At night the monsters come out from under the bed

Yesterday I dreamed I was being fired from my job. The setting of the dream was clearly out of context, taking place in a carpenter's shop all complete with saw dust on the floor, old furniture and people dressed in work overalls, but the cast was people among the higher ups at work. The reason for the firing was that someone had pointed out something I had said in a meeting the other day, and although I only vaguely remember the reason, it was something along the lines of me saying something impolite to some service staff. Hardly a reason for being downright kicked out in the real world and the process behind it all was also a tad too Kafkaesque to be true, as it was only this one persons word against mine and the decision was already made.

Although I missed two days at work last week due to a cold I don't really think I'm up for being kicked out but the dream was distressing on it own for being so real and featuring the right people in the role of power. It also pushed on some very real buttons with some real situations lately brought about by my future change of workplace. Maybe it's all in my head, but I am having such a difficult time with the decision to go after my new job. It's not so much the move and the saying good bye to very nice colleagues here (although that in itself is taking its toll), it's more the guilt of not being grateful enough for the chances and opportunities I have been given here and maybe most of all the fear that in being open about my desire for New Job/ New Institution I am inevitably showing a lack of passion for Current Job or more correctly Current Institution. It is not so much about the actual work to be done in various projects, because I will continue to be involved in those and my closest colleagues know that I plan to be invested in our shared interests for the foreseeable future, it is more about the type of institution.

I am not unhappy where I am. I work with an extraordinarily good group of people who are excellent scientists and fun and kind people to be around. I like my workplace and recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone and I appreciate many of the privileges associated with this kind of business. I also like the city and the place and in general I am not ready to rule out the opportunity of ever coming back. I might never do so, but at the moment I like to think of leaving a door open. But it is not a university and it has a different mission. Not a worse one, just a different one. It has a heavy emphasis on applied science and the potential to do great and important work that affects lots of people every day, but I don't know if that mission is for me. I am not sure it is, but with being a postdoc and being in an almost entirely basic research focused group I haven't really experienced the true side of this workplace. At the moment I have a hard time seeing how the kind of research I am most interested in right now fits into the main idea of this institution, but to rule that out forever is a bit of a long shot, I'd say.

Ever since finishing my Masters I have had a desire to teach. I love teaching and I am good at it. I have a passion for teaching that I just can't muster up for applied research, and my main goal is to work at a university. The position I have gotten now is my chance to do so, and may eventually open the doors to another university in a more desirable location (the place I'm going to is definitely desirable in its own right, but it's not a place most people would want to spend the rest of their lives) or it may not. There are not hundreds of universities to choose from here. There are maybe something like ten universities where my field is taught in the region of four countries where we could imagine living for the long term. In other words there are absolutely no guarantees for being able to sustain a lifetime career as a professor.

I have been trying until now to signal interest in both worlds (I mean who on the job market wouldn't do so, if they could possibly under any circumstances see themselves in both types of careers), and trying to get credentials in both types of work. I have actively been working towards getting as much teaching experience as possible, but maybe my colleagues haven't realized I thought of that as a way of making myself marketable towards another type of position. I have found it difficult to be open about my wish of switching to the university environment because I feared it would change how my commitment to the applied research type institution was viewed. I think that was rightly guessed, because that is what I am experiencing right now. Now when everyone knows I have accepted the other job I cannot really hide where my preferences lie, and some people don't like that. It's not only that they don't like it, but I'm fairly sure that some people also take this as disinterest in what we are doing here and may well remember this if they ever receive an application from me again in the future. What bugs me even more is that although I don't want it to be that way, it may be true and if it is I will not be able to return to this place, and that leaves me really sad.

My job does not exist

After almost two years you would think I should have realized, but alas, no. A few weeks ago I got a questionnaire from the union I'm a member of, who were doing a survey among their postdoc members about work conditions. All fine and an excellent initiative. In one of the first questions the respondents were to choose their workplace among a list of institutions. My institution was not on that list and according to the explanation following below neither were any of the other non-university research institutes. Apparently according to the rules in this country one cannot be a postdoc if the position is not linked to an university. Huh?

