Survive in the academia (while making it a more glamorous place)

my boss in the Centre of Excellence wrote to me yesterday telling me not to worry too much about not getting that postdoc place, and that they’ve budgeted money for me in the research project for the whole 2009 – six months of research grant and six months of salary _{proper salary!} after I return to Bohemia.

Except I think I’d like to stay here for another year; possibly in another good university somewhere a little warmer. (California springs to mind.) I know haven’t done much academically yet, but just being this far away from the petty squabbles of the academic circles in Bohemia feels liberating. I feel like my brain is getting a lot of fresh air.

I need a way to put this goal back on my main page.

I just got the evaluation reports of my most important postdoc application this year (a three-year place I didn’t get.) It’s basically fine; I wasn’t expecting to, it’s almost impossible to get, only two people in my field this year etc. It’s more the evaluation report. It’s a very… sobering thing to read. I know I didn’t do the application as well as I could have, but now I worry whether it has any value at all, and whether I’m on the wrong track completely.

“The project is interesting and innovative BUT we judge it unlikely to yield significant outcomes.” It’s “ambitious but we think too ambitious, and would be better if scaled back”; the hypotheses are not presented clearly enough; I need more expertise; and the overall evaluation is “this might issue in valuable research, but the evidence is not there. [...] The applicant’s background [...] may not equip her for what she wants to do.” Overall, it’s grade 3 on a scale of 1 to 5. I got 4/5 on “competence and expertise” and 5/5 on “research environment”, but only 2/5 on “feasibility of the research plan” – the most important thing.

It really is a very useful report and the panel is probably right about everything. Honestly, I am very aware that I haven’t worked hard enough on the proposal. This will have to change. I know I shouldn’t be totally depressed since I didn’t do too bad for a first-time applicant. But, darn it, I and the proposal are very far from excellence. And that’s what I want and need. I needed a mighty troutslap, and that’s what I got.

_{Still, ouch.}

and ready to move into simple excelling (what was I thinking, marking this as ‘done’?)

I just completed my third postdoc grant application in a week, and three more remain to be done within the next week. I’m tired of applying. I want three solid years of research funding so that I can excel and won’t have to try to make my living in this piecemeal fashion, six months there and seven there.

I’m reminded once again why I’ve been thinking about applying for a job somewhere else than in Bohemia: it’s just too small. There isn’t a proper assistant/associate/full professor job structure, and most postdoc researchers live on research grants for ten or more years before getting a professorship or giving up and getting another kind of job.

I feel very unshiny at the moment.

I just got a grant that’ll cover my staying in Chicago until February 2009 (or even March if I try to live more modestly), and the Centre of Excellence will fund the rest if I don’t get another grant. I’m safe for another academic year! Much more important than just this specific money is actually that someone thinks my postdoc project is worth funding, which will open the door for other funding sources. I’ve now cleared the first hurdle where 40% of those with PhD’s are weeded out! Phew.

I really should celebrate today. :)

but I guess someone must do it.

The research centre of excellence I belong to had a meeting in London last week and I was chosen to represent the post-docs in my group, so there I flew, wearing my favourite suit and favourite lecturing boots. All three of us were applauded _{though when I looked at my 15-minute presentation the day after it seemed very imperfect and lacking a proper ending}. In any case, there was a Very Important Professor present, a man whose work I’ve used and even taught, and I was just blown away by him. He’s what I’d like to be like when I’m all grown up. The Oxbridge and the Princeton and the Institute for Advanced Research actually fade in importance compared to how he behaved – attentive to everyone, the lowliest PhD students included, managing to give the impression to everyone that he was utterly interested in what you were saying and that you were a colleague on the same level, to be taken seriously and respected. He asked questions of everyone in a totally self-effacing way and was just so smart and considerate and… kind. He’s almost seventy, but he ran around London freezing without an overcoat trying to find me and a bunch of graduate students a cocktail bar that would be open after 11 pm. One of the loveliest people I’ve ever met.

