(and nothing if not persistent...)
I knew it had been a long time since I had posted anything here, but a year?!? Where does the time go???
Let’s recap real quick, in case anyone was wondering…I defended! (Woohoo!) All our family is currently healthy! (Also woohoo!) I’m interviewing for postdocs! (Ambivalent woohoo!) And I have another paper in submission and FailProject which will. Not. Die.
Hunting for postdocs has been a less than pleasant experience. Crazy Man has been essentially useless, with the exception of writing very complimentary letters of recommendation. It’s sort of driving me nuts, but I’ve also just sort of accepted it. It’s frustrating, but the situation could be much worse. So I commiserate when I can, and I’m just sort of getting on with it.
The very first place I interviewed (lo, these many months ago), was incredible. I loved the place, the lab, the PI, everything was awesome! The PI knew it was my first interview, and I was trying to schedule others, but when I emailed her/him to say I wanted to join the lab, s/he told me s/he had hired someone else. In spite of the fact that s/he had previously told me they weren’t really looking at anyone else.
Bachelor #2 I was pretty excited about, but funding was dicey so s/he didn’t want to hire anyone just yet. So then I was sort of back to square one. Ugh. Somewhere along the way I girded my loins and emailed a ton of people and finally managed to start scheduling some interviews.
The first of these was a giant fail. I knew about an hour into the first day (before I even gave my talk!) that this one wasn’t going to work. The atmosphere in the lab was bad, the PI was a jerk, the institutional resources were terrible. I stuck it out (even after I almost choked to death on some sushi), although it was really hard to show up for the second half of the interview. But as far as I can tell, there’s really no graceful way to end an interview early. Despite how badly I just wanted to say, “I’m just not that into you.”
And now I’m sort of in that position again. I applied for this particular lab because I had met the PI at a meeting a few years ago, he seemed pretty awesome and he was very impressed with me. The science is interesting-ish to me, maybe a 6 out of 10. But there would be space and money to blaze my own trails, and there are new things I can learn. However…I kind of hate the location. And it would likely be a nightmarish commute. Once more, I’m just not that into you. But I can’t just not show up for my actual interview. At least I have some others scheduled, ones that I am REALLY excited about.
I decided earlier that I’m going to write a book about the stages of interviewing. Like the stages of grieving. Maybe it’s just me, but I seem to always get to a point I’m calling the DO NOT WANT phase. Which is exacerbated if I don’t like the place or the PI or whatever. I’ve got real bad DNW right now. I’ll eventually make it to acceptance. And who knows, maybe somebody will give me some brilliant ideas for FailProject.
