So we're staying here, for sure at least until 2011. We're hoping to be able to stay longer. Our decision is that this is a great place to live, there are lots of smaller schools around here that hire adjunct from Mr. Chemist's department so the likelihood of him being able to work at least part-time is good. There are also many places around here that recruit on-campus from my department (such as the interview that I had a while ago), so it's not too far-fetched. We won't limit ourselves geographically when it comes to it, but if local options arise we'll pursue them.
About the house...our respective parents have promised us that if/when we move if we can't sell it they'll help us out. Although I don't want to rely on that, it's piece of mind. There's still a lot to consider, but we'll look for now.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Mama said...
...there'll be days like this...
So my day started out bad, when a friend sent me this: http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/mad-men-maddening-times/
She said it best: "This is appalling."
Then it went on to get worse when the postdoc (PD2) that I was supposed to run samples for realized he didn't have them ready for me, so now I have to do that next week. It kept getting worse when the same postdoc had agreed to let me use an instrument today - but he never cleaned up his stuff so I'm still waiting. Another postdoc (PD1) was using one of my setups yesterday and it went horribly awry, so that I can't even use it today (which I needed to).
On top of that I'm exhausted and stressed out. I mentioned in the last post that Mr. Chemist wants to buy a house, now. He's serious. He's figured out that it's financially feasible, and would actually cost less in this city than renting. But isn't it a little crazy to buy a house when you're only for-sure going to be somewhere for 1.5 years?? I don't know. I don't know anything about real estate. I don't know what to do. A house would be nice, but...
...there'll be days like this, Mama said.
So my day started out bad, when a friend sent me this: http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/mad-men-maddening-times/
She said it best: "This is appalling."
Then it went on to get worse when the postdoc (PD2) that I was supposed to run samples for realized he didn't have them ready for me, so now I have to do that next week. It kept getting worse when the same postdoc had agreed to let me use an instrument today - but he never cleaned up his stuff so I'm still waiting. Another postdoc (PD1) was using one of my setups yesterday and it went horribly awry, so that I can't even use it today (which I needed to).
On top of that I'm exhausted and stressed out. I mentioned in the last post that Mr. Chemist wants to buy a house, now. He's serious. He's figured out that it's financially feasible, and would actually cost less in this city than renting. But isn't it a little crazy to buy a house when you're only for-sure going to be somewhere for 1.5 years?? I don't know. I don't know anything about real estate. I don't know what to do. A house would be nice, but...
...there'll be days like this, Mama said.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Big Life Decisions
As the title implies, Mr. Chemist and I are facing some Big Life Decisions right now (and yes, that deserves capitalization). We've reached the inevitable point in which Mr. Chemist can be finished with his program but I cannot. We knew this would happen - he had a M.A. coming in, whereas I did not (plus science programs generally take longer anyway).
Yesterday was our self-set "deadline" to decide. Does Mr. Chemist apply for faculty jobs now or does he postpone his graduation for another year? Honestly I was pulling for the later, because although I could probably graduate in a year from now, I don't mind staying another semester if it means less relationship stress.
Here are the options:
1) Mr. Chemist applies for jobs. In theory if he gets one he would leave here in late summer, move (alone) to a new city and I would stay in our current home with the cats. I would try to finish my degree as quickly as possible, then find a job in whatever city he's in.
2) Mr. Chemist doesn't apply for jobs. This option involves Mr. Chemist either being funded by a fellowship for next year, or getting his current position with the university renewed. Neither of these options are highly unlikely but neither is guaranteed. I delay graduation until Spring 2011, we graduate together, apply for jobs together and hopefully move together.
3) Compromise. Mr Chemist applies for jobs within a commutable distance from here, depending on whether it's TT or adjunct (if he can find something) I either look for jobs around here (the one I interviewed for a few weeks ago has a local option) or we look for jobs together throughout the US, and graduate accordingly.
It looks like we're going with option 3...which is still a bit of a question mark in my mind, but it gives us at least until next Spring here to figure it out. I know Mr. Chemist would love to stay in this city, he wants to buy a house (now...that's for a whole other post) and he really likes it here. Our home state is in turmoil at the moment, so I'm not too keen to move back there just now (despite the proximity for family), so staying here would be great. But it's no guarantee. The hardest part about it is not knowing. That and apparently Mr. Chemist is being encouraged to still apply for jobs even if he has no intention of taking them because "it's good practice, and you likely don't get the first job anyway, and you don't have to take it, etc. etc." That just seems like poor form to me, but what do I know?