Sorry about the hero-worship, but the morale of the story was that it’s possible to be absolutely successful in the academia and a great human being at the same time. I’m so glad I’ve met one person who’s like that.

An ex-colleague from the department I got my PhD from visited not-hometown last week, and while having dinner with her, I was reminded of all the things that are dreadfully wrong there. It’s really rather hopeless – all the brightest people are driven away and just the mediocre yes-men remain, and consequently the department gets really bad results in both research and teaching evaluations. Even considering all the universities here, if I want to become truly good at what I do, I’m not sure I should stay in Bohemia. Maybe things will change in five years or so, when lots of people retire. But meanwhile, if I don’t get postdoc research funding soon...

I never considered applying for an academic job in the States as a real option, but I’m reconsidering that. It’s harder for people who don’t have U.S. degrees, but my American professor friend seems to think I could still do well in the competition. And he promised to coach me for a job interview if I need that.

The thing is, this year in Chicago is all my husband can do. His work and career is in Bohemia, and can’t be transferred to the States. But being supported by him while I would be unemployed here is unthinkable (and unpractical too – he just doesn’t make enough to pay our huge mortgage alone.)

These are the biggest choices I’ve ever had to make. What is my future path? Marriage or divorce? Career or marriage? Bohemia or the States? Settling for quiet mediocrity or going after my dreams? Are these either/or choices or not?

So, I want to shine and help others shine, but I have no idea which choices would help me best with that. I’m lost in the woods and don’t know where I even should be going.

Two people liked article 1, though it was finished too hastily and in not ideal conditions. I’m thinking that I will probably just keep getting busier as my ‘career’ _{I really need to stop cringing when I write that} progresses, so the ability to deliver under not ideal conditions will be an asset, and something I can be proud of.

Of course, I’m still hoping to reach ‘relaxed, effortless efficiency’ when I’ve fully internalized the GTD system. :D

as a ‘fraudulent’ academic (I never did get chance to reply to that did I??)

^{Now to polish and shine the boots}

A woman who was in the same working group in last week’s conference emailed me and asked whether I wanted to come to a conference organized by another society she’s the vice-president of, in May 2009. She wasn’t completely explicit about whether this was to come as an invited speaker or just to send in a paper, but it’s not that far from Chicago where I’ll hopefully be next year so I said ‘sure’. Now she answered, and apparently they just want some better papers than the proposals they’ve had this far – but that’s fine. One of the keynote speakers is someone insanely famous in my field, and I’d be totally crazy to assume I would be in the same league as her _yet. :)

Anyway, I’ll get a chance to meet yet another potentially very interesting bunch of people, and the woman must have liked my paper if she went through the extra trouble of soliciting my attendance at this new conference! And she wants to add my name to the list of ‘confirmed speakers’. Man, I feel like an adult – in the best possible way.

The Georgia conference was the best I’ve ever been in.

I feel I just got lucky in so many ways: I was put into the same working group with the big names and other interesting people there and somehow managed to ask a couple of semi-intelligent questions; although my paper was aimed at completely the wrong audience, several people asked to get a copy of it; I got much complimented on my cocktail dress (as well as another offer of queer marriage with a nice woman); and on the last day I was asked to join the Advisory Board for the society and possibly to organize their conference in 2011 (which will mean I’ll be in the Executive Committee for three years). This last thing had more to do with me being from Bohemia and them wanting diversity than my academic brilliance, to be sure, but it was still very nice to be asked to play. A year ago, I didn’t have my PhD and felt on the outside of everything. And now I know I’ll be an Executive Director of the society in 2011 as long as I don’t blow it.

I feel so inspired, and again have more faith in making it in the academia. I’m also thinking, for the first time, that I could consider applying for jobs in the States after I first get to Chicago. I could live in the US, probably not for the rest of my life, but for some years. As long as I don’t want to have children or become ill.