The blog of a new postdoc

Job market statistics

2010-03-23T12:47:00.005-05:00

Here are my final job market statistics:

6 dozen applications
- 44 faculty: mostly tenure-track, some research-track, a couple temporary teaching fellowships
- 7 real jobs: 3 government, 4 research institutes
- 18 postdocs: 5 prestigious and competitive, 13 regular.
13 short interview offers.
- 4 conference (2 different conferences)
- 7 phone: 3 formal (with committee scheduled way in advance), 3 informal (impromptu with 1-2 people), 1 formal declined.
- 1 informal visit.
- 1 email interview (seriously!) (declined)
8 visit offers
- 5 paid visit offers: 4 completed, 1 cancelled.
- 2 unpaid visits costing >$150
- 1 unpaid visit costing <$10.
2 offers: 1 postdoc, 1 research-track faculty. Waiting to hear from tenure-track job.

Sources of jobs by outcome:

Offers: both were from informal chance meetings, but neither through connections.
- Postdoc offer: saw faculty posting outside my field, emailed to ask if should apply, guy said I should apply and mentioned an unadvertised 1 year postdoc, declined me for faculty and brought me for postdoc interview.
- Research-track: walked up to all desirable schools at field's annual conference asking if they were hiring. The guy at this school's booth who I happened to approach turned out to be the chair, and he said to send my CV. I drove there for two short, informal visits. They gave me an offer after the postdoc's offer.
Paid interviews (where employer paid travel costs): 1 asked to apply, 1 at conference, 2 online.
- 3 year postdoc: asked to apply for, also saw postings in 2 places. (When considering the VAP, called 5 people in the area. One of them kept in touch, invited me to visit his campus, and mentioned that the following year I should apply for the postdoc, and then mentioned again that I should apply for the postdoc.)
- tenure-track faculty: saw posting at above conference. Search chair contacted me right after he got my application to say that he knew my advisor and that they were inviting me. 4 months passed before I actually got the invitation to visit.
- 2 tenure-track faculty: saw postings online.
Unpaid interviews costing >$150: both postdocs, both online. One guy was friends with my advisor, and assured me that I would likely get an offer, but I didn't because the other postdocs didn't think I was interested in the area.
13 short interviews
- 4 conference interviews from registering for conferences' job services.
- 4 formal interviews from internet postings
- email interview from internet posting
- 4 informal interviews all due to personal contacts: 2 from connections and 2 just because I reached out to them randomly.

Conclusion: networking works, even if it's just randomly walking up to someone and asking if they are hiring. Having a good pedigree and good publications certainly helps with the random approaches, I'm sure.

Finally comfortable here. Time to leave.

2010-01-26T13:03:00.003-06:00

Ironic that as soon as I make friends and start a relationship and become productive in my postdoc (finished 2 paper drafts in the past month!), I'm going on job interviews, none of which are in my current city. Which is a terrible city, but it's become awfully comfortable. The closest job is about an hour's drive away, which is pretty far. And I'm trying to think of ways that I could stay here, perhaps just another year. This relationship is going so well that I don't want to put the stress of either geographical separation or a difficult decision on this relationship.

Too early to worry about that, though! This stage of the job market is for getting offers. Once I have offers, I can think about how to make reality work. The hard part about getting offers is seeming so enthusiastic about a place where you don't feel so happy about. My current job, they never asked me what I thought of this city, and it's a temporary postdoc, so they weren't so concerned about that anyhow.

But, really, after putting out all those applications, what I want most of all is just to stay here, doing exactly the same thing as I've done the past 1.5 years, only this time I'll be happy and productive. Perhaps the two grants that I applied for will come through in time to be able to continue here. Maybe I can find more grants. Maybe I will get an offer that will let me defer.

If I stay with Jon and stayed here another year, I think at that point, he could reasonably consider moving with me without feeling like he was premature in his decision, or like it would be too disruptive.

In a relationship. . .

2010-01-26T12:29:00.006-06:00

For the first time in years, I'm in a relationship with the Starving Artist which has lasted for months and feels really good. I don't want to keep calling him SA because that's too labeling, so I will call him Jon. We're not yet calling each other "boyfriend" and "girlfriend", but it almost doesn't matter. He calls me practically every night, and stops by many evenings after work since I'm conveniently on the way. Jon's reassured me that any hesitations he has about being a couple are because he's never been part of a couple before, nothing to do with me. So we're doing everything slowly. And I think we're both really happy. And definitely happier than we had been alone.

I went back to a dating site to find the profile of a friend of mine to send to someone, and caught up on my inbox, and WOW I'm so grateful not to have to deal with that right now. And I hope not to go back to it. My inbox was the usual mixture of inarticulate and/or really far away, usually both. One guy endeared me to him because his profile made me laugh and he was located 45 minutes away, and I started thinking about whether he and my friends would get along, but then I realized that was all he had in common, so I just told him where my friends go when they say they don't see any guys our age.

Then, on a different dating site, so went back to those to reply (I feel like that's owed rather than letting things go into the ether.) And it was again much of the same: inarticulate, far away, nothing in common. One or two made me laugh and seemed appropriate, but only in comparison to the others being such bad matches. I can see these dates playing out.

(Though I have to admit that if I hadn't met Jon in person, I may not have thought we had much in common. Though it depends what he wrote on his profile.)

All in all, I'm conscious about making this relationship work in a few ways. Most important is following the "best practices" for communication, and not doing everything I've ever done wrong in a relationship, and amazingly I am.

Second of all, sex. Several months ago, I read a book about a couple that had sex every day for a month, even though many times they weren't interested in it beforehand, and it seemed like it really brought them together for all the expected hormonal reasons, and I learned a lot from that book.

Third, weight. I'm 5 pounds over my usual weight, about half of the weight still remaining from the going-off-antidepressants gain last spring, and I'm working on getting back down to my usual weight, and then hopefully down another 7 pounds. Mostly because I want my clothes to fit and to be firmly in the normal BMI range since right now I'm just above the maximum "normal" weight. But partially because I am almost certain he would prefer it. I'm doing the flax oil thing --- 2 T flax oil in unsweetened soy milk, shaken --- to reduce appetite, and it's actually working. Plus various kinds of interval training.

So it's really nice. I feel really lucky, and I hope always to see the good side of this relationship rather than looking for flaws in it, most of which involve money. And at this point, money is not important, and the quantities of money involved are relatively trivial. If for some reason we both had to live on my flimsy postdoc stipend, we could. The important part is that he has all the right impulses in terms of not wanting to have a financial inequality in the relationship since at some point of course it could become a point of stress if he doesn't feel like he's contributing.

It's great to have good news here for once. Most of my dating posts were just complaints. I realize that this post risks Murphy's Law that the relationship will end because I felt good enough about the relationship to post this.

Monthly dating update

2009-12-14T13:58:00.003-06:00

I'm still seeing the Starving Artist. I go through cycles when I think he is manipulating me, and others when he seems so vulnerable, honest, and good-humored. I have realized that again I am dating across the geek chasm, and it's a scary cultural gap. Even though he went to a well-known geeky high school and taught high school math for awhile, he has never even seen or read the geek canon, like Monty Python and Hitchhiker. He has a fantastic vocabulary, and he catches on quickly to everything, but the first social event I went to with him, I ran into some friends from grad school and college, and he was very quiet until art came up.

I'm still talking to the wedding guy whom I met at my friend's wedding this July, and we have a lot in common, and we're going to meet for the first time since the wedding around New Year's.

Nothing else imminent, just additional first dates.

Department chairs

2009-12-14T13:49:00.003-06:00

I used to hear faculty discussing department chairs as if they were another species, and I didn't understand how that could be: they came with the same training and did the same kind of research as normal faculty, so how could they be so different? But now that I have met so many of them, I understand.

They're academics, and yet they're politically conscious. They're cocky and excited, even if they're under-resourced and have a mediocre record. They're oh so nice, yet every discussion is a negotiation requiring some attention to strategic concerns. They promise a little as if it's a lot, and they promise something when they might not have anything.

The first times I saw these traits, I didn't realize it was part of a pattern, but now it's so clear.

The myth of the postdoc

2009-12-14T13:26:00.007-06:00

In the midst of job season, we all have romantic ideas about what fellowships are like: you picture yourself in a different environment, doing different work, and you come home to a fulfilling social and personal life that is just like the one you have now. Obviously a complete fantasy.

Right now, I feel extremely productive. I am doing research that is interesting and relevant, and the projects are coming along at a fair clip: I have given or will give several distinct conference presentations this academic year, written a grant application and part of another, and have a few papers at a good stage of preparation, but virtually everything that I have accomplished has been this year.

In the first few months of my postdoc I felt disoriented to live in a new city and university with completely different patterns of life; distracted by moving and the endless tasks that have to be done, and the lack of money due to having moved; and overwhelmed by the need to make friends and professional contacts simultaneously in order not to be lonely. Meanwhile during all these adjustments, I felt lonely, scared, tired, and sluggish, and just plain non-resilient. Any setback was discouraging, and there were so many.

That's really not a good mood in which to take on new projects. Craving the familiar, I just finished old projects and got them published. That's precisely not what you're supposed to do, but it was hard to do otherwise. New projects have lots of unpredictable setbacks and at a time when every single part of my life was in upheaval, I didn't feel that I could handle setbacks well. The first time I went to a new project group and the first 5 minutes was two faculty members (one research-track and one tenured) dissing my advisor, and the remainder of the meeting was just boring. Between the awkwardness and lack of interest in the project, I didn't continue.

As I prepare job applications, the cost of moving and transition has been forgotten. And it really has to. New jobs require a leap into the unfamiliar and willingness to take the consequences, whatever they are. But I am pretty sure that even though right now everything feels so good and right that the loneliness and disorientation of moving seem so far away, I will have another lonely and disoriented and perhaps even depressed season as I move to my next position. I will forget all of that as I interview (thankfully I have gotten some), and will be nothing but sweet and light on the interviews.

Variations on a theme (dating)

2009-11-19T09:43:00.006-06:00

I just reread my post from early August, and almost 4 months later, my dating life looks similar.

Jack and I stopped seeing each other even as friends. Something incredibly banal and boring happened --- fill in your favorite Brady Bunch episode subplot minor minor conflict. After nine months of impeccable communication skills learned in MBA school, he blamed and accused, sent endless emails, ending with "what else short of slapping you would show you that I was upset." The whole situation surprised me. I just didn't write back, and that was it.

New romantic interest seemed extremely promising: we connected well (most recent date 6 1/2 hours of just talking), he's smart with BA from a top-20 small liberal arts college, taught high school math at a prep school, and he is well-built and good-looking. It didn't even bother me that he was a starving artist and estranged from his surviving parent after the other parent's protracted illness. Until it turned out that in the recent past, around when I was finishing grad school, he was homeless for several months. Homeless as in all of his belongings in a bag next to a park bench that he slept on because he ran out of friends to stay with, as he lost his friendships after staying with each of his friends.

Why do I have such an affinity with the troubled?

He didn't go into more detail about his time being homeless, but yesterday I saw homeless men standing with signs by the road off the highway yesterday asking for food (I gave one the apple that was supposed to be my afternoon snack), and I started thinking about the myriad degradations of homelessness and the wall of dehumanization between the homeless and non-homeless ("everyone else"), and it breaks my heart that he had to endure all of this.

I feel of two minds about this.

On the realistic hand, obviously an enormous red flag. The specifics do not matter. He has less of a buffer to protect him than most people, having chosen to go to art school instead of continuing in his steady job, a complicated family, and a tendency towards depression, but whatever the reasons, someone who could actually fall so far once could do so again. And he still does not have a steady income: a few jobs that are a part-time job with low enough salary that he still qualifies for some types of public assistance.

On the optimistic hand, he also pulled himself up from such a hole that is so deep most of us cannot imagine it, and he is wise enough to know that he cannot get into a real relationship until he feels more steady on his feet. He is also wise enough to avoid tangling relationships with social work. And I feel like I connect better with him than 90% of the men I've met this year.

On the realistic hand, I can hear so many women saying the same thing, and just ending up burned.

Other prospects are two men a long plane ride away: George (who does like me, it turns out) and the wedding guy (who now calls me a couple times a week, and is slightly disappointed when I get off after 2 hours, and he is looking for another job in closer cities).

Oh, and a just-minted-PhD from school whose personality I find really attractive and I think he's cute, but he is very fat. Now that he's defended, we have time to get to know each other. The thing that puts me off from him has nothing to do with him, just the social context. He's one of those "really nice guys" that "someone should date" but no one around him wants to. When people saw me with him once, they got all excited, and somehow it makes me uneasy to be that "someone." [Addendum 1/8/10, it turns out that the excited woman who saw us told her roommate that I was having brown bag lunch at school with this guy, who told the Starving Artist, and presumably others.] But with all considered, there's a great deal to be said for stability.

Dating update: breakup, old prospects

2009-08-03T19:34:00.018-05:00

Jack broke up with me in the late spring, not much after I wrote about how calm and happy I felt with him.

Backing up, due to feeling so calm with him, after spending all of grad school on an anti-depressant, I decided to taper off. It felt like a huge coup. I felt normal for the first time in years not feeling dependent on the pharmaceutical industry. Suddenly I gained like 10 pounds. It's not a surprising thing since I lost almost that much after starting the drug, but due to having been on it so long I hadn't been thinking about that. So the weight was a surprise and frustrating. Seeing your girlfriend increase in weight by more than 10 pounds in the only 3 months you've ever known her must be kind-of worrisome. So I suspect this is related to why he had been acting increasingly distant.

Because of the distance, I knew it was coming. In fact that afternoon I'd emailed a friend and told her that the guy was going to break up with me that night. So I felt relieved once he did. He just said straight out that this wasn't going anywhere. I didn't cry, just felt frustrated and a little silly. I put everything he had given me into a bag later that weekend and drove it to his apartment and left it outside.

He called me that night after I dropped off his stuff saying he wanted to be friends. I demurred, but we ended up deciding to try to spend time together because we are good for each other just for personal reasons: he helps me be more professional and I help him be more personal. The upshot has been that we've spent some great times together, times that would have been terrific dates if they had been dates. But also times that reminded me why I didn't want to date him in the first place, such as ships-passing-in-the-night conversations and awkward uses of money. But I had lost much of the extra weight, back to "normal weight", wore an awesome dress, and he said I looked nice, so it was good confidence. Confidence that I hope I can bring to a real relationship.

The old characters are all dead ends:

1. Rob is still dating the 12 years younger than him girl and I'm guessing they will get engaged in December when he travels to visit her family abroad. I tease him about it, but obviously I'm just very jealous. He says he feels bad about the whole situation, but either way he's not the lonely one so how bad is it possible to feel if he really feels like she's the one for him.

2. Punk Rock Virgin came over the other night for dinner. We were going to cook together. He brought a huge grocery bag of alcohol, including wine and beer he'd brewed himself and an exotic beer that he'd picked up at a brewing exchange. Sounds like a promising evening. Even to someone like me who isn't a "bring over a 6 pack" kind of girl. The evening ended with him asking me for advice on getting therapy because he feels like he has to lower his standards in order to find a woman.

3. Simon turned out to have been pursued by a friend of mine in my former town for the 6 months after I introduced them. (How nice of me.) Apparently they only met up twice for coffee, he paid, and soon afterwards he got super depressed and cut himself off from all social contact other than work. So maybe he is not for anyone.

4. George seemed so into me: this winter while I was dating Jack, he had asked me to spend the night to cuddle with him in his hotel room. Of course I couldn't. On his next visit I was single and so looking forward to seeing him, and he completely stood me up.

5. The blind guy I met in February was thoroughly charming, smart, and also good-looking except that I found it unnerving not to be able to look him in the eye and that his skull wasn't the usual shape. I decided not to pursue him which felt unfair, but he keeps pursuing me. Even while he had a non-monogamous girlfriend, but even moreso now that he doesn't.

This time around, the dating prospects look both like closer matches and yet more remote, like a guy from a long plane ride away whom I met at a wedding. That's another post. But it's so sparse and uninteresting, maybe I will wait until I have something to say.

Snap! No, really, ouch.

2009-08-03T18:56:00.004-05:00

This guy from my grad school, but a different program, moved at the same time to this current city. He was at least 12 years older, and something about him just felt creepy. He was so into meditation and spirituality in such a conscious, affected way that I wondered what was wrong with him before he got into meditation. He seemed into me, so lonely and needy, yet sophisticatedly aloof. This is how I described it at the time:

A good-looking older guy across the neighborhood I know from grad school has photogenic weirdness such as speaking earnestly and openly about spirituality and illness. Regrettably I feel discomfort and have a constant urge to flee him. He's the one who made me take the morning off to drive him to get his wisdom teeth out, and then left email and voice messages for the next few days about dry socket.

I wish I hadn't constantly felt like I had to flee him, but that's how I felt because he seemed so extremely needy. He came by to return a DVD he'd borrowed, coincidentally at a time when I'm sitting around in workout clothes feeling unproductive and a bit pitiful and conversely something about him made him look extra good-looking, confident, and more in shape than usual.

In saying our goodbyes, he said how successful and impressive I am. I said I'd feel successful if I just had a permanent job and a husband.

"I don't know about the latter, but I'm sure you'll meet your professional goals," he said. "You're a rock star. You'll be on the cover of People Magazine."

He continued, "I know that the right woman for me is in my new city. I didn't feel attached to this city, so I never tried to date here."

I'm hoping I'm just taking that the wrong way, but ouch that really hurts. It's one thing if someone says that it's never possible to know what relationships will bring because that's true. It's another thing altogether if they say they're sure they'll get married in a city they don't yet live in and aren't sure about someone else.

He also thanked me for being so supportive which also felt double-edged. Yes, I took half a day off of work to drive him to the dentist, but I also delayed answering his calls and emails embarrassingly long. Though quite a lot of them were things like, "I'm recovering from hand surgery. Can you drop off a gallon of 1% milk in the next 4 hours?" or "I'm taking a walk in 15 minutes. Do you want to join me?"

Not that any of this matters.

The worst kind of colleague

2009-07-16T09:22:00.004-05:00

I'm on this project alluded to earlier that I realize is so canonical as to be a stereotype.

Senior faculty member gets a grant, gets some wheels moving, and passes it to junior faculty member. Junior faculty member works on it enough to do one of the objectives of the grant, presents them at one or two conferences, and sits on the project.

Senior faculty talks up the project to postdoc (me). Postdoc contacts the junior faculty member in September, October, November, finally gets an appointment, goes to appointment (90 minutes round trip), and finally finds out about the project sometime in the middle of the winter, but nothing is ready to be passed on at that point. Makes another appointment, remembers the appointment just in time to make the appointment if it were in the same building or even campus but it's an unpredictable as much as an hour away, so emails just before scheduled appointment time. Meeting rescheduled after 3 weeks.

Postdoc tells senior faculty member that she will be applying to present the work at a conference and senior faculty member says "Great! Let me know what I can do." Postdoc rushes to write abstract draft in record time, asks many questions including "Whose names go on this?", and gets no response. Abstract is necessarily vague because project has not yet been started. Junior faculty member gets wind of the abstract and asks to see it. Only emailed comment on abstract is about the positioning of authors' names. Names changed. Revision sent. Remember this abstract is based only on the grant application because project has not yet been started.

In the early spring, postdoc finally meets with junior faculty member (baked goods in hand as apology) to get started on the project. Junior faculty member is not in office. Postdoc waits and eventually leaves baked goods on desk with a note. Junior faculty member comes eventually, abstractly thanks postdoc for the baked goods, mentions that abstract was read and commented on, but "It must have been thrown away or lost." I'm not making this up.

Junior faculty member selectively gives some of the materials to postdoc, but not all materials. Postdoc asks for materials used to do earlier work, as well as the presentations that the work was presented in, but junior faculty member will not give them.

Postdoc finally starts project, rushes to get enough work done on project to present at a conference, gets most of the necessary work done, and presents.

After months without contact, senior faculty member emails "research group" during the conference and says they need to meet soon because an MD grad student, referred to in email as Dr. FirstName, is joining the project. Perhaps tomorrow.

Meeting is set for after the conference. Postdoc, remembering earlier missed meeting with junior faculty, dresses carefully in the morning, thinks about meeting all morning, arrives at the distant office 45 minutes early. 10 minutes after meeting start time, junior person arrives. Senior faculty member is called and is at home due to a scheduled-well-in-advance medical procedure. 30 minutes after meeting, Dr. Grad Student arrives. Postdoc reports on conference. Senior faculty asks postdoc to spent 2 days a week with Dr. Grad Student getting him up to speed. Postdoc stupidly says that she doesn't have that much time right away, rather than just agreeing.

Postdoc spends time with grad student and gives much more to grad student than junior faculty gave postdoc originally, emails project to report that. Postdoc notes that grad student will have easier time getting up to speed than postdoc originally did because he has all materials that the postdoc has, so in theory can get going right away. Passive aggressiveness is apparently contagious.

After meeting, junior faculty member emails (Cc: senior) and asks again for conference abstract, whether the abstract was sent to any other conferences. Postdoc says this was the only conference, forwards original draft to demonstrate all of this was discussed months ago. Junior faculty member rehashes argument about name order and again asks whether abstract sent anywhere else. Postdoc reminds junior faculty that name thing was already discussed, repeats that it was not sent elsewhere, and in addition forwards 2 additional emails, documenting what was sent to the conference, and last night's email that it was not sent anywhere else. And then wastes part of morning writing bitchy blog entry about this dysfunction.

Postdoc webcomic

2009-07-15T10:17:00.001-05:00

I love it:

Conflict of interest statement

Why are suitable guys so unfriendly?

2009-06-24T07:12:00.003-05:00

My Email #1: Emailed guy on ok cupid because he sounded smart (one of few) and he mentioned xkcd in his profile, so I mentioned a couple of my favorite strips.

His Email #1: He drops the name of a niche computer program that I use often, which is actually extremely weird. Why would he think I would know what that was? And writes 4 or 5 more paragraphs, mentioning that he is away for 6 months and including no questions. Maybe he is clueless and doesn't realize he isn't giving me a way to continue the conversation.

My Email 2: Wow, I use that program a lot and ask why he uses it because I'd thought he was a computer programmer from his profile. And ask a few questions to keep the conversation

His Email 2: No, he's in my small sub/field. And 1000's of miles away. This email is like 2 sentences long also with no questions.

My Email 3: See you at the annual conference!

--------------

Another case: Also ok cupid. I email a guy in the fall, again one of the smart ones. he turns out to have been at my graduate school when I was and I was almost certain that we knew some of the same people. He CLOSES his profile. (I know he didn't just block me because I have a second account and tried from that one as well.) Did he just enter witness protection?

I just want to do research

2009-05-21T09:28:00.003-05:00

I have started writing grant proposals. Everything is soft money around here, and grants are the only way to advance. Suddenly speaking this language of grants (why didn't I learn earlier?), everything makes more sense in conversations between colleagues.

At a recent conference, I spoke with a person I went to grad school with (who was a TA of mine but PhD was in a different department) who is coming up for tenure now. I asked about the requirements for grants. Some places, even hard money places, have an unofficial requirement that you need at least one major grant to get tenure. It turns out his department only wants a publication record. I never thought that I would say this, but "publish or perish" is so generous. Now that my new norm is "eat what you kill."

As a friend of mine said, "When I would hear faculty members say that they just want to do research, I always interpreted that to mean that they didn't enjoy teaching. Now that I know about grants, I understand."

I just find it unbelievable that people speak in academia as if all it takes is good ideas. Just pursue what you like. As if that were enough. If I could do it over again, I would make a list of the research areas that operate on 100% hard money and choose grad school and research topics only from those areas. Now that I'm at the job stage, I would apply only for jobs that operate on 100% hard money. But most jobs seem not to list that crucial crucial fact.

Starting collaborations

2009-05-21T09:24:00.004-05:00

At a conference I spoke with a grad school classmate of mine who was in another PhD program but with similar interests. He is in the first year of a faculty job, and I asked him he was able to get any research done while teaching. He said that he had and even gotten some new collaborations going.

I confessed that I had some difficulty starting collaborations, so I asked him more details about them. One of the two is still in the "looking for collaborators" stage. The other collaboration is with a faculty member at the same university in another department. He's contributing expertise to the project. I asked more details how he met this person --- did this person come to him or did he come to the person.

"Well, I came to them and they came to me." He paused. "Actually, it's my sibling."

Whew. Glad to know others have just as much difficulty as I do starting collaborations. Still he has a guaranteed salary for the next few years and gets to teach and come up for tenure.

