The Man with No Time

This evening marks the end of my first week in my new job. It's been a little odd at times, and a little frustrating at others, but I didn't expect it to be a cake walk. I'm cautiously optimistic though, and I think I'm going to enjoy working with alongside the astronomy group at Warwick. Sadly, none of these buildings is the Physics department. But it's a nice panorama of part of the Warwick campus, so I'm using it. (Credit: en.wikipedia.org)

I’m feeling very silly today. In my ongoing quest for a job post-PhD I had my eye on a position at Warwick. It wasn’t strictly in my area, but was related enough that I was considering applying. It was attractive; an interesting sounding project, a University and department that I know already, and positions of either 3 or 5(!) years available. Sadly I really messed up. Somehow I’d put the closing date in my calendar as Monday 11 th of February, but when I rechecked today it was Monday 4 th of February. So that one’s down the pan now. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I’m having a hard enough time finding interesting postdoc positions in the UK without throwing them away like that. Pretty much how I fell right now. Stupid idiot! (Credit: knowyoutmeme.com)

Today I received the long-awaited email from the department at Oxford that I recently interviewed for. Sadly I have not been offered the position. I can’t say that I’m too surprised given what I thought immediately following the interview, but it’s still a bit disappointing. Ah well, onwards and upwards. I emailed the professor offering the postdoc to ask for some feedback on my interview, and she’s given me some helpful pointers. Now I just need to find some more UK-based postdocs  that look interesting enough to apply for.

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)

A few weeks back I talked about my apprehension over the next stage of my career, and my indecision as to whether I wanted to stay in scientific research. I also said that I was intending to spend some time over Christmas thinking about what I wanted to do, and then start applying after Christmas. Well, you know what they say about well-laid plans….. (Credit: onefootovertheline.com)