increased. I hope that the scope of research that NIH supports expands again, that we fund bold, imaginative, equity-oriented science without political interference. I hope that indirect funds are protected at stable and reasonable levels. I hope all of that happens. But what I don't hope is that we go back to normal in all of the ways that the federal funding system and academic institutions have failed us. The inequities, the exhaustion as badge of honor culture, the obsession with prestige and output over care and curiosity, the over-reliance and insistence on NIH funding as the bread and butter of a biomedical research career and particularly career success, because this disruption, as painful as it is, is also an opportunity. We are standing at a real turning point, and we have the chance to shape what comes next. I don't think things are going back to normal. But the good news is that everything we've talked about over the course of this series, all of the skills and perspectives that will serve you in changing times are the same ones that we've always talked about here, just viewed through a slightly different, more urgent lens. So even if somehow, some way things do go back to normal, these same skills will serve you. And this is where sustainable ambition comes in. It means leading generously, collaborating deliberately, and defining success in ways that keep you aligned with your purpose. It means rejecting burnout as the price of entry and replacing it with focus, clarity, and integrity. You are not powerless in this. You are the future. The way you run your lab, the way you mentor, the way you write and review and collaborate, those are the levers that shape academic culture. If raw, white knuckle ambition is what got you here, sustainable ambition is what will get you through. So thank you for being here, for thinking deeply and bravely about what it means to build a career in these strange and unsettling times. My hope is that you leave this series not just more informed, but more certain that your work matters and that you have the tools to sustain it. Because the future of biomedical and behavioral research will be written by people who can stay clear-eyed and hopeful. People who care not just about outcomes, but also the process of getting there. And people who make sure that their success opens doors for others. In other words, people like you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to this episode of Significant Impact, from K Award to your first big R01. If you want to dig deeper into what we learned today and move a significant step closer to a smooth K-2R transition, visit Sarah Dobson.co slash pod and check out all the free stuff we have to help you do just that. Don't forget to subscribe to the show to make sure you hear new episodes as soon as they're released. And if today's episode made you think of a colleague or a friend, please tell them about it. Tune in next time and thanks again for listening.