Interpersonal conflict: just like a TV show

2009-04-24T11:53:00.004-05:00

I have a colleague who is probably about 5 years older, faculty, and had been working on a project that I'm supposed to take over. It took months to make email contact with her, she didn't really apologize for that, and then I concentrated on other projects because I found her long email response time (and associated traits) difficult to deal with. Plus she is beautiful and well-dressed with pictures of her beautiful, well-dressed kid all over her office, and assorted baby equipment.

And I find the project daunting in tedious ways (i.e., it's a time-consuming new trendy method, and it's not clear that all the time put into the method yields much better work than things I already know or other things I could learn).

But I came back to the project, though, because I like the PI and I wanted the PI to be happy with me.

This colleague is difficult in all the ways you can imagine. And yet I had an "after school special" type breakthrough with her when I noticed no pictures of a significant other in her office. Just lots of kid pictures. And no ring on her wedding ring finger, just a ring on the engagement finger that looks nothing like an engagement ring. Or wedding ring, for that matter.

So if she is difficult to deal with maybe that is part of why. And baby equipment in the office could be that she is a single mom without a backup in case the child is sick. Who knows.

Dating update: steady as it goes

2009-04-24T10:59:00.005-05:00

I've noticed that I'm a lot calmer since I started dating someone. It's been 2 months with Jack and is going okay. Sometimes I'm incredibly happy and grateful and content, and other times I feel like I must be making a huge mistake. The most recent was when he was telling me about how his relative got cancer when he was our age and died in 3 years and never stopped being upset about it. "He should have gotten over it. It's really not productive to still be unhappy. No wonder he lost all his friends." Oh there are so many things wrong with that (e.g., it's normal for a sick person to lose many of their friends over time no matter what their attitude is because their friends get scared), and I told him all of them. On the other hand not being as sensitive has been good for him in ways that I do learn from.

For instance once I totally flaked out on him. He called me from about 60-90 minutes away and asked if he could come over. I spaced out about the time and waited too long to do an errand that absolutely had to be done for the next day, and it turned out I was out when he came but didn't have my cell phone with me, so he just went home, and he had to drive over an hour out of his way for no reason, and yet it turned out fine. He was annoyed that night (though oddly didn't sound it), I apologized again the next day and made a joke and he laughed about it, and then he forgot about it. It's a healthy emotional attitude that I could learn from. And have.

He's not big on pet names or compliments, so I am trying to encourage him in those --- I used not to be big on those things either. On the other hand he brings me flowers all the time.

And he wants to be very slow physically, so I feel like we are in the 1950's. At the same time I got accepted to a conference this summer in a fun place and he asked if he could come. So he sees a longer future apparently.

And I can feel really happy with him and content and cared for and really attracted to him, but I don't feel rushes of joy and love and passion and connection. It's just really nice. I also don't find him extremely funny in the way that I'm used to finding my dates. He makes jokes, they're just not all that funny. Not in bad taste. Just not a connection.

So basically I have come to a decision point: emotional has its advantages and less sensitive has its advantages. Less sensitive helps me feel more calm and balanced and less neurotic and more confident, but less excitement and connection. More sensitive helps me feel understood but doesn't necessarily help me moderate my own moods and gives me someone else's moods to help moderate. I'm not sure what I think. But the advantage of slow is that I don't have to have any decisions, and I can see how things progress and if things can moderate a little bit.

Orthogonally, there's still Edward. We had our first date about 2 months ago and never had the second date. I think he was scared that I would turn him down. And I am probably going to.

In a rare intersection of professional and personal, I had an informational interview with someone in a government job. She got her PhD around when my parents were graduating from college which is obviously rare, and started out going with her husband to get faculty positions, though her husband had a much better position than she did. They moved again and then she said her husband became mentally ill and she had to take over, and the government job was perfect for her becoming a single mom. She didn't give many details, but it's the same as Edward has. I mentioned in my thank you email that the interview was also helpful for me personally because I had been feeling guilty for breaking up with someone for that, and her email reply emphasized "Run, don't walk!" from romantic involvement with a person with this mental illness.

So there you go. That's one sensitive person in my life who isn't going to become a date.

There is another "sensitive" guy in my life, George. George is a friend of a friend who lives a long plane ride away. I first met him years ago when he was dating someone. At the time we had fantastic chemistry and I remember getting into a deep conversation walking in a group as his girlfriend was elsewhere in the group, and feeling a little guilty about that at the time. Ever since then we effortlessly have long conversations and I feel like we can understand and agree with each other in a lot of ways. Even the places where I disagree with him, I find his perspective emotionally compelling. Since then we've become friends though a little cautiously because he knows he has a tendency to get caught up and whirled away into emotional highs, and I do too though less so. George is also disabled (not at all heritable, though), and I wonder if that's related as well: people who feel less sure of themselves have harder time with uncertainty, and it's easier to fall into relationships quickly before really investigating. So even though there's something there, the geography and the social complications make me feel like I don't have anything to investigate. "Risking our friendship" is a canard, but more importantly I don't want to hurt our mutual friend because I think she would feel left out if we started dating since she is perennially single and each of us is very close with her. He used to live nearby and sometimes he talks about missing the area. And even last year he was talking about moving here at the same time that I was, and I was really hoping. He was here recently and I went up to his hotel room with him, and he clearly seemed conflicted between trying to get me into bed and not risking anything. And I felt a similar conflict, except dating Jack has given me more appreciation with being gradual and moderate so I didn't feel as big of a need to get him into bed.

Another sensitive guy, Rob is still around and yet not. He and I met up yet again in this small city midway between where we live, and it's starting to feel like our affair get-away. He wants to hold hand or me to hold his arm and hug, but he says his girlfriend would not want him to do any of this. With Rob I laugh and feel close and love and feel loved, and it's all really nice. And yet there is that cultural disconnect. And now he is dating someone. (And my gosh, it's such the typical relationship between a WASP guy and a foreign-born woman more than a decade younger! Yes, of course I'm jealous.)

Whoa, diss!

2009-04-03T09:33:00.003-05:00

I'm applying for back-up postdoc funding in case I don't get a faculty job next year. I had 4 committee members, two of whom were helpful. One was my main advisor. The other active member was the only committee member I fully liked and respected and appreciated their feedback --- really looked up to them. Never worked with them other than on my dissertation paper revisions, but I just really liked them.

This person wrote a recommendation for me and wouldn't put it on file in a dossier service, but said I should ask whenever I needed it. Of course not planning ahead very well, I never did ask because I was always asking too late to expect them to be able to do anything. Now I am planning ahead, starting an application several months before it's due (go me!), and so when I asked if they could update the letter they said no.

The first response was: you really should ask someone at your institution. When I replied that actually they request people from grad school, the second response was that they didn't have time. I thanked them and said I thought I could find someone since the deadline was so far off.

But I feel really stung, especially since I like them so much.

I felt like everything had been going so well. And, otherwise, it is.

The woman who does everything more beautifully than you do writes a grant proposal

2009-03-23T13:56:00.002-05:00

There's a woman at my university who is just a year older than I am, and finished her PhD a few years ahead of me. The most famous member of my committee whom I loved and I didn't get to spend much time with was her advisor and has been her co-author on at least half a dozen papers. And she's really nice, so I can't dislike her, as gratifying as that would feel. I met up with her recently, and thought immediately of this Sylvia character who does everything more beautifully. When I was reading these comics back in straight-A high school 4.8 GPA days, I thought I understood, but now I realize I couldn't. Now I do!

Beyond being recognized as a junior expert in one of the areas where I do research (and am only locally a semi-expert), due to having collaborated with her famous advisor on many papers, and doing interesting work, she is also more perfect than I could imagine being personally: she's married to a successful academic guy her age, lives in a great location, with one child so far, is effortlessly thin (looked better a few months post-partum than I look now), nice and really low-key.

The only main requirement of my postdoc is to submit a funding proposal by the end of the academic year for a career development grant. I met up with her and found out she is currently funded by the exact same grant, having gotten it on her first try, which was fantastically helpful and extremely intimidating. Her proposal is extremely well-done. I've not looked at many of these things, but I can really tell hers is exceptionally good. It has coherence and logic: it's an important and central problem, and yet extremely well-defined and manageable, it builds on her areas of expertise, and it comes with a 20 year vision attached. She had a substantial publication list going into the grant application process that shows a variety of projects she can do, and was already junior faculty for several years at the time of submission. I have just my dissertation published, one paper from undergrad, and that's it.

Having read her proposal I have a very clear idea what I could do process-wise to develop it, and yet I feel even more paralyzed than I did before I read it. The most intimidating part: I have 2 months left to produce the grant proposal. She produced the grant proposal 4-5 months early and circulated it widely and got lots of feedback, asked lots of questions to program officer, and that's how she got it on the first try.

Compared with her, I'm a very weak candidate. But I don't have a few years to develop prior to the grant proposal.

The hard part moving forward is swallowing my fear, moving on, and starting to work on it anyhow. I'm definitely not going to succeed if I don't start. And if I don't get this (likely!), I can reuse the material somewhere.

A Beautiful Mind

2009-03-12T16:54:00.003-05:00

I visited with some old friends this weekend. Before that I thought my romantic life was going pretty well. Afterwards I saw all the holes.

I am totally smitten with International Man of Mystery Edward, but my friends aren't and they spoke seriously with me about the life course of his mental illness, and noting that he's already had experiences suggesting further difficulty. My friends who are 10-20 years older than I am were particularly helpful in finding perspective. They didn't say I shouldn't date him, but it is a sobering reminder that it is not a question of this year or 5 years from now. 10 years from now, 20 years from now, all kinds of things can happen. That's why they made that movie about John Nash. At least Edward doesn't have schizophrenia, but he does have psychotic tendencies. Psychotic in the sense of slightly out of touch with reality clinical sense, that is.

I am realizing how emotionally blunted Jack, the foreign-born old-fashioned guy with the sports car, is. He has put his entire self into his work. And obviously succeeded. But it is hard for me to tell whether he has any intimate friendships. He clearly needs the intimacy. He likes playing with my cat, and he visibly relaxes when I touch him. All we've done is kiss and it's yet to be really fun. In the old country they kiss differently, apparently. He will tell engaging stories, many of them extremely vivid, the most vivid about life in the old country. Which is funny because he came here when he was 12. The ones about life here seem a little more disconnected, alienated, maybe a little bitter. He was in school grades 7 to 12 with a friend of mine, and she said he was often disappointed not to do better in school than he did and wasn't all that confident growing up, and maybe he is now overcompensating with the sports car. But she thinks he is a good person. Which is a good thing because he's my own real prospect at the moment.

Joseph, the professional persuader, is out of the picture. I think by mutual consensus. He was away last week. I went away a couple days after he returned. He invited me to join him for dinner at an old friend's house with her parents as well (?), and I apologized that I already had plans that night but would like to see him another time, but haven't heard anything.

This Sunday I was in another city before giving a talk on Monday and I went on an anti-date with a guy who contacted me on a dating site like 5 years ago and then sporadically since then. I wanted to meet him and get it over with so I could say I tried and not see him again. Or maybe I would like him. I didn't. But I got it over with. It wasn't really a date. We met outside a cafe and then I suggested we go for a walk. And after 85 minutes I said I had to meet a friend. He's called me a couple times since, so I sent him an email thanking him for the walk and saying how glad I am to be back here and seeing my friends including this guy I've been on several dates with.

I don't know if I can count on anything happening with Jack, so I think I have to restock the ponds. There's this early/mid-40's divorced humanities PhD who has a real job but publishes a little in his area still whom I'll meet this weekend. And then there is the perpetual dilettante I've not yet met and a friend of a friend I went on one date with but who blew me off possibly for decent reasons. And there were some people I flaked out on when I was sick --- not so sick that I had to stay home all the time, but sick enough that I would stay in for long periods.

Staying in touch with a postdoc advisor

2009-03-06T16:16:00.003-06:00

Dialog is so much easier when I have recently been in contact with my advisor. The longer I spend away from him, the more dread and friction I feel about doing work, and I slow down and feel overwhelmed by all the projects I'm not doing enough work on, and it's exactly like the Doldrums in the Phantom Tollbooth, which is where you end up when you don't know where you are doing.

Then once I see my advisor, I am scared and feel a little stupid for part of the time, but then feel revved up and actually like I am doing just fine and I can do good work that will uphold my part of the traineeship bargain, and actually become super responsible and responsive.

Yesterday I met with my advisor. I was totally dreading it because I spent a few weeks under the weather, partially from physical illness and partially from the accumulated mental sludge and inertia from having been away from normal life for awhile. I was convinced that there was a good shot that I wasn't going to have my position next year, and that he would tell me just how disappointed he was in me and that he's sorry it didn't work out. It's not entirely paranoia on my part. I have been told similar things before and left to flail --- being asked to leave an academic program even --- though the flailing was temporary and certainly not fatal to me or even my career. But I forgot that he really wants this to work too.

Anyhow, paranoia over because he spoke to me like I am definitely going to be here next year. So I feel relieved. And we spoke about new projects and the next steps and how I am going to apply for funding real soon now.

As a result of this meeting and the burst of energy, when I got the "training grant annual update" form in the email today I wrote up the report and sent it back within an hour. Had I gotten the email before the meeting I would have sat on it hoping that I would do enough work to make myself worthy of filling out the form. Delusionally thinking, perhaps, that I could write and submit a couple papers before the end of the month so that I would have something on there other than my dissertation papers.

But the right way to think about it is to do all the work for the annual report, work hard and if I do happen to submit a paper I will add it to the report and resend it.

Life is so much easier when I'm happy and optimistic. When I'm in the middle of a procrastinatory funk, it's so hard to regain my optimism. Though maybe it just takes a meeting. Or even just any human contact.

This is my second consecutive day of good work habits. If I keep this up, maybe I will even start to feel like I am not just pretending to be responsible.

Better and worse than expected

2009-03-02T14:21:00.007-06:00

The out-of-my-league guy from college Edward is even better and worse than I remembered: more attractive, with more panache, more influential contacts, more privileged and influential family, and even with all that kind, humble, devout, and principled, so none of this comes off as anything other than just who he is. And he's very idealistic and doesn't seem bitter about anything at all, which is contagious so I find myself feeling more optimistic and moderate while talking to him. And he is so open and easy to speak with, so somehow we ended up sharing astoundingly personal background. Especially for a first date.

And with everything we shared I realized he's also much more psychologically strange than I would have expected, beyond just having a mental illness. But he may just be the canonical tale of the guy who seemingly has everything and yet developed feelings for a seemingly wonderful (smart, socially-skilled, beautiful) friend who turned out to be manipulative and abused him (though he did not use that word) for a few years, damaging his genetically fragile sanity. And giving him weird ideas about romantic relationships. So painful even to hear his story, especially how long it went on and how many examples of her asking him to jump and him asking how high. And still holding herself out of reach. Obviously one of the weird ideas about romantic relationships it gave him is that this woman with whom he no longer speaks gets mentioned at length on a first date not because he has feelings for her (I really believe him that he doesn't and she won't speak with him anyhow), but because she affected him so profoundly in spurring him to various life changes. They were never even involved romantically. Just in that ambiguous type of college friendship that can be so frustrating yet tantalizing.

Afterwards he said he thought we connected and he really wants to see me again. He's very religious so no kissing or anything. Which is kind-of refreshing because all I have to go by are his words and look. If we got seriously involved I'd raise that. But at this point I am still completely incredulous that we even went on a date. We discussed science courses we took in college, grades, etc., and a course he is taking right now, so it felt a little bit like we were meeting to do a problem set. The only context in which I would interact with someone like him (though we weren't enrolled in college at the same time --- he came just as I graduated) would be doing problem sets. Not that he would need my help.

Now I'm still just flattered. If this continues, I hope I never take him for granted. He's truly a wonderful person in every way. Other than the possibility of mental illness becoming unbalanced and again intervening in his life. Oh and I suppose this woman could come back and decide she wants to be with him and he could abandon all his principles. The latter seems less likely than the former.

Charm is scary, and Porsches are sexy

2009-03-01T09:39:00.007-06:00

The charismatic guy "Joseph" still likes me after 3 dates. We went on two dates this week. The fact that he is so charismatic and good-looking puts me off a little. He surprised me with tickets to the symphony for our third date, which was more elaborate of a third date than I'd ever been on before, but probably not over the top. The restaurant was one I'd go to myself. Later on as we were sitting having tea on my couch --- him sitting very close --- he mentioned in the context of another story having bought $800 tickets for a different third date long ago because he and his date had discussed the musical on their second date and he thought that would be thoughtful. Which it is, but what on earth kind of world is he living in.

Joseph is partially in sales --- convincing people that they need what he has, designing and implementing a plan, and making sure they are happy after they buy --- and he has an impressive amount of control over his "message". First couple of dates he sounded so monogamous long-term-oriented that I thought it would be ridiculous to think he had slept with more than those 3-4 year girlfriends, plus maybe a couple others. And then third date I actually asked and he's had more past sex partners than anyone I know personally has admitted to me. I have to give him credit for telling the truth where others have lied or refused to answer. It's not hard to get to numbers like 50, even being completely sincere: just a few years of mini-relationships that go 4-6 weeks at a time. He just has a higher hit ratio than most men: good success in convincing women to go out with him, and good success in getting subsequent dates. And getting into bed with them. Being the object of that feels like he's a little predatory.

Every statement made that could possibly impact the issue of "us" either relationship long term or short term, he addressed even if it was totally tangential. I mentioned something I'd read about STDs just as a random topic. He said he'd been tested. He mentioned a previous girlfriend had a problem with all his travel and got lonely and seemed overly dependent. I said that it does get pretty complicated when there are children involved, and he backtracked and said yes it's something to think about when one gets to that stage and children obviously come first. I found the second statement completely sincere; maybe he really hadn't looked at his travel in a family context before. But he can't possibly mean each of the ways he is selling himself. I'm totally intrigued, and I think as long as I am dating others and don't do anything more than kiss him, he can't hurt me that badly, just a minor ego wound. So I am curious where it would go. Of course it may be that if we ever got to a long-term exclusive relationship I wouldn't be as alluringly distant. And somehow I feel that he is charming enough that at any point he could decide he'd had enough and marry someone 20 years younger. Or perhaps that is just my paranoia and feelings of inadequacy.

The international man of mystery "Edward" is super popular, well-liked, "everyone" from college knows him --- he was elected to be some official representative for the college class for life --- and obviously extremely high-functioning. But he has a serious mental illness with a relatively strong genetic component. I haven't spoken with him about it. I just read an essay he wrote and left on line. It was buried right in the middle as a side detail. I broke up with the guy I almost married because he was mentally ill --- a less potentially serious condition, but much lower functioning. Obviously no one is perfect, but wow really no one is perfect.

I went out on a second date with an otherwise unassuming engineer turned out to drive a Porsche, "Jack". Our first date went extremely well --- best part was at the beginning he gave me a pinwheel. He said he'd come early and went to Target. Leaving the restaurant he walks me to my 13 year old but remarkably well preserved car. I asked which was his because the one to the side was some crazy-looking sports car. He didn't answer, but in my rear view mirror, I saw him drive off in it. I have always thought that it was stupid that someone's car might affect your perception of them, and yet I have to admit that somehow I found it raised his cool factor and masculinity. It's all about signaling. I liked him before I knew about the car and I notice things that I do appreciate that have nothing to do with the car, and yet I'm quite conscious of it. Both as a symbol --- and I can certainly understand why someone who grew up poor and became successful might do something relatively over the top --- and as a disability --- he seems inordinately careful about which neighborhoods he drives through. In spite of my being conscious of it, I am relieved at the myriad of things I notice that I like about him otherwise.

Jack has all the old world manners. After I invited him into my place for tea after our second date --- including dancing, and we'd been dancing pretty closely --- he sat in an armchair which was quite unassuming of him. And I really appreciated that. I actually started to worry a little bit that he had decided he didn't like me because I had said something stupid earlier in the evening.

But more importantly I feel really comfortable with him. It may partially be that way back he went to school with a roommate of mine. But while he has all the chivalry of Joseph, he doesn't seem like he is trying to convey any particular message. Joseph is way hotter, though.

The lack of obstacles is intimidating

2009-03-01T09:31:00.004-06:00

I finally got the data that our "collaborators" had been withholding. I emailed the PI at the other university during the first week of the month, and twice more, asking for the data. He answered his email towards the end of the month. And I got it that day. And now there are no obstacles. I find that extremely intimidating.

The only thing standing in my way is me. (I am the change I am looking for?)

I went on a date with this engineer who told me of his first post-college job. He was hired on a 6 month contract into a group that was originally a bit over half a dozen people. He hadn't learned this area in college, and wanted the opportunity to be trained in it. When he arrived, the group was down to 3. Then the other two quit. And then the last one quit. And he was the only one in the group, and stayed up as late as he had to in order to do all of his work, and bought lots of books. And he did all the projects that the group was given. He is first generation --- he moved to US in late junior high --- so maybe has good work ethic from that. Whatever it is, I am in awe.

Were I in the situation I would take the many excuses available --- didn't know the material, group left, no mentorship, no contact with anyone --- and decide maybe I could do it, but it wasn't worth it. Worth what, I'm not sure: the time? the ego risk? And do just the minimum and hope to find something more suitable.

A friend of mine said that sometimes he thinks that in dating I am hoping to meet someone who will be a good model to improve my work habits. In fact I am.

Date per day

2009-02-16T12:38:00.005-06:00

On Friday I met up with this grad student in the student lounge whom I'd met on a free off-beat dating site. I didn't have high hopes but it was no effort to meet him, so figured I may as well. We both clearly weren't into each other. He is that effortlessly super high-achieving laid-back hangin'-out guy type: he told me both about his newest publication and how easy it is to sleep with women who have boyfriends. To preempt rejection I sent him a cheery email that afternoon saying that I enjoyed talking with him and to let me know the next time he's on my campus --- i.e., obviously neither one of us is interested in going to go out of our way to meet. He wrote to me and said that he wanted to be clear he sensed a "friend" vibe. Usually that kind of superfluous rejection just irritates me, but in a flash of inspiration I sent him a note saying that I would go ahead and cancel the hall and caterer.

On Saturday I had a date with someone from a dating site seemed way too cool and optimistic and energetic for me, so much that I was tempted to just cancel to save myself the pain of rejection, but I paid attention to my clothes, tried to sound positive and not self-deprecating, and he liked me enough to ask me on a second date. But I am not sure how long I will be able to keep it up. I hate to get my hopes up when it seems like it couldn't possibly last. I go on a lot of dates, but most of them are people that clearly have something undesirable about them. Perhaps things regarded as "flaws" that I don't care about like height, but "flaws" nonetheless. It's weird to go out with someone who doesn't have anything obviously wrong with him much less someone who seems cooler and less flawed than I am.

On Sunday I had a date with a friend of a friend. More exactly, a friend of the obese guy that I really would have liked if he weren't obese and kept waiting and hoping that his diet was going to work, when the obese guy went ahead and got engaged to my college classmate 4 months after meeting me. And I first met his friend at his wedding last year. He was skinny and the kind of techy type who is clearly wound very tightly and seems like he has gone to a great deal of trouble to seem as dry and uninteresting as possible. In spite of hobbies that are actually kind of interesting. And being close friends with a guy who has an outgoing and fun personality. And eventually a personality did emerge and I had fun. So I think we will go out again.

Tonight I have a blind date. As in he literally can't see. I'm sure he gets that joke a lot. He is another guy who seemed during email to be way cooler than I am. Talking on the phone with him reassured me --- he was friendly and then he said at some point he was blind in a way which fit seamlessly into the conversation. Aside from lack of sight, he still seems cooler than I am. But at least he has an evident flaw.

I also got a call from this international man of mystery I know from college who is by all accounts perfect: tall, good-looking, from a sophisticatedly indeterminately international background (raised in 4 completely unrelated countries), eager and earnest about everything, and more gregarious with a bigger personality than anyone else I've ever met. Before I met him my friends would laugh at the mention of his name and I would ask why they would laugh --- they would always say "Oh it's just how he is. You have to meet him.", so naturally I thought he must be a really huge dork. When I met him I realized it was just because he's just a really funny charismatic outgoing guy with a big personality and more good-will and enthusiasm than you would ever expect in a person. I would never in a million years think of dating him because he's clearly well out of my league and a couple years younger. A few months ago I did try to set him up with a friend, and he said he had his eye on a girl and so couldn't date my friend. I thought figured this girl must be tall thin and gorgeous, 27 and just finished her MD/JD perhaps. Anyhow he asked me out. My cynical thought is that things with the girl he'd been interested in must not have worked out. And less cynically but more delusionally, perhaps I was the girl. Bizarre. I was tempted to tell him that he was out of his mind. I may as well enter into this with good will. Maybe become less embittered and more idealistic.