Granted, nowhere on my contract are the words "postdoc" mentioned. My position says research scientist on a contract that runs out four years from the start date, but the name tag on my door and my business card says postdoc. How's that for confusion? I don't really care whether my particular position is called postdoc, or contract-based research scientist or worn out young scientist waiting in line for a permanent job, but I do care about the implications following from the postdoc position only being associated with universities*.

For one this brings up my favorite pet-peeve, about the postdoc being considered a second educational step beyond the PhD. This bugs me to no end and I have written about it several times on this blog in the past. I have no problem with the postdoc as a time to refine ones ideas, get the dissertation research published, get a foundation of new research to publish from in the future and to provide some preliminary results for the first big grant applications. But, emphasising that this must happen at a university, sounds to me like saying that one must be in a degree-granting learning environment under supervision of teachers in order to do so. Sounds to me like the next step will be the "postdoc degree" achieved by defending a set amount of research in front of a board of academics.

On the flip side, this rule might be well intentioned and signal the need for a training ground where postdocs can get experience with teaching, interaction with students, advising etc. If it is so, even I might agree that it makes some sort of sense. But as far as I know, the goal at many institutions and various associations with postdoc's best interest at heart is to shield post docs from teaching loads, student advising and too much interaction with students. The ideal postdoc in my field seems to be considered ample time for research and development, without "wasting" too much on taking part in department commitments.

Last, but not least, how on earth do the union people imagine the research institutes can be effective in churning out papers to the degree they are now, if postdocs weren't involved in the process? Do they have no idea how a research group or the grant proposal process works? I wonder who they think do much of the science in the government subsidised research institutes if not young contract researchers, and what these people are entitled to or not, if they are not postdocs? If the postdoc title somehow suggests that one is under training, does that give the university real-postdocs access to development tools, that the research institute contract researchers haven't? Or is it the other way around that the non-postdoc contract researchers have more freedom as scientists because we are considered average slaves rather than people in training? If that is so, I'd like the title on my business card to be changed.

*I should emphasise that I am at a research institute, in a department with a strong emphasis on basic science. We are not associated with a particular university, but many senior (and some junior) scientists hold associate/ full professorships at universities in addition to their position here. We do not do commercial science and compete for grants from research councils and other public funding bodies on equal terms with the universities.

Writing for fun

I am slowly reengaging with research after the summer of craziness and a year of unusual obligations. I remember how I in the beginning of my postdoc sometimes found it frustrating to be in my office with myself and my papers all the time and wanted distraction and new challenges. Now I think it is pure bliss to close my door and work away on my own things all day. In a way I have achieved what I wanted in the short term now with getting the job, and I don't see the need to spend a lot of time on teaching or admin or any other complimentary CV-building activities right now. I have seven months left in this position and I've decided to live the postdoc life in all it's glory to the fullest and enjoy having all the time in the world to work on publications. It's interesting how it's much easier to be enthusiastic about this prospect now, when I know it will not last forever than in the previous two years when I had plenty of post doc life ahead of me and the mere title made me feel unenthusiastic.

So I have been typing up my field notes recently and while this is a completely brain-less task it is still a way of reconnecting with the work we did a few months ago and get an overview of the kind of data we have brought back. Yesterday, after finishing the typing, I sat down with the notes, went through all the localities and started scribbling down which data have the potential to become which kind of publications. I've always been a bit frustrated with the way these projects are organized, because the control-freak inside me, loves the idea of having a proper hypothesis, finding a good place to test it and see what the outcome is. Sadly my field doesn't really work that way. Of course we have some sort of a hypothesis, but since we don't know how and where we will find the pieces for the puzzle, it always ends up with a situation where we come home with the data and then we begin to figure out what it's all about.

This project has been running for two years now and until yesterday I was seriously worried that my publication outcome of this post doc was going to be embarrassingly small, because I just couldn't see where it was all heading. After yesterday's combing through the material for publishable bit and pieces and bigger arguments I've counted 10 potential publication topics that we could start writing right now and 7 more that require more data, but are work in progress. I mean, how could I not see that before? So, obviously I'm not going to write 17 papers tomorrow (and some of the topics would not be me as a first author anyway), but looking at this list makes me so much more inspired to write than I have been in a long time.

