ABSTRACT
This autoethnographic study explores my transition from school leader to early career researcher (ECR), disrupted by the pandemic during early 2020. As I seek to leave luggage behind at the last station, it is past the shadow cast by those two words – being and doing. My aim is to engage in much-needed discourse and more considered approaches to support early career researchers in higher education (HE). While the disruption of the pandemic brought with it further economic, social, and political tensions for work in the Australian HE sector, it also provided potentially new and different opportunities to find other pathways to be and do. Solitude, sanctuary, and interactions with pseudo-mentors may be useful to realigning our values and finding ways to thrive as ECRs.
