5 years later, I succeeded

I defended my dissertation five years ago.

I have been thinking about this update for a long time, because I finally feel like there is a happy ending to this story. When I was struggling to find any type of job, I felt like a failure. I would second guess myself about doing a postdoc (which I skipped thinking it wouldn't help me get my career started). Even when I started working, I had incredibly mixed feelings about my work. I started in an entry level role, writing for high school students. I was embarrassed when people would find out I had a PhD, and mostly wanted to pretend I was just starting from scratch- just ignore the interminable education that no one can make sense of. I was impatient to succeed, to make it somewhere, to find my place, and be able to contribute in some meaningful way.

Comparing myself to my peers wasn't ideal, but I realized that if I had stayed on the academic track, I would have spent another five years before I got my first real job as a real professor. I promised myself that when I was 5 years out, I would be in much better shape, and this would all seem like just a bump in the road. At the very least, by the 5 year mark I might be able to name my career path. But it took my a year (a YEAR of interning, volunteering, freelancing, networking, and hustling) to find my first job. That job was fun, but I was not convinced I was cut out to be a writer. I thought I had impostor syndrome as a scientist? Ha! I cant spell, I know nothing about grammar, and I am supposed to making a living writing? Mercifully, I fell in with some good mentors and role models. I put the nervous energy about my career towards absorbing everything I could about writing for education.

A year after I got that first job, my contract expired. I got a new 1 year contract. That grant ran out, too. I was enjoying the hell out of my free time, and I was consistently making more than I would be as a post-doc. Maybe this is what most people feel like, you handle/cope with/pass the time at work, and then have a rocking real life? But I was tired of wondering if I would ever hit my stride, get a chance to settle in somewhere and make an impact. I worked with a career counselor to be more strategic about my next job hunt. My goal was to land a job that would last more than a year, and might even play to my strengths. I networked, I volunteered, I was hustling.

And it paid off. All of it. The people I met at my first job had landed at new company that was growing their team, and was doing technical training. The team is brilliant, and they were willing to hire me on to learn how to do my job. I am not bad at what they hired me to do (develop eLearning), and I have a smashing time doing things they didn't hire me to do. Next month I am giving two talks - one at a local academic meeting of process chemists, and one at a data visualization meetup.  I have two volunteer gigs I got through work helping education non-profits take advantage of their data. Its a wonderful marriage of both my education and my work experience. At 16 months, this is the longest I have ever worked in a professional job.

This job probably isn't as prestigious as being a professor, but its also not remotely as stressful as the tenure track or grant cycles. I get to learn about so many different things, and I haven't been bored since I started. My career has actually started, that I've developed relevant, employable skills that I enjoy using. Recently I have been giving informational interviews- people want to know how I got to where I am. Finally, after 5 years, that time feeling lost and anxious really does just looks like a bump in the road.

Welcome STEMinists

If you've come here because you have ready my profile on STEMinist, I'm glad you stopped by!  As you will see, I kept this blog primarily about my job hunt after graduating- and now that I have a job I've been pretty terrible at updating it. 

BUT if there is anything you'd like to know more about or people I might be able to connect you with I'm still monitoring the site and would be happy to chat with you more.

On feeling good about the job

As excited as I am to start my new job, I've had some mixed feelings about pursuing this route.  Working as a curriculum writer in career education doesn't require the exacting touch of a molecular biologist, or a PhD.  Like many people, I struggled with the idea that I might be "wasting" my education.  For a long time I was looking for jobs in industry because I wanted to believe all those years of hard work would pay off in form that I could predict.  But, the longer I looked, the more hurdles I put in my own way- I don't wanna be at the bench, I can't do sales or marketing, I'm over academia, I don't want to travel 50%... Whether or not I was aware of it, I was backing out of science.  There is something like a mourning process when you give up on your dreams- and eventhough I can't say it was My Dream to become some big deal scientist, it was certainly the path that I'd been fixated on for so long.

