A Few Thoughts

I currently have 3 applications out. The first is for that assistant professorship at a local liberal arts college. The second is an adjunct application at a different liberal arts college. I rewrote my application and e-mailed it this time, directed to the correct person, hopefully. And finally, I e-mailed away my resume and cover letter for a possible grant writing position. Every time I send out an application I get a pit of anticipation in my stomach, like I can't wait to hear from these places when they tell me I have an interview. But that has yet to happen. I'm not yet familiar with the timeline of when there's still hope versus when I need to give up on a particular job. We'll see. Of course job opportunities are few and far between these days, so while there was a bunch for me to apply for at first, now that I'm caught up with what's come up in the past few months I'm now at a plateau where I check my job sites every morning and wait for that next thing to apply for to show up.

In the meantime,......today is the first day that I feel like I'm useful in the lab again. The last few days of the week we found out what was happening were spent in a lethargic-shock state. Plus we felt completely justified in sitting around doing nothing. Last week I didn't mean to do quite as little as I did, but it takes time to start back up after you've essentially taken 3 days off. Also, I was spending a lot of time searching for jobs. Plus, our PI was being very very very difficult to deal with and that just made me want to accomplish nothing, mostly out of spite (I tried not to feel that way, but it didn't work). Finally today I am doing a big giant experiment that will take all day and has loads of steps and makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something. It's a nice feeling, really.

On a completely other note, my husband has suggested that if I really want to use this blog as a tool to break into science writing I need to write about science here - I completely agree with him, but the amount of time and effort that that would require is not something I have at the moment. Of course that statement brings along with it a whole lot of guilt - like, if I really want to change my career I clearly can't be lazy about it. At the moment though, I'm still putting in the hours at the lab and when I go home I like to relax, cook dinner, watch TV and read books that are fluffy. But, I do realize he has a point, and so I plan on making an effort (a slow one, but an effort nonetheless) to pick a science topic, do a bit of research and make a coherent blog about it every now and then. Actually, since I have a mostly non-science audience - what scienc-y stuff interests you? Give me suggestions and I'll see what I can do.