I've prided myself on having gotten more resilient to rejection, but perhaps I've only become better at dismissing guys who seem too good.

Though my cynicism is occasionally reinforced. This morning before I got the international man of mystery call, I went to this very ethnic dating site that I feel like I should use but I rarely have luck on. I saw that two local guys who are "very marriageable" (in the sense of what "the community" would consider, and also good looking, seemingly articulate and successful) had written to me. In order to read what they wrote, I would have to join. After cynically thinking that they must be rejecting me, I figured I may as well just join for the month. And in fact they were rejecting me. Then there were 20 other messages from guys who sound nice but don't live here and guys who can't write a coherent sentence who do. But at least I've processed those messages.

Paranoia in"Collaboration": assertiveness lesson #598

2009-02-12T14:59:00.006-06:00

I am joining a collaboration between my advisor and a group at another university about 1-2 hour flight from here. This is a collaboration where my advisor's lab is providing to the project something not available anywhere else. The rest of the project is not so innovative --- there are several dozen similar things.

The PI described the project and another two to me, and basically wants to meet me before we start collaborating, so they will fly down there for a few days. And soon. On phone call 2, he says that I should have as much done as possible in advance and that I should have one of those 4 am to 10 pm days, and it will be just one day.

In order to have work done in advance, I need information. He refers me to his peons (well, actually junior faculty), and they send me some information that is not adequate for planning. Two weeks of email exchange and finally they agree to send me "everything."

Some time passes in between all this --- some legitimate, some procrastination because my mind got off the project --- so my memory of the conversation is fuzzy enough that I don't catch on right away that I was only sent "everything", not actually everything: it's less than 1/3 of the project and my advisor's contribution isn't there. But I spend another week or two thinking I must have misremembered.

Finally I schedule a phone call with a junior faculty member who reveals that the PI is not actually comfortable sharing, or "collaborating", until he's published a certain amount on the project. As if he is afraid that his collaborator's postdoc is going to steal his entire project away.

The junior faculty member promises to send my advisor's contribution, but says I need to speak with the PI if I want the other 2/3 that is necessary to have "as much as possible done" in advance as he said.

I am used to standing in my own way by procrastinating --- I could have twice as many publications if I didn't check email or distract myself --- but it is weird realizing that there are actual other people that are real barriers and how important it is to be on my toes so that I can call b.s. when necessary. Because I wasn't on my toes and assertive, a month passed which was almost completely unproductive for this project.

In fact, I almost feel like I have to budget in this wasted time: how many hours and weeks to convince collaborators to actually collaborate.

Another funny/disastrous date

2009-02-10T16:55:00.004-06:00

Last night I went out with this guy from a few blocks away whom I met on facebook.

When he picked me up I had to go back and turn off the radio and I made the mistake of mentioning it was Obama's press conference. He was ranting about socialism in the stimulus bill within 1 minute, but also about the lack of sufficient infrastructure funding (isn't that contradictory?), and continued for the next few minutes even as I tried to at least ground the subject in facts ("Which economists back that up? Did you see the Congressional Budget Office report on stimulus multipliers?", His reply: "I don't need economists. I'm a capitalist. Obama has all these socialist economists who want the government to take over the economy."), so I knew before even getting into his car that it was pretty much a write-off date.

He thought similarly because he changed our plans, and instead of going to the nice area to walk around and have coffee at a Barnes and Noble, he decided we should go to a B&N in a strip mall. He didn't order anything. I paid for my own tea.

When I mentioned that I go to a hip neighborhood sometimes, he said something about how he hopes a homophobe would have a fit there. He had been raised pretty conservative, so I was curious whether he was anti-homophobia (= possibly gay) or just neutral about it, but when I asked him to elaborate he would only say, "There are gay people there, but they don't hurt anyone. They're totally harmless. You can walk around there and it's not like they do anything to you. It's not like they attack you like in boys' dormitories at single-sex schools. You didn't know that they attack each other in boys' dormitories?"

Shortly after, I told him that the guy I dated this summer had recently come out to me. He stopped the car (we were in a parking lot) and said, "There is no way THIS (gesturing at the length of my seated body still wrapped in my coat I'd been wearing the entire time) turned someone gay. You could turn Elton John straight!" somehow managing to make me feel simultaneously objectified and flattered. And I definitely did not want to take off my coat.

On the way home, I told him the story of the religious adulterer (posted about earlier) and he got so angry ranting about pretend religious people that I thought he was going to crash us into the median. I thought about which skeletons he might have in his closet, and I did get him to reveal a past engagement he'd gotten into after a month of dating and she broke off after 2 weeks.

I have to admit it: I kind-of like disasterous dates as long as they are not the only dates in my life.

Published! Officially finished with dissertation

2009-02-10T16:20:00.005-06:00

My final dissertation paper got accepted for publication. All the papers are well-placed, and this one is in a journal with highest impact factor of all. The average impact factor of the journals where my dissertation papers published is. . . well, extremely high. I mean, not Science/Nature high, not even close (though arguably one should be looking at the log of impact factors rather than impact factors themselves because the high ones are so high), but probably higher than many of the dissertations to come out of my program. And they are all single-authored papers, and all in journals where that's very unusual.

So I am really happy about this. Especially since this last paper actually has the chance of making a difference in the field, though also of pissing people off. And that is actually why I delayed submitting it. That and the fact that my committee never seemed to like that paper very much, and it didn't come off super well as a job talk during my first year on the job market.

But the journal took it, and that's all that matters!

Success is scary. It raises the bar of what I feel like I need to accomplish now. Rationally, that thought doesn't make any sense. An accomplishment can never be a bad thing. Not every piece of work is fantastic, and you certainly can't start any project expecting it to be fantastic.

Nonetheless, every project I'm working on so far is at the very beginning stages, and I am not yet feeling absorbed in anything which I find scary and distracting.

And it's hard to feel absorbed because as I am starting projects I wonder if the ideas I'm having are as fresh and original as my dissertation papers. But that's not productive. It's not like I set off on my dissertation looking for something creative. I was just trying stuff, almost on a whim, and things came together. Some projects will come together to be fresh and get well-published. Others are like book-keeping, and they add to what we have but in the same way as others' work does.

All the work habit books talk about turning off your inner editor in order to get started. These books are talking about writing, but the same idea applies to research. Try a little idea, and then see where it goes. As the title of one of my favorite writing books says, "No plot, no problem!" That's for writing novels, but the same idea applies. And it's fun to read about recklessly writing a high volume crap in order to be able to pull a novel out of the mess. Maybe I should get it from the library again and reread.

And the height of non-rational thoughts: I see all the bad economic news and I imagine not doing any work and not getting renewed and continuing on my lack of work streak in any job that I take and . . . well, that's already ridiculous.

If I have a solid hour of work on one project, that's a start, and a solid day, that's great, and a solid week, I will really feel absorbed. Attainable goals; one foot in front of the other until I get to other side. That's how you cross a wire across the Twin Towers (as I heard the guy talking on NPR on Friday), and it's how you do anything.

So much easier said than done. It's totally self-aggrandizing to say that my pretty high impact factors put me anywhere like crossing the Twin Towers on a wire, but even if they do: walking doesn't change, no matter where you are. Attainable goals. Attainable goals. Attainable goals.

Just as I was feeling irresponsible. . .

2009-02-09T11:16:00.003-06:00

I am submitting an abstract to a conference at more or less the last minute and so emailed the section head to ask whether one idea would fit, having absolutely no idea what else I would do if he said no. Several email forwards ensue, and now I'm being asked to be the "[Field] expert" discussant on an impossibly-broad interdisciplinary panel.

It's so startling to be feeling irresponsible --- in this case because I am running late, as I frequently do --- and then to have such a thing land in my lap.

If I worked more consistently and wasn't running late for submissions and everything else, I might not feel like such an impostor, but on the other hand it's feeling like an impostor that lets me feel particularly grateful when good things happen.

...

In other news of unprofessionalism: the administrator for the job that just rejected me sent me an email about scheduling the rooms for the job candidates that they are inviting. Apparently the room scheduling administrator has the same first name. I googled the one name listed in the accidental email and he already has a faculty job at a very good state school. I'm flattered to have been competitive enough with already professors to make it to the top 10 of that group.

Once I start new projects post-dissertation, and feel solidly integrated in that, hopefully then I will actually get invited for the job talks.

But it is really hard to start new post-dissertation projects!

Social life outside the ivory tower

2009-02-09T08:58:00.004-06:00

The punk rock virgin does seem to like me. He had me to meet his friends; we ate dinner and played a geeky German board game. He was very considerate about little things, smiled nervously at random moments, and a couple of times as we were walking back to his place, started a conversation and then said, "Hm, maybe this isn't the time to talk about it." It was very cute, and it's wonderful to be with someone who is smart and treats me well, and it's also refreshing to be with someone where things don't feel fraught. Of course part of the reason why I feel so relaxed around him is that he's not an ethnic match and we got together purely to be friends.

The PRV's friends include an indie-cute late-20's girl finishing undergrad in the humanities at a local college (I know two professors in the humanities there, but held myself back from asking) and a John Lennon-esque cute guy who used to run a BBS and has a half-time job in a local university's administration and didn't say whether he did anything else. I didn't want to press the question. Usually the only difference in these cases is in profession, so if you talk about hobbies and current events there's no difference, but oddly, when the topic of airline fares came up, I was the only one who had flown recently (as PRV helpfully announced). I really felt like a rich urban sophisticate on my glamorous postdoc salary.

Separately yesterday I met a guy on facebook who is 2 yrs younger than I am. I met him because he rides a unicycle so I had an excuse to write to him when I saw him RSVP'ed to an event I was thinking about going to. He is studying to be a court reporter after his college major turned out not to have as many or as well-paying jobs as he thought; it's usually a 2 year program, and he's taken 4+ and still hasn't gotten the speed required to graduate (225 words per minute!). I wonder if some people are better at these things than others and if there's a time to say that one would be better in a different 2 year degree career. He said that his jaw dropped when he saw where I am a postdoc, again where I went to undergrad, and asked if there was anything I didn't do, and if I am a MENSA member. Some days I am quick to change the subject, but my non-MENSA-belonging mind was blank, so it was awkward. He said something about juggling not usually being something that gets girls, and I said that it's kind-of a geeky thing to do, and so it's something I'm really used to people doing, and he said, "Geeky? Doesn't that mean it's for smart people?" I said most people I tend to meet are above average smart, and I'm sure he is too, and he protested. That was just the phone conversation.

It really bothers me when people insist that they are not smart. Why?

But maybe it's no less bad than how I will look at some people on dating sites and decide they are way too cute to want to date me. As I feel about one guy from a dating site whom I'm supposed to meet next weekend. First date on Valentine's Day, bad idea?

. . .

Back to snobby PhD land, I spent an evening with Rob. There's not much to say other than that there is so much accumulated tension in all directions that it feels like it is time to fish or cut bait. We held hands and hugged for a long time and talked about ambivalence, but on the other hand he is dating someone, though he does not seem all that excited about her, though the guy I almost married also did not seem all that excited about the woman he married when we would talk, so I suppose there is no way to tell.

Strange rejection note

2009-02-06T12:33:00.003-06:00

I got an email from my contact at a job saying that they had 127 applicants and I was one of their top 10 choices, but not on their short list. At the time they got to the last 10 choices, "we were comparing among the very best folk and it proved to be very difficult to pick one and leave one out, and it really wasn't an issue of expertise at that point -- I hope we have made the right decision!"

What a weird statement. "I hope we made the right decision by rejecting you."

Um, I hope you did too?

This is the second such rejection I've gotten. One last year where I was one of five to interview remarked that they chose the "best fit". It's frustrating to think that there is some ineffable personal quality that I should develop to get thought of as a good fit.

Dating update: new slate!

2009-02-05T16:58:00.003-06:00

Updating the January update.

I broke up with Alan. It was easier than I expected. I said that I couldn't see myself marrying him. And since I had been having only minimal contact with him for the past few weeks (the blessing/curse of living an hour away), he said likewise. And it was over.

Simon showed all signs of being interested, but he really wasn't. My friend thinks he is gay.

Ted seems interested, but thinks I'm bad for him. He called me the other day and gave some right-wing rant about the stimulus package. Ugh. He is trying to set me up with someone.

Rob still brings me fruit when we see each other because it used to be a flower, and he can't bring me flowers because I'm dating someone (or was, at least). We're still confused about each other, and getting together this weekend. He is dating someone, though whenever he talks about her he sounds removed.

I am still hanging out with the punk rock virgin. I looked back, and may not have mentioned him. This is a guy who looks totally punk rock (though a version that could vaguely fit in at an office) and has never kissed a girl. Not for any religious reason, not for any social reason. Even hairdo aside, you would never guess. Sometimes we argue whether he should tell a girl that he's never kissed a girl before before kissing her. I think it's a great way to guarantee that he won't. He went to a good college, but has a self-described boring office job that lets him pursue his hobbies that he hopes to turn into real work (things like bakeries that even if they are a huge success are draining and only barely profitable). We have some chemistry, but probably no marriage potential. I keep being tempted to kiss him to end his run. I have kissed so many people under worse circumstances before, and yet I want to be friends with him and not more, so it seems like a bad idea.

And now I have a whole new list, who are advancing through the various stages of email, phone, etc. And the list is surprisingly long. There are some guys on it who look from their picture like they wouldn't think I was cute or fit enough if we met, so I am a bit intimidated. Somehow too cute seems like a bad thing. The two very cute guys I dated in the past 2 years failed horribly, so very cute makes me suspicious.

There is one guy with definite potential who I've spoken with. He works for an entity that I used to actively dislike, but I am being open-minded about that entity. We spoke on the phone, but can't meet until the end of the month, so I am trying to defer thinking about him.

There's another guy whom I enjoyed speaking with, but he also seems like a geeky dilettante who is overly pleased with himself. And his pictures are not great either. Even if his pictures were better, I would not judge him well for saying that maybe in a few years he'll get a PhD in physics to pursue one of those problems about which cranks send 20 page handwritten letters to their local university physics department.

"Dear University Physics Department, As the culmination of 5 years of intensive self-study while working as a patent officer, I have the grand unified theory. I have also invented a new kind of bubble gum (viz. enclosed)."

To be continued!

Boice lesson of the day: Stop!

2009-02-05T16:22:00.003-06:00

We all have the days when you go to the office and don't do anything at all. Facebook. Clean out inbox. Obsess over details like travel plans. Maybe some meta-work such as looking up deadline for conference submissions, renewing library books, volunteering to chair a conference section, speaking to lay people.

And then it gets to be 5 or 6 pm, and I just want to stay until I've done something. But that just punishes myself and it makes me feel anxious and it puts me in a bad position for the next day, and I end up too tired to go to the gym, and it's all downhill from there.

So even though I haven't done anything today, I am going to leave. Tomorrow is another day.

I also write down what I did all day hour by hour, even to fill it in with "facebook", "catch up on dating site email", "catch up on professional email", "answer professional-related email from high school student", "attend lecture". My theory is that it's like the cure for obsessive thoughts. (You don't judge yourself for having them, and you don't try to stop them. You just count them. And before you know it you aren't thinking about that guy who dumped you after a 2 month relationship by losing his phone.)

Beggars try to be choosers

2009-02-04T15:42:00.004-06:00

I know this PhD who is the kind of socially awkward that attempts to be suave and comes out unctuous. The kind of guy who makes remarks early and awkwardly about how much they like sex, always in the most awkward way possible.

He is well-intentioned, though, and in spite of his unattractive aspects, I suspect that once someone gets to know him they'll like him.

I mentioned two women to him, and his reply was the worst of pickiness: "I think I met Alice and we don't click... do you have a picture of Barbara? I trust you on the other stuff and guess if you like her I might - but everyone has there own ideas of cute! If she fits with my concept of cute, we could work out something perhaps... "

The right woman who gets to know him will find that he's a great guy in spite of his unctuous manner. Apparently he is not willing to extend the same favor to women.

Privileged guilt

2009-01-17T15:25:00.005-06:00

I got a note from an academic in a developing country who is 5 years younger than me and has 32 publications, nearly all in what sound like standard US and European journals (though he's not at all in my area, so I can't gauge). He is looking to come to a country where he'd have more economic opportunity and not live under an oppressive government.

Meanwhile I muse over how to stop myself from procrastinating and have had many many days where the bulk of my time was spent cleaning out my inbox and looking at funny pictures on the internet. I am always up to date on xkcd and almost always on the Daily Show. I am always behind on my journal reading, and may not even open the ones that come. Even not compared with someone for whom work is the only way to a decent life, I already feel guilty about the amount of time that I spend not doing anything productive.

Update: a friend of mine in that guy's field says he suspects that most of the cites are forged. It would be easy enough to check.

Grant applications

2009-01-12T14:36:00.006-06:00

I've never really applied for a biggish grant. I found an announcement and a senior person to work with me on a pre-proposal. We planned a collaboration with some of the senior person's colleagues.

Only one application was allowed per area and a few days before the deadline we found out about another group in the area and for various reasons we had to collaborate rather than compete. During a couple of hours of conference calls, we spoke about exactly how we would merge the two studies. The "merged" pre-proposal was submitted with no mention of us and not even showed to us in advance. Even more egregiously, the merged application requests funding --- and this is a full third of the requested budget --- for a role that I would have done for free, and in an area where frankly I have far more cutting-edge knowledge, albeit less experience.

Their way of telling us that they don't want to work with us was by sending to us their pre-proposal a few days after it's been handed in and having us notice that there's no mention of our participation.

Reassuring update: I forwarded the pre-proposal to someone who wasn't included on the recipient list, a pretty senior person. I phrased it neutrally, "Even after our conversations with them last week, I'm not sure exactly what they have in mind, but wanted to make sure you had the pre-proposal."

The reply: apparently they don't play well with others.

Well said! Still royally rotten of them.

The demographic game

2009-01-09T15:14:00.003-06:00

A close friend from college just broke up with her boyfriend of 10 years, her first long relationship. She's a slightly aimless grad student, cute but could be more confident. He's cute, dresses well, and has a tenure-track job at a good school. It seems so transparent.

Relationships are such a demographic game. When you get involved in college or right after you don't know who is going to be successful and who not, so it's easier to pair off by personality. As success becomes more clear, people seem more and more conscious of their "worth" in the marketplace.

It's not my relationship, and I wasn't even sure I thought it was the best relationship, but for some reason this depresses me.

Why I love Boice

2009-01-08T18:07:00.004-06:00

I was feeling disconsolate the other day, so looked up depression in the index of Boice. He had practically a whole chapter in the first half of the book, the teaching half that I never look at. He says that the first year out of grad school in a real job is a time when faculty feel more depressed and listless than at perhaps any time in their lives. I would add, all the more so for postdocs because we don't even have much real place in the university, as in the recent PhD Comics. It made me feel so much better to read that I was not alone and that it was actually normal to feel abnormal!

Boice is right every time. I am starting new projects and still have a couple weighing on me from before, and I feel a tremendous amount of pressure to start churning everything out. In other words, this is the typical rushing impatience alternating with despair that leads me to watching the past 3 days' of both the Daily Show and Colbert Report instead of working. But when I think about even Monday or the end of the month, I'm not sure how I will have enough work done for those times.

There's a balance between solo work and collaborations. There are two or more projects closely enough related to my dissertation that it feels like I could churn them out one week each and get good journal placement, although I know that is the rushing impatience that Boice warns against talking. Review article on a subject related to my dissertation. Again, seems easy. And a couple old projects that I'm going to ignore.

And then collaborations. The only successful one is a grant pre-proposal: I saw a notice for funding, wrote a pre-proposal for the first time with no idea, and she said it was good, so I accomplished something here that wasn't my dissertation. And then a couple potential collaborations whom if I am working with I need to start some momentum, hard especially with the holidays.

I have to keep reminding myself to breathe and just allow work to proceed one hour at a time, and one step at a time. I wrote down two steps and did those, just like I'm supposed to. And now I want to write down that step 3 is "Do everything else." But I will breathe again and take another step. Impatience is hard.

And also hard is that I feel such a pressure (from whom? my advisor? "people around here"?) to juggle more and more balls, and in theory I see how all of them can be juggled by someone else. I just feel like I have trouble doing even one project. But I will start one project and feel like I have a little momentum on it before I move to something else.

Perils of soft money

2009-01-05T17:29:00.003-06:00

A faculty member who I had thought of a well-established is leaving the university soon because they got sick and couldn't work full-time anymore. They are moving partway across the country to a mid-rank school that I didn't even know had an appropriate program. The announcement said they would be able to continue in academia in a "highly supportive environment and yet not be obligated at the same level [as] here."

Presumably they could no longer pay for their soft money position, and the new position will pay their salary.

What a horrifying position to be in.

Miracle of the phone

2009-01-05T09:13:00.003-06:00

I got an email from the senior member of a rival research group about a published paper. He had several detailed questions, clearly pasted in from a Word document complete with sub-items (a, b, c, d) and bold font for the item titles. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach because he asked straight out whether one of the numbers was correct because it seemed high to him, and I remembered why it might not be correct.

I spent over four hours going back over my paper, pulled up all the programming again, and discovered the mistake that I had suspected. That one number was too high by one because of a programming oversight. No other numbers were off and it doesn't change the primary or even secondary results of the paper because I'm interested in differences, and even after being corrected, my number would still seem "high" so qualitatively my results are the same.

It made me nervous to admit the mistake to a rival especially when I'm on the job market so being scrutinized. I also felt weird sending him exact details in writing because I know that they have enough people in their group that if they wanted to, they could replicate my paper quickly and perhaps discover errors that I hadn't seen. I'll submit a correction to that one number to the journal once I'm done with the job market, but the correction will have no practical effect on anyone's future work and could have a negative impact on me.

Most of the questions were just details about definitions, and so I wrote up my answers to all the questions and dallied over sending it. Then I realized the phone exists. Thank you, Alexander Graham Bell!

I called him up and answered all his questions. For the one answer where I am off by one, I told him how I defined the quantity, a bit different than most, and then gave an argument for why the answer should be "high" since it really is high both as published and once corrected.

He said, "Oh!" like he hadn't thought of my answer why it was plausible. He agreed that it made sense, and he seemed sincerely satisfied by that answer. And his qualitative understanding will be exactly the same if he finds out it is really x-1 instead of x.

And then I got to find out about their group's newest research, and I even gave him a tip that I think could really help them.

Beyond the lesson about the phone being oh so useful, it's really nice to realize that no matter how quantitative you get, people think qualitatively. Someone is short, average height, or tall, and even if their height is off by a few inches they probably wouldn't change categories. Likewise, my answer was "high", and qualitatively it didn't make a difference whether it was n or n-1.

Update from the summer

2009-01-03T16:43:00.007-06:00

The guy I dated this summer came out to me over Christmas break. He knew all along, but apparently I was his last attempt at heterosexuality. Which is kind-of flattering if taken as an a fortiori: if he couldn't feel like a relationship with me was compelling enough to date women for, all the moreso would he not like other women. Though of course hurtful to have been deceived. I think we did have a conversation about whether he'd ever been attracted to guys since I have these types of conversations with practically everyone, and I think he told the truth, but didn't raise any red flags. Ironic that he was so sexually pushy. I suppose he wanted as full an experience as possible so he could really be sure. After he told me, I asked a few post mortem questions trying to reconstruct the situation in my mind. One question made him particularly agitated: he put a piece of chocolate in his mouth and chewed aggressively staring off into space well beyond me before answering. I had taken it to be his relative inexperience, but I guess that explains why he was so terrible at everything; I didn't ask him about that, though.

Another guy from this summer (#4 on the list) contacted me. I had been feeling slightly guilty because he seemed to feel slighted at the end of the summer because I kept canceling our plans during the busy time while I was packing, so I made sure to see him on my visit home. Part of the reason I kept canceling is because he made me slightly uncomfortable: he asked lots of questions and told me way too much information including an overly dramatic break-up story in which an ex cuts off their relationship suddenly without warning, and he has to suddenly get a new apartment and arrange to get his belongings back from their shared apartment. The night I met him, he was at a social event with his ex's roommate, so the ex story didn't raise any red flags: apparently her friend was willing to spend time with him. And he was a brooding overweight humanities PhD who talks like molasses. While nothing seemed off about him when we were actually together, afterwards I felt weird. He lamented that I kept canceling this summer, and said he felt like I hadn't been fair to him and didn't think he could see me again. Which made me feel half relieved.

