A Third Path and an "I Wouldn't Hire Me" Moment

Besides teaching or career advising, I've always enjoyed scientific writing. According to my graduate advisor (although perhaps not so much my postdoc advisor) I'm pretty decent at it. In fact, when I first told my Ph.D. advisor that the standard path through academia might not be for me, a career in writing was what she first suggested.

I've come across two opportunities to pursue in this vein. The first was for a medical writer and came from Craigslist and the requirements were a Ph.D. (got it), postdoctoral experience (got it), experience with manuscripts and grants (yep, that too) and 0-2 years of experience. It's really difficult to find a position that's outside of what I immediately do for work and so I was incredibly excited to see this posting. I've already sent off an e-mail in reply with my CV attached. The second I found on an area-university's website and was for a grant writer. Basically I would mine the internet for grant opportunities for the faculty at this university and I would aid in the writing process. In order to apply for this one I'm going to need to turn my CV into a resume, but that isn't too much of a problem (I hope).

On a more embarrassing note, I re-visited the website of the school that I've sent an adjunct application to. Upon visiting the page devoted to inviting people to apply for adjunct positions I was mortified to realize that I had not looked at the page well enough and had in fact sent my application back to the wrong department. I thought that there was one general application to download and send back in to the human resources department. Turns out that there is just a general application, but it should have been mailed into the attention of a specific person in the division that I'm interested in. The fact that the application asked me to state what division I'd like to work for is a bit confusing, not to mention the fact that the division listed first on this page has an extremely generic name. But really, this is my fault for not taking more time. This is not the job market in which I can afford to make a stupid mistake. But this is also not the job climate in which I can write off an adjunct position at this institution. And so I'm going to fill out that application again and send it right back.......but this time I'll be sending it to the right person...........