It will probably be years and years before all of this will appear in print and some of the ideas will probably never fly, but it was so cool to go through this process of connecting the dots, identifying ideas and seeing the potential in what was so far just a couple of dirty notebooks with loose pages and weak binding. I have written so little over such a long time that everything has been revision of old manuscripts and that process is so tedious and drab that I get tired just from thinking about it. I have been thinking about how to make the most of my workdays and I think I shall try to sneak in a small portion of writing for fun each day and get started on some of these new ideas.

What does a postdoc do - part II: The research

I was hired as a postdoc on a four-year research project beginning in December 2005. My contract runs the full lenght of the project and will end in December 2009. I packed my belongings, moved abroad and started my new position within the week after my dissertation defense and arrived with four papers from my dissertation in press and two yet to be submitted. I also brought one half-finished manuscript from my Master's research five years previously, which had been in and out of the dissertation several times due to disagreements between advisers.

The new project had barely started. What I do relies heavily on fieldwork, which is done in summer, so the first six months were mainly about getting acquainted with the new topic, planning the field season and trying to get my old manuscripts published. The new topic was closely related to my dissertation topic, though seen from a slightly different angle. I performed literature searches, went to field site country to meet with potential collaborators and got to know my new surroundings. I also wrote a reasonable full first draft of the old manuscript from my Master's and sent it off to my former advisor and fretted about how one of the dissertation manuscripts should be revised. My research group decided to participate in a collaborative proposal for a big grant. As one of the things we wanted to do was originally my idea, I wrote that part of the application and was involved in the fitting-it-all-together process. I don't remember how long time I spent on this, but as a group we were probably engaged in the grant writing activity more or less full time for a month. As summer was coming closer I spent almost all available time prepping for the field season. It is maybe not at the core of our work descriptions but for field scientists logistics takes an awful lot of time. It is paperwork and planning and booking and packing, shopping for personal gear and field equipment, figuring out a train table in a foreign land with a different alphabet, vaccinations and health checkups, learning how to use equipment, packing lists and did I mention shopping. At the same time I was offered a six months stint as a visiting professor in another place and made arrangements to continue my postdoc research alongside with the teaching while I was away.

While summer is the quiet time for many academics with time for in-depth thinking, reading and writing, summer is the busiest time of the year for someone in my field. Summer is the time for week-long field expeditions, for student field trips and for conferences. In the summer 2006 I spent 5 weeks in the field for my postdoc project, came home for four days, left for six months away beginning with twenty days of student field excursions and then preparations for the semester. Five weeks in the field ought to generate a lot of data, but often it feels like nothing has been achieved yet when we arrive back home. Much of the interpretation actually happens in the field along with data collection, but like everybody else we need time to dive into the literature and to connect the dots before getting to the writing phase. Most of all we wait for one specific kind of lab analysis to tell us whether the results are useful or not, and it is not unusual to wait for a year for those results.

Before I started the visiting positions I had ambitious ideas of all the work I would get done when I was not teaching. In reality I could barely keep up with necessities such as eating and sleeping. Teaching three courses - one of them an intensive undergrad course - and all of them for the first time was just not compatible with research activity. During the fall I went to one conference (at which I spent more time in my hotel room studying material for an upcoming graduate seminar), wrote one proposal for a field excursion (which I later had to cancel), wrote one proposal for a small independent grant (which I got), did some revise and resubmit work on the big grant proposal from spring and had a few meetings about some background material for the postdoc project. I didn't touch the manuscripts besides when moving the paper piles around in the office to make room for more class-related articles.

This spring, I'm one and a half year into the postdoc and I still haven't submitted any of the manuscripts I brought with me in a half-finished state when I arrived. I haven't written a word on any new paper related to the postdoc project (I finally finished the field report from last year less than a month ago). The postdoc project is still officially my main research activity and I do spend time on it, but mainly in terms of being responsible for the background material (involves drawing the strings to keep some other people working on this), organizing data from last year and planning logistics for this years field season. We got the big collaborative grant and while I am a co-PI on one of the modules I haven't really done any science in the project yet. It has a heavy outreach component which I have been quite involved in (attending meetings and developing ideas), but other than that others are keeping it flowing. I got the small independent grant and have been working on logistics and field preparations for that one for months. It is not a lot of hours per week, but it's always there in the back of my head and takes attention away from other activities. I am still working on the manuscript from my Master's. My former advisor finally got her act together and sent me comments in February and we have been working on it together on and off when time is available.