Distance made me forget all this, so I went to meet him at a cafe. While driving to meet him, I spoke with Alan and was surprised to find myself bitching about this guy being manipulative, something that I don't think had ever occurred to me, but after I hung up with Alan I felt kind-of bad for speaking badly about this guy before seeing him. While I was actually talking with him, I enjoyed the conversation. He has a humanities PhD and forms unique combination of words: for instance, describing a relationship as beginning with a starry look in their eyes, then beginning to tell him everything about their day as if their consciousnesses have merged, and then he gets to see them without their clothes. Which sounds creepy, but also accurate about many relationships.

I started settling into feeling how much I enjoyed spending time with him and like perhaps I'd been overly hasty at judgement. Until the end of our time together. I drove him home, and he mentioned a girl he'd dated recently who he described in many ways, but the word "educable" stuck out in my mind along with some oblique innuendo. I don't remember the exact words, but he said he hoped I would redeem myself from having been so "undependable" this summer, which goes well beyond normal teasing between friends. He then asked me to set him up with someone, perhaps my former roommate. I didn't think they would be a good pair, so I suggested someone else who had mentioned she might want to meet him who is exceptionally self-assured and directed. He demurred saying she didn't seem to make much room in her life beyond her career. We kept talking, extending to 10 minutes longer than I'd wanted to, I told him so, and he left. Nothing seemed weird until the next morning when all the pieces came together and I shuddered. "Educable". My hunch he was manipulative was right, and he seeks women who are smart but with a germ of lack of confidence that he can manipulate. The woman I suggested would never stand for his nonsense and I'm sorry I tolerated his nonsense as long as I did and had been too busy thinking about packing and the rest of my life to see the situation clearly enough to do something more decisive than passively avoiding him.

The only thing stopping me from deleting his number from my phone is that I'll need to know he's calling in order not to pick up.

Dating update for 2009

2009-01-03T14:26:00.005-06:00

New year, new slate.

The dating cast of characters has now much simplified. There's one person, and others receding into the background. I feel good about it specifically because I feel no euphoria, just hope and happiness. There's not the same ups and downs and dreads I've felt with others.

I'm still meeting new folks, and have a new first date this weekend and another possibility.

- Simon: perpetual nice guy I've known for 8 years, just moved back to the US after grad school; last year he fixed in my mind as "It", but got overwhelmed for his first 3 months back and I didn't hear from him at all, and so I set the possibility aside, disappointed but not angst-ridden.

He spend the weekend with me before Christmas while he was in town for a wedding along with some other of our friends, and Simon spent every possible time with me, skipping all the activities for out of town guests other than the wedding itself. His flight from the wedding was at the same time as my flight back for Christmas break, and we went together to check-in at the opposite ends of the terminal until we absolutely had to go through different security lines. Now he is telling me about these friends he absolutely has to visit less than an hour from here later this month. And come to think of it, I haven't been back to the town I went to grad school in since June, so I could go visit him and even though I have lots of people I could stay with in there, we started talking about which weekends would be okay with his roommate if I stayed with him. And we spoke about our respective job markets --- his starts just about as mine finishes. With all this, nothing explicitly non-platonic has been said or done. It's just encouraging. I feel no soaring anything. Just happy and cautiously optimistic.

- Alan is still there. I spoke very little with him for the past 2 weeks and didn't particularly miss him, and intended to break up with him straight away when I got back. But then when I did spend time with him (best not to break up over the phone), it was comforting and fun, so I delayed. We went to a New Years party at his ex-girlfriend's. She's now married with a kid, a big house, and a nanny that there's no way she and her husband can afford. Alan and I were assumed to be a serious long-term couple, and socially it was pretty comfortable. I read some non-fiction "reality-style" books written by young married people (format: author tries something wacky and writes about it), and was reminded of just how little time married people spend together.

- I emailed with Ted on a dating site just before I moved, and was disappointed that he turned me down before we even got to a date. Four months later, I wrote to a community mailing list and asked for a favor in return for which I'd bake something. This guy volunteered to do the thing for me, and I baked the goods, and I came to his place to do the exchange. The guy answering the door was cute, but I didn't want to be obvious about looking for a ring. We got to talking, and after about 45 minutes of talking I realized it had to be the guy from the dating site, but I still wasn't sure. I asked if we'd emailed before I moved, and he said that we had and looked embarrassed. I said I had to go meet a friend at 10 pm (I really did), but we kept talking until 11, and I finally tore myself away. He asked for my number. Even if I never hear from him, it's nice to feel vindicated. Ted is a lot more serious than I am used to people being. But on the plus side that also means he's more responsible: he just bought an inexpensive house and is doing things like rewiring it, and he cooks, all far more domestic and established and practical than anyone I know.

- I have a friend who I really look up to: I don't always agree with her, but I think she has good judgement, a strong sense of self, is very professionally directed (I can't believe how many papers she's sent off this year), and she's also really attractive so gets a lot of dating opportunities. She is also much more religious and serious than I am. I saw her when I was back in town around Christmas, and mentioned the Rob situation to her in passing as we were parting. I thought she wouldn't get the conflict, but instead she sat right back down and told me about a situation she had been in also this fall with someone she would never think of dating were it not so compelling. He lived really far away, so she actually took a few plane flights to see him and he to see her, as they figured it out, and she was willing to compromise so much. In the end, she found that they couldn't make the situation come together, and she put it aside and moved on, but boy she found it compelling. And then she, my former roommate, and I talked for another hour about how we just really wanted kids. So that made me feel better about the whole Rob situation. I no longer worry as much that there would be any serious social ramifications if I married Rob. I just don't know that we could be fully happy.

- That guy from London keeps calling, and recently started poking me on facebook, each about once every 10 days. We haven't actually spoken for over a month, though.

- Max fell off the radar, and I don't much care.

- A commenter asked about the obese guy: I realized he was overweight, but didn't realize he was obese until we met. He emailed me persistently such chipper and friendly emails that I felt like it would be easier just to meet. I suspected I wouldn't like him, so scheduled something directly after our date, so it was exactly an hour. That said, I've met maybe two pretty fat guys (>50 lbs over) that I would date in spite of their weight. One was this summer: we met at a dinner, and had absolutely a fantastic conversation, one of those great conversations where you are astounded after 15 minutes how much in common you have, and I started feeling conflicted. After that 15 minutes he mentioned he was engaged, and I was surprised how disappointed I was. Though partially I was thinking that he's 5 years younger, quite obese, and he is still engaged before me.

- The commenter asked about the TV guy around the corner. Marriageability aside, I think we come from just radically different cultures. He's very much Red State, and while we can understand each other well enough to have a reasoned conversation, it's pretty serious differences. Most recently: discussions whether he should declaw his cat. I was reading that it hurts cats' balance because it's like cutting off the tips of a persons' toes and fingers, and some shelters require adopters to sign papers that they won't declaw their cats. I don't know if that's true or not, but we spoke about it, and he seemed to agree that it might be bad for the cat, but he wanted to do it because he's in charge and it's more convenient for him if the cat is declawed. I pointed out even just economically that it might be a better deal not to: the cat only scratches on his office chair, and he could buy 5 office chairs for the price of the declawing surgery, and even that didn't affect his view. Somehow that discussion and the verdict about who is in charge just turned my stomach, and he certainly stopped seeming cute.

Speaking of which, one of the things that bugs me about being single is the loneliness, but I've recently discovered the wonders of foster animals. The rescue agency gives you an animal and everything you need for the animal, and you take care of it until they need it back, and you can give it back if you need to go out of town or if the animal is too neurotic to deal with. It's like pet ownership without cost or commitment, and it is useful volunteer work.

What not to say on a date: obese version

2008-12-16T22:18:00.003-06:00

I went on a date with a guy who turned out to be not merely obese, but the kind of obese where the stomach starts to droop over the genitals, definitely on the way to morbid obesity, if not already there.

He had dropped some TMI in an email saying he doesn't drink alcohol (he'll tell me later).

He didn't do anything that weekend other than get his oil changed --- he couldn't at least make something up? --- and he didn't seem to have any hobbies, so for 40 minutes we swapped pet and family stories. He told me about his job as a professional nay-sayer at a phone company, his siblings, his dog, his siblings' dog, and his dog's siblings.

The dog was good because the dog helped his father with his sleep apnea by waking him up whenever he stopped breathing. Dog's definitely better than a CPAP machine. Which his doctors want him to have because he has sleep apnea too. Getting diagnosed was a real pain. After two years of constant headaches, he had to sleep one night in a lab tethered to machines, and during the one hour he actually slept in the lab, he stopped breathing 6 times. Anyhow, all the medications he has to take are incompatible with alcohol, thus fulfilling his promise to explain why he doesn't drink alcohol. So he's willing to take pills, but he draws the line at a CPAP machine. Or, apparently, weight loss surgery.

Poor guy. He probably thinks I'm not interested just because he's obese, rather than because he is both obese and boring.

I surrender to the job market.

2008-12-16T13:19:00.006-06:00

It happens this way every year. I tell myself that I'm not going to go on the job market, except for really exceptional positions. This year, I just sent two applications, one of which was solicited directly by the school.

And then I ran across one at a fantastic small liberal arts college, one that I almost attended for undergraduate in fact, so I have had a bit of a crush on the college for a long time (if such a thing is possible). So I applied there. And then to two more comparably-ranked small colleges, both in barely-tolerable locations; I think I met a guy at a conference who used to have one of those jobs. The web form asked if I had department contacts. I didn't know whether to list him, but I figured I may as well. So now a total of five applications.

And the idea of earning a real salary next year in a tenure-track job, especially in the wake of unknown economic turmoil, sounds really good. So I've identified a sixth job. And then I'll go into an orgy of professional association and job listing websites, which I'm guessing will culminate in a total of 20 applications.

So I need to open up a new excel file to list everything. Which I was convinced wasn't going to happen.

Anything to avoid real work.

Weekend update

2008-12-13T19:16:00.001-06:00

It's nice to be wanted

2008-12-13T18:59:00.003-06:00

Being in a postdoc that can last more than one year, I've not spent much time on job applications. I've just applied to two, so far.

One job I got via email and asked the person running the search if I should apply, and he said yes.

The other, the search committee chair actually emailed me to tell me about the job and said that he hoped I would apply. This job is particularly promising for a funny reason. I had a famous committee member Joel who had a female student Alberta whom I had heard lots of positive things about. I asked Joel to write a recommendation for me, and accidentally he made it non-confidential, so the dossier service actually let me read Joel's letter, which said that I reminded him of Alberta.

While writing the cover letter, I noticed that Alberta just started a new faculty position at this school! So what a great argument: this famous faculty member thinks I am like one of their current faculty members.

Though then I saw her picture, and I realized that it's possible that he was just saying we look alike.

Doing this particularly targeted job application process is surprisingly non-stressful. I worked with someone on the research proposals in my cover letter, the reason I procrastinate applications, and so far all I've had to do is insert a few additional sentences specific to the school. Now it's tempting to try others!

Dating tip #432: Effective email

2008-12-09T16:53:00.006-06:00

If someone wants to go out with you, they'll say yes no matter what you propose for a first date as long as it's reasonable. If they don't want to go out with you, they'll say no no matter what you propose. Or at least they should. When I was 23, a 46 year old asked me to the ballet, and I was very tempted to go, but I didn't.

(Corollary: the same holds for initial emails on a dating website.)

I got a very sweet email from someone a couple years ago listing about eight possible first dates ranging from coffee and dinner to picnicking at a specific park with hot chocolate in a thermos (seriously).

And just now I got a similar one, not excessive in number, but just in TMI and nervous online laughter: coffee, dinner, drinks (but he doesn't drink, he'll explain it later lol), pool (location specified), bowling lol. Nervous laughter in person is embarrassing, but we all do it and usually can't help it. Nervous laughter in email is completely preventable.

I don't mean this to sound sarcastic. I've just been dating long enough that I've gotten over my natural tendency to write overly long and detailed emails because I'm nervous, so I've learned the value of simplicity for faking confidence.

- "Hi, I really liked X and Y about your profile because I do/am Z and W. Question related to X or Y? Follow-up question? Generic smalltalk question? Statement related to generic question. Have a good weekend/Wednesday/etc."

- "Coffee or dinner? What day/time works for you?"

That is everything I wish I knew 4 years ago about initiating correspondence and meetings.

Choosing a mentor

2008-12-09T12:30:00.005-06:00

My advisor is a great guy, but more of a "super-mentor": he'll advise me, but he has evolved beyond even being a PI so he doesn't really have any projects of his own --- some are farmed out elsewhere, plus there are others in the department doing relevant work. Now that I've sent off my last paper, I am choosing new projects, which means choosing additional mentors.

During college and grad school, I've had many mentor relationships. Initially I started out looking for subject matter that interested me, but I'm enough of a deletante that practically everything sounds interesting to me, so I realized that the quality of the mentor mattered more than the quality of the project. It's possible to find an interesting angle on many subjects, but not possible to make an indifferent mentor better. I haven't always stuck with this rule, but when I have, it's been really helpful.

The first RA-ship that went well for me led directly to grad school. I was applying for an RA at a research center the summer before graduation, and interviewed with two advisors. The one whose research sounded totally boring and whose academic background wasn't similar to my interests turned out to be the nicest guy and we had a great conversation that lasted well longer than it was supposed to --- very much like a good date. The one who did a wide range of interesting research and had an academic background like the one I wanted to get turned out to be the rational sort who doesn't really try to connect with people. I went with the former, and while the project was a little random, it was a success. I stayed motivated the whole summer (although I also remember an extensive email correspondence with the guy I had a crush on then; who wasn't, in the end, interested in spite of spending 2 hours a day emailing me.), and created out a project that I'm still proud of. While presenting the project, I met a woman who served on my committee and was one of the most helpful members. I haven't gone back to the subject matter, but it helped me get into grad school, so that's worth something.

By contrast, the advisor who I did not have chemistry with ended up being my first academic advisor in grad school and a complete disaster.

The rule does not always work, though. In early/mid-grad school (grad school was long enough that it not only has a middle, it also has a beginning of the middle), I had an RA-ship with a fantastic professor. He was always in his office and available to talk, and dropped nuggets of advice about academia, and had us to his beach house for a day every summer (and not to dig him a pool, as I heard from someone who was a grad student in the early 70's: a professor asked them to his beach house and they were all excited, and when they got there, he handed them shovels. And they actually constructed the tennis court or pool or whatever.) He sat down with me and walked me through writing my first paper, which got well-published. I could not have done the writing without him. So it was really a great relationship. My research for the center was not so exciting, but he was accessible and helped my own research along.

And then at the very end of the paper-writing process, he put his name on my paper. He made some "track changes" edits in Word, one of which was adding his name to the authorship line. I checked the journal's authorship guidelines and writing help was not sufficient for being an author (thank god for authorship guidelines! I had thought before they were a formality, but hadn't realized how much they protected junior people!), so I told him that he didn't qualify and sent back the next revision without his name. Next edit comes back to me with his name put right back in the authorship line.

I spoke with my (male) advisor and with the (female) director of graduate studies and got two conflicting pieces of advice: keep him on because he deserves something for his time and no way in hell should he get authorship on a paper that he did not do the actual work. I listened to the latter, dropped him from my committee, and dropped a chapter of my life. (E.g., I can't say that I once worked in his research area.) And I never completely trusted my advisor's advice again. So the "good mentor" rule of selecting research projects does not always work. I couldn't have foreseen that difficulty from any of my prior interactions with him or from anything anyone had ever told me.

I'm thinking a lot about these lessons as I'm choosing my next projects. I'm meeting some genuinely nice people and some politically nice people. And junior faculty, who can't really afford to be nice at all. The politically nice people are the department chairs and others who manage large numbers of people, and while they all seem nice it's always a matter of inference how nice they are in reality. Somehow the politically nice people are disproportionately tall, male (even in heavily female departments), and not overweight.

The genuinely nice people are the sorts who could fit in very well as small college faculty, and really like to mentor. I met one today. We had a meeting with a politically nice person, a junior faculty member, and him. The meeting closed with the politically-nice guy saying, "One thing you'll find about [this university] is that everyone is friendly and accessible." I smiled and said "Great!" because I found that idea completely laughable, but they probably interpreted my smile as agreement and "great" as non-sarcastic. After the meeting, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed because they'd just listed about half a dozen projects I could join, and I ended up speaking with the senior nice guy in the hallway as we walked back to our respective places (naturally, the meeting was in the political guy's corner office), and he gave me some much-needed and sensible-sounded overview advice and he sent me 4 emails within an hour of the meeting with background materials.

(Interestingly, he is short. I wonder how many of the good advisors are short, versus political ones are tall. A short male friend of mine once turned me onto this advantage that tall men have, and I read a book about it, and I keep noticing examples.)

So I'm excited. One potential project has a guy who wants to hug my advisor. Another one dispenses sensible advice. Some progress! Now I just have to do my part and come up with something.

Academic sweetness. Really!

2008-12-09T12:05:00.004-06:00

I'm finding new projects now, and my advisor referred me to a collaborator 500 miles away whose work I'd always admired, but I'd never investigated because I didn't want to live where he is. Which is good in itself.

But also: the collaborator, equally senior to my advisor, told me to give my advisor a hug for him because "He's one of the most wonderful people!"

How sweet: my advisor's collaborator wants to hug him! Which says a lot about both of them. I hope the collaborator is interesting and as full of good will as he sounds.

The vigilant reader might remember that the first 5 minutes of the very first research group meeting I went to (for a research center in my department not affiliated with my advisor) was spent with two of the four people there complaining about my advisor and how mean he was.

Everything is nothing

2008-12-05T08:16:00.007-06:00

I have to appreciate the irony. Of the four people that I could reasonably date, I feel like I could really love and be excited about being with only the one whom I cannot marry. Rob is the only one whom I feel breathless, warm, and happy for, before, during, and after being with him.

Of the four people that I could reasonably date, the one that I could most readily marry is the one I have the most doubts about the quality of our eventual relationship. Spending time with Alan can be really wonderful, but I don't feel like I can count on Alan's logical intelligence, and it makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes uncharitable thoughts leap into my head. His emotional intelligence more than compensates, and yet I don't trust my own logical intelligence enough to be the only one.

To the extent I have any kind of relationships with Max and Simon, they are really too nascent to know much about.

Max is the smartest and the most ambitious of the three (the ambition is mostly by default --- Alan and Simon aren't at all ambitious), but he is also the most arrogant and self-justifying. Every time he's said something that shows dubious judgment and I've raised my eyebrows at it ("How exactly do these hookups of yours work? Do you think there's any danger of hurting people's feelings?", "I know you didn't anticipate ending up with a child, but what made you think you shouldn't wear condoms?"), he justified himself instead of being more balanced. That troubles me, though I understand it because that's how I am. None of this is prohibitive to a relationship.

Rob, I feel compelled to remind myself, is at least as smart as Max, professionally confident (rather than arrogant) and apparently quite good at what he does, and reflective about his ethics. Though a bit Walter Mittyish. (I've wondered sometimes whether Rob would wear purple striped polo shirts every day for the rest of his life if I asked him to.)

Simon is only possible to have a relationship with via long-distance, but his record of disappearing makes me wonder if that is even possible. He is very smart, but not brilliant; sensitive, but not perceptive; the prototypical nice guy whom everyone likes, but seems not to have many intimate friendships. Moderation is great, but can feel like simultaneously everything and thus nothing.

And that's what my romantic life feels like. Everything and thus nothing.

It's enough to make me decide that I can't prejudge, and maybe I shouldn't disqualify Zeke on the grounds that I am afraid he would hurt me. Maybe his emotional detachment could melt away. It sounds like he's never hugged a girl before. It wouldn't hurt to try to hug him next time I see him to see what happens. Probably nothing.

Rob comes out of all of this looking pretty good. We get along, he has flashes of brilliance, and I could fall in love with him and kind-of feel like I have already started to. The only thing "wrong" with him is his entire culture and ancestry. That's all.

Dating update: again!

2008-12-05T07:13:00.007-06:00

When I was in school, I was constantly made fun of. My friends dated people starting in middle school, but even at times when I was popular and thinner, no one wanted to date me until the very end of high school. And in college even I stayed with the same guy for way too long partially because I knew I was far from hot stuff on the dating market. And not much has changed for me, as far as appearance. I have learned social skills. And confidence and self-efficacy.

But somehow it turned out that finding dates is no longer a problem. I have more potential dates than I have time for them. Now the game is to get married, and now that's the stage that I'm slower at and having more trouble with. It's ironic. Some people stayed in the stage where it is hard for them to find dates, and I figured that would be the only reason someone wouldn't be married. I didn't realize that it was possible to have many potential dates and yet not be married.

While I was visiting my college roommate, we spoke about her relationship: they've been together without marriage or engagement for about a decade, and they've decided to fish or cut bait. He talked about breaking up with her --- cynically, I'm guessing because he's realized that his value in the dating market has gone up as he's developed social skills and success --- and she felt uncomfortable because she knew she didn't want to fall into the trap of being the stereotypically clingy woman, but she was happy with the relationship. Now he says he doesn't want to break up with her, and she wasn't sure what to do because he can't just keep changing his mind like this. She doesn't think very much about marriage and family, so I reminded her of that, and what it's like to be on the dating market, and you can't count on having kids after age 35, so whatever she ends up doing she should do it sooner rather than later.

And now suddenly this talk reminded me of my own biological clock. It would be a really good idea for me to get married in the next year. And somehow I don't feel like I am any closer to this goal.

I have to make a list so that I can keep track, and I suppose I should narrow it down and stop thinking about the unlikely ones.

1. Rob --- my friend of 7 years whom I could see myself falling in love with, were he not a WASP so out of bounds to marry unless he changed or unless I decided to violate a huge taboo --- asked me yesterday if I wanted to spend time with him next weekend, and told me today that he didn't want to talk to me anymore until he feels better because he feels terrible every time he talks to me. I know the feeling of wanting to talk with someone and then feeling terrible, every time, but then going back for more, and I hate that I've made someone feel like that. But I'm impressed he has better willpower than I do.

He says he is more excited about me than anyone he has been with since high school, and he didn't know it was possible to feel like this anymore. And I feel that way too. I am not sure if I've caught onto his excitement or if I reciprocate his excitement, but either way it is nice. And I love talking with him. There is just this taboo and cultural difference. There's a part of my life he will never understand unless he joins it, and unfortunately that part of my life gets smaller every year as I become increasingly unusual as an "older single".

2. The guy from last year, let's call him Simon: he used to live abroad, where I had my potential postdoc, and I stayed with him, and as we waited for my ride to the airport, he slowly put his arm around me, and it was among the sweetest moments of my life. He moved to my grad school town, where I still had furniture, and I offered him all my old furniture --- he took some bookcases, and I never heard from him again in spite of a dozen phone calls and emails (partly because I wanted to talk with him, and partly because I needed to settle the furniture matter because the person who took my apartment was getting impatient.) I didn't understand, but let it go. Maybe he got into a serious relationship already. Who knows.

So we haven't spoken since September despite my repeated emails and calls, but on a lark, I called him over Thanksgiving because I thought he might be home: he grew up in the same small city my dad did. So we saw each other over Thanksgiving. He apologized profusely for having dropped off the face of the earth. He said he got busy, and then embarrassed. We took a walk and then had lunch together at my uncle's, talking with all my various relatives: as he spoke to my relatives, I noticed he kept looking at me. After he left, all of my uncles and aunts said practically in unison how much they like him. And it was really nice. Not exciting, but just really nice. And if I had to find someone who was the most likely person to be married to, it would be him. Except I don't know he would be someone I would be likely to marry because of his strange dropping off the face of the earth. Perhaps he gets depressed. Perhaps he is scared of commitment: he's never sounded particularly excited about anyone he's dated, and his family always feels a little detached and off to me. Maybe it's just that one of his parents is European.

He lives a short plane ride away, so long distance would be annoying, but possible. But we haven't even gotten to the point of going on an explicit date.

3. Alan is still around. He would be a great father and a sweet husband, and he's totally adorable, though I am really not so excited about him. Which is okay. Adorable and sweet is fantastic.

4. Maxim is thinking about breaking up with his sort-of girlfriend. We sent each other email at the same time. Something about him makes me feel like he is not marriage material.

5. Zeke, that emotionally-detached newly-secular guy who is so not a good idea. But we keep talking about the dates he keeps going on, intended to be for marriage. He says that he just waits for them to realize that he isn't religious, as they all are, and turn him down. So maybe he is relationship material. And if he wants to date me in spite of my being older, that's his choice.

