It's done and in the mail

It is about time I chime in here with an InaDWriMo update. I am far behind my goal and have been embarrassingly quiet here. I have been working a lot to make first the original deadline and then a couple of later ones, but alas, things take time. But, as of this night, the first paper is done. It is still going out for a last round of comments from the co-author before being submitted, but I have a good feeling about the paper this time. The argument is stronger than it was before. I have tied up some loose ends, rewritten parts of the results section where some unclear writing covered up some gaps in my understanding of the data and, I think, come to a conclusions that is neither too adventurous nor too trivial.

The manuscript is standing firmly at 13.275 words, or just about the same as I started out at about two months ago (see why I didn't do a word count for InaDWriMo). That's fine. It's a little on the long side, and technically I think one part could be left out completely or moulded into a separate paper, but just the thought of major structural changes now makes me want to puke. So I'll wait and see what the co-author/ reviewers suggest before doing anything major.

Manuscript 1:

To do (list for InaDWriMo posted Nov 1):

Finish revision of pages 21-25 - DONE

Edits to figures - DONE

Rewrite discussion + add sections (currently 6 pages and shouldn't get much longer) - DONE

Write conclusion - DONE

Re-read introduction and revise according to final discussion - DONE

Re-read abstract and revise according to final conclusion- DONE

Check reference list - DONE

Burn CD with text and all figures - DONE

Print manuscript - DONE

Mail to co-author - DONE

InaDWriMo

International Dissertation Writing Month, or InaDWriMo has begun. Dr. Brazen Hussy explains it here and has a whole long list of people who have signed up to do some serious writing. As I am one of the poor souls who have promised to produce a lot of words come end of November I'd better get my behind in gear and get started. I also need to set up some sort of word count, but I'm not sure how to do it yet as my writing goal is revising rather than producing new text. I have however sneaked in a teensy bit of new writing and hope I can keep it going.

My goal for InaDWriMo is to finish two manuscripts:

Manuscript 1: needs to go the co-author at the end of the weekend (Nov. 4th)

To do:

Finish revision of pages 21-25
Edits to figures
Rewrite discussion + add sections (currently 6 pages and shouldn't get much longer)
Write conclusion
Re-read introduction and revise according to final discussion
Re-read abstract and revise according to final conclusion
Check reference list
Burn CD with text and all figures
Print manuscript
Mail to co-author


Manuscript 2: Submission deadline Nov. 30 (and actually yes, that's the real deadline from the journal)

This has to be revised pretty much from scratch, so I'm not sure exactly what the bullet points on a to do list are going to be yet.


Field report: Submission deadline Nov. 30 (and yes, once again this is the real deadline from the funding agency)

This is not going to be long. Something like 5 pages I guess, but it does require some steady work on the data from this summer every day until the report is due.


and writing for fun: 20 minutes a day

Here I am not thinking about blogging or emails or starting a novel, but about 20 minutes a day dedicated to new research writing. Either on outline for new paper I just started, making outline for upcoming paper or revisiting manuscript I worked on last year but abandoned due to not-very-nice comment.

Study techniques, anyone?

I did something unusual today. For me at least. I sat down and read through a full volume of Important Journal in my Field and skimmed through a dozen more and I didn't forget everything I'd read the moment I closed the door to the office. Instead I spent about fifteen minutes before leaving summing up the main new ideas and additions to ongoing discussions in the field and felt invigorated and inspired and, like someone with an overview. I tend to think that everybody else gets much more done than I do, and it's probably not unlikely that you're all way more on top of your reading than I am, but honestly reading is something I've almost cut out of my work schedule.

I mean I do skim the e-alerts from Science, Nature and the most important journals in both my fields. I do read papers when prepping classes or writing up papers or the occasional paper by a friend or close colleague, but I don't have the kind of overview I used to have when all I did all day was work on first my Master's thesis and later my dissertation. One reason is that I don't have that kind of time or continuity anymore, but another reason is, as I discovered today, that I've simply stopped using the good study habits I used to have. These days it's all about cramming in time for writing and data processing between all the other obligations and I tend to think that reading for overview is slow, time-consuming and requires my concentration in ways I rarely have when working in the office. The latter is true and I've started closing my door most of the time (much to the disgust of my chair who enters without knocking as a way of signalling that I've stepped over some openness and availability line). But the former is not necessarily true. I used to be able to read thick piles of papers, understand them and use them in my work in a reasonable time, by concentrating, working for longer time intervals and taking notes.