I don't dare to say when those darn manuscripts will be done, but hopefully I won't round the two-year mark without submitting at least some of them. This years field season begins in less than a week and I still need to participate in packing the shared field equipment, go through the results from last year, go to the dentist, pack my own stuff and spend time with Fiance, so it's not likely to happen right now.

What does a postdoc do - part I: The beginning

Among all the more or less mysterious ways google leads people to this blog, the "what does a postdoc do" question is by far the most common. Some time in the not so distant past, when I was a grad student, I thought that a postdoc somehow equalled the grad experience just with better pay and without coursework, advisers and a demand for a dissertation at the end. What i mean is that I thought a postdoc equalled working on a specific research project for a set amount of time with the goal of publishing on x and y topic during that time. For some postdocs this is probably the way it is, for others it's something completely different. One thing I have realized is that the "postdoc" term covers so many variations that it's almost impossible to explain once and for all what it's all about. Most of us probably fall in a category somewhere in the middle. The "postdoc" title usually implies a position funded by someone else's project money. Depending on the PI's characters postdocs seem to be everything from research slaves to semi-independent participants in research groups, but I've also seen postdoc money fund people in more technical positions. Strictly speaking postdoc positions should not contain teaching or administrative duties, but most of the postdocs I know in real life as well as in the blogosphere find themselves participating to some degree in one or both of these activities sooner or later. As the postdoc employment should be a temporary experience most of us need to think along the lines of career enhancement at the same time, and often that means taking part in advising, teaching, administration and grant writing.

In reality only a small percentage of my time is being spent on the original research project that feeds me. One and half year in my responsibilities have developed to span three research projects, a heavy administrative load, some teaching, some advising as well as trying to publish articles from my dissertation and previous research activities. Is it good for CV building - yes, I think so. Is it good for keeping the work load at a sane level - No, I think not. Is it common - I have no idea. The specific combination of hats I wear on daily basis is probably not common, but I don't think development of side projects and additional responsibilities on top of the research project are uncommon at all.

April retrospective

I suck! That's pretty much the feeling I'm left with after another month of not submitting any publications. It's not that I'm not doing anything. I'm doing more teaching and more admin than any other postdoc at my institution, and this month I have actually spent more time on tasks related to my actual postdoc project (yes, I do have one such, although I almost forget it sometimes). Right now is the prepping-for-the-field time of the year, with activities such as equipment shopping, travel planning, customs arrangements, visa arrangements taking up an unreasonable proportion of time. It is also the time for wrapping up results from last year, figuring out where the potential lies and what we'd better forget about. In between endless logistics and Easter break and unforeseen events threatening to jeopardize the entire field season I've managed to get the following done in April:

• submitted one conference abstract
• transferred and labelled all photos from last years field season in new database
• made new base maps for field area
• figured out the nuts and bolts of new software
• printed satellite images for field area
• made sample list
• made itinerary for this years field expedition
• dealt with various logistics for upcoming field season
• dealt with various logistics for summer teaching
• made arrangements with student for summer research
• written project plan for new project (funded by my first ever independent grant, however small)
• had annual assessment meetings with everybody in department
• had full day meeting with colleague at another university
• had a couple of half-day admin meetings

To me it still screams - "but you still haven't submitted the papers you idiot".

And the Oscar goes to....

Thanks to PropterDoc who did not only put up an award show for geeky postdocs bloggers, but also gave a recent post about productivity on this blog one of the three "good sense of achievement" award. Three cheers for PropterDoc!

The award show also doubles as the second What's up Postdoc carnival and there are many good posts. Head over and take a look.

On networking

I am extremely slow, I know it, but I have been wanting to say something about this topic ever since Dr. Crazy wrote this excellent post about being in the network and how to get in there when you are young and junior and unimportant. A few days later flavia added her view on how networking has worked out for her as a naturally more introverted person. I have returned to these posts a few times in the past couple of weeks, but never found the right way to express my own thoughts on the topic. Yesterday when I was discussing student's grades on the phone with the external examiner I came to think of it again - that conversation in itself was an example of how I network and why I think my strategy works.