6. That guy in Europe.

7. That guy from my grad school who lives across town keeps calling and emailing, and I keep up with my 30-50% response rate.

8. And, as long as I am being thorough, my neighbor the closeted evangelical who is 6 years younger than I.

What is wrong with me that I have these possibilities and yet feel like there's no way I could get engaged in the next year?

NPR in a small town

2008-12-03T17:16:00.004-06:00

I had dinner with some faculty in a small college town. Someone mentioned a 5 minute piece on an entertainment NPR show broadcast that weekend. The probability that someone would hear a random 5 minute snippet on an NPR show could be fairly low since it's only 5 minutes, but it turns out everyone had heard it.

Faculty media diets really are more standardized than McDonald's ingredients.

Hard copy vs. electronic applications

2008-12-03T17:05:00.005-06:00

I applied for a job that asked for hard copies. Since it's such a pain to do that and it costs more to have the dossier service send hard copy, I always send the application in electronic copy and ask if they would like a hard copy as well. I have yet to have anyone ask for the hard copy, and I've gotten interviews from these applications, so I know someone is reading them. I was the runner-up to a tenure-track job at a good school under these circumstances, in fact.

I thought my record was broken when I got the mail:

Thanks for expressing your interest in our [position]. We are very much looking forward to reading your work. We can only accept applications in hard copy, so I encourage you to send it to me later this week; in the meantime, I will hold your electronic copy.

So I wrote that on my to do list, and had been home from Thanksgiving for several hours when I got an email that the administrator's computer had crashed. She needs all the applications again, and I can send by email or FedEx the hard copy. As if those are budgetarily the same thing. I resent my email.

The response then came: "Perfect! We're all set, [New Postdoc]. Many thanks."

So it looks like I don't need to send a hard copy, after all.

My record remains perfect. I am guessing that since I sent it on the deadline, the committee wanted to meet right away and needed the applications right then.

That green monster

2008-11-29T05:33:00.003-06:00

I am completely jealous of one of my middle cousins who is 10 years younger. He went to the state school, on his way to med school, is buff and athletic and socially-skilled, beats me at most skill board games, has the surgeon personality which though obnoxious is effective, and has a beautiful, smart, pleasantly confident, put-together girlfriend applying to medical school as well and is way too nice to dislike, though I think she doesn't care too much for me.

On the other hand, I think he is jealous of me as well, which is kind-of silly. I went to an elite college, and I take for granted that I could go from there to any top school in the country in any subject that I'm good at and that I know people in influential positions in a variety of areas. I could have even gotten into med school, though I didn't think so at the time, so didn't even bother taking the rest of the classes and looking into applying.

He started ramping up in math classes at the end of college and as a post-bac applying to med school; while discussing the class he's taking, I let it slip that I took the class my freshman year of college (truly accidental! I didn't realize how competitive it sounded to say casually in the middle of my questions of which text they're using and which part of the course they're in right now that I took it freshman year). Though we actually went through it faster.

I know two and a half more languages than he does, though feel too shy ever to practice any of them, so he is more fluent in the languages that he knows. And I'm more ethnically literate, though that's mostly because school was kicking my ass and I needed another dimension to my life.

And I have crucial qualities that he might not even know to be jealous of. I am a good writer. Though I have no clinical training, I have been told many times that I have a good bedside manner and that I'm good at helping people with their problems. I am an effective teacher, not just for being articulate which he is also, but because I understand a range of students (as a friend says about himself, my transcript is distinguished as much for the diversity of grades as for the quality of them.)

But it is nonetheless frustrating for my cousin to be a foil for my own regrets, especially now that he has a girlfriend to be a female foil. They are 10 years younger and already more put together than I am: a committed relationship, more earning and employment potential, thinner, more confident and socially-skilled, and harder-working with an incentive to continue to be.

The only leg up I have on them is having experienced more challenges, both external and internal, making me more compassionate. But challenges don't necessarily equate to greater resilience; in many cases, it's better not to have had them at all. (E.g., at the extreme, someone with PTSD has had life experience, but they would be better off without it.)

Thinking of all of this, I appreciate Alan even more. He's had challenges, and as a result seems effortlessly compassionate and patient.

Dating internal conflicts

2008-11-24T11:58:00.009-06:00

Monday is a problem for everyone, but lately I have found it not just difficult to get back to work, but also confusing to reflect on the past weekend.

After a pleasant evening and morning with Alan, Sunday afternoon I met up with Maxim, only my second time meeting him (though it still feels as if we've known each other since college), and in just two hours uncovered a terrific array of stories: an early adolescent daughter, 20-40 past sex partners, and questionable ethical judgment.

Like every other woman I claim to like sweetness while being taken in by its opposite, and I'm not sure if I should feel bad about that. What a world of difference in the dating experiences of the reasonably tall, well-built, and somewhat aggressive compared with the short, non-gym-going, and sweet: the former have so many more opportunities than the latter to act poorly. If Alan had the chance to have slept with 20 women, he probably would have, together with the bogus caveat emptor rationalization ("It's not unfair to sleep with someone I'm not seriously interested in if I tell her.") Perhaps I can't hold the 20 against him. The daughter points to exceptionally bad judgement as a college student, though: what college-educated people have completely unprotected sex nowadays, no matter what their girlfriend says? "18 year olds' hormones" can only excuse so much.

Fortunately no decisions to make with respect to Maxim. It was not a date: he paid for my hot chocolate and helped me on with my coat and held doors, but no other indications, and he remains in his 3 month relationship though alluded to uncertainty. Plus it is long-distance.

I begged off early with Maxim, intending to get home early to go to work, but 8 pm still seemed early, so I called my college friend. I haven't named him yet, so let's say Rob, the one who liked me for 7 years and kissed me last month, and I kissed him back, but he's just not marriageable. Rob and I hadn't seen each other since then and I'd been vacillating on whether it was a good idea, but at the moment it seemed more painful not to normalize relations, so I called. He was watching football with his brother, a friend from high school, and the high school friend's wife, and said he was busy, but then called back at the urging of his brother and his friend's wife and said he could drive home to meet me.

So we talked. I don't know if I made him feel any better. I hadn't seen his apartment before, and the whole set-up is more monastic and depressing than I expected: his postdoc is in the middle of nowhere, and it's literally impossible to escape work, even by going home. His work building is visible from his apartment entrance, and sometimes on weekends he will run into his advisor who will ask him to come in. No wonder he is feeling isolated and in need of human contact.

It got late, so I slept on the couch. I'd been asleep for about 3 hours when, apparently unable to sleep for this entire time, he went for a walk. I woke up when he got back, and asked if he was okay and if I could do anything. He said he would feel better if I would give him a hug, and later asked if I would join him in bed. So still wrapped in a blanket, I joined him, and finally he slept. He said he was anticipating this for x weeks and y days. It felt sweet and deeply comfortable just to lie together, and yet seeing his geographic isolation highlighted the desperate loneliness that surely underlies everything.

As he showered, I sat by his bookcases where all of his college notes were catalogued into labelled binders, and picked up his notes from a course with the same course number as my dorm room number: in college I remember he would call my dorm room by the course's name. It's so rare now to get to see someone's handwriting, so on the notes I admired his handwriting and organization and felt oddly proud of him, though all of this was 15 years ago, before I started college. I had been squarely in the middle of my graduating class, but he was in the top 1%, so these notes seemed a bit like a magical relic from an alternate dimension with steady effort and without procrastination.

His dissertation was lying across the rows of binders, and I flipped through that and felt proud of the article published in a top journal in his field. (In one of his few moments of self-confidence, I remember him saying once that he doesn't need a business card because his journal paper is his business card. It wasn't stated in a bragging or grandiose way, simply as fact.)

Feeling proud of the work of someone you care about is a terrific feeling, and it's not something I've been able to feel about a relationship partner for ages. Alan certainly isn't exceptional at what he does, though there are careers that he would be exceptional at; plus he will be a far better parent than I.

But mostly with Rob, I just feel confused. I wish I could put the rest of my life on pause, pursue a relationship to Rob and find out whether it would make any sense at all, and then resume the rest of my life if it wouldn't. Which I think really means that I do really like Rob. I just don't want to deal with the complications. Including the fact that he feels so insecure around me and constantly apologizes. Alan actually does the same thing; I've made fun of this before, and now we laugh about it whenever he apologizes for no reason, but he still does it. The whole thing is enough to make me want to say enough with the insecure men, and find someone entirely different.

Bingeing, or why Boice is right

2008-11-20T17:17:00.004-06:00

Boice emphasizes the importance of timely starting and stopping, and I am starting to understand the latter better.

Yesterday I was sitting in the departmental seminar, and it was one of those "where things are going" broad lectures, so I started thinking about my own work and sketched out a paper based on some work that had been excised from a journal article I wrote. The material is substantial enough that I could turn it into its own paper, and possibly more than one, so I sketched out what I could do.

I stayed late, and actually worked. When I left the office at 8, I was convinced that I could produce a rough draft of a paper by Thanksgiving, if not sooner. On my way to the train I realized I had forgotten a small adjustment, but usually it doesn't matter. As soon as I got home, I tried it out and once I made it, everything I had seen disappeared. Nothing, apparently. I continued working until 11.

First thing in the morning, I sketched out a logical approach that would figure out whether the previous night's failure was indeed a failure. It was.

I flailed for the rest of the day, making tentative stabs, doing mindless things which might be either productive or totally useless while watching internet TV. I should have just gone to a bookstore or for a walk to clear my head.

If I had been more moderate and stopped early yesterday, I could have avoided the delusion and thus the later disappointment, which is what made me unproductive. Better just to be open and have good will and optimism that eventually something will work.

New projects

2008-11-20T16:40:00.005-06:00

I am almost at the point of submitting my last paper from my dissertation to a journal, so I am able to start new projects, but it's really hard to get started.

1. Making connections is not easy. My advisor is wonderful, but does little research himself, so I have a vague list of people to meet with. A senior faculty member closely associated with my advisor (i.e., it seems almost mandatory to work with her, and I like her a lot, so want to) said I could join a project that a junior member was working on, but the junior faculty hasn't answered any emails yet. I sent one in September and one in early November, and then wrote the senior to ask her whether the project still needs help.

Another senior member gave me some material, but they have already published on the area, and it's not clear that I have anything left to do with it. I can learn some new techniques and see whether they yield anything, or I could just move on until I find a better project to work on. But that requires sending more endless streams of emails to make appointments to meet more people, and also explain why I am writing so late. But I think that's what I have to do. I have a whole list of such people.

2. I am not used to not making clear progress. Of course part of academia is dead ends, but I haven't had any dead ends since beginning the last of my dissertation research about 3 years ago. All of my dissertation papers began as class projects with deadlines, so I while there was lots of work to do and small failures in the past 3 years, I had already done enough work that I knew the basic ideas were all sound.

The progress of writing is slow, but at least you know it is progress. Rarely does anyone make prose worse by editing, and writing longer just provides more material that can be distilled into a final version. I am starting to idealize the old days of struggling to sit down to write.

3. I met with the department chair first thing yesterday morning. He seems like a laid-back guy, but I sat in his class on the first day of school to see what it was like and heard him say that there are no extensions on papers because "Every minute of every day is scheduled, and when I grade papers, I block out a period of time for that and do them then. If I do not have your paper then, there is literally not a minute in my day that can accommodate more grading."

Indeed, this appointment was made a month in advance. The train has been quick and on time for the three months that I have lived here, and for the first time ever it got stopped on the tracks for 15 minutes, making me 10 minutes late for the 30 minute appointment.

It got worse once I was actually there. I told him that I had many choices to make, and wanted to ask his opinion what were the most fundable areas. He seemed to think that I was saying that I didn't fit into either the department or with my advisor. I emphasized the great number of choices that I had and wanted to ask advice from as many people as possible. And then he proceeded to tell me some specific research areas that he personally finds interesting. He didn't say anything about funding, though perhaps if he is interested in them, they are fundable.

The combination of not having clear people to work with or a project with clear potential makes me feel unbalanced.

My life as sitcom

2008-11-18T07:54:00.007-06:00

Last night, my neighbor introduced me to the sitcom the Big Bang Theory. For those like me who haven't watched television consistently since Murphy Brown, TBBT is about 4 male Caltech professors, two of whom live across the hall from a cute blonde aspiring actress. Many canonical nerd types are represented: high-strung asexual mathematician/theorist, neurotic oversexed Jews, quiet undersexed South Asians, borderline cool but still socially awkward types, and bitchy cold emasculating women (a side character). Leaving aside the last, which is offensive but makes me reflect whether I am anything like her, it's extremely entertaining to see academia in sitcom format.

Of course having watched the first episode with my neighbor, I went home and immediately watched another 9 episodes online through Chinese and Spanish pirate websites, sating my curiosity. Having seen so many in such a short time, the format is stuck in my head, in much the same way that I found myself thinking in Onegin stanzas after reading most of Eugene Onegin in one sitting.

So I have started thinking that my life fits well into sitcom format.

1. My neighbors introduce potentially interesting plot elements.
- The girl across the street is a cute lesbian friend-of-a-friend taking a break from a long-standing relationship.
- The neighbor who introduced me to TV lives just 50 feet away and I am constantly passing his door: he's 6 years younger, politically Conservative bordering on offensive, and seems to have a crush on me (he's very cute, and you can't beat the convenience; alas not marriageable).
- Two girls live down the block, and sometimes spending time with them feels like Good Cop, Bad Cop. The Good Cop is so fun, and some part of me really likes the Bad Cop (the other part wonders if she hates me). Minor characters.
- Newly irreligious 6 years younger cute aspiring writer of distinguished lineage whose parents still don't know, who sees me either as a potential friend or as potential sexual practice.
- A good-looking older guy across the neighborhood I know from grad school has photogenic weirdness such as speaking earnestly and openly about spirituality and illness. Regrettably I feel discomfort and have a constant urge to flee him. He's the one who made me take the morning off to drive him to get his wisdom teeth out, and then left email and voice messages for the next few days about dry socket.

2. My work includes both popular appeal and irony, and my advisor is good-humored and avuncular.

3. My personal life is a humorous mess:
- Hermit ex-boyfriend who (inexplicably and probably regrettably) I love, but it cannot be because he is so dedicated to his hermetic existence he is not sure he can share an apartment with a spouse, much less have kids. If he finds a spouse, she can live across the hall, but he also likes to joke about dying alone. I'm his major point of contact with the world, and advise him on his work. Which is also full of popular appeal and irony.
- Aforementioned 7 year guy and Alan are good foils: very smart and socially awkward elite PhD WASP who runs marathons vs. not so smart but emotionally attuned ethnic guy who was the only one to fall in the mud when we went hiking.

4. My past and elsewhere includes colorful characters:
- Relatives who had a sudden conversion to either fundamentalist Protestantism or did the Hansen's law ethnic thing.
- One ex was a cool hippie who spoke earnestly about which legumes are easiest for him to digest and how he could find out a lot about himself by putting sesame oil in his first urine of the morning and observing how it disperses. (We actually did this, and found it just stayed in a blob, which is not mentioned as a possible outcome.)
- A friend who has never dated anyone ever for no apparent reason, although now her perpetual singleness has just become self-perpetuating, but she has humorous self-deprecation to an art.
-

And so on.

Painful conversation

2008-11-17T11:11:00.002-06:00

Saturday night I read David Sedaris's story about how he has a low IQ and doesn't like to think logically, and thought that maybe I was overly judgmental about Alan. I could live with David Sedaris, after all.

Then I had the following conversation yesterday with Alan, after we heard something about how Snow mapped the London cholera epidemic, and wondered if I was crazy.

Alan: Newton did something similar. I mean, it wasn't exactly mapping diseases, but it was similar.

Me: Really? What did he do?

Alan: Well, I don't know. . . but I remember that it was similar. I'd have to look back at the Principia to see what I mean.

Me: Okay.

Alan: Or maybe I am thinking of something else. Maybe it was quantum mechanics. [He does something with his hands that I suppose he means to indicate quantum mechanics.] Does this make sense?

Me: Um, no.

The disadvantage of rarely having appointments

2008-11-13T09:07:00.008-06:00

After a week of working at home somewhat sporadically and inefficiently, so not going in, and definitely not looking at my calendar, I missed an appointment with my advisor in a downtown coffeeshop. At least I was actually doing work at the moments I should have been on the train to meet him: preparing for journal club and emailing with the grad student organizer, so I have an alibi.

Fortunately he was running late, and his assistant emailed me to tell me he was going to be late, so I remembered the appointment at all. I dressed quickly cursing myself and wondering if I would show up at the meeting with tears streaming down my face, but grateful that I showed no inclination of crying. But realized with a sinking heart that I also had to call. Even driving I couldn't make it there in a reasonable time.

I dialed the 9 digits, and held my finger over the 10th. I thought about hanging up, but I knew that I had to make this phone call and if I wasn't going to dial the last digit now I was going to have to dial it in a minute. So I pressed the last digit.

I told him, and he said in a somewhat joking manner "You're standing me up!" I said I felt really stupid about it. He said that he could make me feel really stupid, but really it was better just to reschedule, and he was running late too and was meeting someone else there in a little while.

Oh my gosh, I love him. And if I were a different person I would vow always to look at my calendar first thing in the morning, and actually do it. But I don't have that much faith in myself that I won't forget a meeting again. Particularly not in the beginning of a winter post-time-change not-going-to-the-gym not-wanting-to-be-in-my-windowless-and-phoneless-office funk.

Tomorrow I have to take a friend to get his wisdom teeth out early in the morning, and it occurred to me with a start that I might not remember that either.

At least now I am dressed and wearing my coat. And I would like to make my weekly tally of office visits be at least two: today, in addition to Monday.

Farther afield

2008-11-11T17:13:00.004-06:00

A friend of mine from London called me on Sunday, reminding me that there are more men than I have dreamt about in my philosophies, Horatio. He is quite smart. And we think similarly about culture and religion. He has the charming accent and stereotypically marginally unattractive face (why do these go together so frequently even among people whose grandparents or parents weren't from the Commonwealth, but just grow up there?) He really likes me, and therefore he is scared to death of me. He has no business trips to America planned for the near future, especially with the economy and his company as it is, but he says he wants to stay in touch, though I'm not sure what scenarios he has in mind. I find him, as I believe the British would say, dead boring. Conversation with him is essentially trading monologues.

This August in the evening we took a walk to a romantic place along the water near other couples. He was petrified to touch me, and didn't. He told me about how he stopped being so traditional, just all of a sudden. He had never touched a girl his entire life, he said, and he didn't really have any relationships afterwards. "That's remarkable," I said. "Most guys would go out and at least have sex to see what it's like." In that understated genteel English way, he said, "Actually, I did." No further details, though, and somehow I caught his English restraint and didn't ask the flurry of questions I would have, had he been American.

And in my former city, someone who got fed up with me because in my last few months in town, we would make tentative plans and then flake out because I was busy and the plans were only tentative. And I was busy. I was out of town at least twice a month. But I could have made time. He said perhaps I am better at staying in touch when I am out of town. I haven't called him, but maybe I should.

And a former former former city, someone else who I didn't date because he is 18" taller than me and weighs twice what I do, and I find that intimidating. And he has an unstable family background: he dropped out of both high school because he left home at 16, and then dropped out of college, though he's done well in the work world, certainly better than some of my college friends. And I don't understand the way he conducts his friendships. And he just smells wrong.

I feel so ungrateful.

More on the friend from college

2008-11-11T15:59:00.008-06:00

I felt wistful for a little while about the friend from college, and feeling the inevitability of a relationship, almost. I felt so much better about him than the alternatives, though honestly thinking about him I think just as often about how defined his back and shoulder muscles were, as I noticed the first time we hugged.

But then I talked with him.

He volunteered any evening to come out here. Which is not easy on a weekday evening. The traffic goes the wrong way, and it can take 2 hours.

I said that I have a lot to catch up on: online lectures and reading from a course I'm auditing, work to make up for the fact that I am missing Friday to take a friend to get his wisdom teeth out, etc.

As we spoke about our weeks, it turned out he is quite busy producing something with a deadline, so I remarked on how he could commit to coming out here. He said, "I'm really. . . I suppose you could say motivated to see you."

Oh, I see. At least you are transparent.

I said that, to be perfectly honest, I didn't want to get emotionally entangled when I wasn't sure if the relationship had a future. There was this major issue that he had been deferring over an email conversation we had while he was away. What I said in the email still held: I didn't want to date him as he was, and I also didn't want to change him, and it seemed like he didn't want to change anyhow. I had said, "I'll date you if and only if we at least talk about this" and he already said at least once he didn't want to talk about it.

And this time too, he started talking about something else. It wasn't a bad transition, but I didn't feel like we were done, so I brought the conversation back. He said that he was sad he wasn't going to get to see me for awhile, and he really didn't want to think about it, so changed the subject.

I know that I can read this charitably. He leads a pretty shy and solitary postdoc existence, and he really desperately wants to connect with someone he likes as much as that person will let him, and he wants to revel in the fact that the girl he had a crush on for seven years kissed him back.

But avoiding uncomfortable conversations sounds like he acknowledges that the relationship probably has no future, at least as long as I want to avoid assimilating into the mass of areligious and cultureless but open-minded academics, and just wanting to come over when it's too late to do anything other than maybe eat dinner sounds an awful lot like a booty call.

I felt sad not to see him, too. I would like a hug, especially since facebook says it is national cuddle day (who knew?), and someone to share my soup with (the "very ethnic" soup my ex's grandmother used to make, in fact), but I realized it was probably wise to hold the line until I knew more.

The next day the issue seemed even more clear: I realized even more what a terrible trait his avoidance is. He was sad that he had a 10 year post-college drought from relationships, but beyond missing the closeness parts of relationships, he also missed the negotiation and learning to work with someone else that most people learn in relationships. And what can I make of it that he still has a crush on his ex from college. The two girls he's dated since: one girl I set him up with. The second he found on eharmony and doesn't find her so interesting, but she likes him and is willing to sleep with him, though he said he feels bad that he slept with her since he doesn't really like her.

As his friend, I have never thought about it. As a potential date, it's a real problem.

I know that not all WASPs avoid uncomfortable conversations, but in his case, he really fits that stereotype. Unbelievably, he also said that he never discussed sex with his past partners. I never understood how that worked, and figured it was only the poorly educated or very religious, but apparently not. And what I thought were mainstream sexual practices at least to try once, he found kind-of shocking. It's like this alternative world. I take for granted that people speak openly and try anything reasonable.

So I spent part of this morning catching up on my eharmony correspondence.

The "not a good idea" virgin

2008-11-09T12:28:00.005-06:00

I have a friend from my grad school city who refers to some guys as "not a good idea", and strangely enough they all have the same profile: tall, thin, lithe of body and spirit, intellectual, often writers, witty without necessarily being funny, sensitive, a bit effete, so very removed and yet all the more compelling for it.

I recently met one of these "not a good idea" guys --- my friend was with me at the time, and she agreed he was. He thinks I'm 4 years older than him, but actually I am 6 years older (the social age I adopted on moving is 2 years younger than my actual age.) He seems at home in every setting so no one would ever guess it, but he just got out of a ~monastery, and his cool manner is covering up what I'm guessing is completely uncertainty how to act around women or pursue a romantic relationship since he's never been on a normal date.

I keep telling myself that he doesn't really like me. He just wants to date someone and learn how the whole business works. And, at any rate, apparently comes from a totally distant family and may not be capable of having a normal relationship or really caring for someone else. (I didn't have this conversation with him, but with a friend whose family sounds very similar I had the following exchange, "Have you ever loved anyone?" "No." "Your father? Your mother?" "Hmm... No.")

I picked up some good safe sex pamphlets and condoms from a health center, and will attempt to become a big sister, very much not interested, though of course I am. Manifestation of my own fear of commitment? Or just the ineffable appeal of distant men.

Dating update

2008-11-09T11:24:00.006-06:00

The current status of dating:

1. I'm still seeing Alan, the guy who is less smart than most of my friends. It turns out that he had a health condition as an infant which (although he is perfectly healthy now) made him malnourished and slowed down his development and might explain what I've noticed. Which makes it make sense, but also makes it seem somehow more scary and unknown.

It's comfortable and I enjoy talking with him. We don't see each other a ton because of travel schedules and he lives about an hour away and doesn't have a car, so it's going very slowly which is just about right given my uncertainties.