This transition might have felt easier if I had any certainty about where I'd go instead.  There were lots of options, but I was resistant to admit I was backing away from science, and equally unwilling to back away from science completely.  Maybe I could find work at the science center?  Or as a medical writer? Or something that would use my science in a way that I felt more comfortable with?  Does such a job exist?  And even though I had tons of misgivings about traditional careers in science, it was easy to be nitpicky about other careers as well.  Work at a non-profit?  The pay is terrible.  However, I felt like I was living with the pressure of using this PhD, and I tried to let that go. 

Over the spring, I recognized that I didn't have a hard time convincing people I should be able to write well.  This was part of my internship, part of my dissertation, part of my contract work, and something I was enjoying.  Fortunately or not, just being able to write doesn't paint a clear career path. Meanwhile I seemed to have a really hard time convincing anyone I would be a good scientist- there was always some technique or experience that I didn't have yet, like ADME or animals or even clinical trials. By this point, I felt desperate to work and figured I should reconcile myself to working outside of science. And contracting with this new client was going well.  I like the work- thinking about teaching- an awful lot more than teaching itself.  When I thought only about the job, I loved it, it felt like a great fit, but when I would think about keeping it for any period of time I felt guilty that I wasn't doing something in my field (whatever I believed that to be anymore).  Eventually I decided I'd rather be someone who "failed to be a scientist" than someone who "failed to get a job, ever."  I expect these feelings of guilt to pass.  I'm good at my job, and not everyone can do this type of work, which does make me feel like I am using my education and experience.

Even as I felt better about this transition stick, I started to have more criticisms of any potential employer.  Specifically, we create educational models for schools and teachers who can afford to buy them. Does this undermine the public school system?  Does it really help teachers and students?  Although I actually think we do more good than not, my client's work was in a flattering piece by Fox News, which certainly gave me pause. Is this work that I should do? This feeling surprised me a lot.  Finding a career that I felt comfortable with was one thing, now I was feeling skittish about actually taking a job?  After talking with some friends, I realized that there is usually some component of the work that seems.... not quite right.  I know someone who selflessly works at a food bank that buys their supplies from Walmart since they have the cheapest prices. A physician charges people for medical care, just because they lost the health lottery. I rationalized that even if I were working to cure cancer, I'd eventually wonder about the ethical sourcing of my suppliers (all those plastics come from China), the footprint of my lab, or whether my work was taking money from other more promising projects.  It's just the reality of the working world.  Like I said, I really do think that this type of work provides support for rather than undermining public schools.  Working with start-ups, I realized I preferred the honesty of admitting that "we have to make money to stay afloat" compared to the nebulous assessments that result in success for grant funded operations.

Really, for me the emotional journey had three major hurdles: the idea that I needed an Important Job because of the PhD, the idea that the PhD was a waste if I wasn't in science, and the idea that I needed to work (as a saint) for saints.  Getting over that has helped me find a job a like in a field that interests me.  I'm not using my "science" persay, but I got the job in part because I can learn and write very quickly.  The PhD wasn't a waste, and I expect in the long-run may allow me more upward mobility.

I got a job!

I've been waiting to write this blog post for longer than I've been blogging here.  It's a pretty big day!  I accepted my offer letter and am officially going to be a curriculum writer with one of my favorite clients! 

I've got lots of reasons to feel good about this (it's a job!), but I wanted to walk back through some of the key choices and experiences that helped me actually get into a position to take a job I'd never hear of in an industry that didn't exist when I entered school (Lo', those many years ago...).

I struggled a lot with the idea of really moving into a field that is very distant from my previous work.  The job (write a HS curriculum about vocational programs) is certainly not something I need a PhD to do, or a background in virology.  I'll write more about that struggle later, but there were some  things I did in grad school that did help me get this job.  And not just the "hard work and transferable skills" stuff.  I designed a course for undergrads that I taught one semester.  I enjoyed designing the course, but was petrified as an instructor.  That made me think I didn't want to get into education (one reason I hesitated to pursue this).  I also wrote a lot, and made an effort to develop that as a skill.  This was mostly just a couple manuscripts and a dissertation, but while I had colleagues who would rather die of papercuts that put words to paper, I enjoyed the process.  (Although I did totally hate parts of it too).  I hated revisions, so this made me think I was too sensitive to let writign be my primary skill.  By the time I left grad school, I knew I didn't want to be at the bench forever, and I was scared to teach or write.  Nifty.