I am not an extroverted person. I think many people believe I am, because I speak loudly, have strong opinions and can be dominating in groups of people I know well and feel comfortable with. But I don't like introducing myself to new people or hosting big parties and I have few but important close friends rather than a large social circle of acquaintances. I value my alone time and get tired from too much interaction with other people, but cherish my time spent with close friends and family. Nevertheless I have a large and well-functioning professional network that has already proved valuable in finding work, grants, research projects and students along with semi-casual friendships and a feeling of belonging in my field.

This does not all come down to my networking skills. Like Dr. Crazy and probably many others with a good professional network someone helped me along in the beginning and the early start was merely luck on my part than anything else. The research topic for my PhD was part of a larger international research initiative, which had already been up and running for few years when I came into the picture. The international "cluster" worked in the way that each group would carry out the day to day work on their own, but everybody would meet at annual workshops to discuss results, the future of the project and catch up on all sorts of news. As a new PhD student who knew very few people in this field, being introduced to such a closely knit and quite informal network was invaluable. The people I met at the first project workshop I attended still forms the basis of the network today, especially since we have met regularly for many years now and after a while one gets to develop shared stories, shared experiences and shared references. Some are still very distant to me, but others I have met so often now, that they are, if not friends, at least people I care about on some level.

In the country where I did my PhD, doctoral students are strongly encouraged to spend some time abroad. I was the only PhD student in a very small university-unit and desperate to get out and meet other people and arranged a stay at my all time favorite institution in arctic outpost. The stay was arranged through one of the people in the international project network. I practically didn't know him at the time, besides having exchanged a few sentences at the first workshop I attended, but my advisor helped the contact along. It was supposed to be a two months stay to take some courses, but developed into first one semester and later several long-term visits at the institution that gave me the second foundation for my present network. Being located in Arctic outpost the key strategy of the school is to attract lots of external visitors thereby creating a very dynamic and subfield-focused environment. Practically everyone who matters in my subfield (at least in this part of the world) has had some sort of connection to this place over the years.

It wouldn't be wrong to say that I have had some good opportunities to network and to get to know people falling in my lap. But, it's one thing to get the chance to meet people as a student and another to keep those contacts and develop them into your own independent professional network after leaving your PhD institution and advisor behind. And that is what stroke me while being on the phone with the external examiner, who is someone I have been familiar with for years but haven't interacted much with until recently. We were talking about the grades, obviously, and about the students, and about some recent hires and departmental things at the institution and a little bit of this and a little bit of that, like you do when you talk to people you have known for a while. I talked about my ideas for teaching this class and things I would like to change if given the chance, and I told about my new department head responsibilities. While speaking I realized that what I was really doing was giving him an update of my CV, tooting my horn or preparing for a maybe-someday in the future-job talk. Not in an obsessive way, or at least I don't think so, but in a casual- part of a conversation we are having anyway - way.

I do this a lot actually. I tell people I meet about my ideas for research, for teaching and for re-organizing the world and I also tell people about my successes, but not so much about my failures (I whine about those to Fiance and write about them here). I think this is part of the reason why people remember me and do come back to me with job offers and invitations to take part in research projects. I also think that I am only comfortable doing this because most of the people I interact with are not perfect strangers, but people I have met several times and have known on some level for many years. I think this all boils down to that I suck up to people and that it works.

On being a post doc in an unusual setting

I am hired on a four-year postdoc contract with my salary tied directly to a research project. My PI could have decided to use me as his personal assistant to get as many publications out as possible, but clearly he is a very different kind of person who has given me plenty of space, responsibility and room for career development. Most recently with adding this higher-up administrative position to my responsibilities, making me stand out as some odd freak-of-nature in the postdoc world. I think I am going to talk more about the background of this in a separate post at some point, but aside from my boss being the particular kind of character that he is, I also think it has to do with the character of my workplace. I am affiliated with a government research institute and not a university and though we have a high research profile now and some top of their field research departments this is all relatively new and the way of thinking in the administration is often closer to the public agency kind of institution than an academic one. The build-up of successful research groups in some departments has been driven by individuals who have had the interest, the guts and the research pedigree to make this happen, and I sometimes get the feeling that some of the other departments don't really get neither what we are doing and why we are doing it.

