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The good news and the bad news…
Sep. 13th, 2005 12:12 amThere is both good news and bad news on the career front.
Starting with the good news: I've been offered a part-time job this fall working with the New England Complex Systems Institute, or NECSI. Complex systems is the field that I've been trying to get into since fleeing computational neuroscience, so this is a good thing. Furthermore, NECSI is gearing up for a grand "global modelling" project come next May, and if things work out this fall, I may be offered a two-year position come January as the senior post-doc on this project. I'm still somewhat cautious about the research itself--I've been stuck twice in unappealing research projects--but this is a wonderful opportunity for me, to finally get some real research done.
Now the bad news. Jen's boss is moving to Dallas. Perhaps as soon as December. And he's taking his lab with him, including Jen's mice. Furthermore, he wants Jen to come finish her post-doc in Texas for two years, and if she does, he is offering to write a R01 grant with her which will help ensure her getting her own lab at the end of the two years. That is a great opportunity for her. Unfortunately, if she doesn't go, then the loss of the mice cuts short her research just when she is on the verge of getting results, and she would have to go out and find a second post-doc, without the benefit of the NIH grant she has now. (I don't understand all the political intricacies of being an experimental biologist; it sounds horrid to me.)
This is terrible for so many reasons. The heat, the humidity, the politics, the culture. The fact that we'd have to fly to visit family. And Dallas sounds like a downright awful place to live, a million people, highway-centric, and such. (It had to be Dallas, too. Not Austin, not even Houston, but Dallas.) And you don't even get a choice of cities: Austin and Houston are 4-5 hours away by car. And working? There's no way I could take a tenure-track job in Dallas even if my credentials were good enough; I couldn't possibly maintain the charade that I'd for a moment consider the possibility of staying there permanently. I might find a one or two-year temporary position, though my options will be more limited than in Boston. If not, I'm stuck adjuncting, probably at some Bible school teaching faith-based physics.
(OK, my bigotry is showing now. Fair enough.)
I would be miserable there, intentionally miserable; to enjoy anything about Texas would be a personal betrayal. (And if that sounds catastrophic, I spent five and a half years in Chicago determined to hate the place, with much less reason.) But if Jen went and I stayed in Boston, for a year or two? Would I be any better off then? I'm isolated now as it is, with very little pure social contact. I would be painfully lonely. And she has no more fondness for Texas than I do; would she be able to get by without me there?
The third option, of course, is that Jen doesn't go. Turning down her boss' offer would be difficult for her, and it's not clear what she would do instead, how hard it would be for her to find work elsewhere. I guess it's not impossible. But I don't understand the situation to be able to weigh the options, which sacrifice is the least painful.
Plus, I had consoled myself that this decision could be put off until the spring at least, but now Jen's boss wants to leave in December. I'm hoping that Jen and her labmates can convince him that that is much too early and selfish on his part, particularly with the foreign students who have to change their visas. It's not enough time. Actually, I'm rather pissed off with Jen's boss, for obvious reasons. :)
Anyway, it's an awful mess.
Starting with the good news: I've been offered a part-time job this fall working with the New England Complex Systems Institute, or NECSI. Complex systems is the field that I've been trying to get into since fleeing computational neuroscience, so this is a good thing. Furthermore, NECSI is gearing up for a grand "global modelling" project come next May, and if things work out this fall, I may be offered a two-year position come January as the senior post-doc on this project. I'm still somewhat cautious about the research itself--I've been stuck twice in unappealing research projects--but this is a wonderful opportunity for me, to finally get some real research done.
Now the bad news. Jen's boss is moving to Dallas. Perhaps as soon as December. And he's taking his lab with him, including Jen's mice. Furthermore, he wants Jen to come finish her post-doc in Texas for two years, and if she does, he is offering to write a R01 grant with her which will help ensure her getting her own lab at the end of the two years. That is a great opportunity for her. Unfortunately, if she doesn't go, then the loss of the mice cuts short her research just when she is on the verge of getting results, and she would have to go out and find a second post-doc, without the benefit of the NIH grant she has now. (I don't understand all the political intricacies of being an experimental biologist; it sounds horrid to me.)
This is terrible for so many reasons. The heat, the humidity, the politics, the culture. The fact that we'd have to fly to visit family. And Dallas sounds like a downright awful place to live, a million people, highway-centric, and such. (It had to be Dallas, too. Not Austin, not even Houston, but Dallas.) And you don't even get a choice of cities: Austin and Houston are 4-5 hours away by car. And working? There's no way I could take a tenure-track job in Dallas even if my credentials were good enough; I couldn't possibly maintain the charade that I'd for a moment consider the possibility of staying there permanently. I might find a one or two-year temporary position, though my options will be more limited than in Boston. If not, I'm stuck adjuncting, probably at some Bible school teaching faith-based physics.
(OK, my bigotry is showing now. Fair enough.)
I would be miserable there, intentionally miserable; to enjoy anything about Texas would be a personal betrayal. (And if that sounds catastrophic, I spent five and a half years in Chicago determined to hate the place, with much less reason.) But if Jen went and I stayed in Boston, for a year or two? Would I be any better off then? I'm isolated now as it is, with very little pure social contact. I would be painfully lonely. And she has no more fondness for Texas than I do; would she be able to get by without me there?
The third option, of course, is that Jen doesn't go. Turning down her boss' offer would be difficult for her, and it's not clear what she would do instead, how hard it would be for her to find work elsewhere. I guess it's not impossible. But I don't understand the situation to be able to weigh the options, which sacrifice is the least painful.
Plus, I had consoled myself that this decision could be put off until the spring at least, but now Jen's boss wants to leave in December. I'm hoping that Jen and her labmates can convince him that that is much too early and selfish on his part, particularly with the foreign students who have to change their visas. It's not enough time. Actually, I'm rather pissed off with Jen's boss, for obvious reasons. :)
Anyway, it's an awful mess.
