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.