The day I stopped working I started volunteering at the Carnegie Science Center.  I believed that I probably had some workplace competencies that etc.) my adviser would not be able to speak to (showing up to work on time, dressing appropriately, and I wanted some structure in my long, tedious days of job hunting.  This transformed into a much more responsible position that I had been able to predict, and I was able to (among other things), write and execute scalable demos (for 1-many students, and for all ages).  I did handle a small budget and some other project management skills, but developing demos was the key.

I made a HUGE effort to build up my LinkedIn profile.  I did everything anyone suggested there, including improving my profile to include all my skills and experience, not just my science background, and joined tons of groups.  One group I joined (Possibly a subgroup of Science Jobs- the Freelance group), someone asked for help writing some science lessons.  It didn't sound like anything I'd done before, but I wrote some letter with hubris that said I've got a PhD, I worked at the science center, I can totally smash you lessons.  This lead me to my first client, Words & Numbers.  Work there was sporadic, and after having tried plenty of other routes, I realized I had months of experience in this field (curriculum development), and there seemed to be a lot of off site opportunities.  While I was trying to amass more clients, I ran across an ad for a local company in this industry and applied- again with a letter I thought was ridiculous.  I've often that that I should amend this entry to say that as crazy as I thought the letter was, it was read, and I got the job- well, not the job I applied for but I was able to quit working at the bank to take on writing full time.

After working with them for several months, telling everyone there how much I enjoyed it and how interested I was in more work (and several contract renewals), I decided to take matters into my own hands and told the guy who hired me I was looking to apply to another job at the company.  This prompted a discussion about how I could continue to work with his team in a more permanent basis that VERY SLOWLY (I sent that first email in August) turned into a full time job offer.  Tada!

Obviously, I couldn't have predicted this combination of things, and a lot of the other stuff I was doing prepared me to respond well to what turned out to be the key opportunities.  A few things turned out to be help for me.  I never got good at 'leveraging contacts' to open doors to invisible job opportunities.  I did met loads of folks who gladly shared information about their careers, but I decided that the easiest way to impress someone was by doing the job- that's why I volunteered and took contracts.  And that did give me a chance to impress the people who gave me my job.  And of course, I work for a company that makes online curricula for credit recovery and educational development.  5 years ago the publishing industry wasn't prepared for ebooks, and now there are any number of companies making mixed media learning tools.  It's just not a job I could have gotten prepared for by any traditional route. 

I promise at least one more write up on the internal components of getting and taking this job as well. 

What's negotiable?

Lately, I've been trying to learn a bit about negotiation.  Specifically, what is negotiable at the start of a job.  I have a general sense that the starting salary is, but I don't know how I would ask for that.  I've also heard plenty of internet blabber that Everything Is Negotiable.  But at the very least, no one is going to want to sit down with the new hire and negotiate every little dumb detail about the job before they are clear you are pretty much onboard.  So I surveyed some friends and colleagues to see what is common to expect from a professional job, and what/how to ask for other things.

Basically, everyone said you should negotiate your salary, and this was across the spectrum of "Take'em for all their worth!" to "it never hurts to ask."  What was interesting to me what what was suggested as things to factor into this number.  A friend said, you have to get out of "Ohmigosh, I'll do anything to work for you!" sucker mode, and move quickly into, "My skills are valuable, and valued at X price."  But really, if you think of yourself, your potential, you as The Whole Package, it can be hard to distill all that into one number, especially when it's hard to gather objective evidence about your market value.

Several people (with enough work histories I am inclined to believe them) said vacation, health insurance and retirement aren't usually negotiable.  But I need to find out about them so I can adjust the required salary accordingly. Terrible health plan?  I'm going to need extra cash to make up for the fact that your competitors would include this in my package.  Several people recommended I look at Glassdoor.com and Salary.com to be sure that the number was in the range for the position, and use this as the start point to add extra salary on to.

