Fresh Wallaby Juice

Fall is the season, in the academic world, for job hunting. The ads begin in August, usually – “assistant professor wanted”. And the applications pour in and a lucky couple dozen get phone interviews and a handful get the real thing in January and February; committees meet and decisions are made by April.

I’ve known for at least the last 8 years that what I’d like, as far as a career, is to wind up at a small school teaching analytical chemistry, year after year. Research? Fun, but my ideas aren’t particularly ground-breaking and not likely to bring in big bucks of grant money. Which means that big universities aren’t for me. Teaching is about equally fun, and I seem to be somewhat good at it, so there I go. Well, once I’ve applied.

There’s a long list of schools I’d like to apply to, but I’ve been delaying mostly because I really wanted to have a couple papers done first. “Done” meaning at least “in preparation”, better “submitted”, far better “accepted”. Well, the one project isn’t likely to get published at all – who cares about an impurity that showed up in one batch of samples out of a dozen? And the other is going to take a bit longer. So new papers.

Sat down for a nice long chat with the boss about all this. (“Long” for him means “about 10 minutes”.) We even managed to communicate! or at least I think he understood about 90% of what I’d gone in to say, so that’s a huge win. I’d been putting this off, too, since I really wasn’t sure whether he’d agree to write a recommendation letter for me or not. He came down more on the “not” side; or at least said that my application (and his letter!) would be a lot more competitive once I have some fresh papers to add.

(As an aside, he seemed to think I was only interested in the “top” liberal arts colleges, where they do care about research and where professors are expected to start work that rivals that at doctorate-granting institutions – on less money and with less shared equipment in the department. And so of course they’d be looking primarily at my research background, rather than anything I might have done by way of teaching. Is he wrong? Dunno; that doesn’t match what I’ve understood such schools to prioritize, and he’s got a tendency to project himself and his own experience onto others.)

Then I went down the hall and had another nice long chat with my PhD advisor. One advantage of winding up doing a postdoc in the same department is that I can do that sort of thing And “long” with him means “a solid 45 minutes”.

(I don’t think it’s any coincidence that my current boss uses femtosecond lasers exclusively – that’s his attention span. The advisor uses CW lasers exclusively – so he can keep going for a while.)

Advisor’s advice was much the same, though more encouragingly/objectively put: If I want, he’ll write a (glowing) letter now, but he thinks I’ll have a better chance at getting a wider range of options if I try it next year with a couple more papers. He also encouraged me to consider branch campuses of state schools, and reminded me that one of the easier sources of grant money is to collaborate on a prof at a research university and ride along on one of his grants.

More options sound good. And I would not really be satisfied leaving the current job without a bit more to show than I’ve got so far. (Tough to put an ulcer on the CV.) So I agreed that I’d be back to ask again next summer. And current-boss seems gung-ho enough on me getting anything published that he’ll even let me do some analytical type stuff. *beams*

All of which means it’ll now be 2009 before I leave this department – ten years is twice as long as I’d planned to be here, but then, it’s never really been my plan that’s driving anyway.

Tags: job hunting, postdoc, teaching