The Grass is always greener...

I had lunch this weekend with the grad school friend I mentioned at the bottom of this post. We spent a lot of time talking about our respective jobs and although I still wish I could spend my days doing what she spends her day doing (i.e., writing manuscripts and conducting data analysis on ideas/projects that she can freely generate), I would not be able to do that job now that I have a child. The place she works is not at all family friend. Totally inflexible regarding hours, no working from home, and a regimented half hour lunch break (so she always eats her lunch at her desk). So although I coveted this job for years, I am over it.

I may not be able to spend my days doing what I would like (although the powers that be keep telling me that we're going to get there), I have been able to drop down to 75% time, I work from home at least one day a week and my husband brings my son to the office so I can nurse him on my long day, oh and I got a promotion after being back from maternity a couple of days.

OFFER!!

NAJ came through... more later.

Tuesday check in

No word about either the job or the grant so far. It's all good though because I am so busy at work that I can't think about it too much right now anyway.

Going to get pedicures and dinner with my sister tonight. During grad school I hardly ever got pedicures, now that I'm back in home town it's a regular occurance. I think being around my sisters gets me back in that mode.

I'm headed to grad schoool town wiht my DH for the long weekend. I haven't been back since graduation, I miss everyone and can't wait to see them all.

That's about it. I hope to have a chance to post over the next few days but W & TH are participant running days and usually that takes up all my time and energy.

Job Market Woes

I haven't applied for a job in 2 weeks.

There are just not any new postings out there at all. And I haven't heard from any of the jobs I've applied for. I'm stressing.

I've started to compile a list of schools that I can send applications to for part-time adjunct positions. This scares me, I don't have any idea how I can teach enough adjunct classes to actually live and still make progress on my research.

I have been thinking about contacting an I/O psychologist I know who does consulting on the side and sometimes needs assistance. I have no idea if they have any consulting work coming up but it can't hurt to ask. I am not an I/O psychologist so who knows if I even have the skills this person would need if they did have consulting work.

I need to do something though. Not sending out applications is worse than getting rejection letters.

writing, writing, writing

I find writing incredibly hard. In the end my writing is quite good but I have never had a good role model for writing, my grad school advisor finds writing really hard as well so that wasn't helpful.

My advisor also never works on more than one paper at a time so it sucked to be their grad student when they were co-authoring papers with other students.

I'm getting better. When I put my mind to it, I can get into a groove and really make progress. Today I spent over two hours working on the paper with my mentor. I think I might actually be able to turn it over to her after a few hours more tomorrow. I hope she's happy with it (actually, I'm hoping she's more than happy with it!), but I'll settle for feeling as though I did enough to help her move it forward.

Wish me luck.

Oh, and I applied for another job today.

And I received a letter from the last TT job I was waiting to hear from. They canceled their search for this year but they're hoping to get the funding for next year so they said they'd keep my materials and I just have to let them know if I want them reactivated. All in all, I was just really impressed they contacted me.

I might be wrong

I checked the NIH deadlines today and realize that I might have been a bit paranoid. It looks like my mentor won't know about the grant until later this month or early next month. I do have reasons to be a little paranoid but I wish I were better at keeping those feelings in check.

I applied for another job today and there are two others I'll probably apply for as well. I feel a little more control when I'm getting applications out, even if I'm not hearing anything back.

Freaking out about job stuff

As I mentioned in my first post, I don't have a job for the Fall.

I applied for 2 grants to stick around my current position.
- both were not funded (one was a NIH NRSA, which was scored but not high enough to be funded).

I applied for 2 post-docs
- received 1 rejection letter and although I know the other position was filled and other people who applied received a rejection letter, probably lost in the mail

I applied for 2 faculty jobs
-received 1 rejection letter right away without an interview, and haven't heard anything for the other although it's been 2.5 months by now. Expecting the rejection letter any day now (or maybe I'll never receive one), this one was not a great fit so I'm not surprised. I only applied due to pressure from my post-doc mentor.

I have applied for 4 non-academic jobs.
- I received one rejection email (no interview, pretty sure I didn't make it past the HR phase of the process).
- Heard from the HR person at another job that they have closed that hiring spot right now while they "re-evaluate" and they'll be contacting candidates for interviews when they re-open the search. I assume that really means "if" they re-open the search.
-I have 2 others that I haven't received more than a "thank you for applying" email from their automated application website.

I have one more post-doc that I'm going to apply for.

Even though I know it's only April (well okay, May), and my current contract doesn't end until Aug and my mentor said they'd be able to float me for a couple for a couple of months if I needed them to, I am freaking out. I'm worried about not having a job, about not having health insurance, about how my husband's salary won't be able to cover our rent and allow us to eat.

I could probably adjunct next year but I'd have to do a lot of it in order to make enough money and a lot of places are advertising now for the Fall & Spring and I'm just not ready to go that route. I think I'd feel a lot better if I was at least being interviewed.

I meet or exceed the needs expressed in all of these job ads. I've had lots of people read my cover letters, I have great letters of recommendation, I've published a fair amount for someone at this stage of their career, I have a post-doc at a top 5 program in my field. I look great on paper, I could totally understand if I was getting rejected at the interview stage, with fit and all that being so important but I'm baffled why I can't seem to even get a second look.

And of course I keep telling myself that it doesn't help to freak out. But that doesn't help either. :(