As for these other things, what can a professional still expect these days? Healthcare is a yes.  Hopefully details of the plan can be made available before just accepting that "Health Plan" = "Good."  There should be a 401K, with matching, most people said matching at 5% was standard (still), although it may take time to vest.  I heard 3-4 weeks of paid vacation.  I find that odd, since my husband only gets 2 weeks of "vacation time'" but he also gets another 10 days of holidays during the year.  I suppose it all works out.  The idea is, if an offer is lacking in any of these things, you ask for more salary to make up for it (since that makes for good leverage).  No one addressed how to respond if these were all above average- probably thank your lucky stars and keep your mouth shut.

I also asked about other things like parking, bus pass, gym membership and other random perks.  Most people said it's ok to ask for and about those things, but I should wait until the salary number is already lined up.  When the question of salary is still on the table, it seems like you might walk.  And it would be weird to turn down a job because you had to get your own bus pass, right?  Or worse, if you are fussing about the parking, you are cool with the crappy salary number, right? You often have more leverage for those little things at that point.  By the time an employer has gone through the HR hoopla to get you that far, they are keenly aware of how much they want you and need to make you happy to get you. Of course, if it was generally considered that these perks were valued by employees and available, they might think to mention it during the hiring process.  That being said, the corporate goon who hires me might not be aware of how amazingly liberating I think it is to work flex time, so I will ask rather than assume someone will tell me about this nonsense. If I have learned anything in looking for a job, it is that what is important to me as a job-hunter is not what is important to a potential employer.

And then tactics.  With luck, the employer will make the first offer, which gives you a number to start from.  Countering with 5-10% more (and valid, sound reasoning), seems pretty much expected.  Since I am terrible with arithmetic under pressure, I would make a table of annual and monthly salary numbers to compare with.  I also heard that it is ok to take day to think about it- do your due diligence, and prepare a thoughtful counter offer.  (Seriously? That's allowed??)  And the valid, sound reasoning for your counter offer should include other offers, previous salary, the accepted salary for the industry etc., not so much personal budget issues (I've got this HUGE mortgage).

That's what I've learned so far about negotiations.  This seems like a pretty key moment to have a spine and stick up for yourself, which isn't a good time to decide you dont't need one.  I should probably practice this stuff.

Blogging Professionally: Interview with Chemjobber

One of the things that I have realized while job hunting is that there are plenty of ways to do important, professional things that aren't paid, which means I have a lot more choice about participating.  One model that I really look up to is Chemjobber.  Chemjobber is a blogger who writes about jobs and the job market for chemists.  Chemjobber follows the movements of the American Chemical Society, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and various commentary by science writers on this theme.  It's all very thoughtful stuff, and the blog attracts equally thoughtful commentary and readership.  You don't have to spend much time there (or be a Chemist) to feel like this provides an important place for a community to discuss the under-discussed issue of chemist unemployment and under-employment.

And Chemjobber? He's not paid to maintain this blog, he does it because he wants to.  And actually, that got me curious.  So I asked if he would be willing to talk to me about it: why blog? And of course, he was glad to. I was SO pumped about this conversation before and after so I wanted to share here.

Chemjobber is a really nice guy, the kind of guy who would dedicate hours a week to writing about the issue of employment even though he actually has a job. He sees average chemists struggling, and a lack of dialog about that issue and uses the power of his blog and pseudonym to address it. By blogging, he can collect resources, add to (or start) the dialog and be a fact-checker for other writers.  All this helps get thoughts in order, it allows for ideas to be shared with a critical audience, and sometimes it's even a service.

When asked if it's worth it, he told me that as a scientist he has learned to take his wins very narrowly.  He's been able to connect a few people with jobs, or be an ear for someone navigating some career mystery, and that seems equally, if not more important than being quoted by famous bloggers, or even print journalists.  For him, connecting people with information and elevating a dialogue about the very scary struggle of the average chemist is important.  Worth dedicating time away from his family for.

To be honest, I probably could have guessed most of that about Chemjobber, although I was surprised to learn that he didn't choose to write about this issue because he had experienced unemployment.  Seriously, he just writes about it because it seems important for the community. He's just that kind of guy.

