The future of education research is linked to what early career researchers in Education are doing and learning to do now. This paper presents a narrative of one early career researcher who works and lives in Australia. She tells the story about how she came to research and to an academic life, about what her doctoral work and education taught her and how now, as an academic in an on-going position, she feels needs to unlearn many of those values and practices in order to succeed particularly in the so-called ‘grant game’. The narrative format, though, is intended to invite and encourage other readings.
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