Life goes on (2)

Things have been good and bad this past while.

I finally got two manuscripts out the door, and two more on the wing about to be submitted.
I applied for five jobs, and have a phone interview for one at the end of the month.
I’m not doing the science I want to do, but I know why I came here, and what I have to do to move on, so I’m doing okay.

On the down side, I’ve been living on the edge of sanity with only moments of clarity. My beloved pet died yesterday, and I feel like I’m floating through life with nothing to ground me.
The dynamics of the lab have shifted, and I’m excited to be there for it. I feel strangely calm.

Life will go on. I never thought I would be here, so I know my life is something I can’t plan.
It’ll be okay.
I’ll be okay.

What am I doing here?

A random assortment of manuscripts, projects, half starts and stops, crazy ideas, half-ass data, and intentions for the future. That is my professional life right now.

I thought that maybe if I were to get a faculty position, I would feel more dug-in, more settled, more focused, but now I doubt my ability to get a position, and even whether I am cut-out for academia at all. What I really want is to go home and resume my old life.

Why did I come here? It is still pretty clear. I came because I was offered the position, and it wasn't just any position. It was at the top University, with a department that is packed with leaders in my field, to work with a big name, who I know and like personally, in a dynamic and unique city. There was no way I could have turned that down.

But now, more than a year later, I realise that the dynamism of the city is lost on me as I only ever spend time at work. As for the advisor, department and Uni, it's still all there, looking very nice on my CV, but I have very little in the way of projects to show for it. Preparing for conferences that I have attended for the past few years, I also realise how far my research has strayed from the things that I am passionate about. I have nothing to present at these conferences.

How do I find a way, other than getting a faculty job and starting my own lab, to resume my old research?

Long-list

Why do the perfect jobs always seem like they were invented by the writers of Twilight Zone? The old, black & white, Twilight Zone.

Here is the job of your dreams – except the building you would work in smells really bad.
Here is the job of your dreams – except you would have to give up good coffee.
Here is the job of your dreams – except it is the furthest possible distance on the planet from everything you value in your life.

So, I made a long-list. They asked for reference letters. Someone, a group of people actually, found me and my research interesting enough to ask for reference letters.

Huh.

I still find it weird, but I’m oddly okay with it. In fact, I’ve made a break-through on my research (life). I have a direction, and a vision, and I think I’m ready to implement it. I’m ready to have my own lab. I know the equipment I need. I have several projects for students to start on, and for me to write grants on. I once again (Hallelujah) know what I want! It only took one year, to get back on track. Oh, it’s about time! I’m abandoning my advisor's projects, and going rogue. It’s the only way. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done which has made me any progress in life; in fact, I don’t know why I even attempt to work with other people anymore, or see things any other way than my own. (insert Sinatra soundtrack here).
Done.
I’m back.

Summer mania

Summer I get manic. I don’t eat; I don’t sleep; I talk incessantly; I have crazy ideas, and generally and sometimes literally run around in circles. This week though, I have finally been able to feel like I have a purpose in life. I am in the field, working on the project that I’m getting no data from. But it’s good. I get up early, I eat whatever I want without feeling guilty, I carry lots of heavy stuff, dig around in the bush and get dirty, then carry lots more heavy stuff out again. What can I say. It gives me something other than my pathetic existence to focus on for a while. And while I am here, I can ask myself the seemingly never tiring question of ‘how did I get here?’

I, of course, mean physically (geographically) as well as mentally. I am constantly amazed at where my life takes me and the array of highly contrasting experiences I have. I have a crazy life.

Awhile back I went on a trip to a conference with some lab-mates. We drove for hours upon hours. We told our life stories to each other. I skipped over most parts and just gave the highlights, but I realise that I’ve lead a very different life from most people (in academia anyway). Under-stated though, I think. But only because it’s complicated, and I don’t like to discuss too much of it. It's definitely an accumulation of events that have lead to this kind of crazy. I think the others in the car were a little reflective after that. I was told my story was “balls to the wall”. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds painful.

