The Man with No Time

Something a little bit different today - I've been on television! I've mentioned it briefly before, but my boss is the 'Head of the Science Team' for the new ESA PLATO mission. Since it was selected by ESA last month he's been very busy giving talks, presentations, and interviews about the mission. Yesterday he had the science team from the local BBC TV channel along to interview him about it for a short piece. Since he was getting a bit fed up with the whole thing he decided that it would be good for myself and Dave (one of his PhD students) to get involved too! I was a little nervous about it, as I've not had any interaction with the press before. But it turned out to be a lot of fun. The science reporter was very easy going, and made it seem more like a chat than an interview. He did give me one piece of advice, which was to finish my thoughts even if I stumble rather than trying to restart, as you can always edit and do retakes. Very much like ...

Time for another quick job-hunting update. After a fallow period for likely looking postdocs and non-academic jobs, there have been several all at once in the last couple of months.  I’ve applied to three separate jobs; two are academic, and one is an outreach job that I was actually alerted to by one of my friends.

Today I experienced my first post-PhD job interview, and my first interview for four years. As I mentioned previously , before Christmas I applied for two postdocs. One was in Berlin, and I haven’t heard back from them; given that the position starts on the 1 st of March, I don’t think I will now. The second position was at Oxford, and it was for that that I had an interview this afternoon.

Just a quick update today. I’ve heard back from the job that I applied to at Oxford, and I’ve managed to get an interview for the position! It’s going to be on the 22 nd of January, but sadly I won’t be travelling down there. Instead the interview is going to be over Skype, which will be interesting. I suppose, assuming they’re interviewing everyone in the same fashion, that it makes things fairer if they have a lot of international applications, but it’s going to be an odd experience. Still, and interview is an interview. Time to get practicing! (Credit: kwasistudios.com)