Interviews
Jul. 6th, 2013 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterMy friend S spent four years on the job market, applying for faculty jobs and giving talks and going for interviews, all while trying to maintain her research program. At the time, her daughter was three or four years old, and her husband had just wrapped up his Ph.D. So not only was S looking for a job, her husband R was, too, and they needed to find an institution with a good fit for both of them. She turned down 5 job offers in the process of looking for the right place. I just remember one point when she showed me the calender that she and her husband were keeping to keep track of their travels and interviews. One month, there were only 2 days when neither of them was traveling.
Of course, for something like that to happen, a person has to first and foremost actually be a good scientist. About a year after S and her husband finally got fantastic jobs at a great university, she came to Australia to work on a research collaboration that I was also working on. In the mornings, while I was desperately trying to catch a little more sleep, she'd be up early to work on grant-writing for an hour or two, before our morning data-collection duties began (on the flipside, I had to be up pretty late to help collect data in the evenings). She was so great to work with when it came time to design experiments or figure out how to do things efficiently, and we had a fantastic time collecting data on sweat bees. She's been one of my best role models for how to be a good scientist, and a good person, too.
I still need to work on getting more work done, and need to figure out how to tune out the people around me who can afford to take weekends off, and actual vacations that don't also require working. It's not about logging hours, but about producing good science and writing.
Of course, for something like that to happen, a person has to first and foremost actually be a good scientist. About a year after S and her husband finally got fantastic jobs at a great university, she came to Australia to work on a research collaboration that I was also working on. In the mornings, while I was desperately trying to catch a little more sleep, she'd be up early to work on grant-writing for an hour or two, before our morning data-collection duties began (on the flipside, I had to be up pretty late to help collect data in the evenings). She was so great to work with when it came time to design experiments or figure out how to do things efficiently, and we had a fantastic time collecting data on sweat bees. She's been one of my best role models for how to be a good scientist, and a good person, too.
I still need to work on getting more work done, and need to figure out how to tune out the people around me who can afford to take weekends off, and actual vacations that don't also require working. It's not about logging hours, but about producing good science and writing.