Yesterday was our self-set "deadline" to decide. Does Mr. Chemist apply for faculty jobs now or does he postpone his graduation for another year? Honestly I was pulling for the later, because although I could probably graduate in a year from now, I don't mind staying another semester if it means less relationship stress.
Here are the options:
1) Mr. Chemist applies for jobs. In theory if he gets one he would leave here in late summer, move (alone) to a new city and I would stay in our current home with the cats. I would try to finish my degree as quickly as possible, then find a job in whatever city he's in.
2) Mr. Chemist doesn't apply for jobs. This option involves Mr. Chemist either being funded by a fellowship for next year, or getting his current position with the university renewed. Neither of these options are highly unlikely but neither is guaranteed. I delay graduation until Spring 2011, we graduate together, apply for jobs together and hopefully move together.
3) Compromise. Mr Chemist applies for jobs within a commutable distance from here, depending on whether it's TT or adjunct (if he can find something) I either look for jobs around here (the one I interviewed for a few weeks ago has a local option) or we look for jobs together throughout the US, and graduate accordingly.
It looks like we're going with option 3...which is still a bit of a question mark in my mind, but it gives us at least until next Spring here to figure it out. I know Mr. Chemist would love to stay in this city, he wants to buy a house (now...that's for a whole other post) and he really likes it here. Our home state is in turmoil at the moment, so I'm not too keen to move back there just now (despite the proximity for family), so staying here would be great. But it's no guarantee. The hardest part about it is not knowing. That and apparently Mr. Chemist is being encouraged to still apply for jobs even if he has no intention of taking them because "it's good practice, and you likely don't get the first job anyway, and you don't have to take it, etc. etc." That just seems like poor form to me, but what do I know?
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Advice
Last week I had the opportunity to meet a young female faculty member from another university (we’ll call her Dr. H). She’s just applying for tenure now, is married with a young child, and her husband is in the same field as mine (a rather rare combination). My university invites students to have lunch with the visiting speakers, so it was myself and 2 other female students in the later half of our graduate careers that were there. I have to say, this was awesome. You never know what you’re going to get with these lunches, sometimes people just want to tell you about their research, other times they don’t want to talk science at all. Dr. H asked about our interests and research, then she brought up the topic of careers. Let’s just say that although I’m a fourth year student NOBODY has ever given me career advice. As I’ve written before my department is mostly male, or un-married women. That’s important because Mr. Chemist is an academic musician, meaning that he’ll be looking for faculty-type positions and we’d like to be able to find something in the same city. Anyway, even though it was only 1 ½ hours for lunch Dr. H managed to give me the most useful career advice I’ve ever been given. Her biggest piece of advice (esp. for couples facing this issue) is to boost your resume – she says that the best thing you can do to help yourselves is to make your CV as strong as possible. After that she then asked me about my interests and made me actually give her real answers as to why I don’t want to go into academia. She thought about it for a while, and suggested I look into the national labs. Apparently these are a great option (that I’d never really considered) because they’re located throughout the county and give you the opportunity to be a bench chemist without worrying about the funding or grant writing. Also, she told me that the biggest advantage to this type of situation is that it’s essentially a marriage between academia and industry. It’s not product driven like industry, there’s the chance to work with and supervise students without being the PI bringing in the money, and the research changes so you aren’t stuck working on one project forever. How have I never heard about these opportunities before?
Bottom line, Dr. H is awesome, and in the span of 1 ½ hours I learned more and got more advice than I have in the 3 ½ I’ve been here at my university.
Bottom line, Dr. H is awesome, and in the span of 1 ½ hours I learned more and got more advice than I have in the 3 ½ I’ve been here at my university.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
In which Mr. Chemist puts his foot in his mouth…
Things are busy around here, and I have lots of things I want to blog about when I get the time, in the meantime…
Mr. Chemist and I have recently been more aware of the state of our apartment. We live in an old building, that hasn’t been remodeled or updated, but the apartment is a decent size, relatively close to campus and when we moved in was extremely cheap. That all said, we’ve reached a point where we’re ready for something a little nicer, where the floors aren’t so thin that we’re perpetually worried about the cats running around and disturbing the downstairs neighbors. It’s also old and really hard to keep clean (I don’t even try with the bathtub anymore – we’ve had the complex replace the caulk twice but they don’t waterproof it so it’s gross). We recently had some friends (C&J) over for dinner, which put me into a cleaning frenzy because they have a nice (clean) house.