I also wanted to know about the pseudonym, and not just the funny story about how he picked it (someone should make him explain it).  Does a pseudonym protect you?  Give you different freedoms?  He sighed when I asked about this, and said a pseudonym is never better that writing with your own name.  Instead, he uses it to divide this hobby (blogging) from his work.  This is a little surprising, he rarely mentions his work on the blog, and he told me few people at work know he is Chemjobber.  People often don't trust the pseudonym (and this is a good rule of thumb). When he has been contacted by reporters, they can't credit him as a source.  And I think that is part of the reason he maintains the strict difference- the journalist will site Dr. Jobber, chemist at ChemCo, and that isn't really who he represents as a blogger.  Even though we may never fully understand the motivations of the pseudonym, it seems to provide the space for Chemjobber the blogger to be thoughtful, critical and objective (and prolific) in a way that he might not if he thought his employer might read it.

And this got us into the subject of blogging generally.  Chemjobber had lots of thoughts about how to develop a following and encourage discussion with a generally positive community. (Hints: Write lots, and don't pick fights.)  Using a specific mission statement, there seems to be an unending amount of content, but he hasn't seriously discussed women in chemistry or immigration and jobs.  He's found the chemistry community to be dominated by other thoughtful, objectively critical folks who make the dialogues much more engaging (and man, I wish people left such great comments on my blog- seriously, go look at some of that stuff). We talked about how there isn't a similar blog covering the issue for Biologists, or even all of STEM.

My purpose in my own blog so far has been simply to document what I am doing, it's very autobiographical.  I thought it would help me to collect my thoughts on my job hunt, and possibly provide a record for me to share with others, and it certainly has done both.  But I'm coming to a point where I might not need to blog about job hunting anymore.  Would I blog about looking for clients or contracting? Could I do that in a meaningful way, or would I have stumbled on a topic even less likely to spark discussion?  As Chemjobber told me, "It's not nice to write about people on the internet" and I don't want to be whining about my editors or clients. I like blogging, but I think this iteration may have run it's course.  Do I shut it down?  Change course?  Talking with Chemjobber certainly got me thinking about using my blog as a forum to discuss the science policy issues I am interested in.

Work and Life and Balance

In the desperate throws of job hunting, I found it really hard to consider work-life balance.  I mean, you need a work life to have that problem, right?  But endless hours surfing the web and lining up interviews with strangers made me realize that neither of these activities makes me appear like the thoughtful, bright and engaged person I want to be as a professional.  I don't like having deadlines and to-do lists hanging over my head, but I'm a lot better at dealing with those things when I have taken some time to collect myself.

Working from home moves the work life-balance into a much starker contrast.  Aside from being in a position to micromanage every single aspect of my career (Which client is worth spending the time to impress?  Who is more likely to send me lucrative contracts in the future?), I'm also faced with the immediate consequences of those choices.  I literally get to choose: should I continue working or go do something fun with my spouse? 

However, being able to micromanage my work-life (I tend to have a pretty good idea of how long it should take me to write certain documents, so I can work on various projects for a set amount of time) I also notice when I'm not as sharp as I need to be.  It's been illuminating to notice that when I start working too many hours, or working on too many different things during the day (there is an energy cost to switching tasks, perhaps?) I'm way less productive.  The work I produce takes longer and often isn't as good.  It's tempting to just say, "I can't write at my best when I am busy! I have so many things going on!"  But I'm a professional.  I get paid to produce decent (not Pulitzer prize winning) writing.  My editors don't really care that I have a lot of other things on my plate right now, I've committed to producing things for them. 

It's been refreshing to realize that, for me, at this time, work-life balance means that I have to limit the amount I work so that I can be better at the work I do. Seriously, I have to go do something fun, with other people, and make sure my home is dealt with (I am no domestic goddess, but the absence of clean clothes and dishes is distracting), or I can't work at my best. I'm sure this was true in grad school as well, but I wasn't attuned to it in the same way. That internal sense of dysfunction just seemed like part of the sacrifice I was making for my career, not that I was failing to be my best. It's liberating to get away from the guilt of "not working enough;" having a social life contributes in a meaningful way to my ability to do my job and advance,  it's not a distraction.

I still have occasional fits of "there might still be work to do" panic, but for the most part, it's getting easier to clock out when that time of the day arrives when I remember that I need to.

Investing in my business- as a Medical Writer?