2. New thing: A friend from college who became a friend during first year of grad school and we were friends throughout grad school. Honestly, it was one of those classic situations where he had a crush on me, but he was never my first priority socially, but towards the end of grad school we started working out together for part of the spring, and I started realizing that he was actually really attractive. Sweat, pheromones, athleticism (he has run marathons, but is very self-effacing about it), I don't know. Last year we were in different cities, but now we're 1-2 hours apart. We've only seen each other a few times, but the sexual tension grew, and the last time he came over we kissed, he stayed over, and told me he loved me. And then our travel schedules diverged for 2 weeks. He's smart, sensitive, attractive, and a phenomenally good person, so it should be amazing, other than the travel divergence and small distance issue. And he still acts as though he has to chase me, which feels a little uncomfortable sometimes because I'm afraid I will take advantage of that (e.g., he's willing to drive to me disproportionally often even though it's far), though it's definitely understandable if you finally kiss the person you've had a crush on for 7 years, but I'm sure that will come out in the wash.

But the problem is, it's an ethno-religious mismatch, like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", only moreso, and that's why we've never dated. I ran into a colleague at a conference, and hung out with him and his wife for awhile talking about this. They are Keralan Catholic and understood the situation completely. They just moved to a new city and found a Keralan Catholic church and instantly became part of a community, had people to help them buy a house and advise them on locations, and even be a little bit parental for them. And part of the reason they have this community is because they made it a priority to marry another Keralan Catholic and maintain their traditions, and they get so much cultural and social capital in return, so much more than if they were generic academics or even from a larger and less specific culture.

I thought about it and I really can't marry someone who doesn't share my culture. And he doesn't. He's come to various things very occasionally for 7 years and still mispronounces things as Americans do and isn't clear on the concept in so many respects. He likes it about me that I am so "ethnic", but he isn't looking for a new culture or religion --- he's happy with his own. But I can't give up my cultural capital or have a divided household.

We've emailed a bit about this since we weren't able to meet up for a couple weeks because of travel schedule, and he said in a phone call he understands and sees the issues that I'm raising as compelling and he just doesn't have an answer to any of it. And that's where it's left.

The last thing I did in my apartment was spend the evening together and wake up with him. When I came back from a long time away, I laid down and the pillow smelled like him. The two glasses we drank wine from were still in the dish rack, and two water glasses in the living room. And somehow it feels even more compelling at this distance.

That's not everything, but it's already more than I can think about.

Poster rules

2008-11-09T10:14:00.004-06:00

Edward Tufte has books and there are entire webpages about him, but this is how I would summarize rules of good posters since now I am apparently an expert. I'm sure there are different ways to think about it, though.

- Nothing irrelevant to the research, especially no clip art or background pictures or stock photos. At gigantic conferences, I saw the following examples: E.g., medical-related poster with a gigantic picture of a generic member of the patient population, such as a random baby or old person. Worse, but fortunately rarer: that picture in the background with the poster text on top of it. Still worse: a rainbow background behind the text for no apparent reason. Not fatal, but unnecessary: decorations along the corners for no reason, such as an ivy frame or a few different colors. Related Powerpoint phenomenon that I've seen even faculty do: clip art animations that are either irrelevant or tangential to the text. Once I saw a fire engine rushing across the top of the slide to douse a fire. Over and over again. And the presentation had nothing to do with fire or fire engines or emergencies.

- Tables are easier for the writer, but difficult to understand in the brief time a reader is willing to look at your poster, so use plots whenever a table would take a lot of time to understand.

- Very concise text. Strunk and White and then cut it down further. Just the text of an abstract explained can be an entire poster.

- Follow rules for good data display: e.g., no pie charts, no chart junk, no 3d bar graphs, avoid other bad data display issues.

- Organize the data for the reader: put it in an order that allows the reader to see patterns.

- Omit every mark that is not strictly necessary, e.g., most tick marks in enumerated lists.

- Use color to illustrate or organize your data and text, but not otherwise.

Even with Murphy's Law

2008-11-09T09:37:00.007-06:00

I went to a conference recently where everything went wrong. This is a conference that practically everyone in my PhD program goes to, primarily for job interviews, but I skipped that year for whatever reason. When I submitted last spring, I figured I would be on the job market. After deciding not to do much job applications, I decided to go anyway because it fit in conveniently, and I thought I had a decent chance of winning the poster award. Partly because my research I submitted is solid and of interest, but mostly because most people don't know the rules of graphic design. I am not very good at it and don't have an artistic eye, but I do know the rules a la Edward Tufte and >90% of posters violate them.

1. I ordered my poster from the internet with very little time to spare. I missed the first day of the conference waiting for UPS because my friend said they came early, and only got to go to the evening social event.

2. The poster company left off part of the address and I forgot to add part of the address, so UPS wasn't able to deliver.

3. I was staying with a close friend who got irritated with me and I didn't realize this until he was already irritated, but after all this I had to ask for a ride to the UPS depot.

4. I ordered the wrong size: they had foam board of a certain size, and I ordered 6-8" too big in each dimension, so had to cut up a second foam board and attach it to the first to make it bigger, and then come up with a way of getting the whole thing to stand up, and there were raggedy edges on the side and top, and mine was clearly a different size than others'.

And my irritated friend was no consolation for any of this. "Most of the problems are all you. Sure, it's an honest mistake to misremember the size, but did you see anyone else who had the same problem?"

5. While waiting for my poster, I put up an 8x11 version on a piece of foam board and while I was gone it got splashed with coffee since it was right across from the coffee urn. Fortunately the same thing didn't happen with the real poster.

6. I didn't know anyone at all. Well, to modify that: I didn't know anyone at all, except the incoming president of the professional organization who was faculty in my program whom I got along quite well with. Which is like being at a wedding where you only know the bride or groom.

Usually I find people at conferences are happy to talk with strangers, but met lots at this one who weren't.

Typical interaction: I took the bus to go the < 1 mile from the conference to the social event in an attempt to be social. Three chattering girls sit down next to me and keep talking for 10 minutes about one of their job market travails without acknowledging me. I get tired of pretending to read the program and introduced myself, not intending to stop their conversation, but making me no longer invisible. They stop their conversation and look kind-of upset about it.

Another interaction: on the way back, we were in a crowded elevator and there was a guy 6" from me talking about public transportation with someone, so I asked him about it. After we get off the bus, he practically runs to the train station, and then as we are standing next to each other at the computer ticket-buying machines completely ignores me, and rushes away and to the other side of the platform. I didn't want to be his best friend. Sheesh.

I did sit down with random people at a table and talk with most of the people there, but came away with nothing professionally relevant. One woman was an assistant dean at a local university and mentioned her past job involved a lot of travel, so I asked what her husband did that he could relocate so easily. She said he was a "well-known successful journalist". Oh.

But I was going to this conference because I thought that I had a good chance at the poster award, and. . . . nonetheless I won one of the awards for the poster session, given to 6% of the poster presenters! It's the first award that I've ever won for my work since freshman year of college. (My CV has about 15 lines under the honors section, but it's mostly travel grants and grad school funding.) So I'm thrilled.

At the poster-related social event, after all my experiences I didn't bother trying to socialize. Most of the "congratulations" that I got seemed like the double-edged jealous type where they might be looking for all the non-merit-based reasons I got the award (e.g., hot topic) or reasons they think I shouldn't have gotten it (e.g., lots of white space), rather than genuine. I didn't want to hear any more of them than I had to.

Alternative careers for PhDs: air traffic controller

2008-10-08T05:50:00.004-05:00

I'm not entirely serious, but today's NYT article about the training of air traffic controllers makes it sounds pretty appealing: lots of problem solving, interaction, good pay, job security (not enough of them) at least until artificial intelligence gets really good.

Their pay exactly parallels PhDs' pay: 19k per year during grad school, 30k per year during the next stage of training, and then up for real people, up to over 100k.

Is dating someone less smart settling?

2008-10-06T11:29:00.007-05:00

Alan and I spent yesterday together, and had a really nice time just walking around and exploring my new city. I am bowled over what an empathetic, sensitive, warm, sweet person he is, and I keep noticing these good traits to countervail the fact that I am also noticing how he's not as smart as most of my friends. We communicate well, and so far it hasn't been a big deal, but I did find myself getting impatient that a few times I could literally count a few seconds between when I figured something out and when he did.

Partly, the issue is framing. Were I dating a mathematician, I would expect him not to notice things also, but for different reasons. And just as some mathematicians' voices sound nerdy (why is that?), his voice sounds plodding and tentative.

Maybe it doesn't matter. Many issues that couples decide about their family are about values and emotions rather than facts, and he's much better at those than I am. I think we might have traditional gender roles, but exactly reversed. I don't know how men do it, dating women who are less smart than they. Perhaps they just don't find intelligence to be as much of a turn on as I do.

I am thinking this through early on, and it seems pretty early --- just five dates, even if the fifth was all day --- to think about marriage. But at the same time, if I knew that I couldn't marry someone, now's a good time to decide that. And if I should focus on Alan and stop dating others, that's a commitment in itself.

I reread Lori Gottlieb's settling article, and realized that Alan wouldn't even count as settling by her criteria.

as your priorities change from romance to family, the so-called “deal breakers” change. Some guys aren’t worldly, but they’d make great dads. Or you walk into a room and start talking to this person who is 5'4" and has an unfortunate nose, but he “gets” you. My long-married friend Renée offered this dating advice to me in an e-mail: "I would say even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he’s someone you respect intellectually, makes you laugh, appreciates you … I bet there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight, and bald category (which they all eventually become anyway)."
...
The more-pertinent questions, to most concerned mothers of daughters in their 30s, have to do with whether the daughter’s boyfriend will make a good father; or, if he’s a workaholic, whether he can provide the environment for her to be a good mother. As my own mother once advised me, when I was dating a musician, “Everyone settles to some degree. You might as well settle pragmatically.”

She is defending women marrying guys they aren't even attracted to, among other things. I think Alan and I could have a fantastic relationship and our interests and values line up really well. There's just the intelligence thing. The one sticker for me is "respect intellectually". I'm not sure that's the right wording. As the article points out, I think correctly, married life is not a seminar, and personal qualities may matter far more.

Last year I was thinking I needed to accept the possibility that I could end up a single mom by choice. Now I know that doesn't have to happen, and it's a relief. I just need to learn to stop expecting a life partner to be everything to me. That, I hear, is a particularly modern expectation engendered by the lack of community so everyone ends up in isolated pairs.

But I keep thinking of the xkcd about commitment. But Lori talks back to that xkcd:

No matter what women decide—settle or don’t settle—there’s a price to be paid, because there’s always going to be regret. Unless you meet the man of your dreams (who, by the way, doesn’t exist, precisely because you dreamed him up), there’s going to be a downside to getting married, but a possibly more profound downside to holding out for someone better. My friend Jennifer summed it up this way: “When I used to hear women complaining bitterly about their husbands, I’d think, ‘How sad, they settled.’ Now it’s like, ‘God, that would be nice.’”

Epilogue

2008-09-30T18:34:00.004-05:00

The young researcher down the hall had, in fact, committed suicide, but thankfully not in the office. The office was nonetheless a crime scene. Drug addiction was involved, but it wasn't an overdose. I wonder if they found signs of drugs in the office.

Unfortunately, the person I got this information from was their former officemate. Which made it slightly weird that someone who had never met this person was asking.

My glam single life

2008-09-30T13:23:00.003-05:00

I feel like such a stereotype of an unmarried educated woman. I have been reading NYC glam-single lit lately, like Candace Bushnell's original Sex in the City book and Toby Young's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, so I've been conscious of the trade-off between career and family, and how jealous everyone is of the other.

With this set-up I went to dinner at a guy I knew from college, also a postdoc. Their 2 young kids were asleep, so it was just his MD wife and a couple of guests described as "another couple" who I assumed would be around the same age as us. I felt a little weird about being the fifth wheel, but that's not totally unusual that in a group of a few people over 30, lots of them are married. It turned out that the couple was engaged and still in college, so about 10 years younger, and I no longer felt strange about it: they're more of an outlier than I am!

I felt stereotypical in two ways. First, while we were catching up about our mutual college friends, when I asked about a guy who I'd hung out with a lot, his only comment was, "Well, he's still dating the same girl as before." The doorbell rang, and I didn't get a chance until much later to demonstrate that I was actually asking how the guy was doing, not whether he was single.

Second, as they asked me what I did for fun, I realized how little of the city they have gotten to experience in a few years here, compared with my month. They had kids shortly after moving to this city, and had never done much in the city other than the basic survival activities and a few restaurants.

And the dating update. When it rains, it pours.

Ones which aren't going anywhere first:

1. My date last week that I was nervous for was extremely likeable, and I would have loved to be friends. He was short and slightly built, and I'm sure women sometimes reject him for that, but conversation didn't feel like an equal exchange and I didn't feel the right kind of attraction.

2. An English professor from a local university who was a third generation academic (!). He had a fantastic voice, and I was especially excited to meet him because he lives much closer to me than anyone else, but nothing. It was one of the most intelligent conversations I've had on a date, though, and I really enjoyed it. In retrospect, I think the conversation was so intelligent because it was not personal. Usually I get people talking about their past relationships or sex or something else very personal; that's how I discovered that one of my dates was an adulterer on the first date. I don't do this on purpose, but the conversation just goes there. And it just didn't go anywhere personal. At the end, he made me pay my $4 towards our coffee bill.

3. The adulterer. I had thought I'd mentioned him, but apparently not. His first sexual partner was a married woman, and within a year of his own marriage, he had sex with his boss's teenage daughter. And several more during his marriage. At least he was forthcoming. I hadn't been looking for any of this information, and somehow it all poured out.

Ones which continue now:

1. Alan, discussed in previous post. I am taking it as a good sign that he reminds me of the guy that I almost married, more than I could ever imagine two people resembling each other: physically, academic interests, personality. But he's better than the guy I almost married in the two reasons we didn't stay together. Completely uncanny how well things line up, especially with the coincidence of having gone to high school together.

2. Daniel, who is 7 years older than I. He's sharp, decisive, and assertive, and that's refreshing, but he also sounds like a loyal friend. Something else that is frankly refreshing is that he is not poor. I don't know how it is, but I've had so many relationships where with my TA/RA or postdoc salary, I earned more than the guy I was dating, and that's pretty hard to do. He goes slightly to the opposite extreme, and has a few expensive toys which make me a little uncomfortable. Just because people frequently want better than what they have, and consumption becomes a spiral. Definite sparks, but I don't exactly find him the most attractive guy to look at. Which would improve if he continues to lose weight. I looked back at his online profile, and I think he lied about his height. Which is understandable.

3. Maxim was a couple years younger, and the only person I've met so far who would seemingly fit in with all of my friends from all different eras of my life: smart, geeky, quirky, sweet-natured, loyal to his friends, science major. In fact, meeting him felt like I'd known him throughout college, as if we'd been doing problem sets together. Unfortunately he lives farther away than anyone else and is simultaneously working and going to school, so has less time than most. He would be a fantastic boyfriend, but is not the most attractive guy, either. Well-built enough that he could be outright hot if he lost 10 pounds, though.

Daniel and Maxim are similar to me in so many ways, and are much more like the type of people I am used to hanging out with, and I really like spending time with them. I had to tear myself away from our meetings, and stayed with them much later than I'd originally planned. Alan might be a better complement, though; he has patience, empathy, sweetness, calmness beyond most people I've ever met. I'm not going to make any predictions because I don't have enough information, but I find the range of intelligence, assertiveness, quirkiness, sweetness to be really interesting. Coincidentally, they're all in law of some stripe, though I'd guess there's a factor of two difference between their salaries (x, 2x, 4x).

Needless to say, I'm not going on the job market this year, except in the same rough metro area.

"Smart-person things"

2008-09-30T12:19:00.012-05:00

Alan, the guy I'm seeing most seriously (though just 4 dates) reminds me of the guy I almost married. He's sweet and affectionate beyond all reason, and the books on his bookshelf even looks like my ex's, but in a lot of ways I'm smarter and also more aggressive than he is. I have nothing but admiration for him, but I am afraid of feeling clearly smarter, or at least feeling like that makes our relationship unbalanced. He could teach me a lot: his work ethic is leagues beyond mine, and I haven't yet seen a trace of negative emotion, even where it would be understandable.

The main danger zone is that we went to the same high school and had radically different experiences. I was valodictorian with the model set of extracurriculars. I worked hard, but was also fortunate that everything came relatively easily for me, so I had all the obnoxious feelings of entitlement you'd expect, and genuine surprise when effortless success didn't continue through college. Alan was a year older, and he struggled through his non-honors classes, eventually making it to honors-level in a few subjects, though never in math or science, and didn't do any extracurricular activities, but all of this work gave him an incredible work ethic. He went on to one of those impressive small colleges which are unselective because the student body is so self-selected. The trajectory I'm used to hearing is going from a mediocre high school record to a good college and then a great grad school, but his law school had a 3 digit rank.

Most of my friends since college, and I think all of my closest friends, have been similar to me, and I still feel this bond with smart once-outcasts. I feel guilty over how many conversations I've had where the assumption is that everyone present found standardized tests easy or knows calculus or has achievements to downplay, though those are usually true. Naively, I've always figured that high school accomplishments are inversely proportional to high school social difficulties, so those with more average records had more stable social lives. He didn't have many friends either, it turns out, and was just firmly middle of the road in all respects.

It turns out we were in the same high school language class. He remembers me, but I have at best vague memories. Perhaps he was the cute older quiet guy that I would watch and wish I had the guts to talk to. Perhaps he was the cute older quiet guy who disappointed me when he opened his mouth and gave incorrect answers in an insecure and socially-awkward way. Or perhaps that was someone else and another class.

While we were looking through his high school yearbook, we came to a guy I'd known in high school. On paper he was exactly like me, but a year older: valodictorian, same classes and activities, and we even went to the same college and grad school and he married my former roommate. I asked Alan if he knew him, and he did, "My dad really wanted me to be friends with him for some reason, but freshman year, he was doing all these smart-person things and he didn't seem all that interested in talking to me, so we never became friends."

My heart fell. Is that how I would have treated him? Is that why I have at best hazy memories of him? I know what he means by "smart-person things," but does he really feel like these things were so out of reach as the phrase implies and that he isn't a smart person?

I managed to summarize all this into, "What do you mean 'smart-person things' --- you're smart!"
"Law school made me smart."

Which is a fairly profound statement. Hard work makes you smart. Many people --- especially those who hang out with physics and math and music types --- have this vision that smartness is an innate talent, and I think it is in some fields. But in many cases, it really is about how much you work. (I look guiltily at my list of projects that I'm neglecting by writing this blog post.) As far as I know, Alan thinks he's smart. Though he also sees clear limits to how smart he is. He just thinks that back in high school he wasn't smart, and he became smart through work.

I like that view, and I hope I can continue to learn from it.

The divide in past experience will always exist, but there's no reason it has to matter. It's not like being 30 is like summer camp, at the end of which we'll go back to high school and now have all these new friends because we've seen each other in a different setting. As interesting and nightmarish as that would be.

5 weeks into my new postdoc

2008-09-30T11:30:00.003-05:00

0. Good news! I got a paper accepted, after two rejections. The impact factor for the current journal is actually higher than the second journal I sent it to.

1. A commenter remarked on the importance of seeing other people, and oh my gosh, that's so right! Yesterday I left my office in the middle of the day for the first time in ages --- I headed to the gym around 3 pm, passing hundreds of people through hallways and streets, and it literally felt weird to be seeing more than a dozen people at a time. Wonderfully weird! I am going to try to work more often in common areas. Groups of people don't make loneliness go away, but wow it helps a lot.

2. Dating is wonderful beyond my wildest imagination. That's another post so the academically-inclined can skip it, but it definitely helps my mood.

3. Boice's Tips for New Faculty Members is a life-saver. I have not been very productive, but I am following his advice to do something every day, even if it feels small, and I am making progress on projects where previously I had no progress at all. It is incredibly difficult to just sit there, not doing anything other than thinking mindfully before starting work, but it reassured me that he says it's okay if it's a struggle.

4. Knowing to expect a struggle makes work easier. I remember from the memorial service a couple years ago for a famous academic in my field, someone said that he kept a list of his projects and their current status on a notepad. Right away, I made such a list, which was not short, and to my embarrassment, so little about the list changed over a one year period that it was clear that the list was completely pointless. Perhaps a famous academic was not a reasonable model for me. Part of me wants to keep up with my list. Making progress on multiple items seems theoretically possible, and yet I've never done it. So I am taking a small step every day on just one project, and only working on two projects concurrently. I'm trying not to look too far into the future or think about the fact that the two projects I am working on are still from my dissertation, and nothing new from here.

5. Knowing to expect a struggle makes practicalities easier too. After a month here, I know my regular routes well enough that I'm surprised that I still need to spend time with a map each time I go to a new place, even just on campus. The gym took me 20 minutes to locate. It turns out it is accessible only through an unmarked series of tunnels under scaffolding. Of course!

Being new

2008-09-19T15:13:00.009-05:00

It occurs to me that one of the hardest things about being new is that everything is an effort, and it stays an effort for maybe 3 months. Every conversation is with a stranger. As much as I long to be with people, the meeting with this new research group listening them talk about projects I'm not going to be involved with was hardly satisfying social contact because I felt like I was totally on stage, and maybe even had to overcome some kind of barrier because a few of them hate my advisor. And my research group never ever has any meetings at all, as far as I can tell. Just a monthly seminar, which is the kind of monthly that is "every month, except when it's inconvenient." which really means six times a year.

Update

2008-09-19T15:13:00.005-05:00

I went through a period of high energy, meeting with lots of people, and then suddenly started slowing down. It's incredibly hard to maintain 1 1/2 to 2 hours per day of commuting, even if I do get to read the paper. I introduced myself to everyone that I have met on my corridor, although most people leave their doors closed or ajar just a millimeter so I haven't encountered more than half the people on my hallway. In the subsequent days, I didn't see them again or have an opening to have a conversation. Someone I introduced myself to who has her door open just 3 inches isn't exactly soliciting conversation. The woman directly across the hall from me suggested we have coffee sometime. I should take her up on that. But I haven't seen her since that first time we met. And she is directly across the hall from me! Maybe I should put a big sign on my door which says, "Please interrupt!"

The most demoralizing part of being a postdoc is going to an office and go an entire day without even a single 60 second conversation, and realize that no one cares if I am there or what I do. Of course I care about the research that I do, and I want to do my research, but out of the social context, that's like asking if I am willing to sit by myself in a room for 2000 hours a year, and I'm really not. I got a paper accepted to a top journal, and I'm pleased, but most of all I am happy that its acceptance gives me an excuse to talk with people. There's some clear follow-up work to do on this, but when it's just me and me, I don't feel all that interested.

So I have started again on the bad habits of getting immersed in stupid irrelevant things. E.g., I cancelled the new cheap sofa order and spent forever shopping for a sofa on Craig's List, and found one saving myself about $300 over the cost of the new sofa. And then decided I needed to look for something else. And then watch all the episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert Report online. And get distracted and miss things I'd kind-of planned on going to, but no one cares if I go. And not getting exercise. And going to the public library and checking out all kinds of hobby-related books and fun things just so I can get out of the house. And somehow the time passes. It's such an embarrassing struggle, though I was relieved to read someone else's tips on exactly this kind of torpor.

Obviously something needs to change. I figure if I get involved in a regular exercise pattern, I will feel less restless about working alone for the rest of the day. And find some activities to do. And introduce myself to still more people so that maybe I can have at least 5 minutes of in-person conversation every day. But I really get lonely not seeing anyone and feeling like no one cares where I am or what I do during work hours.

. . .

Dating-wise, things are smashing. In fact, I have reached dating nirvana. In my last city, it felt like I was meeting people who aren't that smart or interesting, although later on I did start to meet them. Here I am meeting more people than I can possibly fit in my schedule. It's kind-of embarrassing, actually. They're not better educated. Maybe I am less picky.

Things are so spread out, so everything has to be scheduled for weekends, and sometimes just one weekend day, so that's easy for first dates: 2 hour coffee dates is plenty, and you can have 3 in one day. Once you get past the first date and you want to do something interesting, it gets to be harder. But that's the worst of my dating problems, so I'm extremely grateful.

Something that I have noticed is that I am fairly unambitious for dating. The only date so far that I am nervous for is coming up this weekend. He's an ambitious energetic confident guy. And so I suspect he won't like me. Whereas the guys who showed glimmers of awkwardness or lack of confidence, I was fairly confident that we would either get along or I wouldn't care. I know that's sad.

Wow, that paper really sucked!