So, this morning Mr. Chemist randomly says to me, by the way, you shouldn’t worry about our place because C&J have someone come in and clean once a week (or something similar, basically implying that C&J don’t keep their own home clean so I shouldn’t feel bad about the moderately clean state of our apartment). I smiled, and made some response about how I would love to have someone come in once a week and clean for me. To which Mr. Chemist replied – “we don’t need that because we like cleaning”. HAH! I laughed a little and said that I wouldn’t mind having someone to vacuum once a week (this used to be his job, he hasn’t done it in over a year) or clean the bathrooms and kitchen. Then Mr. Chemist inserted his foot into his mouth, and said, “yeah I guess I don’t think about that because I have you to do that” … WTF?! I’m totally surprised that I kept my cool. I went on to explain that having someone help with the cleaning is something useful, my parents have someone come in once a week seeing as they both work full time. His only response was that he’d never thought about it because having someone come in and clean once a week is “something [his] parents would NEVER do.”
The more I think about this the more mad I get, but I’m trying to move past it and get it off of my chest. Sometimes I have to remember that Mr. Chemist is Asian, and every now and then those traditionalist values come out – but usually only very briefly.
Mr. Chemist and I have recently been more aware of the state of our apartment. We live in an old building, that hasn’t been remodeled or updated, but the apartment is a decent size, relatively close to campus and when we moved in was extremely cheap. That all said, we’ve reached a point where we’re ready for something a little nicer, where the floors aren’t so thin that we’re perpetually worried about the cats running around and disturbing the downstairs neighbors. It’s also old and really hard to keep clean (I don’t even try with the bathtub anymore – we’ve had the complex replace the caulk twice but they don’t waterproof it so it’s gross). We recently had some friends (C&J) over for dinner, which put me into a cleaning frenzy because they have a nice (clean) house.
So, this morning Mr. Chemist randomly says to me, by the way, you shouldn’t worry about our place because C&J have someone come in and clean once a week (or something similar, basically implying that C&J don’t keep their own home clean so I shouldn’t feel bad about the moderately clean state of our apartment). I smiled, and made some response about how I would love to have someone come in once a week and clean for me. To which Mr. Chemist replied – “we don’t need that because we like cleaning”. HAH! I laughed a little and said that I wouldn’t mind having someone to vacuum once a week (this used to be his job, he hasn’t done it in over a year) or clean the bathrooms and kitchen. Then Mr. Chemist inserted his foot into his mouth, and said, “yeah I guess I don’t think about that because I have you to do that” … WTF?! I’m totally surprised that I kept my cool. I went on to explain that having someone help with the cleaning is something useful, my parents have someone come in once a week seeing as they both work full time. His only response was that he’d never thought about it because having someone come in and clean once a week is “something [his] parents would NEVER do.”
The more I think about this the more mad I get, but I’m trying to move past it and get it off of my chest. Sometimes I have to remember that Mr. Chemist is Asian, and every now and then those traditionalist values come out – but usually only very briefly.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Back Again
It's been a while since I posted. I had a rough week there, but things are looking up again. I still feel like I'm not getting anywhere with this part of my project, but I've adopted the "one step at a time" mantra. In other news, I had an interview this week with an on-campus recruiter. The Boss encouraged me to apply, and seems genuinely interested in my graduating in the near future.
The Boss and I even had a chance to talk late last week, and he's aware of my situation with Mr. Chemist graduating this spring and looking for jobs. He was actually very supportive and more understanding than I expected.
The interview went really well. I don't think that interviewing is one of my strengths, but this guy just wanted to know about my research and my approach to research. Those questions I can answer...it's the vague, open-ended "tell me about yourself" ones that give me trouble.
Anyway, thanks for the support everyone, I think I'm coming out of my funk again.
The Boss and I even had a chance to talk late last week, and he's aware of my situation with Mr. Chemist graduating this spring and looking for jobs. He was actually very supportive and more understanding than I expected.
The interview went really well. I don't think that interviewing is one of my strengths, but this guy just wanted to know about my research and my approach to research. Those questions I can answer...it's the vague, open-ended "tell me about yourself" ones that give me trouble.
Anyway, thanks for the support everyone, I think I'm coming out of my funk again.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Questioning
I’m having a hard time with my science right now. Nothing seems to be working, and it’s taking me forever to accomplish anything. This semester has been a total waste of time. I feel like I’m never going to push this project forward past this plateau. On top of that the reality of life is crashing down on me. Mr. Chemist is applying for jobs now, he’ll graduate in May and I won’t. In all likelihood he’ll be gone next year, and I’ll be here, just me and the cats stuck here working towards what? In the end I’ll go to whatever city he’s in and find a job, so what’s the point of all this? Maybe I should just write a Masters thesis and leave.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