Today I am on day two of my medical writing course.  The course is going to be helpful both  for gaining some experience writing and certainly on the business end- which I feel is the biggest risk of the whole affair.  I am waffling between feelings of gung-ho "Small Business Built America!" and what-have-I-gotten-myself-into-ness, with a very acute sense that I need to learn about odds ratios and the statistics of risk ASAP.  The course is very oriented towards "How to:" run the business, write the documents, find the clients, keep the clients etc etc. It is not so much of the wishy-washy "is this for me?" day dream I am constantly having.  And of course, it is just the tiniest fraction of what I am spending my time on for the next couple weeks.

Just to make the note for myself, I am currently hoping to work 20 hrs a week for my favorite client, as I am trying to convince them to offer me a full time job in the form of a promotion.  I have suddenly received all manner of work that was delayed from my other client, which is awkward timing at best.  I'd hoped to be done with every last iota of that contract by Friday, but I'll be lucky if we aren't still doing this in October.  And while my internship has formally moved into wrap up stage, we decided to write a pre-proposal for a commercialization grant that I am trying to be involved in.  I've never written a grant before, but it appears to be all-consuming, especially when you are working with a nascent idea like ours.  But I wanted to stick around to see what that process is like, since I've never been involved in a grant submission before.

I decided to take the course regardless because I wanted to do something concrete for my career, and I thought enough of the topics would be valuable to me even if I chose to keep freelancing in curriculum development. All of the above is keeping me quite busy, but in 6 months will any of it propel me forward to the next stage of my career?  No. I need to invest in myself and my future a bit, and when you replace "me" with "this business," it seems a lot more obvious where the investment is needed.

In the continued interest of investing in this business, I bought a second monitor.  I have been doing all this work from the laptop I bought after my old mac fizzled out after my defense.  It's a nice laptop, but I notice I work from AT LEAST 3 windows (not counting needing to monitor 2 email accounts and leaving Pandora running), which is cludgy on one small window.  The new monitor is splendid for that, and it makes me feel like I could get a system in order for being a professional in this so called office of mine. My next investment for the business will be figuring out about finances and taxes and other mysteries of being your own bookkeeper. 

Individual Development Plan

A new e-friend sent me a link to a tool on the Science Careers website to help PhD level scientists develop an Individual Development Plan.  It's great, it does a skills assessment, interests assessment and values assessment and then compares your scores to various career paths.  Ironically, entrepreneurship (starting your own business) and K-12 education (specifically curriculum developer) ranked as the bottom two on my list.  Ironic, because I am actually running a sole-prop based on my ability to write curriculum.

I look forward to using these tools more in the future, but wanted to share the link here.

My IDP at Science Careers

Option Two: High RIsk, High Reward

In my last blog post, I laid out 4 realistic directions for my career that popped up last week that will take my career and my life in completely different directions.  I addressed why I wouldn't be post-docing, and I want to address the conundrum of the other science job, which is perhaps non-traditional.  I've been interning with a small start-up that is developing a surface coating technology for the past 6 weeks.  The details of the job aren't important, but the company is run by chemical engineers who have some great technology, are reasonably well grant-funded (SBIR) and hoping to expand.  These are very good signs when looking at a start up.  However, grant funds tie your hand a little: NSF doesn't pay anyone more than half time, so everyone at this company is there half time. They have a technician they love who is leaving to go to grad school, and they offered me her position with the opportunity to help write some additional grants/seek investors (I am the business development intern).

Yes, you read that right.  Get a part-time wage to take on a monumental (and full time) task. If/when money comes in, I've earned my first promotion.  High risk, high reward.

Let's look at the risk first.  In principle, I don't have to give up contracting to take this job, but I probably would so that I could do the job well. Taking a job as a tech wouldn't be bad if I were promoted quickly/moved on to another position quickly, but it will be hard to find a job to follow-up that one if I have used my PhD as a tech for any period of time.  As I explained to my Dad, would you trust a Physician who worked as a CNA after med school?  In particular with the job market here being so tight, I don't need any question marks on my resume. But I am not being paid in equity (lesson learned), and the grant should last at least a year, so there is some stability.  I'm unlikely to just abruptly lose my job if the company goes under (which they seem unlikely to do).  Oh, and I am not a chemist.  For some reason, they aren't really considering the possibility that I might be terrible at this job, and there is no evidence to suggest I won't be.  Failing at this job (either as a tech or a grant writer) would be bad for the company and bad for my prospects moving forward. 

