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If you get depressed or anxious as a graduate student or postdoc, don't be ashamed. Getting a PhD and working at the bench is very hard. It requires a high-level of intelligence backed by even more tenacity. If you don’t keep your mindset in check, these things can spin out of control. Remember to take care of yourself and your mind by opening up about your problems, challenging limiting beliefs, celebrating your wins, and going your own way. Do this and you’ll be in a much better place mentally and emotionally. Your career will be in a much better place too. Here's how to do it.

Academia is broken. The time to transition out of it is now. The academic career track is now a dead end career track. Hiding from truth will not protect you from this future. The only way to protect yourself is to take steps to change your situation right now. If you don’t take action, you will be one of the tens of thousands of poor, unhappy postdocs who are piling up all over the world. But the biggest reasons to transition out of academia are not in the numbers, they’re in the day-to-day lifestyle that PhDs have to endure. Ignoring these facts will not make them go away. Here are the 5 biggest reasons to leave academia now.

By focusing on how to network in today’s economy and academic environment, you can put yourself ahead of the competition and get the industry position of your choice. The key is being strategic in your job search, following up properly, and surrounding yourself with the right people. Developing your interpersonal skills will be vital to your success and will become much more important than your technical skills. Follow these 8 critical networking tips for advancing your career as a PhD.

Learning to follow up properly is the most important thing PhDs can do to get an industry job faster. Instead of showing up to networking events without a plan, start creating specific goals for each event and following up with the people you meet afterwards. Instead of leaving an interview and waiting weeks to hear back, start sending thank you emails the very same day and personal letters the next day. Here are other follow up strategies you should be using.

PhD students often let themselves get obsessed with making one or two people happy. They fight for the approval of a select few who will never treat them as equals instead of working to build relationships with positive people who will like them just the way they are. They allow negative people not only to stay in their lives, but to influence their decisions. This is a mistake for two essential reasons. First, positive people will not come into your life until the negative ones are gone. Second, you cannot do positive and meaningful work with negative people dragging you down.

Connecting with someone is a negotiation. You’re trading value for value. The reason people aren’t connecting with you is because you’re approaching them from a position of need. The first step to correcting this problem is identifying why it's happening. Once you know why you're getting a negative result, you can try something new. Here are 10 reasons why your LinkedIn messages are being ignored.

Many academic advisors have too much unregulated power. Most have little to no management experience or training, yet they're often given complete control over the fate of technicians, postdocs, and graduate students. Don’t ignore the warning signs. If an advisor shows signs of being one of the following 3 personality types, stay away.

Cathy was in a tough place. She had been employed for 3 months after getting her PhD and finishing a postdoc. But this wasn't the end of Cathy's story. By making a few intelligent decisions, Cathy turned things around and is now a Cheeky Scientist success story. Wherever you are at in your PhD career--postdoc, graduate student, or even unemployed--you can turn your story into a success story too. Here's how.

During your industry job search, you are a product introducing yourself to new markets. When you go to typical University or PhD, biotech, or biopharma-labeled events, you’re introducing yourself to what is known as Red Ocean markets. These markets are full of your competitors. The markets are bloody and unlikely to yield any results. Start introducing yourself to Blue Ocean markets--events where you will meet people who won't compete with you and who will help you get the industry position you want.

Segment every part of your job search. Each person you interact with--whether it be a reference, hiring manager, or recruiter--should be treated as a separate audience. Your goal is to engage with these people in whichever way benefits them the best. If you want to get a job over other candidates, you must start tailoring your approach, messages, and resumes to make things as easy as possible for them, now you. Here's how.

If you want a non-academic job, stop thinking like an academic. PhDs stay stuck in academia, not because they are incapable of transitioning quickly and successfully into industry, but because they refuse to trade in their outdated academic mindset for a new, industry-trained mindset. Here are the two biggest reasons some PhDs never trade in their academic mindset and, as a result, never transition into industry.

There is immense value in getting your PhD. A PhD is a high-level achievement and it should not just be handed out to anyone. That being said, you should not have to endure harassment or workplace bullying to get a PhD. You should not be forced to get some magical piece of data to graduate when your lab can’t even afford a working centrifuge. You should not live in fear and be pressured to stay in a system that does not have the means of compensate you fairly. You do not have to accept this. The academic career track is now a dead end career track. But the biggest reasons behind the death of academia are not in the numbers, they’re in the day-to-day lifestyle that PhDs have to endure.