My own department has changed over the past five years ago from a few successful individuals who did most of their research activities with external partners into a fully fledged research department with six permanent positions on professor/ associate professor level, three post docs and two PhD students. This year we will have another post doc and some Master's students. Many are also affiliated with and teach at either the local or other universities and we do all our research in collaboration with universities and other research institutions. But this is all new. The whole idea of having post docs in a stopover position is new to most people here. The usual way of thinking has been that people who were originally hired in some sort of temporary position would usually stick around and with time get permanently employed if they were not completely hopeless. I was the second post doc hired in this department and it was strongly indicated by everyone that this would most likely develop into a permanent position. But, because there is always a but you know, my employment was also part of a hiring wave across all the research-heavy departments and now the administration is obviously waking up to the new order of the day. What are they going to do with all those new people hired in temporary positions? Can they really find permanent positions for all of us like they used to with the odd short-term employee in the past? And ironically because the research departments are doing so well now, there are more grants, with more postdocs and more PhDs and the whole thing is just growing and growing.

Obviously this is not a stable situation, especially since all of us new hires, are here for the research perspectives and with ambitions of getting our own grants and own post docs and PhDs. From the administrative perspective it is clear that future post docs and PhDs can not expect to stay here after their contracts have run out. For us who are already here, the situation is a bit trickier. On one hand we will most likely stay and it will most likely do us good to serve the department and the institution well in order to make the higher ups see why they should create the positions for us (that was also part of the game plan in offering me this administrative gig). On the other hand we need to keep up with publishing, teaching, grants, international collaborations and everything else that might add to give us a shot at the rare faculty positions in our field. At the same time we are walking on a very fine line between admitting that we are keeping our outside options open and requesting time for activities related to that (e.g. teaching) while at the same time conveying interest and effort in building up a future here.

In many ways I like the university environment better. I miss the day to day contact with students and would like to be more involved in the education part, and in the beginning I was almost certain that I would try to switch to a university at some point. Now I don't know. I do want to keep my options open for faculty positions and do want to have some teaching and advising responsibilities, but I do also like the potential for development I see here. The financial resources are better, the support structure around research is better than I would expect at most universities and we have more time to do research (though I doubt this at the moment...). But I think this playing all games at the same time is very likely to get me down. I cannot put equal emphasis on a strong research record, a heavy administrative load, teaching, advising, service and being a good citizen in my department. This has been a source of major frustration but also for a lot of hope because I do feel I have the chance here to play on many strings and try my hand at responsibilities somewhat out of the ordinary for a post doc.

Submitted for the first carnival of postdocs hosted by Propter Doc at "What's up post doc?"

Life as a post doc: Is it really that bad?

As I said yesterday, I want to get back to this topic. Since then Propter Doc has written an excellent post about this article "climbing the UK academic ladder" from "Chemistry World" and called for opinions on the "perfect postdoc". It is clear that many post docs feels trapped in dead-end, low pay and insecure jobs, but is that really the truth for everyone, or do we only hear about the worst case scenario?

Maybe it is particularly bad for the lab post docs. It is not my impression that we have nearly this level of complaints in my own field. But what do I know, maybe I don't know the really miserable people. Academic positions in my field are scarce - to say the least. Some of us hope to land one some day, but it is not a given, and many have decided to take other routes long ago. Good for us, there is a healthy job market for my profession in the industry. Many PhDs in my field never planned to do anything else than get a good research position in the industry. Sometimes people take a semi-industrial post doc and heads into the same or a competing company afterwards. Others stays in academia for as long as possible hanging on to the hope of a future faculty position and many of us will be disappointed. However, my point is, that the number of PhDs and even post docs are not supposed to match the number of faculty positions. Anyone believing so are fooling themselves. There are other walks of life that value a PhD and research experience and a faculty position is not the holy grail for everyone.

That being said, I still think a post doc position should prepare one for academia as well as other professional settings. Different people have different opinions but as I said in a comment over at PropterDoc I think a post doc should be used to gain experience not only in ones particular research field but also with a range of soft skills, which will be useful in any job.

