I recently attended one of the largest conferences in my field, the Keystone meeting on NR in Whistler, British Columbia. The venue was gorgeous, there was even snowfall on the last night. In our group, the rule for conference attendance is that you can go if you have interesting data to present. This meant the newest members of the labs didn’t have enough data to justify the (very high) cost of the trip. Most of us were able to go though – our advisor, staff scientist, two postdocs, and I attended.
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Postdocs have few years to identify career goals, strengthen CVs, and construct a professional network, all while working full time in the lab. Given the current situation in academia, most of us will end up in what used to be considered alternative careers. There is a long list of non-academic careers. We just have to know where to look and how to market ourselves. For the creative communicators among us, science writing is an option. For those interested in protecting public health, a career in regulatory affairs could be appropriate.
As I have previously mentioned, I am an individual member of the National Postdoctoral Association ( http://www.nationalpostdoc.org/ ), and I recently attended my third annual NPA meeting in San Francisco. This year marked the 10th annual meeting and was wonderful due to the attention to detail and efforts of the meetings committee. A special mention must go to a key NPA member, Sam Castaňeda from UC Berkeley who masterfully served as the chair of the NPA local host committee for this year’s meeting.
I am a little behind in my blog posts because I became overwhelmed with my thesis defense. The big day finally came, and I was able to present the work I’ve done over the last several years since arriving at Scripps Florida. I was very fortunate that my family lives fairly close, so my mom, sister, and best friend were able to attend the seminar and go out to dinner with me after the small reception hosted by my department. The big question is now: What next?
For many of us, the reasons we focused on achieving our Ph.D. may be clear cut--we are destined for greatness in the academic arena. For others, it was just the path of least resistance and allowed the continuation of the “student lifestyle” in a comfortable research field.
As postdocs, we toiled away our early 20s in graduate school working 50+ hours a week in research labs and teaching as a necessary rite of passage on the career path to academia. We justified our meager stipends, long hours, and general dissatisfaction in life with the promise of a brighter, better-paying future as principle investigators. Over-worked and under-paid, we were motivated by expectation. We were confident that in the not-so-distant future, our passion for scientific inquiry and contribution to a community of knowledge would culminate in a position worthy of our training.
Postdoctoral fellowships provide budding scientists with the advanced training necessary to prepare us for the next step in our careers. Traditionally, these fellowships are geared toward a future in academic research. For most of us, however, as I described in my first post, our career paths will likely take a different route.
I’ve sent rough drafts of my research chapters to my boss, but I’m having an unbelievable bout of writers’ block for the conclusions chapter. I have a section at the end of every research chapter with conclusions, some discussion and implications, and future directions. These are standard items for the end of a chapter, according to the postdocs in my group. I’m now struggling with how to write a conclusions chapter that doesn’t sound like it was copied from the end of each chapter. That would look awful and I’d appear incredibly unmotivated to take such a perceived shortcut.
As I have searched for postdoctoral positions, the postdocs in my research group have suggested using websites like postdocjobs.com and the job listings on the Science and Nature sites. Surprisingly, I only saw a few advertisements where a cover letter was specifically requested. I do not have much experience writing cover letters, so I set out to find some resources on how to write an effective cover letter.
In my last post, I shared the advice that I had received as I prepared to head to my first batch of postdoctoral position interviews. I did practice my interview seminar. I packed 4 sets of nearly identical outfits to ensure a professional look – all black for the shirt, pants, and shoes with a colored cardigan for something unique each day. I did skim abstracts from recent publications again and re-read my own papers. So, with all that advanced preparation, I also come up with a list of questions to ask potential advisors and their current group members.