And that's what I've rediscovered. For some reason I've come to think that I should be able to suck out all useful information by flipping through new volumes of the journals while being preoccupied with other tasks, and if I don't get it that way I need to invest hours and hours in meticulously combing through the entire paper word by word. Today I closed my door, set a timer for two 45 minutes increments with a break in between, made myself a cup of tea, turned off the computer, sat down at my desk with a pen and a notebook and started going through the papers, quickly but seriously, writing down key sentences for each paper and it worked. Unbelievable. I've now promised myself to go through some of the other volumes lying around in the same way. It took me two hours and I feel more on top of things than I've been since I passed my defense. So easy, and I knew it all along. From now on I hope I'm going to be "someone who reads".

Do you have a research agenda?

I am trying to finish a manuscript for an article before Thursday morning when I travel to grad school city to meet with the co-author. I have a few comments to address, need to fix some details on illustrations and should polish the discussion, and the actual work remaining is totally doable in a couple of days. Yet, there is something holding me back. Partly this is probably my own laziness, but it is also fear and seriously I think some sort of post-partum mechanism. The time spent working on this thing is downright ridiculous. It is research from before I started my PhD and while I obviously haven't worked on it continuously for ten years, I have revisited the project with one-two year intervals since my early twenties. I know it was good research when it was done, and as I'm in a somewhat slow moving field it is not outdated as such, although it has been re-framed several times and might need another serious make over if it isn't published soon.

Part of the fear comes from my coauthor's (and then advisor's) lack of confidence in getting anything published in the top-tier-journals in our field, and the way her extreme perfectionism rubbed off on me during my years as her advisee. I have over the years wiggled myself out of the idea of nothing is good enough for anyone to see, ever, but apparently she hasn't, and since this work was originally shaped under her critical guidance, my own judgement of the quality of work goes out of the window as soon as the question of showing her a draft arises.

This is the last piece of research from my grad school years that is dependent on my former advisers and haven't grown into an independent shape. I'm still mining additional publishable research from my dissertation, but more in the sense of ideas and preliminary data for further studies. Although the focus of the current manuscript has also changed significantly from my MSc thesis it is after all still the same basic idea and as such the last reminder of an ironically rewarding but extremely difficult period in my education and a time it took me years to recover from.

It is however also the time where my views and interests and foundation in my field were shaped and since I have never again been through such a rigorous programme, it is also the one sub field where I feel most confident. It is where know the literature in and out and still ten years on am able to jump straight into discussions, it is where I am able to find ideas and gaps in explanations and the background for any contribution to my current sub field. This is research I want to come back to and where I can see a way forward in applying ideas from my current sub-field. I cannot let this article slide, as I need it to demonstrate that I can handle both sub fields, before submitting research proposals that combine the two. I cannot let the opportunity of drawing on two lines of experience go, and I cannot let a ten year old advisor-advisee relationship bog me down. More important, I can't let this feeling of inadequacy tied so closely to the whole project hang around forever, it is really time to let go and free up some energy to actually develop those future project 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.

Countdown to fieldwork

I am sick, but there is only two weeks left before I leave for a full summer of field activities so no time to wallow in self-pity and staying at home, but have to keep going at fast pace. There is so much to do before leaving and none of it are the kind of activities that will ever go on a CV. Sometimes I wish I was in a less field-oriented kind of science with some time, ever, to think and read and finish all those pesky manuscripts and conference presentations and half-baked ideas I have lying around. I have research ideas I want time to develop, especially one that already exists in a semi-finished manuscript, but needs serious refining and rethinking. I want time to think through how to present certain ideas in a light that will attract potential industry sponsors when I meet these at an upcoming conference. I want time to think about where my own career/ work situation is heading and how to get there (I've been spending so much time on doing annual reviews with everybody else, but haven't had the chance to talk to anyone about my own performance and goals). I need time to prep for teaching later this summer/ early fall and I want to do it well. I think teaching is seriously neglected in my field and often done in a boring and disengaging way. I want to make an effort to improve that pattern, and honestly to leave a good track record at the university that invites me to teach. I could come up with a million things I could do with my time that would make me feel like I was moving forward, being productive and using my postdoc time wisely, but in reality I will be packing mosquito repellent, sampling equipment and camping gear, making hotel reservations, reporting department finances, meeting with a group of journalists, writing up minutes from a meeting where I have taken responsibility for big institutional development thing.

