Crossing my fingers this week

From Friday until last night I was away enjoying the sun of Mexico while I attended my sister-in-law's wedding. It was a pleasant break from both the seemingly endless gray skies and cold of winter and from my lab/thinking about a new job.

But I'm back to reality now and I'm kind of nervous this week. As of tomorrow it will be exactly two weeks beyond the closing date of the Life Sciences Instructor position that I'm very interested in. HR suggested that I'd hear from them (presuming I end up a candidate of interest) "approximately two weeks after the position closing date." So here I am - waiting - not so patiently, for a call or e-mail that may or may not happen (crossed fingers). And this is kind of the end of the line for the moment.

This time of year is typically the end of the hiring season for faculty positions and this is the last application I have out right now. I'm hopeful that I would at least get an interview for this position, but I'm also trying to mentally prepare myself to shift my focus towards what I plan to do with my time should I be hanging out at home for a while.

Meanwhile, it's time to get back into the swing of things here in the lab. Discovering my mistake early last week meant that all the work I had planned was for nothing and so I did very little in here. That was actually pretty good timing, considering that I slowly get more and more lazy and unmotivated the closer I am to a break. It's also good to have one slow day when returning to the lab as well, but starting tomorrow my motivation will be back and I'll be busy again for the near future as long as things work out as planned (crossed fingers).

Oh, and a little progress on a different front. Back in November I attended a talk here by a woman who teaches at a liberal arts college and described to us the experience and some of the ways we can get there - if that's what we're driven to do. One of the many things she does is to connect postdocs and graduate students to mentors in the area who already teach at smaller, liberal arts schools. I had e-mailed her to see if she could help me find a mentor and over the past couple of months we've been sharing sporadic e-mails to get the process going. As of last week, she had e-mailed a number of professors at a nearby college, explaining to them my area of interest and my background and as soon as one of them agrees to help me out then I'll have a mentor!

This is kind of exciting for me. It's certainly not as exciting as a paying job would be, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. This person could help me market the teaching experience that I do have to my best advantage. He/She would likely be more aware of a range of teaching jobs that I might be able to become involved with and I'm hoping that this relationship between me and my mentor may lead to something like an adjunct position at their school (crossed fingers). Any step forward is a good one right now.