Meet Anna Schueth: She dropped out at 17, thought life was over, then earned her PhD at 35

At 17, Anna Schueth believed her academic journey had ended before it had truly begun. Struggling through her teenage years, she dropped out of education and carried a deep sense of failure into early adulthood.

By 20, she has said she felt defeated and directionless, convinced she had fallen irreversibly behind her peers.Nearly two decades later, that narrative looks very different. Schueth earned her PhD at 35 and, at 42, secured a permanent assistant professor position. Her story, shared widely online, challenges the idea that success in science follows a fixed timeline and has struck a chord with researchers who recognise the pressures and setbacks built into academic life.

Anna Schueth’s journey from a dropout to a professor

Anna Schueth was born and raised in Germany. She dropped out of formal education at 17. At the time, she has believed a door had closed permanently, and the decision left her struggling with self-doubt for years. By her early twenties, she has described feeling defeated and unsure whether she would ever return to education or find a place in science. Her return to academia was slow and uncertain. Schueth has spoken about having to relearn how to study, rebuild confidence and accept that progress would be uneven.

There was no clear roadmap back into higher education, and the process involved setbacks as well as long periods of doubt about whether she belonged in academic spaces at all.

Completing a doctorate in her mid-30s placed Schueth well outside the conventional academic timeline. She has said the experience was demanding, requiring sustained focus and technical discipline, particularly in laboratory-based research.

Rather than seeing age as an advantage, she has framed this period as one marked by pressure to prove herself in an environment where most peers were younger. Today, Schueth is a group leader at Maastricht University within the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences. Her research focuses on oncology, advanced microscopy and biomedical imaging technologies. Alongside her scientific work, she has spoken openly about mental health challenges in academia, including burnout and imposter syndrome, particularly among women in STEM. The reaction to Schueth’s story reflects broader frustration with rigid academic expectations. Many researchers have pointed to her experience as evidence that falling off the expected path does not end an academic career, even though it can make the journey longer, more uncertain and more psychologically demanding.

Redefining success in academic science

Schueth’s career challenges the idea that early achievement is the primary marker of excellence. Her experience suggests that persistence, perspective and lived experience can be as valuable to science as speed, offering a more inclusive vision of what success in academia can look like.