Why your career is like a rocket ship. Or a train.

Dr. George Wyse (MD 1974) - world renowned heart expert and Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Medicine - has spent a fair bit of time speaking with people just starting their careers. He tells students and residents that it's important to be prepared for change and never stop plugging along. He also tells them their careers are not unlike a rocket ship taking off.

Dr. Wyse's analogy goes something like this:

“Early in your career it's like a rocket taking off and the thing you notice is there is a lot of fire and smoke. There's a lot of effort going on but you haven't moved very far. You're doing a lot of stuff and you're working very hard but it doesn't look like you're making a lot of progress.

And then you move into the mid part of your career and you still need some fire and smoke and everything but it's a lot easier. You've moved a lot further and it just seems to be going a lot easier.

And if you persist long enough, you get to the third part (of your career) where you're just kind of floating around and it seems as if things are happening with very little effort. But you have to go through the first stages to get to that."

Wyse says the moral of the story is when you're working hard and nothing seems to be happening, persist and you will get to a point where it all seems easy.

Wyse has another analogy that is particularly helpful to people starting a career in science. The winner of many awards - most recently the 2008 Cardiovascular Society's annual achievement award - says it can be helpful to remember that a career in science is like a locomotive with lots of wheels moving down the track.

"Each wheel is a project; some are big ones and some are little ones. And every time the wheel goes around, you get a publication because the project is finished. But what's making the locomotive move is all of those wheels; some small and some big.

You can't just have one wheel in a career in science and research. You've got to have a bunch of things and you've got to keep working on them all the time. Sometimes the wheels aren't going smoothly. Maybe one of the wheels isn't working very well so you spend some time working on another wheel so you don't get frustrated.

But if you have a lot of projects going on, when one project isn't going well you work on another one that is going well. You move back and forth and the final result is the engine moves down the track."

Dr. Wyse served as associate dean (clinical affairs) from 1993-1999 in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary and is now Professor Emeritus. He is also a past president of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Alberta, NWT and Nunavut. His prior decorations include a 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal, an Alberta Centennial Medal, the Heart Rhythm Society's 2007 Distinguished Scientist Award, and the University of Calgary's Distinguished Alumni Award. He is a Serving Member of the Order of St. John. Dr. Wyse is a member of the Strategic Advisory Board of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta and is also chair of the Institute's International Expert Advisory Committee.

Yet at one point early in his career, it seemed he was doing a lot of work and getting not getting very far.