The only certainty is uncertainty
Aug. 26th, 2014 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterI had a good phone conversation with my mom last night, while she walked around outside my grandpa's house and checked on the state of the fruits and vegetables. During our conversation, she found that this year the pear tree has made fewer, but larger pears, as compared to last year. The blueberries have gotten picked, and there are a number of "zero-maintenance" pumpkins that have been produced from seeds she planted.
Even though she reads this blog (hi, Mom!), our conversation still highlighted how important it is to still communicate in more direct and multiple ways. For one thing, she had a lot of questions about my current situation. I've put off articulating about many of the details for multiple reasons. For one thing, I don't want to catch a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease. Money is a large deciding factor in whatever happens next, and there are no certainties in that department. That's a fact of life for a postdoc.
We're coming up on the job application season, which means another round of sitting down to review what's out there and trying to imagine how different scenarios could play out. Assuming I find things worth applying for, and assuming I'm sufficiently well-qualified by this stage, job interviews will happen sometime over the winter, and further job-negotiation dances will happen in the spring.
But let's be pragmatic here. When I look around at how other postdocs look on paper, I think - there are a tremendous number of people who are highly qualified for these jobs, which pay pitiful salaries. On the one hand, maybe that means that applying for these jobs is just perpetuating what Marge Simpson said about grad students making "a terrible life choice." On the other hand, I still firmly and passionately believe in doing aspects of this work. The "aspects" part is important. My identity as an academic differs from the identities of others as academics, so I bring a certain perspective and set of priorities to the job. The trick is to highlight the strengths of those priorities in my job applications, as well as to find an institution that fits well with my priorities. Not simple.
Being pragmatic on other fronts: my funding here has a definite end, at the end of November. Certain people have strong incentives to ensure that I'm able to finish up and publish the work I've done here, and certain other people have other incentives to ensure that I'm pushing out more of the work I did for my dissertation. MY incentives are that I like to put out good, novel, interesting science into the world, and want all of my hard work to see the light of day. I've put most of my belongings into a moving cube, sent off to Nebraska, so that they're well-situated if things pan out in Nebraska. If things don't pan out in Nebraska, well, that's not going to be the end of the world and I won't wind up like my friend V, whose stuff are in storage in one state and who can't afford to get that stuff to the current state.
So I could instead go up to Seattle, be with my family there, and figure out how to integrate myself into the local academic happenings. A pretty satisfying backup plan. Plus, who knows what is going to happen with my father's health, or the health of other family members there. Or I could go back to the Phoenix area and figure out how to carry on with work there. My Arizona safety net isn't quite as robust as my Seattle one, but then again, I have another very strong incentive (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scrottie) to go there. (not to mention the rest of the life created there)
Funny how, in both cases, the incentives are centered around family and loved ones. In actuality, this is utterly unsurprising. I thinksytharin in particular could relate.
And so there it is for now. Not a simple web. But overall, I still feel like an incredibly lucky person. Remember this, when you struggle: people born in the U.S.A. these days have been born into an incredible country. We have electricity in our homes, clean running water, and overall a better social safety net than people in times past and in many other parts of the world. We must put these gifts to good use.
Even though she reads this blog (hi, Mom!), our conversation still highlighted how important it is to still communicate in more direct and multiple ways. For one thing, she had a lot of questions about my current situation. I've put off articulating about many of the details for multiple reasons. For one thing, I don't want to catch a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease. Money is a large deciding factor in whatever happens next, and there are no certainties in that department. That's a fact of life for a postdoc.
We're coming up on the job application season, which means another round of sitting down to review what's out there and trying to imagine how different scenarios could play out. Assuming I find things worth applying for, and assuming I'm sufficiently well-qualified by this stage, job interviews will happen sometime over the winter, and further job-negotiation dances will happen in the spring.
But let's be pragmatic here. When I look around at how other postdocs look on paper, I think - there are a tremendous number of people who are highly qualified for these jobs, which pay pitiful salaries. On the one hand, maybe that means that applying for these jobs is just perpetuating what Marge Simpson said about grad students making "a terrible life choice." On the other hand, I still firmly and passionately believe in doing aspects of this work. The "aspects" part is important. My identity as an academic differs from the identities of others as academics, so I bring a certain perspective and set of priorities to the job. The trick is to highlight the strengths of those priorities in my job applications, as well as to find an institution that fits well with my priorities. Not simple.
Being pragmatic on other fronts: my funding here has a definite end, at the end of November. Certain people have strong incentives to ensure that I'm able to finish up and publish the work I've done here, and certain other people have other incentives to ensure that I'm pushing out more of the work I did for my dissertation. MY incentives are that I like to put out good, novel, interesting science into the world, and want all of my hard work to see the light of day. I've put most of my belongings into a moving cube, sent off to Nebraska, so that they're well-situated if things pan out in Nebraska. If things don't pan out in Nebraska, well, that's not going to be the end of the world and I won't wind up like my friend V, whose stuff are in storage in one state and who can't afford to get that stuff to the current state.
So I could instead go up to Seattle, be with my family there, and figure out how to integrate myself into the local academic happenings. A pretty satisfying backup plan. Plus, who knows what is going to happen with my father's health, or the health of other family members there. Or I could go back to the Phoenix area and figure out how to carry on with work there. My Arizona safety net isn't quite as robust as my Seattle one, but then again, I have another very strong incentive (
scrottie) to go there. (not to mention the rest of the life created there)Funny how, in both cases, the incentives are centered around family and loved ones. In actuality, this is utterly unsurprising. I think
sytharin in particular could relate.And so there it is for now. Not a simple web. But overall, I still feel like an incredibly lucky person. Remember this, when you struggle: people born in the U.S.A. these days have been born into an incredible country. We have electricity in our homes, clean running water, and overall a better social safety net than people in times past and in many other parts of the world. We must put these gifts to good use.