Life goes on

Postdoc’ing is an emotional rollercoaster, like no other, I swear.
• Upswing – received major grant to continue research project for two more years
• Downswing – doing said research project means I live thousands of kilometres from family and friends
• Upswing – about to submit a Nature paper
• Downswing – said Nature paper and 4 other manuscripts have been in prep for 9 months because co-authors can’t agree
• Upswing – I get to keep my apartment
• Downswing – only get to keep said apartment until December when I’ll have to move in the snow (not that I own furniture I’ll have to worry about)
• Upswing – I get to go on a road trip to a fun conference all expenses paid
• Downswing – I hate my presentation, and so does everyone in my lab (they said so)
• Upswing – two more jobs are available for me to apply for
• Downswing – I didn’t get the job I really wanted for some pretty crappy internal hiring reasons
• Upswing – cat, left with parents, is still alive
• Downswing – said parents are dying
And life goes on…

Life as a singleton

Going home is always a dangerous situation for a post-doc. For me, I was dreading it, knowing that I would see the life that I left behind, and everything and everyone I was missing. And, it happened. I came to THAT point. The point where I have to consider that I’ve made some horrible life choices and that I am nowhere where I want to be in my personal or professional life.

Now I don’t regret my life choices, and it is easy to blame the recession for lack of jobs, and I’m sure lots of funding applications get lost…but that aside, my career is stalling, and my personal life is hanging by a thread and causing upset in everyone’s life. There is the realisation and recognition that if I don’t make some changes very, very soon, I will never be able to go back. Now I don’t mean physically or geographically here, I mean mentally to a place that involves other people – real people – in my life. I have lived alone for so long. I have spent more than half my life making sacrifices for myself and no one else. Telling myself that everything would pay off in the long run, and that when it does I can focus on other things. But I’m realising that the things I’ve always done, the way I’ve always done them, has not paid off, and I am failing in life.

I live this life that is so quiet and self-absorbed. I like being alone more than I like being with people. But I also want a home and a community, and to be with my partner. And I realise that if I don’t start making sacrifices for someone else, there won’t be anybody else. And I’m not sure if I’m not okay with that.

Waiting for NSERC

This is the month that we all hear about funding. The whole academic scientific community across the country holds it’s breath in wait. Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic. But here it is regardless. My last chance for PDF funding. If I get it, great, on many levels. If I don’t, there are some serious decisions that need to be made. I don’t want to think about it.

I’m actually the only person I know, other than my advisor, who takes the funding situation really seriously. I talk to other PDF friends who have this laissez faire attitude. They say, “Oh well, if I don’t get it, something will come through”. And I agree, something will, but I feel like my whole academic future is riding on whether I get funding. And whether I get funding is riding on my whole past scientific career. And I have done everything possible to make myself as competitive as possible, yet it will never be enough to appease the queasy-stomach gods.

Okay, that’s not true. I chose to do research that’s cool over research that’s topical and fundable. I’ve worked in places I wanted to live rather than with people who would get me Science papers. I’ve actually made some bad choices in my career, always playing for the underdog and wanting to be the rebel. And I’ve paid the price in not winning scholarships before.
But not anymore. That’s why I live across the country from my family and friends, sacrificing the last years of my cat’s life, without possessions or a stable home. I’m here to get competitive. I’m here to get the big publications and eventually the faculty position. I know I won’t get that by standing aside and saying, “oh well, something will happen”.

Sunday was international woman’s day

A week or two ago I attended our departmental meeting. It was a special occasion as we announced the results of a job competition, and also the Dean was visiting.

We had six people short-list and interview for the position: two women and four men. My favorite was number 1 and was offered the job. The women ranked fifth and sixth. I was okay with that, because they truly sucked. Totally unrelated to that event, the Dean wanted to make an announcement about the official position on increasing the number of women hired for faculty positions. To increase the number of women, he was going to facilitate more spousal hires.

(I’ll let that sink in a moment)

WHAT?! What the $%@# does that mean? That’s not a policy to hire more women, that’s a policy to hire men’s wives!

I’m a woman. I need a job. Hire me.

Doesn’t work that way, but if I marry a man with a better career than mine, I’ll get a job.

Wow that sucks!

How soon we forget; how far we have come

I’ve been growing more worried about the ‘economic situation’ as I watch tangible things around me unravel; jobs dry up, businesses close, and yet home prices still way out of my reach. And while I have been hating my postdoc for what it is, a temporary, uncertain, low-paying position, I’m now glad that I have a position and an income at all.

