Laurie Friday

Dr Laurie Friday is the Degree Committee Senior Administrator in the School of Physical Sciences, and Secretary of the Degree Committees for Earth Sciences & Geography and Physics & Chemistry. A Zoology graduate of Clare College and a former Fellow of Darwin and Newnham Colleges, she has moved from research and academic roles into graduate administration.
 

I didn’t think too deeply about my education when I was at school and I certainly didn’t read when I was at home.

My mother heroically bought me a full set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which I studiously ignored. I found lessons a bit too easy and ended up spending most of my time playing music, or in the garden digging and pollinating pansies. My hands were always dirty and as a very small child I was quite fond of eating mud; I’ve grown out of that now! But I’m still happiest when I’m playing with soil and water and it’s no surprise that my research has been on freshwater and fenland ecology.

When it came to A Levels, I disappointed my teachers woefully but was still offered a place at Clare College. I was one of the first women to go there, which was completely wonderful. I did a pretty useless Biology paper for the entrance exam but what got me in was an essay on Copernicus. Even though I didn’t know a huge amount about him, it must have showed that I was able to put ideas together in interesting ways and Cambridge still values this kind of thinking.

“Thank goodness we’re not all the same: it would be incredibly boring and we would never get anything done.”

As an ecologist I am pretty much obsessed with the diversity of living things; most ecologists are. If you take the river in front of us, it’s absolutely full of life that you can only see at a microscopic level. In a similar way, diversity amongst people excites me a great deal. Thank goodness we’re not all the same: it would be incredibly boring and we would never get anything done. People bring different talents to the same problem and I’m looking at how to do more of this across departments. In academic circles it’s fairly new to bring together insights from different disciplines, but you can get so much further that way. That’s exactly how the natural environment works, lots of different species interacting together.

You need to appreciate the complexity of a system to effect change. The University is like a huge Meccano set that people have been adding to for centuries, so having a bit of experience and insight can really help. I also think my approach is distinctly female in that I prefer to solve problems by consensus (where possible) or dogged persuasion (where consensus is impossible). I have disarmed College Bursars and senior academics by offering them more cooperation than they could reasonably have expected.

What I do for work is enlivened enormously by the fact that I can go home and get stuck into the garden, or rehearse Shostakovich. I’ve never seen work as the main element in my life. It’s very important and I give it my all when I’m there, but life is about much, much more. There are things I am deeply proud of that have nothing to do with my working life, for example conquering crippling performance nerves to play the horn in an orchestra. If work excludes anything that you would otherwise love to do then that’s a bit sad.

“I’m pretty sure success is not just about climbing to the top of a greasy pole.”

I’ve been incredibly fortunate that work has not simply been about making a living and that my husband was willing to support me in what I wanted to do. But it took me a long time to give myself permission to think this way. I used to believe that I had to have a full-time job because that’s what ‘proper people’ did. I assumed I ought to get a university lectureship and I tried to get one until it became evident that it wasn’t going to happen for me. At that stage I decided there was no point in becoming deeply frustrated about it. I chose to step back and ask myself, ‘What else would I like to do?’ Going from A to B might seem to be desirable, but actually C can turn out to be a far better option.

This led me to a career in administration, which has given me a slightly unusual take on success. I started at the top and then just gently slid downwards. Few people would countenance that. I had very good reasons for not staying in my most senior role longer than seven years. Once I made sure the department and the people in it were in a good place for me to leave, I was very glad to move on. It enabled me to re-engage with other things that were important to me.

I think progressing upwards matters for a lot of people; you earn more but you also get more responsibility and have to put in much more time. It’s at least worth asking the question, ‘Do I really want to do that?’ I’m pretty sure success is not just about climbing to the top of a greasy pole. I think you can be deeply successful at the bottom of the greasy pole, providing others view you as somebody who can be trusted to do your job really well. For me that’s far more important than somebody saying, ‘Goodness me, how much do you earn? Really?’