3 years 11 months and 11 days

"Like a Tree With the Passage of Time" 

That's the motto of my undergrad alma mater. That's where it all began. 

I now find myself back in that same city ready for a new start. 

I can now reveal to you that my stated purpose when I began this blog has now been achieved. As of December 1st, 2012, I will be an Assistant Professor, tenure track, at York University. Thus my time in postdoc purgatory will come in just shy of four years. Somehow it feels like it was much longer. Certainly, the period was a not a great one for my mental state. However, if you deal well with uncertainty you probably would manage better than I did.

In particular, I had the issue of not really knowing where I fit in an academic department. What is a planetary scientist? Is that an astronomer who stays close to home? A geologist who travels far? Or maybe an engineer who gets their inspiration by looking beyond their machines? Really it's all of these things and yet none of them exclusively. That's a problem for many traditional departments. But now the market has spoken and its answer in my case is loud and clear - I'm a Renaissance Space Engineer. I couldn't be more excited to join the talented group that will help create the Lassonde School - how often, as an academic, do you get to contribute to build something novel at the organizational level?

I'll have more to say about Lassonde later, but given that some of you may actually be reading this record to figure out how you yourself can proceed from PhD to something permanent, I'll distill (as best I can) my advice on what worked for me below, under the cut. As always your mileage may vary and in a very real sense, given the balkanization of science and engineering, my case may not be applicable to yours.

Annual State of the Blog

To my great surprise, I've kept this blogging thing up now for just over a year. That means that now is as good a time as any to take stock of the year just past and look forward to the year ahead.

In the past year, I've posted 27 times (this is #28), which is an average of a little better then once every two weeks. So based on the every-other-week frequency I was aiming for at the beginning, I'm pretty much on target. However, things have slowed markedly in the last six months with only half as many posts in 2010 as there were in 2009. As such, I'm going to try and step it up a bit, especially over the summer!

In that time, I've held a pair of jobs, one at Environment Canada, and another at York University. I've also had interviews for postdoctoral positions, research scientist positions and space agency positions. All told, 29 applications were made (I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of my extremely supportive and patient reference letter writers!) of which two remain outstanding and three were successful at least in part. None of these were faculty positions or short-lists for faculty positions, so I must conclude that I need more postdoctoral seasoning at this time.

Content-wise, it's been a bit of a mixed bag for the blog. Initially, I had planned to talk mainly about the trials and tribulations of a young academic trying to find work. Over time, however, things have morphed to include a bit of opinion and commentary on topics of scientific interest. From my initial post, this isn't an entirely unexpected development. Aside from that, I still have not posted topics for potential collaboration and have been reevaluating whether this blog is the right place for that material.

Part of that reason are the low numbers of page views (46 over the year, most of which I'm sure are my own, despite advertising topics on my twitter feed) and comments (only one, in response to this post - thanks Nikhil!). This blog wasn't intended to draw a large audience, and it doesn't particularly bother me that few, if any, people are reading. The initial purposes of being part public diary, part practice ground for me to develop my opinions and ideas and work on my persuasive writing, remain intact. And, of course, if my writing helps even a single other struggling young academic long after I've got a permanent job, it will have been worth it.

Looking forward, you may notice a redesign as of today. I've added a search bar at top on the right, and my twitter feed to the bottom of the sidebar. Additionally, a new background replaces the old flat colour. The mottled spheres floating in a reddish cloud is meant to be evocative. On one hand, the colour recalls the Martian surface and sky with swirling clouds of dust. On the other, the spheres recall planets floating in the ether of space at the same time as they resemble microorganisms. Since my interests will focus more strongly on Astrobiology going forward (More on that in a later post), this feels appropriate. As required by blogger, the image is stock, and can be found, somewhat surprisingly, under the "health and beauty" tab.

In any case, it's been a good first year, and I look forward to another one that's even better!

330 Minutes in Montreal

Another interview and another fleeting journey, this time staying within Canada! I do have to hand it to the timing gods, however, there was just enough time to get in on the first train of the morning (leaving on the first subway to get to Union) and head out on the last train of the evening back to Toronto. Even a few taxi hijinks on the 112 only reduced me to being on-time. I even had the chance to pick my wife up her favourite picante truffle from Premier Moisson.

I've now had four interviews, and I am definitely getting to see a complete spread in hiring practices. I've done all day long marathon interviews, and 45-minute panels. I've flown over oceans to extol my qualifications, and answered questions over Skype. I've been greeted with completely free-form questioning (i.e. "let's talk about a subject") and very structured formats. The behavioral ones are always a bit tricky, and I have to wonder how much of this other scientists have seen.

Still, I hope that I have acquitted myself well. I've received some good feedback and I'm grateful to all of those who have given it to me. I've also received a first offer to consider - but that's a topic for another post.

P.S. I've fallen off the wagon a bit recently in terms of updating, but I've been stockpiling some good ideas. Now that I have some more time to devote I hope to catch up, so look for some more essays in the coming days and weeks!

120 hours in the Netherlands and a Review

Since this is, at least in part, a chronicle of my job hunting efforts this seems a good time to provide an update and to reflect back upon the summer's job search efforts. This will be helpful in gearing up for the fall blitz, since that is when most permanent positions and postdocs are advertized.

The summer was largely a quiet time for applications compared to the spring months and the rate at which I applied to positions dropped off somewhat. As I mentioned this was not unexpected. Nevertheless, I recieved three invitations for interviews including one in Boulder, Colorado and another in the United Kingdom. To cap off the summer, I was invited over to the Netherlands for an interview at the end of August.

Each position was very different from the others; one was a permanent staff position working on a specific space mission with some postdoctoral aspects. Another was a more classic purely limited term postdoctoral position working with returned data. The last was a permanent agency position doing some science, but mainly facilitating future space missions and the efficient and effective acquisition of science.

Given my experience, all of these positions are of great interest to me. But all have subtly different styles for interviewing candidates. The staff position was the closest to a traditional academic interview entailing an 8-hour, day long interview which focused on my technical competency alone. Another interview took place via Skype. The agency position was a two stage process with a telephone interview followed by a 45 minute in-person discussion focusing on my technical, communication and leadership competencies. This last interview was my first experience with that Engineering stalwart, the behavioral interview and I think that I learned some good lessons which I intend to apply to my preparation for future interviews.

Each of these three interviews was also a deeply valuable experience for me since they gave me a picture of the different working cultures and academic experience across three countries. I am familiar with the fiercely independent American experience from my graduate days. But the Europeans have a different, perhaps more collegial style which may have grown out of the necessity of forging alliances amongst so many different states with different interests in Space. I can't help but feel that each one of these experiences provides a little piece of the puzzle for my future career. Each different, but interlocking and necessary for my success.

While I have yet to hear back from any of these positions, I look forward to the feedback I will receive. It will make me a better interviewee, and highlight for me where I need to work hard to close any gaps in my experience.

Looking forward to the fall, I can already see a few positions that are of interest. One of these is a teaching position at a small liberal arts college. I believe that this is something I would like as well, since I can impart the knowledge that I have gained over the last ten years to students just starting out on their personal Quests.

But for now, I'll leave you with one image from the Netherlands. My wife and I took this picture of a kite we brought along with us to fly on the beach, as I relaxed and gathered my thoughts on the day before the interview. Never before had we been able to let the string out to its full length, but here in Noordwijk assisted by the on-shore breeze, the kite flew higher and more steady then it ever had before. Let's hope that's a good portent.