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".

A week in the world of the academic administrator

This week is going to be crazy. I tell you, I don't remember the last time my schedule was this tight. It's like all administrative duties has been crammed into the next week with back to back meeting from tomorrow morning til Friday afternoon. Tomorrow hell breaks loose with the monthly department head group meeting followed by the first two annual assessment meetings with people in the department. Wednesday I'm going to the local travel clinic with the rest of the field crew for this summer to get immunised against all sorts of diseases before travelling to faraway field site. Hopefully I will make it back from that appointment just in time for the lunch seminar I suddenly find myself in charge of and another couple of annual assessment meetings. Thursday will be the big "get research group together and discuss our results from last years fieldwork"-meeting. This will probably be the day where we realize that we have nothing to report and that our work sucks (or that we are fabulous super scientists who will change the world). Friday I am going to attend the women's rights group at my workplace for their monthly meeting for the first time. While I'm all for women's rights I have a strong suspicion that I don't resonate with the work of this particular group very much, but time will show. They give a kind of career workshop/ talk about once a month and while I do like the idea of having that kind of resources available, I don't like the way they are singling out women for access to these events. Especially because we don't have any such resources available for male employees.

Finally some progress

As I said in the previous post - one of my greatest work related fears at the moment is my lack of research productivity. I do put in the hours available but the lack of measurable progress makes me afraid that this is not enough (which it probably isn't). Inspired by many wise people out there in the blogosphere and the general online world I am constantly trying out new every-step-counts approaches of xx words a day, half an hour a day, having a list ready of easy things to do when tired, parking on the downhill slope etc in order to squeeze research time into the small holes in my schedule. Most of the time it feels like these approaches are getting me nowhere, or at least that I am moving ahead at a pace so slow that it doesn't count. But two nice surprises today made me realize that maybe it really does work - even for me. (apparently I consider myself so special that methods that have proven useful to dozens of other people are totally useless for me).

After months and months of little tiny steps I finally finished typing up my field notes from last summer today. It might not sound like a big deal, but for me it's actual measurable progress and in a natural science field without lab work much of the thinking is actually done during the process of getting reacquainted with ones field notes. I still need to scan the illustrations made in the field and fill in some logistic details, but I am actually very close to having a finished product and a pretty good overview of my data from last year. With some still-to-be-done mapping work and the remaining planning and logistics for the upcoming field season I suddenly see the potential for a reasonable outcome for Year One of this project.

The second "success" is related to the much dreaded manuscripts I have hanging over my head. Actually it has more to do with me misjudging how far I had come than the actual small-steps-each-day approach, but anyway, it made me feel that I am suddenly moving forward despite limited time. I am doing one paper with my former advisor as a coauthor and she has been sitting on it for a year without any comments at all. During all that time I guess I had just told myself that she would hate it, which would not be unlike her, and that it would take ages to get in shape for submission. But when I finally worked up the courage to read her comments today they were not bad at all. Mainly linguistic comments and some suggestions for changes to illustrations - in other words something, which can be done in a few days. This is such a relief. Not only because it now seems realistic to finish keep my plan of finishing both this paper and the field report as well as making some progress on another manuscript before I leave for a three weeks trip in ten days, but more because I have some sort of complex on the whole publishing issue and this was kind of a breakthrough. I guess, I am scared that no one will want my papers (and it may very well be the case), and this only gets worse because I am in an interdisciplinary field trying to publish in my main area of the field A, while everyone I work with and most of my professional network is publishing in their main area of the field B. I am in a place now where this jump to independence is essential to finding my own place within the scientific community (and frankly, a permanent job) but where sending off manuscripts without approval from a senior colleague is still new and unknown territory. I know I need to get it out there and try, but time is limited as it is and it sometimes feels like submission day is just not coming any closer. This push from former advisor to go ahead and send this baby in soon might be just what I needed to convince myself that it can and will be done.