2008-09-11T16:18:00.002-05:00

My advisor runs research center A, and I thought it might be helpful if I had ties to another research center, so I wrote to the head of research center B. She invited me to their group meeting. One of the topics of discussion was a paper they had just submitted to two journals and had rejected.

It's a fairly obscure area - obscure in that most people think it's unimportant, not that it's hard - so it happens that the literature in the area is not so large, and I wrote one of the few papers which they cited. I said I'd be happy to read it. I had some hesitation after volunteering because I realized that I would be a logical referee, so I would miss the chance to put a new journal on my CV. It turns out it's a good thing that I volunteered because I would have almost definitely recommended the paper for rejection.

How demoralizing to read a paper co-authored by several people including a couple really prominent people which is so completely inferior to research done before. In fact, as a final project in an undergraduate course, I would give it a solid B. Reading the paper made me rethink joining their group.

Not to mention that the first thing they discussed at the meeting was how much they hated my advisor. Who had apparently committed two felonies: 1) criticized one of their papers too much and 2) while giving a presentation to new students to help them find research, he listed a handful of the many collaborators who worked with his center and didn't mention this particular senior faculty member. After 3 minutes of this carping, the center B director said, "That's New Postdoc's advisor." And then followed an awkward silence.

Plus they had the kind of meeting where they set aside 2 hours every single week, and the topics to discuss expand to fill the allotted time. And people just sit there for all 2 hours while so many topics are only relevant to a few people.

I wrote my response to their paper fairly quickly and narrowed my criticism down to 6 points. If they seriously followed my advice, it would be another month before the paper would be ready to send out, and the author had wanted to send it out next week.

Seeing research from this point of view really makes me understand more how important it is to be thick-skinned about criticism. Most criticism is well-intentioned, and it is incredibly difficult to phrase criticism in a palatable way. I rephrased almost every sentence of my review, and I'm afraid it still comes across as overly blunt. But, and I don't mean to be immodest, they should really listen to me: I am one of very few people who knows the literature of this tiny obscure area, and this paper as currently written adds nothing to the area, and I gave some suggestions that if they follow even some of it, their paper could add to the area. I just hope that they listen and don't start grouse about me as they groused about my advisor. And that I have more thick-skinned attitude towards criticism than they apparently are.

Watch out for service!

2008-09-10T16:57:00.003-05:00

I volunteered to chair a session at a conference this summer at the last minute, and got an email from the same guy asking if I wanted to be "local chair" for another conference in 2010. I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded like the previous "chair" responsibility, maybe reviewing abstracts or something, so instead of asking what it was, I said yes.

He wrote back,

"Given your proximity to the area and your interests in the section, we thought you would be ideal for the role of local chair.

Local chair’s responsibility usually includes physically reviewing the local venue (if possible), advertising the conference to the local community including government organizations, universities and private companies, working with the chairs and [professional organization] staff to organizing the local logistical details for the days of the conference and also organizing the social event on the second day of the conference. We hope you will be able to accomplish this by committing not more than a day per month over 12 months preceding the conference.

We will set up a conference call soon to kick off the planning sessions."

Is he joking? No way!

I wrote back right away and said that I had misunderstood the role of local chair, apologized profusely, and would be happy to review abstracts or do something academic for the conference.

Impostor syndrome: email version

2008-09-05T12:12:00.005-05:00

I am supposed to be finding a research project now. The only constraint is that my research has to relate to the training grant, and I think they want me to do a little work with some people in the research center, but otherwise I can go around the department finding people to work with. I have a whole list, and I have carried around that list of people to speak with for several days before I got up the courage to write to any of them. Classic impostor syndrome: I think they wouldn't want to work with me either right now or later after getting to know me.

The funny thing is that it doesn't get any easier the more I write to. I wrote to the three directly suggested to me, no problem. And to the department chair. But now I have 3 or 4 more left, and each one feels difficult.

My insecurity was made slightly worse that my (very sweet but straight-talking) advisor said that the department chair was a good person to speak with as long as I don't ask him about nonsense. I should let that roll off my back. I know I should. I just feel like I should take some lesson from it.

Also, one of the 3 I have to write to, made some sarcastic remark to me in a phone conversation before I came, which made me feel like he thought I wasn't smart. And everyone tells me this guy is so nice.

Just have to do it. Three two one and then it's the weekend. And I will have accomplished all week is attending a class and sending some emails. Well, and getting more settled. And reading more Boice.

$1.71

2008-09-02T18:32:00.002-05:00

The current balance in my bank account is $1.71. I've never in my life seen a bank balance like that.

Somehow the moving expenses this time have been thousands of dollars.

I do not get reimbursed any moving expenses, and my first 6 weeks of pay go entirely to moving. I am detailing my expenses so people can see what it goes to, even for someone who is very careful about money. I shopped around a lot for things like moving and car shipping companies where there were many estimates, and chose the cheapest options by far in each category. I packed lots of things that people tend to throw out and buy new in each new place, like bathroom and bedroom trash cans and silverware trays, and I got these things free in the first place. Much of my furniture comes from Craig's list and Goodwill, but I also didn't have time to do Craig's list for everything or ability to (e.g.) move a couch by myself.

Here is the list of expenses:

- $1100 moving
- $600 to transport a car.
- $150 one-way plane fare
- $100 to rent a car to shop during first 3 days because my car's shipment was delayed by 10 days.
- $900 in new furniture: kitchen had no counter space and little storage- $125 for countertop/storage (on clearance); my roommate owned our couch and I can't move a couch from Craig's list in my car - $400 for new couch that arrives by UPS and can be assembled and disassembled for moving; twin bed for guest bedroom + extra mattress + sheets: $240, new armchair $90.
- $500 in other set-up expenses: food, lightbulbs, lamps, cleaning supplies.
Total: 3450. And there's more beyond that, I'm sure.

Some of these expenses could have been less if I spent more time --- e.g., the gas estimate was $300 to drive the car instead of $850 to ship car + fly + rent car due to late car shipment --- but there is a time and practicality trade-off, and the car is more than a decade old and not necessarily reliable. I could have found a couch for free and rented a UHaul and found someone to help me move the couch, instead of spending $400 on a new one shipped to me.

This way, I was done with all moving activities in a few days and was able to move everything by myself since I don't have anyone to help me.

It does seem inadvisable that someone should spend more than 10% of their annual post-tax income on moving. And yet that's how it fell out.

News from the crime scene

2008-08-29T14:18:00.003-05:00

Literally just as I was coming back from writing the previous blog post, including the note about the apparent suicide in my department exactly one week before, I was rounding the corner and saw that a security officer and a guy in a white shirt and tie were unlocking the suicide's office door, which is a few down from mine.

The name was on the door that morning, but by then they had removed the name. A little later, as I was going to the bathroom (the suicide's office is on the way to the bathroom), there was a uniformed police officer with a big old-fashioned camera, the kind in 1960's TV shows, taking a picture of the door. They opened the door, and went in with the camera. I overheard one of the officers saying, "It's a good thing [they] left the computer logged in." and something about a note, though it wasn't clear whether they were saying there was or wasn't one. Now there is a sign on the door saying, "Please do not enter. If you need anything, please see [administrator.]" No yellow crime scene tape, but perhaps effectively it is.

I wonder why they waited a week to start the investigation.

A friend of mine said, after I told him about the two deaths on the same project, "Driving a car into a house doesn't sound like an accident. And an apparent suicide might not be. You'll stay away from this project, right?" Which sounds ridiculous, but on the other hand, who knows.

New postdoc: the beginning

2008-08-28T12:09:00.004-05:00

I started this week at my new new postdoc. This postdoc is at the university which is the top in my field, and theoretically should be "ideal" whatever that means, at least to people who like to speak in those terms. And in some respects, it's very nice. My office furniture is actually beautiful, for instance, which means a lot when I think about how much time I am supposed to be spending there. And obviously there are really exciting research projects and student activities. I have learned there are also ways in which I appreciate things I took for granted in my old position and every RA-ship I have ever had: printer access, computer, phone (the policy on all three is BYO (bring/buy your own)), a single contact person for administrative details, a library with books (it has only 1 of the 3 seminal books my advisor recommended; my previous medium-ranked school had all 3), a computer support department run by computer geeks.

I called my advisor's secretary to make an appointment to see him, and she asked who I was. I had to explain that I was his postdoc and tell her which grant I am under.

Plus, a creepy thing that has nothing to do with me. There have been 2 deaths in the past month in the department, coincidentally both on the same research project. One was a middle-aged project manager who was killed while sleeping when a car drove into their house. The other was a post-BA RA who, I am guessing, committed suicide. I can't avoid seeing the RA's name plate on my way to the bathroom from my office.

Good things:

1. Administratively, I am a student, so it's considered reasonable to attend/audit classes, get involved in student activities relevant to my work and there are many that could actually help my CV as "community service" of the kind faculty do. And apparently faculty get involved in these too. And there are all kinds of introductory student functions that I am automatically sent notice about.

2. There happens to be a course this term on exactly the new method that I hear I am supposed to learn for my research, so I have an excuse to meet people and get involved in something right away that is relevant.

3. I really like my apartment. It feels like home, and it feels good to be at a bit of a distance from school.

4. It's a gigantic institution, which is what makes it feel lonely and difficult to navigate, but that also means that there are ways around. There is no central departmental printer, but for some reason the library has free printing, I just discovered.

5. My office has beautiful golden wood furniture, and the office is clearly built for two people.

6. There are common spaces close to my office where I can work if I get tired of being alone.

One of the things that people talk about in college and then grad school is how you have to learn to ask for things if you want them, and this postdoc epitomizes this need. After receiving my ID card, my entire orientation to the postdoc consisted of not giving me a key to my office (they didn't have an extra) and telling me to have a nice year. Presumably I was supposed to race down the hall and sit down at my computer and write a paper.

I do have work to do. But somehow being given the empty half of a dimly-lit shared office that I don't have a key to, with no printer access, no phone to call my advisor to make an appointment, feels like I don't really have anything to do until the room gets a bit more populated. I know that there is no inspiration for work. You just have to do it. Even without a printer. And when I have a draft to print, I will have to find a way to print it.

So I will go back to my office, work for an hour, and see what comes out of it.

Aftermath of this postdoc

2008-08-17T11:28:00.003-05:00

My postdoc advisor keeps writing to me to ask me to perform various secretarial tasks --- not terribly time-consuming, but a total of 45 minutes that I don't feel like I have as I prepare to move and start a new postdoc that I am trying to be extremely conscientious about. I told him that I was surprised to continue getting requests for secretarial, to which he replied that he was surprised at my response, since he doesn't feel that I have put in as much time as I was paid for this year, though he admits he could be wrong.

I don't know how to reply to this, or if I should. It seems to me that it's water under the bridge, though I am tempted to say a few things:

1. He cut my salary in half when he hired an administrator to do these secretarial tasks, and yet continued to give me these secretarial tasks.

2. I am not a secretary. If he thinks I owe him research work, that's a reasonable issue to discuss. Discussing how many emails I have to send and lists to compile is not reasonable, and really weren't reasonable tasks for me in the first place.

Both points are reasonable, and I could tell him both of those. The third point that is of course in the back of my mind is that he lost me the second he cut my salary in half and made the first few months of my employment be 70% secretarial tasks.

But really I just want to avoid the whole issue. It was a mistake to accept the job. My term of employment ended, and I no longer have affiliation with that university. And if he thinks that I owe him something, he should have raised this issue when he was actually paying me.

That's a little overly strict, but I am concerned about maintaining boundaries so that I can succeed in my up-coming position.

Lessons from my postdoc

2008-07-31T17:10:00.004-05:00

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.

Last day!

2008-07-31T17:02:00.003-05:00

Today is the last day of my former postdoc, and tomorrow is the first day of my new postdoc.

First of all, on the small level, I can't believe everything that I was able to do today. I stayed home in the morning, catching up on email almost emptying out my inbox. I got into the office in the early afternoon and in four hours, I:
- Wrote most of a summary of my work for my advisor.
- Wrote 3 pages of my paper, and they were good.
- Filed away all the papers that I had been putting off until "later".
- Caught up on loose ends as I realized I needed to for the status update, including tracking down an errant collaborator who has been MIA for the past 5 months. (He claims he never got our paper comments.) Ironically he was the most prominent of our collaborators.
- Chatted with my one friend who was in the office today.
- The dreaded phone conversation with my advisor. I committed to finishing the paper I'm working on and edit 2 more collaboration papers which have been crashing my version of Word.
- Turned in my key. I ducked turning in my ID. I hate to lose that kind of thing.

Tomorrow I am starting a system of working every day, no excuses, on a project that I need to progress on for an hour. We're going to check in with each other. It sounds minor, just an hour, but that's an hour more than I'm doing now.

Next post: lessons.

Questions before choosing a grad program

2008-07-16T12:31:00.005-05:00

These are questions that I wish that I'd asked before choosing a grad program. I had been admitted to two programs at elite universities, and I chose the one at my undergrad institution where I liked the location better. My career would have gone totally differently if I had asked these questions and chosen a program according to them. Not necessarily better, but different.

I was looking only at the universities that graduates went to, and obviously they were good. But I had no idea before I started grad school what soft money even was, much less how it becomes the bane of existence for many faculty members.

The questions were mainly about faculty jobs:
- What proportion of graduates go onto faculty jobs?
- Which departments? Professional schools? Research institutions?
- What are the conditions of the faculty jobs that graduates go to?: hard vs. soft money, salary levels compared with similar alternatives, how much time do they spend applying for grants, number of courses taught.
- Do people change their research area according to the grant availability? Okay, this always happens to some extent, but how often and how substantial are the changes?
- How hard is it to get faculty jobs? How much postdoc do people do before getting faculty position?
- Which job markets do grads go on? What is the job market procedure usually followed?

Congratulations!

2008-07-06T11:19:00.003-05:00

1. Today's the wedding of the-guy-I-almost-married. That's the epithet I use sometimes in real life, too. It puts me in a bind. Our worlds still overlap --- his profession and related issues are a topic of conversation in my circles. Because I considered marrying him, I can speak with authority about a world that most people don't see from the inside and I feel the need to say how I know. I have begun saying "a very close friend," even though that's disingenuous because we have spoken only once since he gotten engaged and that was probably the last time ever. That time, just a few weeks before his wedding, he told me that he continues to follow me by facebook.

So today he goes from the-guy-I-almost-married to a very-close-friend-I-never-talk-to. Congratulations on your new status, my VCFINTT.

2. The hard part comes when I move, and start encountering people that he and his wife know, though thankfully they're moving. I will be visiting a community where he is now a prominent figure. If he ever comes up, he will be mentioned by title rather than by first name. I'll be living within a few miles of where his wife has lived for the past few years, presumably encountering her friends.

3. Coincidentally, while packing today, I ran into a book that Gene gave me when I left my previous city, a foreign language edition of The Giving Tree, which is the only children's book about which I have always since childhood felt unadulterated sadness and anger: the tree gets exploited by its friend the child, and is inexplicably happy.

I'm four years older than my VCFINTT, and when we were dating, he had a lot of mental health problems. His family was in theory supportive of him, but also had always been completely crazy and disordered. When we started the relationship, I had just six months before gotten out of the only truly awful relationship I'd ever been in, and I really just needed an affectionate relationship, which this was. I bounced back after several months with him, and I gave him a great deal of emotional support for years during this time, although it was a difficult time for me as well: a year into our relationship, I failed my quals and was kicked out of my program, and had to petition to return. Getting a call from him at 3 pm saying that he was still in bed and needed help getting up, and spending countless hours talking him out of bed at the worst of his depression was a downer, especially on top of the usual stresses of long-distance relationships. I loved him, so I tried to help as much as I could, but I also set boundaries, and after a few years he was upset about the boundaries. By the time I broke up with him, I had no respect left for him, and was angry to have lost prime dating years, ages 26 to 29, doing what I thought was the right thing in supporting him.

Now I realize that it was silly of me to devote so much to someone that I'd not decided to marry. He came from quite a conservative background, so I expected a proposal after a year even though he was only 23 then since that is what his friends were doing, but we were in different cities and neither of us was willing to leave or change programs, which were both long and we were both holding on by our fingernails. His program had no direct equivalent near me, though we researched his doing a supplementary masters at my school, and I was afraid that I might not survive transferring programs.

So we stayed in a holding pattern. That's why the Giving Tree is going to the top of my give-away pile.

4. Of course I love him and always will, and I am sad that we'll never talk again. Sometimes I have fantasies of old age, whether or not his wife is still alive, if he ever gets sick, I can visit him in the hospital. Maybe if one of his parent dies, I can pay a mourning call. And then I realize how silly it sounds to wish for these things.

He's the only person I ever foresaw getting old with, and even though I chose to end the relationship some part of me still wants to follow his life.

5. I've never even been engaged, and with such a life of expectations washed away, I feel divorced.

Loneliness and academia, part 40

2008-07-03T15:03:00.005-05:00

Loneliness seems to come as a side-effect of the academic lifestyle. I am on a fairly large mailing list for an activity with a new faculty member in his early 40's who keeps sending updates on his mother's health. It seems strange to do, because he goes into such depth about which medical tests, and what the outcomes were. I know him personally, and I'm glad that I know that his mother is sick and he needs extra support, but I feel like knowing the details is kind-of intrusive even as a relative friend of his. For the many people on the list who don't know who he is, it's downright weird to know that this guy's mother had X and Y medical tests and treatments.

But then I realized that everyone needs someone that they can tell all the details to, and he doesn't have anyone. He's never mentioned a father, so apparently his father is no longer in the picture, perhaps no longer alive, and I don't remember if he has siblings, so his mother might be his only immediate family member, so it's even more traumatic that he's at risk of losing her.

He's moving to the same city as I am, and he's clearly reached out to me. He's refined and attractive, but so clearly lonely and longing. Not that there's anything wrong with those things. Being lonely is a good thing, in a way, because it means that someone likes people --- compare my misanthropic once-long-distance-boyfriend who broke up with me the morning of my job interview in his city --- but it also creates a vibe that makes others want to run away from them, at least when it comes to romantic involvement. This instinct to run away from loneliness and need is one of the tragedies of human nature.

Setting up new postdoc

2008-07-03T14:30:00.003-05:00

More progress:

1. I just made $1980 more for next year by pointing out that I have one year of postdoc experience. I wasn't sure if it counted because I just got my degree last month, but my position this year was called "postdoc."

2. I get paid for August, but now need to figure out how to work in as much work as possible at the same time as I am moving from two different cities. And don't even have an apartment yet.

3. Office space continues to complicate apartment hunt.

Originally: I was going to be mostly in the central location, and only occasionally in the distant location (which is where my advisor sits), so had the option to live in the cheap public-transit-accessible edge of the city where it's easy to find housing remotely. The central parts of town are more ideosyncratic, so harder to find housing at a distance.

Now: I am supposed to have "a presence" in both places, though we'll talk about the split once I get there. I could live in the easy place and resign myself to a 25+ mile commute to the distant office, and public transit for the other office. If I go in half the working days in a month, it's still under $100 per month extra as long as I don't have to pay for parking.

Moving decision paralysis

2008-07-02T14:19:00.006-05:00

This post is me talking to myself about moving since I'm trying to make a decision. It is boring. Move along. Nothing to see.

I grew up in my current city, so moving here was easy. I knew which neighborhood I wanted to live in, and where to find apartment listings, and I even had a friend in my former city to live with. All I had to do was come here and find an apartment. I was lucky, and we took the first apartment we saw, though we spent 2 whole days going through the rest of our list to make sure.

Coming to a city that I'd never visited prior to my interview is much harder. Simultaneous with looking for an apartment, I have to decide which neighborhood. I am an urban person and have never lived in a full-fledged suburb before, so I'd planned on living in the city. Plus almost everyone I spoke to in the suburbs sounded bored and lonely. I've lived in most of the major cities in the US, and went to elementary school with 8 year olds throwing gang signs, but I wasn't prepared for the kind of city with vacant lots that people turn into inner city farms.

The inner city farms and burnt-up boarded-up buildings and lack of supermarketsprompted my flight to the suburbs. A friend who grew up in the area reassured me that it was not white flight, since everyone who could afford it moved out of the city, and indeed in my several trips back and forth to the suburbs in the middle of the day, more than 95% of the public transit riders were minorities. I convinced myself that I liked an apartment complex built in 1950: it was well-designed, a 20 minute walk to the train, and cheap, and I bought some fantastic cheap produce half a mile away. Plus, the two guys I knew who were moving to the city at the same time also sold out to the apartment complexes.

After two trips back and forth to the suburbs, I started realizing the implications of a 40-45 minute commute each way, and decided to give the city another chance. This time, an RA in the department suggested a neighborhood where I could safely walk alone at night, and which had a supermarket to boot. An awful overpriced chain supermarket, but I didn't take it for granted. I could get to both offices in under 20 minutes without a car. This neighborhood, ironically, was also mass-produced industrial housing, no less soulless and depersonalized than the apartment complexes, just about 40 years older and more compact with no 1 bedroom apartments. I didn't have much time to call landlords in advance, and after days of heat exhaustion, I didn't really care that I only saw a few apartments.

I left the city without getting an apartment. I have one possibility in the suburbs and two in the city, and I have to make a decision and sign a lease, so I can get on to the next step. I'm on the verge of signing a lease for a city apartment that I'd need a roommate for, but it feels risky to put money on the line and commit to living with a roommate I've never met. Holding out for a 1 bedroom that I've never seen seems somehow preferable to a roommate whom I've never met, although if I am holding out on that I will feel in suspense the whole time. I've usually had roommate situations work out well even when I've never met them, but it is always complicated.

The suburbs sound boring and listless, except I now know two women in the suburban apartment complex where I would live, one of whom is doing a grad degree where I'm doing a postdoc. And I know a few more people in the same suburb, so it could actually be socially okay to live there. Except there's nothing to do there. And I could have a 2 bedroom apartment for less than a 1 bedroom in the city. And that produce market was nice. Even though it's not my first choice to live in the suburbs, at least then I would have an apartment that I have actually seen and have the issue settled. In talking to people, some of whom are not happy in the suburbs, many of them said that they took the place in the suburbs because it was easy.

Plausible deniability

2008-07-01T09:18:00.005-05:00

When I was visiting my new postdoc to get my ID and such, I was incredulous about the money thing. Several times I asked them, "My advisor and I agreed that I was moving and starting Sept 1. Should I change that plan since I am being paid starting July 1?" And they said that I did not have to change anything. At the end of our meeting, the admin asked what I was doing during the summer, and I said that I was at my current job through July. She asked if it was a problem for me to be paid by two sources, and I said that my current job wasn't government funds, so it shouldn't be. All she said was that I should check with my advisor to see whether I needed to do anything special given that I was being paid all summer.

I got an email from my advisor saying that I'm not being paid now, and I should say when I want to start working and being paid, so I asked the admin about the apparent discrepancy:

Finally, do you happen to know whether [advisor] has okayed paying me for July and August? His email below sounds a bit like he thought that I was registered for insurance, but not getting a stipend now. When I called him on Friday, I just left a message and didn't get a call back, so haven't yet been able to speak with him about this.

Her response:

I know he will provide the health insurance for you starting July 1st, but my understanding is that he can't pay your
stipend if you aren't here yet. If you could begin the Post Doc sooner than August 31st, we have the stipend to support you. But if you aren't here during July and August, then he can't pay you. Does this make sense? This was the concern I expressed to you last week.

Let me know what you and he decide about your start date. We can revise your letter to reflect the correct dates, if necessary.

That was not the concern that she expressed last week! In email she just has to cover her behind. I hate how outlandish it makes me sound, "You thought we would pay you when you weren't working? How ridiculous!"

Sometimes I feel like my life is stranger than everyone else's.

Update: I got back 1 month of the pay by arguing that during August I'm presenting at a few conferences, so it's relevant. And I got half an office at the main campus, instead of a room shared with 17 people. And after thinking so much about it, the total time that all took was 90 seconds.

Not really a free lunch; being a postdoc means asking for things

2008-06-29T21:03:00.004-05:00

Perhaps this is a lesson in who really runs things. I asked my postdoc if I could arrange for a month of gap health insurance, and I would gladly pay for it. They said that they could do that, and pay for it, but it had to be 2 months for admin reasons.

When they were setting up the insurance, the budget director of the research center discovered that there was money in the postdoc fund to start funding me 2 months early, so decided to go ahead and do that --- perhaps it is use it or lose it? And afterwards she and another administrator decided to ask my advisor whether it was okay. Neither heard back from him on the question. Now I have to ask him if he's okay with it, and if he wants me to do anything for the extra funding. As long as he really is okay with it, it's a great deal, though potentially an uncomfortable way to start off. "Do you mind that your budget director decided to give me two months of free money?"

