Wednesday

Today I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with the woman who heads up the career services portion of the graduate office where I went to school. She was very helpful, both with suggestions about how I could get into academic advising or teaching. She strongly recommended "adjuncting." She was quite honest about how I wouldn't get paid very much, but it would be a huge boost to my CV as I apply for more full time faculty positions. She said that besides waiting for specific calls for adjuncts, she knew of many graduate student who had success simply by e-mailing the head of the biology department at a number of schools and requesting to be kept in mind should a course come up that they were suited to teach.

As far as getting into academic advising, I wasn't surprised to hear her say that a lot of it came down to being in the right place at the right time. Her best suggestion to me was to become involved in the postdoctoral office where I am now - unfortunately with only about 4 months left here as a postdoc, that's not going to get me very far.

I was very happy to realize that I really am doing all I can me and I'm using the right resources for what I want to do. Each time she mentioned a school in the area that I should check out it was generally already on my list. Also, all the science/higher education websites she mentioned were ones that I'm already checking on a daily basis. I suppose I can sleep well at night knowing I really am checking out all the local options each day.