Thesis date, targeted. Now hire me, please.

Although not in the simplest manner, we have set a target thesis defense date. After reminding the bossman on at least an every-other-meeting basis that I was aiming to defend in March and he finally told me it isn't possible (Aside: Bossman has a grant due in the same time period that I was to defend. Clearly it is not convenient for him. However, working for free after my funding runs out in March is not convenient for me.). Then he gave in and I will hopefully be defending in March. The past three days have been 12+ hour days that involve nothing other than revising my thesis (which, again, draft is completely written, just need to put in figures into the intro and format and so on) and my manuscript that we will be submitting for publication soon.

No really, that is it.

For the past hour though, I've been job hunting. Not even a single interview yet, and I've sent out approximately 50 job or fellowship applications. This tells me that I'm not qualified for anything. Literally. I am not qualified to work in a position away from the lab bench because I have no experience, and no one wants someone with my degree, which is not a buzz term like "Molecular genetics" or something. At the bench, I can no longer work with animals because my allergies hinder my ability to function, and continue to get worse with additional exposure. And because I have no experience in cell culture, I'm not qualified for that either.



So ... who wants to give me a job?

The greatest compliment of my academic life occured today.

Today I met with a visiting professor from a nearby school/hospital system (as many are). This person was part of the study that my least favorite professor first-authored... I've mentioned it before. The one that duplicated my idea but with a different drug target. Needless to say, I entered our meeting with skepticism.

Turns out, this person is pretty neat. We talked about how nobody really knows how my project and all others like it actually work, and that there is a lot of hand-waving and speculation with no actual, legit, hard data to back up the reasoning in a direct manner.

Aside: in science, all evidence must be direct - A causes B, not A causes C and B probably happens or A most likely causes B or A1 causes B1, so A2 probably causes B2. 

At any rate, I pulled a bunch of papers out of my head, throwing down some relevant general concepts, as I usually do. Ok, the authorship wasn't totally correct since I said they were all author A and only one of the three I was thinking was actually written by A. But I contributed to the discussion, took some charge and asked about both basic science as well as long-term human use consequences of the visiting professor's work. We did not have time to talk about my data, and I still had things coming out of my head when the bossman showed up to take the visiting professor to the next meeting. But... know what the visiting professor said when I was leaving?

Something along the lines of "you're a great grad student and I'd love to have a grad student that thinks like you do." There might have been something in there about how the bossman should be proud of me, but I was so caught offguard (holy fuck, a compliment! people don't compliment each other in science/academia! wtf!) that I was utterly unable to listen to anything else that happened.

HELLO, WORLD. For perspective, I consider a meeting with the bossman to be "excellent" when I don't want to run out in tears.

Lets put that in a larger font so I can come back to it later. I should have recorded it. Having a bad day? Play. Still having a bad day? Play again.

"you're a great grad student and I'd love to have a grad student that thinks like you do"

 Small step for grad students everywhere, large leap for K-kind. 

Every day in the office

Me: *Sits down at desk, types furiously on laptop.*
Coworker: *Strolls in at 11am, begins talking about the things they did this weekend, how wonderful and fun it was, how I need to go do these things too.*
Me: *Looks up* "yep." "mm-hmm." "thats neat."
Coworker: "So, how is the manuscript going?"
Me: "Good, I really need to get it out in the next week, otherwise I will not be able to defend soon. I'm really trying to focus hard on it and get it all taken care of."
Coworker: *Serious face* "Oh ok."

(three seconds elapse)

Coworker: *Begins asking questions about the manuscript, questions about recent bossman meetings, questions about my weekend, questions about staying home from work the previous day, questions about feeling under the weather....*




WHY.  WHY.

The job hunt: Failure edition

I've sent out a lot of job applications recently. And by applications, I mean CVs and cover letters tailored to each position. Yes, tailored to each position. So it is sort of annoying when I would like to apply for two open positions within the same company, and their antiquated application software only lets me upload one CV/resume. XX State Dep't of Health, you get an F-. On a related note, when you have to answer skill-based questions (eg. "yes, I do this often but under supervision," "I have been trained but have never done this," "I am considered a professional at this" etc), there should be a button to click that says "I don't understand the question."

Job postings are often clearly written for specific people, tailored to the specific skillset of one person. I get that. But at least make the skill-based questions relevant to the job posting. Seeing utterly irrelevant skill questions makes me want to be the computer gif with the typing and the stumps and... you know which one.

What I wanted to complain post about today, rather, is the job that I recently didn't get. The one where the two most recent hirees came out of the same training program that I'm currently on, the one where I know several people who work for the company, the one where I was in extensive contact with *all* of those people. They abandoned my resume without letting me know, so by the time I got ahold of someone, four months after I turned it in, their feedback on why I wasn't considered was "you didn't do at least two years of a post-doc." No? You're right, I didn't. But neither did the two people from my program that you hired. One of them only post-doc'ed for a few months. And neither of them have the non-science business-related skillset that you were looking for.

(Aside: Of course, I did)

At least give me some legit feedback, people. This is getting ridiculous. I'm already at the stage where I'm applying to Bachelor's level positions, potentially robbing some new college grad from his or her own possible position. Watch, they'll end up in grad school because they can't get a position. And then what? They'll have to rob some poor 20-year old for an entry-level Bachelor's position too.

This is a shitty cycle to be stuck in, folks. Maybe if companies didn't have bots to automatically dump your resume if you answered "no" to "Do you have 1-5 years of experience doing XXXXXXX?" (No, fuckers, I have a goddamn PhD doing XXXXXX. I spent more time in grad school than you require for your shitty Bachelor's level position) we wouldn't be in this state.

Le sigh.