Now I'm asking another favor. There are two campuses: one campus is where my advisor and his mostly-MD colleagues in the research center have offices for the (possibly rare?) occasions when they are actually in their office. The other campus has everything else, including journal clubs, seminars, postdocs and PhD faculty in the same research area, and grad students. I suggested that I work partially with a PhD faculty member at the central campus partly because the work honestly looks interesting, but also because I want the excuse to be at the main campus. Currently I'm slated to have a normal set-up in the distant campus, whatever that is: cubicle, half an office, etc. In the main campus, I'm slated to have a desk in a room with 17 other people, mostly RAs. So I have to ask for a half office there as well.

The administrator is fantastic on these issues: she was coaching me on how to ask for the extra space because she agrees that postdocs are horribly isolated and they should be around as many other people as possible. Honestly, I want to be at the main campus because it seems more fun and is easier to get to, so I keep reminding myself that I have legitimate academic reasons to be at the main campus, so I shouldn't feel hesitant about asking.

Last interview of the year

2008-06-26T20:18:00.004-05:00

I had my last interview of the year in mid-June.

The department was founded about a decade ago, but as of a few years ago there was exactly one faculty member left in the department. It's a field with an obvious non-academic set of careers, and the chair had left, and while they were working to replace the former chair, they appointed an 80 year old interim chair, and didn't want to hire new faculty, but they didn't appoint a new chair for several years. Meanwhile all but one of the other faculty left and were not replaced. And this department still had hundreds of students which somehow continued to be taught.

Now there is a full contingent of faculty, mostly non-tenure-track but relatively senior, and the recent years of turmoil have succeeded in decreasing the number of students by 30%, which they see as fortunate under the circumstances. This year they are making several tenure-track hires, which they've been interviewing feverishly for. The delays were due to delays in the central administration's approval of the hires.

NIH stipend levels frozen

2008-06-23T23:14:00.001-05:00

I've noticed that NIH stipend levels have not increased for years. Does anyone know whether anyone is organizing a protest of this? It seems ridiculous, especially given the recent inflation in energy and food costs.

Dating update

2008-06-23T16:28:00.002-05:00

1. Roy is a new-to-the-US guy whom I went on several dates with over the past year. He is very short, probably bottom 1% of height for men, and weighs slightly less than I do, which made me feel a bit awkward. We only went out when I would ask myself out: I would ask if he was free a certain day, and he would say that he was free any day any time I wanted to see him, as if he'd been waiting by the phone for me to call, and then treat it as if it had been his initiative, paying, bringing me things, etc. On Valentine's Day, he brought me slightly embarrassing candy heart refrigerator magnets (U R HOT). He never tried to do more than hug me, and even that was hesitant. I got tired of asking myself out, so stopped.

This 10 years younger girl who weighs maybe 50-100% more than he does had been chasing him for the past several months. When we were seeing eachother, I tried to clarify her relationship to him; he said he'd never thought of her as anything since she was younger than his youngest sibling. She thought they were. On my birthday, she wrote on my facebook wall, "Hope you enjoy your last birthday in [this city]. Good luck in [new city]!" When I ran into her in the supermarket, she said that she was cooking dinner for Roy and he was coming home late for work, and then asked me when I was moving. He invited a group to a dinner party, and then she took over his house and cooked for it, which hadn't sounded like the original plan. When I invited him to a party without her, he said he would like to come and then didn't; I wonder if he was grounded.

Passivity is its own reward, apparently.

2. I haven't spoken with Michael for over a month. The last time I saw him he had just walked home the (very nice, friend-of-mine) size 0 woman 17 years younger than him whom he's chasing; I'd been biking down the street past him and figured it was friendly to stop and say hi, and immediately regretted it. I hadn't realized it was possible for a never-married childless guy living in the city to have a midlife crisis, but I'd underestimated reality. He told size 0 that he'd be at a party I was throwing, but unsurprisingly he didn't come.

3. My entanglement, a graduating PhD whom I'd (naïvely, it turns out) thought was my friend, called me on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago from out of state. We'd not spoken for a couple weeks before that, and I'd wanted to catch up and maybe have an outdoors outing, so welcomed the call. He asked if I was free Monday night or Tuesday during the day. I said that I work during the day, but night might work. His plane gets in Monday at 11 pm, he said. I said I'd be asleep then. He stuttered out why his schedule was so full for the rest of the week, graduation, parents' visit, etc., and then I didn't hear from him for a week. A week later, he contacted me five times in a five hour period: 2 consecutive calls on my cell phone, an email, an IM on the dating site where we met in December, and a late evening call to my home phone. I'm normally a total softy about forgiving people, which makes it particularly remarkable just how satisfying it was to see someone else panicking about having lost touch with a potential date.

4. A brooding world-weary sensitive humanities PhD attached himself to me via facebook. He friended me, and when I asked how we knew each other he evaded the question, but eventually we started emailing 1 sentence things, such as if he was coming to an event he thought I might be at. I recognized him a couple months later at an event, and ever since then he's pretty successfully insinuated himself into my life since I don't know many other guys anymore to invite to things, after all. The real tragedy here is that brooding and being world-weary is attractive up through grad school age, but just makes an overweight 30-something seem listless.

5. When I was abroad last fall, I stayed with a long-time friend, the prototypical nice guy whom everyone wants to set up their best friend with. Six years ago, I tried, but my best friend wasn't interested because she didn't understand the phenomenon of never dating nice guys, so figured there must be something wrong with him. As the conventional wisdom goes, skinny balding bespectacled guys suddenly become big catches in their 30's. I'd never been interested in him, but right after I arrived, while we were roasting vegetables together for a dinner he was holding, I felt like we were already in a relationship. Not that we could be or that I wanted to be or that I made this calculation of his suddenly increased dating value, but simply it felt like we already were in a relationship. I resisted my impulses because I wanted to be loyal to the guy I was seeing at the time, who it turns out wasn't being loyal to me. But it's just as well. Now he's finished his program and is looking at jobs in the US and abroad. After months of thinking in what-ifs and too-bads and rushed international calls on his cell phone, he's arrived in the US and we had a longish phone call, and will spend some time together next month. It's scary to see possibilities crystalize. They're almost more attractive remaining as possibilities.

6. A college friend of the-guy-I-almost-married, who I've met exactly once before and is dating someone, called me out of the blue, and we had a long conversation. His father is living close to where I'll be, and I think I will get to know his father a bit. I've already had an hour-long conversation with his father while getting advice about neighborhoods. The world is so small.

7. Finally: Not my dating life, but my roommate's, who is also a postdoc. She was dating this guy for several months, and it was beautiful, but one specific issue came up repeatedly and then they broke up. I spent over 3 hours talking with her ex about his options, since it's possible that the relationship could work in the end: it's just one issue, and it's something that counseling could address, if only she would agree to go, but she's a hard core scientist type who isn't convinced that psychology is anything but theory. Irrespective of this relationship, she will probably need to resolve it for any relationship to work. Her ex and I talked out all the options, and it was truly satisfying to be able to help someone else figure out his relationship, plus fascinating to see it from the other end. She's had little relationship experience, and doesn't know the classic relationship mistakes, and it sounds like she's made all of them: increasingly clinging and talking more about commitment the worse the relationship looked; relying on her ex for emotional support post-breakup; etc. It was so strange to see as a third party all the mistakes that I know I've made myself. I can't go back to her and try to advise her on these since he told me what happened in confidence, but maybe I can work in relevant anecdotes from my own life.

Moving practicalities

2008-06-20T13:09:00.005-05:00

I'm planning my move for this summer, and finding a few things very helpful so want to pass them on in case anyone else does:

- Movingscam.org has reviews of different moving options. The site's somewhat unfortunate name came about because someone had their belongings ransomed by moving companies, and when they started looking into the consumer issues, they found many moving companies gave low estimates and then raised them once the move was in progress and it was too late for the customer to back out. One story that I read there had a woman actually decide to forfeit her belongings rather than pay the several thousand dollars that the moving company requested from her.

They recommend a very small number of services --- full service, cargo shipping/partial trailer, relocubes, and self-driven moving vans --- and their motto seems to be "if you want it done right, do it yourself." From reading their stories, I understand this perspective.

- ABF UPack has been consistently friendly and helpful in all of my planning for different moving scenarios: they email quotes right away almost all the time and show which days are cheaper, and if you call they will tell you the price difference between different days. The other relocube places are less responsive and the people I spoke with seem more like salespeople. Upack customer service people haven't tried to pressure me at all, and they answered all my questions and explained the options, and all five of the people I've spoken with in the past two years at their depot terminals and customer service were just extremely friendly and helpful. Moving isn't their main business --- they're a cargo shipper --- so that may explain the difference from the other places. (I tried to use them for my move last year, but due to parking regulations in my current city, I wasn't able to.)

Also they gave me a $50 discount for mentioning the above website when I called them after making my reservation. I had thought that mentioning the website gave the website some funding for referrals, and hadn't expected a discount, but it turns out that it gives a discount.

Paths not taken

2008-06-20T09:37:00.004-05:00

The guy I almost married's wedding is coming up soon. We had dated for 3-5 years, picked locations where we could both get good jobs and I helped him choose his internship, and we started to plan a wedding. He shopped for engagement rings and checked out books from the library on how to plan a wedding. We chose a date during the week of our anniversary. When our favorite vineyard closed (I'm not the kind of person to have a favorite vineyard, so it's that good), I bought a bottle of wine for when we got engaged. But then out of simultaneous sanity and insanity, I broke up with him.

(When it's over, it's over, so it doesn't much matter who broke up with whom. Except I feel the need to add that for what follows. In one of the few conversations I had with Michael recently, he expressed surprise that I was the one who broke up with the guy I almost married. Do I really seem so desperate?)

He got a permanent job exactly where we were going to be together and their wedding date is the day we had chosen, the week of our anniversary. After months and months of not thinking about him at all, now that I know he is getting married I keep thinking about him, especially given their wedding date. I suppose because it's a little bit like a death: we used to speak a few times a year, and now the expectation seems to be that I can't talk to him again after he was such a big part of my life. He has been dating this woman for 1.5-2 years, and asked me to get back together 6, 4, and 3 months before their engagement. He only told me difficult things about her, such as her fairly debilitating mental illness and the fact that he scared himself how angry he would get with her since she looked up to him so much. When I asked him if he loved her 4 months before their engagement, he hesitated and said how grateful he is to her for being so supportive. Of course he might be reticent to say good things about her to me, but it's so hard to hide being in love even if you try. I couldn't hide my feelings for the person I'm in love with.

The whole business concerned me and I'd been thinking about it more, so I called him up. I thought he could find a woman he could have a more equal relationship with. Our relationship had been imbalanced, and his relationship seemed imbalanced the other way. He proceeded to give a list of ways in which she was better than I was. Ouch. Though mostly they were things she was doing for him, which underlines the issue of equality. Not my problem. Not my problem. Not my problem.

Women who are less attached to their careers really do have an easier time finding relationships.

Part of me thinks that I gave up my only opportunity to have a solid relationship. Definitely I gave up my only chance to get married while young, and so it was that I ended up plunging back into the world of older dating, with all its inequalities and stereotype reinforcement.

I wish I could say that I didn't regret anything or that I couldn't have acted differently than I did, but the reality is that I could have.

I can say that breaking up with him allowed me to find a relationship of equals where there's palpable love and affection in even criticism, and somehow the things that would drive me up the wall with someone else just don't bother me, and I have a hard time staying angry with him, even when he made me furious, and we're secure in the other's love. Though we live a few time zones apart and he doesn't want kids and isn't even sure whether he wants to marry anyone, and he just broke up with me. He's still my best friend. And I'm his, though that's more by default.

I am very grateful: some people never find love in their whole lives, and I've found love several times. Rising expectations from near misses are still frustrating.

Industry interview, continued.

2008-06-18T11:17:00.005-05:00

A large profitable company tried to recruit me, and flew me out at the end of February. During the phone screens, they told me about one division which actually lines up very well with my academic work, and I said I would be interested in interviewing with that division. They brought me to interview for another division that I'd said I wasn't so interested in, but which produces most of the company's revenue stream, so they're concentrating hiring in.

The company is well-known for being secretive, so the interviews consisted of them saying, "This division is called X Y [i.e., two words]; what do you think we do, and how should we do it?" I learned almost nothing about the company, other than what I could observe, so it was hard to answer the question, "Do you think you would be interested in what we do here?"

I learned more about the company from a NYT article than I did during my entire interview, but the NYT article came out after my interview. Given the lack of information, I suppose that most people who interview just drink the kool-aid, while I found the kool-aid factor extremely disturbing.

We had a couple of phone calls and exchanged some emails after the interview, and I repeated that I might be interested in the other division, but not the one they brought me to interview for. The recruiter said she would look into it, and I naturally never heard back from her.

Now, in mid-June, I get the following email from the company's recruiter:

I hope all is well with you. I wanted to write to follow up and see what you had decided to do regarding the academic offers you were looking into. I take it that since I have not heard from you, you made a decision to accept one of those. I wanted to be able to make the lines of communication open and thought i'd check in!

Hope all is well, looking forwrad to hearing back from you.
Kind regards,

My impulse is to say, "I couldn't consider offers that I didn't receive, so I accepted one of the offers that I did receive." But that's not helpful.

I am guessing that they are having trouble recruiting for this new division. This company is popular among new college graduates, but PhDs are a harder sell especially since it's solely a question of making more money, rather than solving intrinsically interesting problems that the company likes to tout.

So I settled for:

Thanks for your follow up. The last I recalled of our contact, you told me in late March that you would look into the positions that you had available that would be a good match for me. I didn't hear back from you, so I assumed that there was not a match and I accepted one of the offers that I received. I'll be a postdoc at Z in September. On your end, what's going on?

I would still consider a job in the relevant division, especially since it's not located in Kool-Aid Central.

Protecting time: game theory

2008-06-16T15:21:00.008-05:00

My father's former student is a year older than me, and a tenure-track at the university where I'll be going next year, but in my current city for a summer fellowship. My father suggested that he ask her to join our family at an evening meal, but I wanted to meet her alone since I thought it would be awkward otherwise. I wrote to see if she wanted to have a friendly coffee and didn't see the need to specify that I was proposing evenings specifically. She wrote back asking me to meet near her office on a Friday morning at 9 am.

I never know how to answer this type of email other than wishing my original email had been more explicit because anything I say after that feels uncooperative. But it's pretty nervey of her to treat me like a student seeking an appointment with a professor when I'm a peer looking for social and living advice. In theory, of course I could meet her at the time and place she requested, but it would take an extra hour beyond the time we're actually at coffee and would suck up most of my working morning.

After laboring over an email response for at least 10 minutes, I settled on saying that I'm already at work at 9 am, but letting her determine the place (near her office) and asking for times when I'll be in the area anyhow. Though for all I know she's not at her normal office every day, and we'll end up playing email tag trying to line up times.

It's such a small issue, but all of the moves in scheduling in order to protect the most time feels like a game theory problem. It seems unfair to try to determine too many of the details, but that's what she did right when I wrote. I suppose that is what those who are best at this game do: determine all the details if they don't care all that much about whether the meeting takes place.

Clarification: One of the reasons I posted this is because I think it's interesting to see how faculty develop ways of protecting their time, and this is one illustration of that.

Divorce: the cycle continues

2008-06-14T07:51:00.009-05:00

My first year of grad school, I met this college senior Bob. He got engaged to Alice at the end of the year, and went abroad the next year. His fiancee Alice finished her MA while planning their wedding. Alice got tired of planning the wedding alone and felt Bob wasn't taking on his part of the planning, so decided to wait with the rest of it until they were together. At mid-year Alice finished her MA and came to the foreign country and stayed with Bob. Alice said she had no hints that anything was different until a few weeks into her stay when Bob's classmates pitied her and told her that he had been openly dating his female roommate Carol before her arrival. Alice returned to the US the next day.

At the end of that year, I got a wedding invitation, and was surprised to find the wrong bride's name on it: I'd never heard of Carol and I didn't even really know Alice, but felt weird about the suddenness. Less than a year earlier, Bob was publicly declaring his undying love for Alice at his farewell dinner, and now was marrying Carol.

At Bob and Carol's wedding, my boyfriend and I happened to sit next to his ex-fiancee Alice and comforted her. Alice told the above story, and also said that Bob's father had cheated on both his mother and I think also step-mother. In retrospect, Alice said, she should have suspected that he might cheat. She pointed out Bob's father, who was indeed with an evidently younger woman. Clearly it was a mistake for her to accept his invitation to the wedding, and she said she regretted going, though on the bright side, Alice and I became friends. After hearing this, I assiduously avoided Bob, though he was living in another city so I suppose it wasn't super obvious. I wasn't surprised when he would come on visits without his wife Carol, took a summer internship in another city without her, and most recently spend a year abroad without her. For the last, Bob and Carol both changed their facebook statuses from "married" to "complicated" and, at the end of the academic year, to "single."

The ex-fiancee Alice, in the meantime, having never before been interested in women in her 30+ year life (she was several years older than he was), became interested in women and brought the proverbial U-haul on her second date with the first woman she ever went on a date with. They're now happily partnered with two endearing cats, and I think they plan to get pregnant.

I saw Bob was coming to our former town, where I happened to be for graduation. I'd felt slightly guilty about having avoided him for so many years, I made a point to call him as soon as I landed to find times when we could meet up. He sounded super happy to hear from me; it turned out that this happened precisely during a break in the divorce proceedings. (Apparently the etiquette is to change facebook status when one gets the appointment for divorce proceedings.)

When we ran into each other the first time, Bob stood about 6" away from me, and I kept having to back up to maintain personal space. And again the second time. Granted it'd been a year since his separation, but it was less than a few days after his divorce. Geez. (I managed to turn off his interest in me through some combination of asking him whether a classmate of his was still single and talking about other men.)

Meanwhile two separate friends of mine get interested in him, even after knowing the story. Both apologize for him, "I would need to know what his side is." and "I'm sure that it was a misunderstanding."

Bob's side, it turns out, is contradictory: they broke up, but may have miscommunicated on that point; Alice had come to visit him just as a friend, and they made clear to each other that she should only visit as a friend. Was there a miscommunication, and Alice wasn't aware that they were broken up, or was there good communication, and Alice was visiting only as a friend? In theory, it's verifiable which side is right. In any case, he may have been not doing anything strictly wrong, but still been a jerk. For instance, they may have had issues and she visited in spite of the issues, and when she visited he took advantage of the opportunity to sleep with her and otherwise make it seem as though they were in a relationship, while never intending to continue a relationship with her. Meanwhile, Carol must have felt awful that her boyfriend/roommate was sleeping with his visiting ex-fiancee while she was in town.

One of my friends acknowledged, "I realize that there's no way that he would have been such a catch in college. Now, though, I'm looking for different things." Yeah, he's an almost 6 foot tall smooth-talking intellectual bad-boy elite college alum who is good at initiating relationships. This guy with an indisputably checkered history is attracting these women against all reason --- two in a day! --- and he can repeat the cycle as much as he wants.

More stragglers: are they insane?

2008-06-14T06:37:00.008-05:00

I interviewed for this postdoc in the first half of April at a mid-ranked, well-funded school in a good location. I emailed with them as I was about to accept the postdoc that I accepted, and they said they would get back to me that Friday. They didn't. I didn't push it, especially since they had reason to turn me down.

(That's a story in itself: basically, I have been sort-of seeing this guy for a couple of years who is basically a hermit; all of my friends who have met him find him totally charming and can't believe it, but he has virtually no social life. He can barely picture living with another adult, so he does not want kids. We love each other and for a long time we were speaking every day, and being together makes everything feel good, even strip malls and traffic. When we get to spend a week together he brightens up and we don't get tired of each other, and he conceded that if we were living near each other, he might get used to having other people around and come around in the end. We treat it as a foregone conclusion that we would marry if I were living there (he can't move at the moment) and agreed about kids. Early in the morning before my interview he mentions seemingly apropos of nothing that he read that article about Settling, and he feels he's been leading me on, so we should not have a relationship. He was the main reason that I applied for the position and needless to say, this makes me leave late for the interview, exacerbated by traffic and not being able to find parking at the interview because I was late --- we were meeting at a conference that the department happened to be holding that day, and all the designated spots for the conference were full. All told, I was an hour late. I called them that I was going to be late, but obviously an hour late is egregious, even with profuse apologies and explanations (I did have something of an excuse: google estimated 20 minutes and it took me 50 minutes plus 30 minutes to find parking) and the interview otherwise going well. So they definitely had reason to turn me down.)

More than two months later, on June 13 after 8 pm, I get the following email:

Our training committee (re postdocs and predocs) was just able to meet since so many things have been happening around here lately. I was wondering what your current status is. Have you accepted a position somewhere?

What is wrong with them?

Update: I got an email that was accidentally meant to be sent by the faculty member running the research center to the administrator:

I think that is for the best. I didn't call her after that meeting because we still hadn't decided and had a lot of questions. So let's look at someone who has a definite fit. Ideas from recent applicants?

Followed shortly by a retraction:

Hi New Postdoc. I just noticed that my reply to [the administrator] got sent to you instead. That's okay. I wish you the very best. The note to [the administrator] was about searching for candidates with a more specific [subject area] focus, since that is what the training grant requires.

The transition to the new postdoc

2008-05-30T12:30:00.004-05:00

1. There's a mailing list of incoming grad students, so I joined it for help looking for apartments. About half the students start out their posts congratulating each other on having been admitted. "This is a really great school, so I want to congratulate my classmates!" I think it's mostly international students, and I suppose it makes sense since it must be really competitive and a bigger move forward for them to be going to grad school in the US, and particularly this one.

2. Lots of foreclosures listed in the "for rent" section of Craig's list. Many others state whether or not they accept Section 8 housing vouchers. By contrast, the expensive places emphasize that you never have to go outside to get to your car.

3. The international students have a FAQ for "how to survive coming to grad school", and I find it really reassuring somehow that I'm not the only one who finds it slightly overwhelming to be moving after a year of traveling and not getting settled to a city filled with foreclosed homes.

4. Some of the tips are really nice to remember.

"US is just another country and [school] is just another University.Both the things are handled by people. They are not HEAVEN, with angels all around. People have their shortcomings, so is with the institution and the country."

- Some are funny:

"Avoid pennies like the plague - you just cannot get rid of them and they make your wallet heavy."

- Some are surprising:

"Jobs to be done in your country before leaving: Practice Walking (Welcome to grad-student life in US of A)"

- Some are way too familiar:

"A laptop will be your life. It will be the person you will be staring into with a far away look in your eyes, for most of the year. The Ghost in the machine will be your companion, as it is the one-stop friend who will help you through assignment submission, over the internet, watching movies on DVDs, listening to music, having 3-min breaks with You-Tube Clips."

- Some are surprising that they are different in the US:

"You will tend to bring a 3-litre pressure cooker, (the one-stop all purpose cooking vessel). But the larger 5-litre version is more suitable, though bulky. That is because in the US, you will cook many meals at one time. There is no time to cook fresh food everyday. It is more usual to cook in bulk and eat piece-meal out of the refrigerator. Good bye, fresh food, Welcome to American life."

"Food serves more than its nutrient value. It is an anti-depressant."

"Amongst clothes, if you are the type who can gain weight, you will definitely do so in this part of the world. So it helps if you have go a few not so figure hugging clothes."

- Some are reminders how things are in the US and not elsewhere

"There are no fashions in the US. The fashion is what you wear."

"The rule in the US is that nothing should be bought at full price, only purchase during a sale, with marked down prices."

"Shopping is a national sport in the US, and retail therapy is prescribed to keep away depression. Electronic toys(like Cameras, Television sets, etc) bring joy to daily life and can be a surrogate for good food."

- Reminders of what I am grateful for about US:

"Schools for children: Public School education in the US is free. ... Here you meet the school nurse and agree on the final list of immunization taken and need to be taken. She would tell you of a list of places where you can go for these shots for free. ... I can tell you schools here are a lot of fun for kids and sometimes for parents as well. " Amazing that a grad student can come to the US with their whole family and just enroll them in school and get free shots. Even if their spouse isn't allowed to work.

"Public libraries in the US are marvellous. The most amazing thing for me was that they trust you completely as you can show any mail with your address typed on it and they will make a card for you. You can borrow more than 10 books/ CDs at a time."