One thought on “A New Year’s wish”

1. After discovering this website yesterday I’ve now read these posts back to Aug 2011….I can’t take anymore! I hope you have worked the bitterness out of your system. My 8 years postdocing was in chemistry and physics and I worked for relatively generous Profs.

   Personally in 11 yrs I only ever worked a weekend once (and regretted it) and I always kept 9-5ish hrs because I prioritised time with my young family. Was I lazy? Maybe..but I was never accused of that….but I also tended to work much more efficiently, got my PhD thesis completed within the allotted time, had a successful grant on year 2 of my postdoc and came very close to a lectureship (snatched by a super postdoc from Oxford).

   I think the difference for me was that I had worked for 5 years in industry after my undergrad before even starting my PhD. Before I started I had some time management skills and had learnt that “time is money”. If time is money then A) you don’t give your employer more than they pay for and B) You work as efficiently as possible. Working yourself into the ground for just the chance at a competition is madness to the Business World….investors demand much better odds!

   I know the biological sciences are in general more competitive and cruel though, and I did hear horror stories from some labs (students locked in the lab to work! – pre HSE). I don’t regret my postdocing entirely though. God was very generous and eventually lead me into a job where I can really capitalise on the skills I learnt….I feel way better skilled than fellow colleagues. But I was also sucked into thinking academia was some kind of fairy tale career and that my chances of succeeding were much higher than statistics suggest.

   What doesn’t help are the stories from years past when things were different. My Dad was an academic, headhunted for a lectureship before he even finished his PhD! But this was the golden age of university expansion in the 60’s Now there are far too many people seeking research jobs…..and I haven’t even touched on science growth in China!

   Anyway you are far too creative and talented at fictional writing to waste your time on publications….God Bless with your future and Novel writing.

   Cheers
   David

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