So where am I heading with all this? I think I have one of the better post docs available, and I think it is important sometimes to recognize and write about what is good and what is working for others to see what could be different.

I am hired to work on one particular research project with four years of funding. My contract runs for the duration of the project. It is a large collaborative research project with four PI's at four different institutions, each responsible for subsections of the final goal. Since I am not in a lab science we are not as strictly organized regarding members/employees as it often seems to be the case there. I belong in one department with a department head who is not the PI. Only three other people in the department are involved in the project at the moment (the PI, the department head - but for his scientific contribution and one more colleague in a permanent position). I am the only one of us who is so far only involved in one of the departments projects. Most people are involved in several projects - with a new combination of people in each project. Some are PI's in one project and participants in others; others are only participants in a number of projects, but might have been PI's on former projects or have proposals in now. My closest collaborators are the PI and colleague with a permanent position who is not the department head (we will call her CoolFemaleColleague from now on).

My specialty requires a lot of field work and often in remote regions in the far north. Our first field season in the new project was this summer when PI, CoolFemaleColleague, GeniousForeignCollaborator and I travelled to an undisclosed place in the woods in the northern hemisphere for five weeks. Before going away, we spent a lot of time planning the field season, sorting out the logistics, getting vaccinations, buying equipment, ordering visa's and tickets and of course discussing our scientific ideas. During this phase everybody involved did their fair share of things and nothing was particularly handed to me because I was the post doc.
We also spent time last winter/ spring on meetings with the big research group for the entire project and travelled to meet with people we want to establish contacts with for the purpose of the project. Again, everybody did their part of the work, and nobody gained more credit than the others.

During spring we also worked on a grant proposal. Again a collaborative effort with colleagues from other institutions heading subsections of the proposal. Five people from my department are involved in this (PI, who also happens to be PI for this one, CoolFemaleColleague, Me and two other people with permanent positions). Our part of the proposal relies heavily on an idea PI and I have been nurturing over some years (since before I became a post doc with him). I consider myself personally involved but also recognized in the proposal. The proposal has since then come through and the grant will start running from next year. I will work on this this project alongside with the one I was originally hired for.

Since we came back from the field I have been away for this temporary associate professor-gig and I haven't had much time to devote to research with all the course planning and teaching, so things have been a bit slow. We have had a couple of project meetings (PI, CoolFemaleColleague and I), been away for a conference and submitted a couple of abstracts with some of our results from this summer. I have been involved in setting up a database and finding a couple of promising Master's students to-be who can join us next year in the field.

I have only written one manuscript this year and it is based on some previous research. This is something that is not really related to what I do no or what my current research group is doing, but I see a link between the two sub fields and a way for me to grow in that direction. My colleagues seem to acknowledge that this might someday be useful for them too, and my ideas in the new grant are sort of a first step in that direction. I have more ideas for papers pointing in the same direction and PI is aware of that. Next year we will probably also start publishing something from the new project. I expect to have first authorship on the papers that are pointing most in my interdisciplinary direction and be co-author on papers taking the more traditional but equally useful angle of my collaborators.

I know, I am truly blessed with a good work environment. I am also in a country where the labour rights allow even post docs a decent salary. But many of the good sides to my work place doesn't cost much, if anything in money, only in attitude. What I do not understand is why it cannot be better in so many places.

What do you think? Are you exploited by a cruel PI or are you having the time of your life? Are you sick of temporary contracts and overseas moves or are you excited about new opportunities and new colleagues? Is it as bad as they say, or are you satisfied with your options?

What does a post doc do?

The past few days a discussion has been going on over at Young Female Scientist and ScienceWoman about what post docs actually do and if we're supposed to do what we do.

When I am not professing in the Arctic I am a post doc too, but boy, I do not recognize myself in many of the commenter's descriptions.

As others have said post docs are people who already have a PhD. We are not in a training phase (at least not more than any academic should be). We are generally a young, enthusiastic, smart and productive bunch of people, and we wouldn't have made it where we are now, if we weren't all these things. Anyway the perception of the post doc - phase as some sort of prolonged graduate education seems to be firmly rooted. Ideas such as "post docs should have better mentors" or should be provided with more guiding or better structure" seems to be flourishing among those who wants to improve our conditions on all continents. Sorry to let you down, guys, but we do not need guiding or structures or mentors more than any young-ish person might need those things, and we do not need any particular help in finding these.

