Lessons from my postdoc

In no particular order, these are the lessons I learned from the job search that led up to my current postdoc, which was a mistake to accept from the beginning:

- Don't try fancy tricks: I took my current job as a stop-gap measure before I was going to go abroad. It was an offbeat interesting thing to do --- trying to do multiple things at once --- that completely failed and left me with an unfulfilling and frustrating year, and not very much money either. If I had taken my second choice, which was just a plain old postdoc at the same school, it might have been more boring, but that stability is good and probably ultimately more fulfilling.

- Take only a job that cares about your professional development. In this postdoc, my professional development was an extracurricular activity. That's why my pay got cut in half before I even started because I needed time for my own work. The postdoc that I would have taken otherwise did care. Even the visiting assistant professorship at an elite college, where I would primarily be a teacher, cared about my professional development more than this postdoc did.

- Prominent million dollar professors are dangerous. Some students of these professors with a million dollars in grants manage to do very well, but some just end up being used. I have a friend from a different school whose advisor was a million dollar professor, who just ended up being an underpaid programmer, and is a programmer even though PhD is nothing related to computers or engineering. This guy I worked for this year was a million dollar professor which meant he was never around, he assumed that I could discern what he wanted if we spoke for just 15 minutes every month or two, and he didn't care at all about my professional development.

- Have good will to everyone, but trust no one. That sounds obvious, and I was really good about making sure that no one took advantage of me throughout the job process, but I took this job without a paper offer because I was assured that there was funding and he wouldn't leave me loose. The existence of money to pay me was not the thing that I should have been concerned about. What I should have been concerned with was how much of the money was going to me, and what my responsibilities would be.

It's interesting to think back at last year, and what my options were. I didn't apply to enough postdocs last year, and didn't really understand the job market, so what happened was slightly weird especially since I expected 3 specific offers that I didn't get, but would have preferred any of them to what I took.

I think I said this already, but to review the real actual offers for myself.
- First offer: postdoc teaching 1 class a semester at Ivy-ish university with 6 days to decide before I had even interviewed everywhere. Turned it down when I got:
- Second offer: VAP at elite small college. Which I was in the mindset that I was going to accept and was on the verge of accepting when they told me that it would be bad for me to take it.
- Third offer: research scientist at top-5 that wanted to use me.
- Fourth offer: a real postdoc abroad.
- Fifth offer: the real postdoc at my current school.
- Sixth offer: didn't get the real paper offer letter until my first day, and didn't get salary commitment until I started the process of moving. By this time, the process of travels and offers had stretched out for about four or five months, much longer than it usually would, and I was just tired. I'm not usually such a sucker. I can bargain with cab drivers in Arab countries, but somehow I let there be an exception because I was tired and impatient and trying to be interesting.

With what I know now, I would have done a few things differently on the labor market in 2006-07:
1. Applied to more postdocs, even if not in the fall to keep applying through the spring in spite of all the traveling I was doing just in case no real offers came through.
2. Not applied to temporary teaching positions at all. Safety option would be postdoc at mediocre school.
3. Not apply to positions that just want to use me.
4. Accept only positions where I know exactly what I will be doing, how much I would be paid, how long it will last, and nailed down as much as possible. Uncertainty is a risk, and risks feel stressful, and this job was one big uncertainty. Even until now.
5. Accepted the only job that cared about my professional development: the postdoc at my current institution. Even though it didn't come with group health insurance and even though it paid less than I had been promised in my current job (which didn't come through on that.)
6. Not think seriously about moving to a new city until I had lived in my current city for a few months without leaving. That might mean moving to the new city during the summer rather than stretching it out.

I lost financially, but I think I am coming out ahead as far as my CV goes. My CV lists my current position as a type of job that a grad student might have, and technically I was a grad student this year. So my first year of postdoc is at this prestigious place instead of at my current mediocre place. But I think I might have been happier if I had settled and settled down and just lived for awhile and caught up on my papers and been normal for awhile before looking for another job.

Given that I did accept it, there were some things that I could have done better as well:

- Meet people even if they are all hidden away in their offices and no one introduces me. I was used to there being common areas, seminars, etc. where people meet, or at least being taken around and introduced, but everyone just stayed hidden away all the time. The only people I met were one girl who came to my office, a few people at a Christmas party, and a guy who I met at a conference elsewhere who took a job here.

