Standards Deviation

Growing up, there were a finite number of video tapes in our house. We didn't even have all that many, but it's like at a certain point we just stopped buying them, or bothering to record free HBO weekends. What this meant, then, is that my sister and I had seen everything we owned literally dozens of times, and could (and probably still can) quote most of them from start to finish. The brain's capacity for dialogue (and song lyrics!) is truly staggering, isn't it?

One of our favorites was the 1992 Cameron Crowe classic Singles, which while on the surface may seem to be your run-of-the-mill ensemble cast non-story about a bunch of 20-somethings looking for love in grunge-era Seattle, I'd argue that the film is notable not only for cameo appearances by some of the period's most influential figures--Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder, and Tim Burton, to name but a few--but also for its genuine insight into the way people value themselves, and how that translates in their day-to-day interactions.

The movie is also eminently quotable, and one that has really resonated with me through the last 18 years (ZOMG) is a scene in which Campbell Scott asks Bridget Fonda what it is women really want from a guy. She replies:

Well, when I first moved out here, I wanted a guy with looks, security, caring...someone with their own place, someone who said "bless you" or "gesundheit" when I sneezed...someone who liked the same things as me, but not exactly...and someone who loves me.

He's all "Wow, that's a lot!" and she's all "Yeah, I've scaled back a little," and he's like, "So what's the list now?" and the answer:

Someone who says "gesundheit."

I feel like I've had pretty much the exact same conversation with myself over the last year or two, but regarding my job, not men (in that arena, as you might imagine, I have unwaveringly maintained the highest of standards). If you'd asked me a couple of years ago where I wanted to be in five years, I'd probably have said something like, "Well, I'd like a job in academia. Ideally, I'll be tenure track faculty somewhere, either at an R1 university or a prestigious liberal arts college. Either way, the students will be super smart. And it'll be in or near a really cool city, hopefully in the Northeast. And I'll be doing some teaching, but not too much teaching, and I'll have a perfectly small-to-medium-sized lab where we take an interdisciplinary and elegant approach to answering timely and clinically relevant questions. Etc!"

But had you asked me again, say, 6 months ago, my answer would have been more like, "Well, I'd like a job."  The unscored K99 made me seriously re-evaluate my place in the TT applicant pool, and like Bridget Fonda, I lowered my standards.  I applied EVERYWHERE, including many places that didn't at all fit my dream job description, and even started browsing job ads for non-academic positions.  Now, there are of course good reasons for doing this anyway, like experience and leverage and maybe-I'll-be-surprised-by-how-much-I-like-southwestern-Idaho, but if I'm being honest, it was at least in part out of feelings of desperation.

I HATE feelings of desperation!

Well, there's nothing like a couple of good meetings to show feelings of desperation the door, and I came back from two last month thinking to myself, Did I actually allow myself to entertain the possibility of a job in publishing?  We can DO this! (that's the royal "we," which I've found is also quite useful re: self-esteem.)

More concretely, I've been invited to apply for a grant from a Private Foundation, which would fund two years of work with Famous Dude.  I wrote the proposal, and it pleased Famous Dude.  Things are moving along.  I'm not letting myself get too excited, but I like to think of things as "definitely not not happening." If it all works out, my stock should rise significantly. And in anticipation, my standards have begun to creep up as well.

"Use more hyphens" and other career panel advice

On Friday my institution hosted a "career panel" for post-docs.  Though it was mostly meant to be a chance for us to hear from people who'd decided not to stay in academia after getting their PhDs, I decided to go, figuring it would be mildly interesting at the very least, and monumentally life-changing at the very most.

The panel consisted of three biotech/pharma people, one publishing person, and one academia person (administration, not faculty).  They were asked to describe their journeys off the tenure-track track, discuss the current state of hiring at their company/institution, and describe desirable qualities in new hires.  In a surprising twist, all except the publishing person noted that having several first-author publications in top-tier journals was supremely important.  

And just as I was about to be all, tell me something I don't know, I did learn something I didn't know!  The publishing lady, after talking about how she entered publishing when she realized she hated bench work and how people who succeed in publishing have a keen eye for dangling prepositions and whatnot, said this:  "Something I've noticed is that people in this country often don't hyphenate when they should.  So...use more hyphens!"  As a long-standing proponent of the hyphen, I felt that this was advice I could really get behind.

Two out of the three biotech/pharma people were pretty depressing.  Neither one seemed to be all that enthusiastic about industry, and they each noted that hiring where they were had all but ground to a halt.  One did admit, though, that when her company does accept applications the initial CV screening is done by computer, meaning that if your CV doesn't contain exact word matches from the job ad, you're not getting through.  Crikey! 

The third industry person, however, was different.  Unlike the other two, he genuinely seemed to love his job and believe in his company.  He was cool, and spoke with the casual wisdom of someone who probably takes his kids fishing on the weekends, and also knows a lot about wine.  He qualified his earlier statement re: potential hires' publication records and said that while fancy papers were great, they were also looking for creative people, people who write well, people who have skills they didn't know they had.  His company has on staff a group of what they call "deep divers"--people whose job it is to immerse themselves in literature, attend meetings, and report back with all the cool stuff they learned and help everyone think about how to apply it to the company's work.  Sounds kind of fun, no?  

I looked at this guy's company's website, and they've won several "Best Places to Work" and "Most Innovative Companies" awards.  And, according to him, they're currently looking to fill 50 new spots for Ph.D-holders!  I'm not sure if I should just blab this company's name out loud, but if you're seriously considering an industry job, shoot me an email and I'll point you in the right direction.  

While it's nice to know that I was not completely turned off by the prospect, I'm not ready to start applying for "alternative careers" just yet.  Plus, I had a pretty great week in the academic world: got some new exciting data, started planning the class I'm going to help teach, met a faculty member who wants to collaborate, and convinced my boss to send me to two conferences this summer.  So for now, then, I'll be staying on the tenure-track track.