reset

Going to get back to this in some form or another. Will be moving here:

http://jbashir.wordpress.com

Punting

Looks like I will be sitting this one out. After a few talks with the relevant people (adivsor & spouse) it seems that the plan will be to not apply for academic jobs this year. Instead I will work out publishing the shit-ton of data I'm sitting on, and write a grant. If both of those were to work out reasonably well I would look very good next year. A big if; though there's probably a better chance at me getting this grant and publishing everything than getting a (good) job this year. So the move makes sense as an overall career plan.

A similar strategy worked in getting my current position. I was highly annoyed that I had to spend an 'extra' year in grad school. I didn't have a real reason to hurry, I'm well within the typical age range from my place on the professional development ladder. Perhaps this time I'll take things better.

splaining

Recently came back from the family vacation. The big one, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. That means, amongst other things, a lot of “how’s the academic life?” questions. Here’s the basic rundown.

1. What do you do(study)? I’ve explained this a million times. No one remembers. That’s fine, it helps we work on my elevator speech: simple, short and interesting. A few folks even want me to send them pdfs of my papers (I did). That’s nice of them.

2. What do you do(all day)? The assumption seems to be that I spend 80-90% of my time teaching. Again, as much as I try to nicely provide accurate information (0%) I still get the "what? really that can't be right?" look.

3. So what kind of job are you going to get? A job, if I’m lucky. I do a quick explanation of different types of professor gigs (SLAC, R1, CC, etc). Explain what I’m looking for (R1) and emphasize the highly probabilistic nature of the market. At this point I often get the look I call the “why didn’t you just go to law/med school” look.

4. Will you return to the region? Again, the market is unpredictable. Particularly given the recent economic goings-ons it is possible that no major (R1) university in the region will be hiring in my field. No, I can’t just fax my resume CV to the dean at FancyPants U. Besides, I’m still a bit split over my home region. Maybe it would be nice to live there again. It’s been over a decade since I last did. The main pluses are familiarity and ease of travel (driving to see relatives as opposed to flying). That’s it.

Conferences

In the beginning (grad school year 1) conferences were quite exciting. It was a very tangible way of being involved in The Science. The poster sessions, the talks, I ate it all up, went to anything even vaguely interesting. And it all seemed interesting since I was still new to the field.

A few years later (prelim era), I was more focused on learning my area of research. Going to only the posters and presentations specifically on my small research area, because I needed to become an expert and I didn’t have the brain energy to waste on things I didn’t need to know, as interesting as they may seem (in theory).

During the dissertation era, when I was searching for a postdoc I went out of my way to attend a lot of conferences. I attended 5 or 6 in a year(depending on if you count “workshops”). That’s definitely the most I’d been to in such a time period, and I don’t really recommend it. Perhaps it would have been more fun had I not be stressed about employment and my dissertation, or if the conferences had been in exciting locations. My field doesn’t really do exciting location all that often.

Anywho, after that I thought I’d take a conference break. I do enough traveling as it is. I will be heading back out into the fray and have two conferences this summer. To what end? I have posters at both conferences. No biggie. When I was looking for postdocs I did a bit of networking. I guess that’s still a possibility, though thing are a bit different. The TT job market really has nothing to do with the postdoc market. The postdoc market is either via word of mouth or email forwards. TT jobs have much more of a standard operating procedure. It doesn’t seem there’s anything to be done other than apply (and have a shiny CV).

When walking around the poster session talking to folks I do find myself thinking.

Oh look, Dr. Interesting is at Awesome State U. I wonder if they are hiring this coming year. Probably not, but what if they are? I’d better not make a bad impression here, what if she remembers when he sees my CV? Oh crap she’s talking to me, what did she say? Did she ask me what I thought about that last talk, about some controversial new paper? No, no she just wanted to know if my former advisor is here because she owes him 20 bucks.

Unlikely, but still, these are the thoughts that go through my head.

Go / no-go

This whole thing is pretty complicated, the career plan thing. The simple question is go on the market this year or don’t. It’s not actually that simple of course, there are a myriad of factors, how my CV looks now, how it may look in one year (or two), how few jobs there may be this year (or next), if I get that grant I’m applying for (or not), and how long I can stretch my current funding situation. I don't want to fall off a funding cliff, but then again I don't want to waste time with apps when I could be working on papers¹.

Blargh, it’s all a mess. I thought I had a good idea of a decent strategy. Some conversations with more experienced folk have lead me to believe otherwise. I guess that’s why you have those conversations.

1. Right now my CV looks...eh. I have a lot of things hovering in the cue that will all likley end up as pubs at some journal or other. Some day the CV will shine, but not quite yet.

Begins, in earnest

Yesterday, on one of the various email lists I subscribe to, it arrived. The very first job ad of the season¹. I guess it begins now. Time to start gathering information, make that excel spreadsheet. Might not need to buy a book of stamps, I think things have reached a tipping point regarding online v. paper applications².

The ad falls into the category: known school, unknown department, general ad for Bashirology. No real reason for me not to apply. Unless I want to get picky about the location (I don't).