So how is it going?

No, I was not abducted by aliens and I did not stop blogging, but it has been a while and longer than I intended. Life has been busy in these parts. First a week of very intensive work and some evening meet-ups with friends visiting from out of town and second, my mom and sister were visiting for ten days. In other words time for free time activities on the Internet has been scarce and time for blogging non-existent. So to catch up:

Life

is good. A while ago I posted a list of things I wanted to change in my life and I am doing better at this than I dared hope. I do lead a more active life than I did last semester (even if going to the gym has not become quite a regular habit yet) and I do cook good food with lots of vegetables most days. This weekend I even went skiing, twice, and it was exactly as amazing as I remembered it. We did redecorate the house to some extent and I do feel very much at home here now. Now one year into proper grown-up working life I've had a promotion and a pay rise and for the first time in my life, I believe, been able to open a savings account.


Research

is falling scarily behind on my day to day schedule. Or this is not entirely true as I do spend time on research related work but not nearly enough on publications and I'm afraid the time I do spend on publications is not spent right. I am juggling two big active research projects with all the associated planning, logistics and networking, one small start up project and a backlog of four manuscripts which should really just be finished, polished and submitted asap. In reality I am obviously not very good at juggling and I end up spending a lot of time on the planning, logistics and networking and not enough on slogging through old manuscripts. I do make writing a priority and for short bursts this also translates into productivity (exactly the reason for the first week of my blogging absence), but then again something happens that I need to take care of and I'm back to square one. The lack of papers-ready-for submission is beginning to haunt me now. For the first year of my postdoc I tended to think that this will come with time and the number of papers submitted during the first year need not be a problem four years down the line, but now that time is approaching faster and I know it cannot wait forever.

department heading

is going surprisingly well. Who would have known? I have never held any paid administrative position before and did not know whether I'd like it or hate it or whether I'd be horrible at it. I'm sure it can be a very difficult job, but so far it hasn't, really. I have learned that I like this "being behind the scenes" kind of work. I like the responsibility that comes with it, the possibility of influencing decisions, the daily contact with everybody in the department and the role of being someone who encourages others and can make things happen. I have gotten nothing but positive response and feel much more at ease with the position than a month ago. Some days, however, I do feel my administration is happening a bit haphazardly like the other day when someone gave me some information and for the rest of the day I couldn't for the life of me remember what she had told me. I have developed a very extensive post-it note system because everybody gives me so much information, much of which I have no immediate use for (and maybe never will) and somehow I feel it just seems more serious if I write it down (like I will at least try to remember what I've been told).

Something that pisses me off right now

I have gotten a small research grant. It is not a lot of money, but it is a "real" grownup research grant rather than student support, and it's the first time I have gotten a grant as an independent researcher. Two other people are involved in this project and since letting them know on Thursday that we got the money I haven't heard a peep. I have a strong feeling that the sudden silence is intimately related to the fact, that both are in the middle op writing up dissertations and at least one of the involved advisers is opposed to the person taking on more projects. I can see the point, but still, they are grown ups and my friends, and you just don't commit to something first and make other people spend their precious time and energy getting funding, only to wiggle your way out later. I have four weeks to accept or decline the grant, and I don't know what I'll do if these guys back out now.

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?"

Born under a lucky star or the importance of good mentors

I never thought I was going to be a scientist or a professor or travel the world on other people’s money. I never even dreamed about it, because I had never thought about as an option. My parents are well-educated and employed by the church and the national school system respectively and brought up my siblings and I in a good middle class home. They expected us to be bright and do well in school, preferably better than most kids in our generally-not-well-educated neighborhood, and go on and get an education and good jobs. I did well, according to the local standards, but nothing exceptional. I loved reading and dreaming about faraway destinations for future travels, thought I wanted to write a novel some day, was not into sports and lived in a self-made fantasy world with my best friend. Pretty much the average girl geek. In high school and early years at university I developed my social skills to the level where I did very little work and got average or below average grades as a result.

