an ADD moment at my conference

***Cross-posted at wordpress.

I had an “ADD moment” at my conference over the weekend.

By some misfortune, I was scheduled to present a poster at 8 a.m. Sunday morning. This is the *worst* presentation slot, and I’ve now had it two years in a row. I’m a good sport, however, and prepared in advance so I wouldn’t have to scramble on Sunday morning.

I didn’t know about daylight savings time until I arrived at the conference on Wednesday afternoon. But, I still prepared in advance, set several clocks so I wouldn’t sleep in and miss my presentation time, etc. I even woke up on time, had a cup of coffee, and made it to the poster hall early. I was really, really proud of this, because I am not a morning person.
Five minutes after I put up my poster, I realized I hadn’t taken my medication. So on top of being really, really tired, I could barely string sentences together because I was sans-ritalin.

The punchline: I still didn’t remember to take my medication, even though I’d carried it with me to the poster hall! The 1-2 times I remembered I needed to take it I ended up getting distracted. The bottom line… I was too tired to remember to take something that helps me function like a normal person even when I’m tired.

I’m not beating myself up about this too much, and in fact, I’ve been laughing about it ever since. Fortunately only a few people came to the 8 a.m. session (my supervisor was not one of them), and I didn’t need to do any real deep thinking at that point of the morning. Plus, I could joke about not being able to think straight because I was so tired, just like everybody else at the session.

I did experience a cool “first” at this conference: multiple people recognized my name! I was greeted enthusiastically at one poster by name (”Dr. Addled! It’s so nice to meet you! I really enjoyed your article on French pastry techniques, and would love it if you attended my symposium later on croissants!”), and another person purposely found me to tell me how valuable they found my research. This has never happened before, and it’s pretty darn cool!

clearly I just suck

***Cross-posted at wordpress.

I just received a rejection letter from the small liberal arts college I’d visited last week.

• 35 applications
• 12? phone/initial interviews
• 8 campus visit invitations (6 completed visits)
• just 1 offer

Clearly I just suck, given the measly rate of return on all my effort.

whirlwind week

**Cross-posted at wordpress.

A lot has happened this week, both good and bad.

I went for my last interview a few days ago. This was at a small, liberal arts college in the northern midwest. It was a great interview, and I was very pleased by what I saw during my campus visit. The students were great, and the faculty were friendly. Start-up resources would be abundant. The department will get a new home in a new building within the next few years, so nice facilities are also on the horizon. The only drawback is that it’s at a liberal arts college, so I’d have relatively substantial teaching responsibilities and reduced research responsibilities. This also means that I’d have “less status” in the field as a researcher. I’m still conflicted about how I feel about this.

I heard from my top choice school the day I returned home, and they’ve offered the position to somebody else. This first-choice candidate accepted their offer, so I’m out of luck with my first choice department. They expressed a reason why their first-choice candidate was their first choice, and from my perspective, it’s a total cop-out. But, it really doesn’t matter since there’s nothing I can do anyway.

I received an offer I don’t really want the day I returned to work following the liberal arts interview trip. I interviewed for this position a couple of weeks ago, and observed some major red flags during my campus visit. I have very mixed feelings about the offer. Some points of it were better than I’d expected (i.e., salary), but it’s not enough to eliminate those red flags. The biggie is the quality of the grad students. I’m concerned about how productive I could be in this position with what would likely be grossly inadequate student support. The teaching responsibilities would be less, but the research expectations would be higher. This is worrisome, because from my perspective, weak graduate students are dead weight, and are not “better than nothing.” It doesn’t help that this university is situated in a town that’s not particularly nice. An offer is better than nothing, but I’m not sure how much better than nothing this offer truly is.

If nothing else, taking this offer would get Hubby and I out of our current house, which seems more and more vulnerable every day we live there. I had the mail held while I was at the small liberal arts college, and the bundle of accumulated mail was stolen from our mailbox on Friday afternoon. On Sunday morning, somebody checked out all the windows at the basement level of our house and left footprints in the snow as proof. Just this morning, we found proof that somebody had been messing with our front door while we slept. Needless to say, we’re deeply unhappy about this situation, and want to move as soon as possible.