1. I've yet to look at the online job listing. There probably isn't much up yet, if anything.

2. Thank god. Last time things got very messy with all those envelopes, stamps, and a lot of label making.

Tasks

During graduate school my work fell into one of a few categories, experiment design, data analysis, data collection, writing, reading articles. That’s about everything. The ratio depended on what stage I was at; lots of reading during prelim times, lots of design & writing during the dissertation. Probably the most writing I’d ever done.

Since then it hasn’t really let up. I came into a pretty good postdoc situation. I have RAs doing a lot of work for me, that frees up focus on design, data analysis, and writing. Lots and lots of writing. Looking at my task list for this week it reads:
1. Writing: for that grant you’re applying for
2. Writing: to finally publish your dissertation work¹
3. Writing: more edits on that short paper you advisor swore we’d get out 6 months ago
4. Writing: that other paper
5. Writing: that other other paper
6. Writing: kinda hoping the reviews on that paper we sent out don’t come back yet because that would mean more writing.

Soon that will be joined with the various writing needed for job applications. My writing has never been amazing but has steadily improved. Now the crucial skill is working on getting from “here is my submitted manuscript” to “here is my accepted manuscript”. Things like handling crazy reviewer requests and hornery co-authors.

This is what happens when you step away from the bench into a semi-supervisory but not quite a PI role. More top-down stuff, less grunt work. I knew this would happen My graduate school profs always noted that things change after graduate school². I suppose I could talk about this not being what I got into science for, because it isn’t, but neither was the grunt work. I guess I’m at least happy that I’m learning new skills.

1. Even if you are so sick of it you might vomit on your computer
2. So enjoy the easy part while you can, was the gist of it.

No read policy

“Worry about that which you cannot control waste energy, and creates it’s own problems”

I don’t look at other people’s CVs any more. It’s a no win situation. The best possible outcome is neutral. It is likely that something the person’s CV will make me feel bad about mine, depressed about my job prospects, suspicious of authorship gerrymandering¹, incensed that a paper with such a silly title got into a good journal, etc.

Thus I no longer peruse the CVs of up coming speakers, researchers I just met at a conference, and so on.

1. I have seen one CV I suspected was heavily gerrymandered, in the sense than the authorships were more arranged than earned. I’ve seen plenty of CVs that I’d describe impossibly good. This particular CV was orders of magnitude better than those. Imagine something like 8 first authored Science papers during the first year of graduate school.

Departmental Fundamentals

My field of study, let’s call it Bashirology, is a very common field. Virtually every major university has a department, one way or another. There’s a bit of variation in the focus of the subfields, but I would be more or less at home in the vast majority of Bashirology departments. Then there’s the applied version of the department. Maybe slightly less common, but many universities also have some group along those lines. In theory my research can be framed to fit in with the applied department. Looking at jobs in applied departments is a possibility for this fall. It would certainly increase the number of jobs to apply for, and thus my odds¹.

Thing is, as much as I believe the applications are important, that’s not really what I want to do. I fear I’d find myself intellectually isolated, cut off from all the interesting ideas that first drew me to Bashirology. The few people I know who were trained in Bashirology departments but end up in the applied department don’t sound enthusiastic about the change in scenery. “It’s…different” is the most common description, and that certainly fits with my interdisciplinary experiences².

Though perhaps when I see the paucity of jobs in Bashirology departments I will reconsider and widen my search. Maybe I would enjoy such a position more than I realize³.

1. I hear those jobs are less competitive. I have no idea if that is true.

2. Much more on this later.

3. Maybe not.

will the library be open?

Invariably, it seems like for a few years now, national holidays, particularly the kind with 3 day weekends, seem to magically coincide with me suddenly having to get something done that involves wrangling other people. I'll fire off a few emails Friday afternoon, maybe even with a note about doing something on Monday. In return I'll either get silence or a "umm, you know what day it is, right?". oh. It must be one of those things again. Holidays. Other than Christmas they're just not on my radar. Just this year I blanked out when asked what I would be doing for the upcoming holiday. I bluffed, "oh nothing special. Just hanging out with my family". Turned out it was the Friday before Easter, which I realized about 30 seconds later.

Maybe I'll get a calendar for whatever gift giving holiday is next.

Jobs etc.

The academic job market for this year is still a bit off on the horizon. Still some degree of preparation is beginning to slowly commence. Technically speaking this isn’t my first rodeo. Last year I applied to 25-30 positions before landing a very reasonable post doc. Thus, I have pulled together all my application materials before; the research & teaching statements, the letters of rec, etc. I even had a small pile of rejection letters that eventually arrived. Word on the street is that last years market was the worst in decades. Predictions about this year’s range from

a) Back to "normal" (ok)

b) Same as last year (bad)

c) Even worse than last year (very bad)

I have read countless arguments for each option. No one really knows, and either way it's always complicated; different fields of study, different types of institutions. At the risk of sounding selfish, all I really care about is the N on the schools that would even consider hiring me. Eventually that will be revealed. Whether it is 20 or 200, the work to be done remains the same. Thus I am punting on this issue for now, interesting as it may be.