When I was working on the research for my Master's thesis I had an advisor who knew very well how to push me to do my best, but who also did not know when to stop. The part of my personality that had made me re-read every page in the textbook out loud until I did no mistakes in the second grade and spend hours a day on latin translations in the 9th grade, flourished. My perfectionism took my nights and days, ruined an anyway poorly functioning relationship to ex bf, changed my priorities completely but left me with no desire to do research ever again. But I did well - very well - and even though I started my carreer working as a teacher in elementary school - I had some vague idea of maybe being capable of something else.

Half a year into the teaching job I got a phone call from my PhD-advisor-to be, completely out of the blue, asking if I was interested in participating in the project, that would become my PhD project. On one side I had told everybody that I had it with academia, and to some extent it was true, on the other hand the nudge from someone thinking I could do it, was just what I needed to grab the chance. Long story short, I did embark on the PhD journey (slightly worried where it would lead me, but extremely proud and motivated by the fact that someone had encouraged me to do so). The first year I pretty much made a fool out of myself. I was switching subfields and was not very well prepared for the work I was going to do. My personal life was also messy and confusing at the time, and I can honestly say, I don't think I made an impressive figure in the beginning.

But things started to change. I got more comfortable and learned more about my new field. I got to know the collaborators in the research group better and I started to get new ideas. I also began to like the job very much. I got a better sense of the direction I wanted to work in and found my own place in the research group. At some point one of the collaborators asked me if I was interested in doing a post doc at his institution later. For the second time I thought I was extremely lucky that someone had picked me and saved me from the unemployment I believed I was facing without their rescue missions.

Though it seemed like it would never happen, grad school did come to an end, and I moved on to be a post doc with collaborator as a PI at his government research institute. Since then opportunities have been thrown at me at a pace I still have difficulties grasping. I had barely arrived when we started talking about putting the big research grant proposal together, that we just finished revising last week. From the moment I became a part of the group my ideas have been integrated into the research we are doing. To the point where I realised when we had a brain storming event last week that everything we intend to do over the next 4-5 years closely related to ideas I developed during my PhD. Around the same time I was contacted by someone else, whom I had once told over a cup of coffee that I would like to get more teaching experience. She wanted know if I'd be interested in this one-semester temporary faculty gig I have at the moment. Again I considered this pure luck and being at the right place at the right time.

Right before I left, it was decided from the higher-ups that all departments should have a new type of administrative position - an assistant department head. An average research position but with administrative responsibility when the department head is away or to help out when the work load is too much for one person to cover. The department head asked if I was interested in this position when I came back full-time in December and I decided to jump at it. No one else was particularly interested in taking on more work, and due to a policy of promoting women in science (I will talk about THAT another day) women were preferred. While I didn't like the reasoning behind it, I did like the opportunity (not to mention the salary increase) and said yes.

Now, as I posted a few days ago, the offer was changed to not only be the assistant department head, but to cover for the actual department head for one semester while he is on a sabbatical. I did say yes, because as always, I am too vain to say no when people trust me and think I am capable of something. But I also really think it is strange. I can probably learn the administration part, but being head of people twice my age, with an international research record and permanent positions somehow seems wrong. I mean, who lets a 32 year old with a one year track record run the business. I am seriously not sure what I think about this. I haven't told it to anyone but fiancé in my real life yet. I don't know why. It sounds weird just coming out of my mouth and I am afraid people will think I am bragging.

There is no doubt I could not have done this on my own. There is no way I alone could have created the network of people I have today, and my advisors over the years and my post doc PI have always treated me nicely and I believe they speak about me in way, so others would think I am a relatively smart and reliable person. But maybe I can finally allow myself to think, that it is not all pure chance and luck. Maybe some people actually like what I do, since they keep asking me to do more things. My mentors over the years all have one thing in common - they have pushed me forward and held high expectations, but at the same time they have shown clearly that they believed in me, not only by saying so, but by offering me opportunities to show I was worth it. That is maybe the biggest difference from when I was younger and didn't believe in my own abilities. They simply created an environment where I could achieve thing I had never believed in myself. That is really amazing, I think.

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.