That didn't take long

I went from zero to loathing in 3 months.
My feelings about postdoc’ing that is.
I was so happy and proud and excited to start this next phase, but now I’m screaming to get out. Everyone says your postdoc is great; no teaching, unlimited productivity, etc. But I’ve just come off unlimited productivity. I’ve been a whirlwind of productivity. I published eight first authored manuscripts in the last 2 years. I’ve been my own PI, with my own funding. I’ve initiating multiple research projects, attended 18 conferences, done paid contract work, and described a new species, all in the past three years.
I’ve been the poster girl for productivity.

I don’t want to work on someone else’s project. I don’t want to be the only person sitting at the lab bench every day. Knowing that I’m spinning my wheels because nothing will come out of the data for years. Writing up old experiments I didn’t perform just to be third or fourth author on a manuscript. Having all my ideas be circumvented through my advisor, transformed and then passed off to my honour’s student. What am I doing? I go to Uni each day, but I don’t really have anything to do. I’m losing momentum.

I want control again.
I want my own research again.
I need a faculty position.

It's so damn cold!

As I huddle down in the only room in the apartment that has doors and a working heater, and review what I’ve compiled for my job application package, I once again tackle the difficult question of “what the hell do I want?”

The possible future paths my life can take overwhelm me. I like to have a clear vision, and I’m simply unable to generate one now. I can isolate a few aspects of life that I want, but placing them into a specific context, I draw a big question mark. Further thinking about how to balance professional with personal life goals makes the future a limitless, unsolvable equation.

One issue I have is the degree to which my two professional choices are mutually exclusive; qualitatively I can do everything I professionally want in either, but quantitatively there are big differences. In one career I could work on the thing that I am most passionate about, and find deeply, truly fulfilling and pleasurable. This is the aspect of my research that people most associate me with, the stuff that comes easily and naturally, and in many ways, my so-called calling in life. Yet this is the area of my research that I refer to as my ‘secondary specialisation’. I want to be the world’s leading expert in this area and, already in the top ten and still under 40, I have the potential to be just that. But the actual job for doing exclusively this doesn’t exist yet, and maybe never will. Furthermore, if it did, I would be giving up most of my primary research, and all the hard work I’ve done to establish myself even a little bit in my field; thus I consider my passion to be a secondary specialisation.

The other career path, I continue my primary research, ask the scientific questions I want to ask, find out the answers to questions that often keep me up at night trying to solve, and overall get to contribute more broadly to a challenging field. I still get to work on my passion, but it really would become a secondary specialisation, as administration, grad students, lectures and pressures to publish in high-end journals etc. would consume most of my research time and energies.

When I was finishing my PhD, I gave a seminar to the department. I had one slide introducing my ‘secondary specialisation’ and the rest focussed on my scientific questions. Afterwards people who were not familiar with my research came up to me and told me how passionate I was about this ‘secondary specialisation’. I asked how they could tell with such limited discussion of it, and they said “your eyes lit up when you talked about it’. Okay, so why am I fighting it? Why not work the rest of my life on my passion? Why sacrifice the ability to work the rest of my life on my passion? Well, I have ego. I spent many years in a degrading job, being treated as worthless and having people expect very little of me. I still feel I need to prove to myself I'm not a loser. Career path two is more prestigious. Career path two is more likely to bring me geographically closer to family and friends (though still unlikely). And what’s more, career path two is the harder path. If I opt out of career path two will I always wonder whether I was good enough?

I do not play well with others

So, I’ve never been an academic lackey before. I know it’s strange to say that at the post-doc stage, but my grad career was a bit atypical. Sure I’ve done more work than what was expected of me for little-to-no recognition, but it has always been by choice; I’ve never been asked or expected to. In my previous stages I’ve typically been the PI of my own project, tagging names of supervisors on papers that they may or may not have read, edited, or commented on. But I’ve always come up with my own hypotheses (stolen from the literature, of course), designed my own experiments, carried out the experiment, analysed the data, and wrote the manuscript. I’m used to handing over a complete manuscript formatted for the journal I plan to submit to and telling my supervisor when I want his comments back. Okay, I’m not quite that blatantly bossy about it, as I usually let them know how the progress is going and try to coincide the delivery of the manuscript on their desk with a time when they are available to read it. But overall, this scheme has worked well for me, and them.

