Finding jobs after graduate school is a huge transition period that isn’t talked about nearly enough. So I’m so grateful that my friend Dr. Afshan Khaleghi was willing to come onto the podcast to talk about her recent experiences - and successes! - in finding a non-academic job after graduate school. We talk about how she navigated how the “real world” views PhDs and how she engineered her way into quickly and easily getting recommended even by strangers for positions.

And! If you feel like you recognize some names in the episode…Dr. Khaleghi worked in FluxLab along with Dr. Nadia Tarakki, who recently appeared in a journal club episode about methane quantification methods from landfills!

And more on my own job journey

Find all episodes for Women In STEM here!

Song of the week: Tournament by Nation of Language

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• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes! You can also reach out on my website!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

Welcome to STEMdentity Journal Club! Every month, I find an exciting peer-reviewed journal article and interview one of its lead authors. We talk about their paper, their work, and their STEM identities.

My guest today is Eric Mei, who is a PhD candidate in the department of Atmospheric and Climate Science at University of Washington. We’re digging into his 2026 PNAS paper Multidecadal preindustrial methane variability can be explained by noise in the source–sink imbalance. I’ll admit that methane work is still like cat nip to me - so appealing! But I don’t think about ice core research at all so this study was fascinating to me.

We also talk about how Eric transitioned over time from working with wastewater research to atmospheric signals and how he wrote such a fun and compelling paper.

Find all episodes for Journal Club here!

Song of the week: Anoana by Heilung

If you loved this episode:

• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes! You can also reach out on my website!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!

Welcome to a “special edition” of giving better talks: panels! And if you don’t think this applies to you…chances are good that if you stick around in one field long enough, you’re going to be asked to be on a panel or moderate a panel! Whether you’re the moderator or a panelist, there are some elements in common with giving a solo talk along with some unique elements. I find panels (both moderating and speaking) to be a lot of fun and a lot less pressure than solo talks. Let’s talk about how to be fantastic at both roles!

Find all episodes for Giving Better Talks here!

Song of the week: Visceral - ATOEM Remix by VAPA & ATOEM

If you loved this episode:

• Follow me on Instagram at @STEMdentity or LinkedIn at Anna Hodshire & feel free to DM me anytime with questions or ideas for future episodes! You can also reach out on my website!
• Give a follow and share with a friend! Let’s build a community of badass, heart-centered STEM pros!
• Music by @excess_sass - I’d love a follow!