What we do need is for PI's to live up to their responsibilities and treat people on their pay roll with the respect and independence they deserve. Why is it, that anyone in their right mind would hire someone with 20+ years of education and even consider not using this capacity to the fullest? I do not believe in post doc years as a training phase where the person in question should be protected from all other aspects of academic work than writing articles. On the other hand it makes me furious when I hear about post docs (or grad students for that matter) publishing in their advisors name and fame with very little to show for themselves when they need to move on.

It can be done. My own post doc experience has so far been great. Yes, I want a permanent job at some point and yes, I might want to change from my current government research institute to the university environment at some point, but that is for other reasons. My current working environment is really good. In my opinion, post docs are fully educated scientists, perfectly capable of doing the same work as any PI, but who haven't had the luck to find a faculty position yet. In my field faculty positions are incredibly rare and people often work as "post docs" or whatever title is attached to what are essentially the same soft-money positions for years. This does not mean that we will never break into the system, but that we do not have a regular cycle of job openings.


For the past year i have:

revised manuscripts from the dissertation
written a new manuscript based on an old line of research
done the logistic and scientific planning for the field season (with PI and project collaborator)
done field work directly related to my postdoc-grant project
been co-author on a new grant proposal (which is now funded)
developed a side-project with colleagues (not related to postdoc-grant)
attended professional meetings, networked and taken part in developing the department.

Next year I expect to:

Follow up on four different projects (some of these very near and dear to my heart)
Take on my first graduate students
do more administrative work in the department

This is not too different from what I would have spent my research time on in a faculty position, I believe. Last year when defending the PhD I had been pursuing one line of research for a long time. Before that I have worked in another sub field for my Masters degree. Now I feel I am developing as a researcher into someone who works across sub fields and contribute to the department and the group in my own particular way. I could and would not have done this any differently as a faculty member.

*I have the privilege of a four year position with full funding and a realistic chance of landing a permanent position afterwards, and this might influence my views. But basically I think post docs should be treated similarly whether hired for one or several years.

I am off to write a small grant proposal - in my own name.

What makes a good academic position...and when?

I have been thinking about this issue a lot in recent months since I am currently on part-time leave from my actual position at governmental research institute in small city to teach at small, sub- field specific university in remote but amazing location. My actual position is in a great department. Lots of interesting people with varied backgrounds, some big grants available and no lack of funding for basic research, very nice colleagues and options for promotions, responsibility and so on. I haven't really settled into the town yet but have an amazing apartment in the best location I have ever lived in. The downside to the job is that there is no teaching, and not necessarily regular contact with students.

My temporary teaching position is in a place I love. I have been living here before and I have always thrived here. It breaks my heart that I have to leave these parts again at the end of the semester. The students are awesome. I really do love the teaching part and I get so much nice feedback. But I have never in my life been as busy as now. I practically work round the clock and am beginning to feel how draining that is in the long run. And my time for research is effectively zero. So far this fall I have attended one meeting and written two abstracts and that was all within the past three weeks.

I should be more productive. I should use these first few years after the PhD to publish, publish and publish and yet I haven't submitted one paper since I finished a year ago. The sensible way of dealing with this is obviously to forget about more teaching intensive jobs right now and use the next couple of years to settle into my new town and research institute. Get the new projects going, publish what is left from the dissertation, publish something new, get some graduate students, build a reputation and the leap to a university position when I actually have an independent research agenda and some experience .

But I am not a very patient person. If anything is just remotely within my reach I tend to want it right now, no matter if this is a stupid decision. I know a couple of university positions in my field are coming up over the next year. This does not happen often and it might be a long time till it happens again. My initial reaction is wanting to jump at them, but seriously I think I would do much better a few years down the line with some time to publish now. On a personal level I don't think another move is a good idea. Fiance and I are planning to stay in our new city for a little while and see how it works out and we are thinking about having a child. I am beginning to think that maybe I am in a pretty good place without teaching for a couple of years and can maybe afford to wait for something better to come up. Gee, I sometimes wish I had the ability to just wait and see what happens.