Job hunting progress

[liv]

I've been horribly, horribly avoidant about looking for jobs, because I am scared I won't get any, and because I don't have a clear idea what I want to do with my future. Stay in academia or get a real job? Stay in Sweden or go back to England, or find a new country to explore? I managed to get started this week, deciding that I'd apply for everything I could find that looks vaguely suitable, and not agonize over every word of my applications, just get some out there.

So far the tally is:
Cold-calls: 1 (Cambridge) Result: semi-positive (he likes me, but has just heard his institution's budget has been cut by 20%)
Advertised research jobs: 1 (Dundee)
Advertised teaching jobs: 2 (Birmingham, University of East London)
Advertised science writing jobs: 1 (PLoS biology, based in Cambridge)

I think of that lot the most likely and probably the most appealing is the lecturer post at UEL. I don't want to be in London, but I like the idea of getting my teeth into some serious teaching, and I think I'm rather well qualified.

I seem to be drifting to the UK by default; that's partly because it's a lot easier to look for British jobs and to judge whether they're likely to be suitable and productive. And it's partly because at least part of me wants to live near a decent proportion of my friends and maybe even in the same country as cartesiandaemon.

In other work mightiness news, I was pushy earlier in the month, with the result that we've managed to get our paper back to the journal with corrections completed, and two others in the group have submitted manuscripts, and there are two more in the pipeline. So I'm reasonably proud of that. And I can leave tomorrow for my long-awaited Christmas vacation with a good conscience.

On the less positive side, I have a stabbing headache, and have done for several days now. It's not bad enough to stop me getting on with things, but I would prefer it not to be there.

Comments

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

gosh, well done on getting started with the job hunt. i'm a bit ARGH GET ME OUT OF HERE but too inherently lazy to actually do anything about it. have other things, will email.
oh also - long headache bad. have you tested whether lack of vitamins or daylight are anything to do with it? poor you

[liv]

Thanks for email, more on that soon. I doubt I would be looking for a job if I were only unhappy in my current one, it's the combination of being unhappy and the end of my contract looming that is pushing me.

I could be malnourished somehow, I suppose. I don't think the darkness gives me headaches, it sometimes makes me a little lethargic, but not worse than that. I suspect what I'm short of is more like sleep than vitamins, though.

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that the variety open to you makes me a bit envious. The job-hunting part of my field is far less so, at least in the US. It's also curious to me on account of how (as per my discussions with rysmiel) the parameters of where and how you and your group might publish seem to be relatively clear -- whereas my big question of the year is "which journal out of the fifteen or so possibilities should I send Piece X to?"

Best of luck.

[liv]

To an extent, the reason I have variety available is because I'm contemplating giving up the career I've spent the last decade training for and doing something I can kid myself is vaguely related. But it's true, having science qualifications does open a lot of doors. Thanks for the good wishes.

As for publishing papers, I don't quite know whether you're noting that we have more choice or less than you; I'd say we have more like 150 than 15 options, but it doesn't make that much difference which we pick, so it would never be the big question of the year. Basically you start at the top of the list, delete any obviously unsuitable or over-ambitious, and work your way down until you're accepted somewhere. rysmiel has limited options cos they're in a very specific field; I'm just a biologist and can publish in any biology, medical, genetics or even general science journal.

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry for misreading. I probably shouldn't comment where I obviously have no clue.

Publishing options in my field aren't nearly that hierarchical.

[liv]

No, not at all! I was happy to have your comment, it made me feel supported. I'm sorry that I phrased my reply so it looked like I was snapping at you for having misconceptions about how my field works. I am stressed by the jobhunting process, and also by trying to figure out whether I will have to, and whether I want to, give up my lifelong dream. But I thought I'd kept that out of the tone of my comment, and obviously I didn't succeed as well as I thought I had. My apologies.

I'm rather intrigued by how you got to where you are, too, cos I think you're not much older or more advanced in your career than I am, but you seem to be taken much more seriously as a university teacher than I. I think that's partly because you're in the arts, and partly because you're American, and partly because you work incredibly hard.

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

I just came back to this; sorry. I think that the structure of the arts/humanities doctoral degree in the US is simply predicated upon the idea that One Will Teach. (Sciences far less so.) It's a research degree, but there's no way it can be purely so. At my institution people start teaching in their first year or two of graduate school. Admittedly our program is a bit extreme, in that we don't serve as teaching assistants or anything first. We do have a practicum in our first semester to make sure we don't do anything too horrid, but otherwise there is a "here's your classroom, now go!" learn-by-doing approach.

I will freely admit that my first couple of years of teaching were OK, but not great -- but I was 3 months out of my bachelor's program. My students were older than I was. (Because I was so young I started teaching at a junior college, btw.) Now I have 5 years experience, even though I'm only just beginning my dissertation; that plus a master's degree (um, because graduate degrees are often sequential in the US rather than alternative endpoints? And as a result we spend more years in graduate school?) means I can get picked up for adjunct teaching at lots of places outside of my own university. Now adjuncting in the US is long hours for low pay and no benefits. But all of the experience means that upon completing my degree I will be very comfortable applying for tenure-track jobs. In the US in my field such jobs will by default have a heavy teaching component. Even the most well-known faculty members I work with at my school, who are there to work exclusively with graduate students (not very common as positions go), teach pretty regularly.

I don't know, when it's all built in like this the degree itself maybe takes longer but it does help you get ready for actual life-as-an-academic sort of thing. I do plan on seeking a postdoc for a year or two after finishing but those are relatively uncommon in my field.

Regardless, I am deeply familiar with the anxiety of the job search, and I wish you much luck and fortitude.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

And people in London would get to enjoy ore of you ;-)

Frankly, the entire structure of job-hunting is not just crap, but is actually pure distilled EVIL. It exists to sap the will, confidence and competence of every individual who touches it. It's universal kryptonite.

So, being avoidant is not pathological but deeply rational behaviour. Like not wanting to plunge your hand into boiling fat.

[liv]

Hey, thanks for being enthusiastic about the prospect of my coming to London, I'm most flattered! I agree that job hunting is evil, but I suspect being unemployed would be worse. So far my cunning plan has made it relatively painless now that I've got started, but if I don't get any positives I shall get very miserable.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

being unemployed would be worse

Oh no; being unemployed is indeed far worse than having a job, but substantially better than the period of torture known as job-hunting. And I speak as someone with a tendency towards workaholism, so, y'know, my utter rage towards job-hunting is not minor or passing. I know I will have to do it again at some point and I really just don't want to think about that, which is probably quite bad.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

And people in London would get to enjoy ore of you ;-)

I don't know, I've always thought of livredor as already being quite refined, myself.