I’m also spurred to move on by the situation in my lab, which has never been great but has recently become a bit worse. Recently a grad student has asked me to join hu on a paper as 3rd author. Grad student had added a model to the paper without a priori hypotheses for certain effects. Hu wanted to include the model, but also wanted its addition to make sense with the rest of the paper. My reading of the manuscript revealed that it wasn’t foreshadowed adequately, and I spent quite a bit of time adding statements, etc., in support of the model and to make the hypotheses stand out more clearly. I also made major revisions to the methods & results section of this scientific paper. A week later hu poked his head in my colleague’s office while I was meeting with colleague, and told me that the lab’s big boss instructed hu to ignore my comments on the introduction. Grad student was quite embarassed when hu told me this, and tried to downplay it as big boss’s desire to submit the paper with minimal revisions at this point.

I can appreciate wanting to take the path of least resistance in terms of submitting papers for review, but the way this was done was pretty disrespectful. Clearly I’m not good for much around here other than doing other people’s analyses and checking papers’ formatting.

I am so out of here ASAP.

turning around another file

***Cross-posted at Wordpress.

My “job applications bag” tells my job application story in its own way. For the last two months, I’ve carried all materials together in the same bag. I have one folder per position, and other separate folders for all my basic materials. The labeled tabs face out only while an application is still pending. I turn them around when I’ve heard officially or unofficially that I’m no longer being considered. About 1/3 of my folders tabs are now turned backwards.

In the meantime, I have to listen to my next-door office neighbor’s phone ringing off the hook. He already has 3-4 interviews on his schedule for the next 2.5 months. He just stopped by to (apologetically) tell me that he’d talked to Huge State U on Friday afternoon. Neither I nor our 3rd colleague have heard anything from them. I’m happy for him, really I am. I didn’t really expect to hear from them, and still don’t think I’d particularly like being a faculty member there. He’d be a much better fit there than I would likely be.

I have lots of feelings about how the process has gone so far. I am not heartbroken about turning this file backwards in my bag. But, my heart is breaking anyway, with disappointment, sadness, embarassment, annoyance, and anger.

Disappointment. I’m disappointed that I’m not doing better, and that doing a postdoc seemingly hasn’t done enough to make me competitive on the market.

I’m disappointed that continuing to put up with all the s$%& I’ve put up with in the past few years seems to count for nothing, because I still feel like a 2nd class citizen in my own lab. I’ll continue to be disappointed if I have to stick around here for another year.

Embarassment. I’m embarassed that people who haven’t finished their Ph.D.s yet (i.e., a friend’s friend, who hasn’t yet finished her dissertation) are getting better responses than I am (e.g., more interviews at better places).

Sadness. I’m sad that my friends and colleagues feel like they can’t share their good news with me because they are afraid it will hurt my feelings or make me feel discouraged. It does, but I do my best to hide it when they’re around. I’m sad that my hubby is worried about my search because my colleague’s reception has been so much better.

Annoyance. I’m annoyed with all the stupid, arbitrary tasks & requirements that are part of the process. I wasted 12 hours (!) writing the mission statement response on Friday & Saturday. I won’t allow myself to speculate what else I could have accomplished with such a substantial chunk of time. Now I’m wasting time working on the job talk I might only give twice (once to my lab for practice, once over internet chat for a position about which I’m unenthusiastic).

I’m annoyed with myself for being disappointed, embarassed, and sad about not getting “great interviews” when I know I don’t want the kind of pressure that comes with those kinds of jobs.

Anger. I’m starting to get angry about the hierarchical nature of academia… that it’s all about power, and not really about educating students or doing high-quality research (this topic will be reserved for another post at a later date). I’m angry that the system is set up to sucker people in before they know that there are so few job options at the end. I’m angry that the men I know in my field receive way more interviews than the women I know in the field (small n, but still…).

I’m angry that I’ve sacrificed a lot in order to get this far and that it still apparently hasn’t been enough. I’m angry that even if it has been enough, I’ll have to sacrifice even more in order to continue to be at least moderately successful.

I’m starting to think that I deserve better than this, even it means changing careers just when this one should be *really* starting.