- Regular updates. Even though I went months without seeing my advisor, and probably only saw him a total of six times in person (seriously, six, I'm not exaggerating. I can get out my calendar and count them all) for the entire 14 months that I worked for him, giving weekly email updates is a way to stay engaged with him. And keep calling. Even though I rarely got through.

- Talk and engage even when irritated. I used this blog to vent instead of taking my grievances to my advisor, and it would have been more healthy and helpful if I had tried to have constructive conversations about exactly what the plan was and what I should do.

- Decide in advance. I was keeping this double-think that I was going to go abroad even though I knew it was probably a bad idea for my career if I wanted to live here. But I kept the option open and that made me not commit to being here right away and made my advisor not commit to me, because I had some weird idea that if I committed to this postdoc I would be boring or mediocre somehow. Although partly the lack of commitment was because the project was initially supposed to be 3 months and now somehow it's stretched out to 14 months and still not done.

- Do things quickly even if it's gruntwork. Find ways to make gruntwork okay. 30% of my job was secretarial work and 60% of my job was lit summary tasks that an undergrad RA would have done, and I was ticked off. But the remaining 10% of the job was where I could have taken the undergrad stuff and done a great job with it, and made it interesting, and gone beyond. But instead I dragged my feet and complained because it seemed like the tedium would last forever, therefore ensuring that the tedium did last forever. If I had just accepted that I would be spending 100 hours doing undergrad RA tasks, and just tried to finish, I could have counted down from 100 and moved on from there. Plus then I would have learned more. As I was finishing up the undergrad RA tasks a month or two ago I was just thinking how even though it was tedious, I would have had a better handle on the project as a whole if I had just done it right away when I started. So tedious things are okay too.

- Remember that nothing lasts forever. So many of the issues that I had this year came from an assumption that somehow things weren't going to change ever, when in fact they did change every few months. Initially I was convinced that there were no men here to date which made me plot to move to another city and invest lots of time in my job hunt, and then somehow they've started popping up all over the place like gophers in that game now that I have gotten settled in and started going to activities and meeting people. (And actually before that I was dating someone for a couple months and it seemed pretty solid when it wasn't.) And the tedious work wasn't forever either.

- Corollary: Don't panic! Like it says on that book. I had a few biological clock panics this year and it really didn't help anything. Somehow things work themselves out even if not in the way you expect.

- Engage. It's hard to engage when traveling. All I want to do is go home and stay there after I've been traveling at least every other week and sometimes more, but going out and doing things even when I'm tired from traveling would have been better for me overall. And perhaps find a way to decrease traveling.

- Don't try to move subfields without a huge amount of research. Otherwise all the interviews are a waste of time. I went on maybe six interviews for jobs that I had a low probability of getting because they were in a new subfield. My dissertation was on A. My current job was going to let me work in a new subfield B, though that project ended up being given away to someone else even though it was a major factor that brought me here. So I figured I could apply to projects in B elsewhere without much additional research. I applied thoroughly to every single position in a good city in area B without making a serious effort at a research proposal.

By contrast, in subfield A people appear to be ready to give me the moon and stars. Just now I emailed a government official who is the retiring director of a big department in my area of research looking for her replacement, and asked for an informational interview and whether they have more junior positions. I saw her name because I saw the senior job announcement. She wrote back enthusiastically, and said I may as well apply for the senior position because my research interests match the department's so closely.

The reason I wanted to switch is because I don't have a great deal of confidence in the future of funding in this area A and ability to find a job where I wanted to live, and I also feel like it's not as "important" as B. And just for variety. A's such a small area. B is expansive. But if I wanted to work in B I had to put lots of time and lots of reading, and instead I just spent tons of time writing applications for jobs in B that I wasn't competitive for because I hadn't prepared enough for them.

- And one last job search tip that I learned this year. This one is the rule of improv theatre, and it works for job interviews too: affirm everything. I am very much myself on interviews, and I trust a bit too much and convey things that could be seen as negative. Like 80% of faculty live on campus, and at the moment that I hear it it sounds claustrophobic and weird. I did say, "How great that you have such a community among the faculty and probably get to know people in other departments that way. And the campus housing looks really beautiful and well-planned." But then much later on in the interview (2 days is such a long time!) I let my guard down and asked if it ever feels like they're in a bubble. When I should have stayed on message. Affirm affirm affirm. They said their major concern was "fit." Affirm affirm.

So, that's all, folks.

Probably won't be blogging much after this, though maybe about my interviews next year once they started happening.