I have been worried about money my whole life. My parents spent a lot of time worrying about money, and I grew up very, very frugally. I grew up like it was always a recession, if not a down right depression. And I was loaded with guilt if I wanted to spend money on something. My father grew up without shoes, and my mother remembers the war. If that doesn’t guilt you into eating your gristle, nothing will. Anyway, as a result, I now have financial (and food) issues. When I get stressed, I stop spending money. Sounds good eh? It’s not, because it comes with a worrying, nagging, guilty feeling that I’ve tried to escape most of my life, and have really only been successful in the past few years.

I also left home at an early age. I remember having less than 20$ to my name for many of those early years, and I remember not having heating or food as well. When I finally decided to get my act together and go back to school, I often sacrificed food for tuition, and would then wander the halls between classes looking for spare change under the vending machines, hoping to save enough money to by a cup of soup or bowl of rice.

So that’s my story. It’s old enough now, and I’ve been well fed for long enough that I don’t think too much of it until something reminds me. That happened very unexpectedly this morning. I was at the lab bench listening to a radio story about a group of friends who decided to crunch the numbers and figure out how little low-income people have to spend on food. They came up with $80 per month. And they decided to live off that for a few months and compare notes; a sort-of social experiment for them. The details of their story was enough to send me right back to my late teens-early 20s and the worry, doubt, guilt, desperation I felt living off a sac of rice. That pit of the stomach feeling wasn’t just hunger, but also fear. I was actually emotionally stimulated enough by the radio article that I had to leave the room and take a break.

Later that afternoon, as I was entering my office, it hit me again but in a different way. I have an office. My own office. With windows. Two of them. And food in my desk. And heat in my home. And clothes on my back. I am safe, and well fed, and warm. So why won’t this uneasy feeling go away?

Shattered and tossed and worn

I haven’t blogged in a while because I’ve been discouraged about my future.

The first position I applied for was cancelled due to the economic downturn, and I personally know about 10 people who applied for the second job; the job I haven’t even been allowing myself to think about because I really want it, and know that I’m not competitive enough to get. It would be “the” job. The job that I would have for the rest of my life because everything could fall into place, and I could live how I’ve always dreamed of. I’m too scared to get my hopes up. I didn’t tell my friends or family about the job because I also don’t want them to get their hopes up for me either.

But, in all that discouragement, I’m almost resolved myself to this current life. I am feeling better about being here. I’m making friends, albeit only from work. I trust my advisor and know that he wants me to succeed. My lab is coming to life, and if I could only get focussed and get back some of my past productivity I could make some good progress. I feel blah and numb most days, other days hopeful, other days kicked. That box full of my dreams for the future is still there, yet no closer after 10 years of working towards it. There are days that I think about giving it up, but the alternative wouldn’t get me any closer to the box of dreams either, so I plug on. I have another month before I find out about funding for the next two years. Between my advisor, and myself I can’t imagine that we won’t get funded, but, if I personally don’t get funded then I have to consider that I’m not going to make it in academia. The question then would be, do I drop out now or do the two years and wait for the random drift towards more uncertainty.

I'm a grown up?

As I finalise my application package for a tenure-track position, what I was so hyped on yesterday, is now becoming a freak-out.
What if I get it?
Can I pull that off?
Why hasn’t someone stopped me already?
Do I want to live there?
Do I want to put that much effort into teaching?
Am I ready to start writing the do-or-die grant proposals?
Grad students sound like a lot of responsibility.
Am I ready for this?
Am I ready to focus on the next big push towards tenure?
Does it ever end???

I am so naïve. I have no idea what I’m doing. My application package is okay, I think. I have the credentials, but I lack the experience – not of doing science, but of making what I do look all glossy and slick.

However, I know I’m not alone. Many successful scientists in my field that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and bonding with over beverages have, at one point or another, beckoned me with crooked finger, leaned in and told me the same secret. They have no idea how they got where they are, and worry that one-day someone will find out that they have no idea what they’re doing.

It’s funny though how you judge yourself over such short time periods. I never felt that I would succeed in my undergraduate, I thought that grad school would be so hard and I might fail, and now I compare myself to profs with 10 years experience and grooming, and think “I suck”. But, then things are put into perspective. I talked with a good friend over the holidays, an old roommate actually, and mentioned I was applying for a position at this University. She asked “what position” and was shocked when I said “prof”. Ha ha. She has no idea what I do for a living, and she thinks that since I still “go to Uni” I must still be going to classes and writing exams and stuff. When I talk to my friends about ‘work’ they always cock their heads and ask “Work? When did you get a job?” I had to ask her “You know I’m a Doctor, right?” Ha, ha. I’m grown-up!