#unkowns

June is slowly dancing her way out of the halfway mark, leaving July to carry on and lead us into a second half of endless unknowns. Those unknowns will play out in their own time and dwelling on them will not magically alter their outcomes. Instead, let us focus on the present. The “here and now”. It is what we do in this moment that will set the course of “unknowns”. Let us take a step back…

I recently finished my postdoc and during my ongoing job hunt I’ve been thinking about the skills I needed to learn and events people don’t talk about during grad school and postdoc life. A few are laid out here. This is not the way it has to be, but it is the way of the world now. There is a lot of effort ongoing to improve some of this but the outcome remains uncertain.

1: Your adviser/mentor will betray you.

2: You will write more than you ever wanted to.

3: You will fail at a presentation somewhere, maybe more than once and you’ll live. Hopefully this is just in lab meeting.

4: Your adviser will try to keep you around as long as they can, you’re cheap labor.

5: Publish or perish matters even outside academia. This is a major way your judged outside the ivory tower as well

6: You need to pick up management and business skills on your own. How do you train people and get them to do the tasks you need done.

7: You will be paid very poorly if at all. Deferred compensation is the keyword, though i haven't seen it yet.

8: Be sure to ask yourself, do I really need this degree to do the job I want.

9: Try not to drink too much and workout more. Workouts are a better way to stay sane than the bottle.

10: Having a child will cost you at least a year for moms and a little less for dads. This is probably the worst truth on here other than 1. Ensure you have a working relationship with your PI before you try this, and lets hope there is more understadning the academia in the future towards young families.

11: Married dual faculty appointments can happen but finding two open slots that fit a couple is more than twice as hard as finding one.