The current situation is the complete opposite. I am working on other people’s projects or having students run with my ideas. I have other people’s old data (and methods – ugh) and I’ve been trying to plow through and save an experiment that hasn’t seen the light of day for years. Then, just when it almost touches the surface, my advisor is writing to colleagues telling them I’ll have a rough draft by tomorrow. Um, it’s not ready. “Working draft, working draft…we understand”, he says.

I’m not sure they do understand though. I do actually have a full working draft written, that’s not the problem; the problem is that I’ve never had anyone see the little man behind the curtain before (a.k.a. my brain in action). I’m not brilliant, and I play with ideas and data in ways that are wrong until I figure that out and move on to what’s right. That’s why I typically work on projects for months before telling someone, giving the illusion that it was quick and easy for me. Now all that is going to be ruined by exposing myself to people who are smarter than me. I guess my biggest issue - as in life – is my issue with ‘control’. I like the comfort of my own control. I rarely to do as I’m told, and mostly do what I want, when I want. My justification is that other people may be ‘correct’, but my actions are ‘right’ for me. However, in the end, I still want to please new advisor, but being subservient to him makes me fight the rising “fuck you” in my heart.

Actual video footage

Lost it. I’ve completely lost it. Somewhere in my recent life shift I can’t find major parts of my existence. I’m not just talking about snow pants and a camera cord, even though I can’t find those either; somehow I lost a whole email conversation with a colleague. I get an email from him, after he received the returned samples I sent, saying “Did you look at them?” I remember writing a whole detailed, (and very, very interesting, I might add) email to him with my findings and asking whether I could use some of the information. Did I dream it? Am I crazy? Is he crazy? Did I send that weird email off to someone else? Did I press ‘Delete’ rather than ‘Send’? (I do that). Did I write it at all?!!! Not only is this email conversation gone, but so are the previous ones: our initial contact, our agreement for the conditions of my services, my apology for not replying sooner as I was switching labs, my new contact information…I’ve checked all the folders of all four of my email accounts (too much! I know), and there is no record of ever having contact with this guy.

Okay, so it got lost in the shuffle. I can accept that, I’m mellow and easy-going (ha). But now I have to email him back saying ‘yes I looked at them, and I swear I wrote to you months ago, but I’m a complete ditz and can’t actually remember, but you trust my diagnosis right?” It also doesn’t help that I’ve had this package on my desk for three months now, meaning to send it back. Not very professional.

I’ll get over it. What I did find though, in the bowels of my archived emails, were conversations with my current advisor before he became my current advisor. Those are embarrassing! I hope he’s deleted them. And on a completely separate, rambling thought, I’ve also realised lately (as Xmas and the inevitable Xmas parties are fast approaching, which for my department is apparently a time to embarrass your co-workers), that he has footage of me in the field acting like a crazy woman. In my defence, other than BEING a crazy woman, I was trying to outsmart mosquitoes while eating a sandwich. Of course you can't see the mosquitoes, you had to be there, so it's just a video of me running around in a circle, waving my arms, and eating a sandwich. Huh.

Objects in life are closer than they appear

This week PhD comics introduced postdocs to their story line; quite aptly having them hovering in an after-life, purgatory-like state waiting to be called forward into academic positions. But post-doc’ing isn’t the after-life, it’s more like a pre-life. We are here, taking it day-by-day, waiting for our lives to begin. I look at my advisor’s life (remember we are the same age) and think how different our existences are. He’s married, has a kid, a house, a yard, a hybrid, probably even furniture in his house. I know he bought drapes the other week. Contrast with my life: I left my man, my car, my cat, sold all my furniture, moved here with two suitcases of books. For me, post-doc’ing is more of an inter-life. I had a life, I rather liked it, but gave it all up to post-doc and now I’m trying to get back to it.

This past Monday, my advisor again asked the ill-fated question about the quality of my weekend, to which I replied “good”. He commented on my different response, genuinely looking happy for me, and asked if I had ‘gotten out socialising’. Ha! It cracks me up to think he still thinks I’m normal. No, no socialising, just me. Two days of not speaking, living inside my head, going for runs, surfing the net, reading papers, and cleaning house. It was good.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not entirely unhappy. I do miss certain aspects of my old life, but am also excited to be having this new experience. I think because the post-doc is so transitory, so uncertain, I find myself looking forward mostly, and thus not really thinking about or trying to get settled here. I wonder what my next life will be like. If there is anything I know about my life, it’s that I have no idea where it will lead. I never thought I would be here; or that last place; or the place before it. I do know that I want an orange Vespa in my next life though.