I love my research. It gets me up in the morning.
Don’t get me wrong — I love teaching too. I love sharing knowledge, watching students grasp a difficult idea, seeing curiosity ignite. But creating — in all its forms — is what energises me most.
Creating new ideas.
Sharing new interpretations.
Constructing new stories.
Because that is what research ultimately is: storytelling.
I am a firm believer that all researchers — whether clinical scientists, social scientists, physicists or historians — are storytellers. We tell evidence-based stories about the world. In my case, I tell stories about the past. What was life like 20,000 years ago on the edge of a drying lake in New Mexico? Who walked there? Why? What did they see? What did they fear? The sediment and the footprints give us fragments. Research weaves them into narrative.
Narrative is not decoration; it is structure. Research without communication is lost creativity. Randy Olson [1]makes this case beautifully in Houston, We Have a Narrative. He shows how even the famous Watson and Crick paper on the discovery of the double helix follows a classic storytelling arc — And, But, Therefore. Even the most clinical of sciences unfolds as story.
We are storytellers — whether we admit it or not.
That is the version of myself I am comfortable with. As a child, rocks, trees and mountains were the characters of my imagination. I invented landscapes and histories. Today the stories are perhaps less whimsical, but they are still stories.
And that is why research, for me, is not simply a career. It is vocation.
I do not research because it advances my CV. I research because I am curious. Because I want to know. Because I want to understand and to explain. I simply happen to have found a career that allows me to express that instinct.
Had I ended up in a teaching-only institution, I suspect I would still have researched. Many high-performing researchers will say something similar. They are not driven primarily by pay, promotion or prestige. They are driven by intellectual curiosity.
Of course, research success is linked to academic career progression. I aspired to be the first professor in my family and pursued that goal with determination. When I achieved it, however, I realised something quietly unsettling.
It was hollow. The title changed little and I rarely use it. I do not need the badge to prove I am clever. In fact, I am often slightly hesitant to declare what I do. Geographer, geologist or archaeologist — these do not sound as glamorous, or useful, as brain surgeon or chiropractor.
Do I really add anything of value to society?
That is a philosophical question, but it does not change the fact that I love what I do. If anything, the doubt reinforces the point: the motivation is internal, not external. All of this speaks to what it means to be a researcher in a university. Humboldt argued that a university’s mission is to teach, but its status is defined by research. I would put it slightly differently: without the creation of knowledge, a university risks becoming merely a training establishment.
Research is the generative engine of reputation. But for the individual academic, research is also something more intimate. It is not simply employment. It is an expression of who we are. And this is where the struggle with time becomes clearer.
We do not fight for research time merely to satisfy a workload model. We fight for it because something in us needs to create. When that creative impulse is squeezed by administrative demands, endless email, performance metrics and institutional politics, the frustration is not just professional — it is existential.
We feel blocked not because our career is stalled, but because our vocation is constrained. It is healthy, occasionally, to separate career from vocation.
Career is:
Promotion.
Titles.
Institutional recognition.
Salary bands.
Vocation is:
Curiosity.
Creativity.
Contribution.
The quiet satisfaction of discovery.
We cannot all become professors. We cannot all secure major grants. Academic structures are hierarchical and competitive. But vocation is not hierarchical. It is personal. Owning that distinction brings a certain peace.
Research pays poorly compared to many professions. It comes with relentless demands from multiple directions. It is often undervalued outside academia. But we are, in truth, extraordinarily fortunate. We are paid — however modestly — to ask questions and attempt to answer them. That is a rare privilege.
And if we are honest, most of us would continue to think, to question and to create even without the institutional framework. Research is not something I do. It is something I am.
And remembering that — especially when time feels scarce and pressures feel heavy — matters.
Because if research is vocation, not merely career, then the battle to protect time for it is not self-indulgent. It is preservation of identity. It is how we make sense of the world. And perhaps — in small, often unseen ways — how we make a difference within it.
[1] https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo21174162.html
(C) Matthew Bennett, 2026.