How about the Reward?  Well, getting a chance to write myself as a PI on a grant is not something I thought I would be able to do at this stage of my career.  That's a big one- if we get funded, that's awesome, but for many reasons I want experience grant writing. I will also get to learn some cool chemistry techniques (however, given the dismal career prospects for chemists, I'm not sure that's more than an intellectual bonus). Looking for investors could help me expand my network (I'm not sure this is a talent I posses or will develop though- so add that back to risk), should I ever decide I am done being a Chemist. And I can create for myself a position in this company that is young and growing that could really take me places.

There are other perks as well.  It would be gratifying to tell my old boss I am working at a start-up, it would make sense to him.  I would be working in a cool neighborhood, with cool people, which is something I miss about grad school.  I've actually been offered this job.  It was all I could do not to say "YES, I'll take it!" when offered the position. Wasn't this what I've been working so hard for?? 

The two questions I am struggling to answer though, are do I have this kind of appetite for risk, and where does this position take me?

Stability in Science Careers

That recent post, about how you need a post-doc to be a scientist, is a place holder for one part of my internal dialogue on what I am supposed to be doing with my life. For the last couple weeks I've been quite busy with two big curriculum development contracts and my business development internship, which got me thinking two things:  1) I can stay on this track of having work and getting paid and not worrying about the bills for a pretty long time. 2) I think I want to know where my career is going more than that.  So ideas were had, contacts were pinged and a bunch of things happened last week.

1) I was accepted into a 6 week training program for PhDs to become Freelance Medical Writers.
2) I was offered a part-time tech position at my internship to support writing grants and getting investors to support myself full-time in a scientist role.
3) I pre-interviewed for a post-doc with an innovator I know from my first internship at C4C.
4) I spoke to my favorite current client about moving into a more permanent role with them.

Each of these four things clearly takes my career (and my life) in a completely different direction.  I'll discuss more about my hesitation to give up freelance work, with zero commute and my own priorities on how to spend my time etc etc, soon.  But today I wanted to talk about my discussion about the post-doc job.

Since moving out here, I have not had a chance to connect with many people who really know my skills and abilities AND understand the job market in Seattle.  This innovator/faculty member happens to be someone I endeared myself to as a professional (believes I am smart, a quick learner and creative), has been here for several years and is married to someone finishing a post-doc and looking at the job market right now.  The conversation started with the usual, "What do you want to do after a post-doc?" type questions which I answered vaguely ("work, y'know, in industry probably"), but I was able to articulate the things I do know.  It's important to me to stay in Seattle.  It's important to me to have stability in my career- which is why the soft money research institute or grant funded academic role do no appeal.  And that got us onto a fairly horrifying tangent about the state of science.  Yup, payline at this institute are around 10%, which is making it hard to get and retain good scientists.  Many of those folks move on to the larger pool of positions in Industry (we've got Amgen, Dendreon, Zymogenetics, Novo Nordisk and more here), but those employers are resorting to more brutal hiring practices themselves with limited investor funds and shrinking pipelines.

Bench laborers (and I can confirm this is a lot of highly experienced PhDs, not just techs- just look on LinkedIn) are hired for project for 6-18months, then laid off when the project ends.  This used to be the case that folks would just move around from hiring pool to hiring pool fairly seamlessly, but these days Pharma does much less Research, and limited development.  Those projects are becoming fewer and farther between as the pipelines are drying up, and the pool of highly qualified people looking to get back on the bench is becoming deeper and deeper as the layoff times last longer and more people leave academia to give it a shot.  I have met too many scientists here who are among the long term unemployed.  One way to deal with that problem is move for a job, which is where the #ScienceNomads tag came from.  I don't want to be spending 6 months out of every two years looking for a job.  Sure you could think of that big Industry salary as the equivalent of a 9 month academic position, but I just don't think this will work for me.

It's been said a lot: science is no longer a meritocracy.  Sure, you have to be good at science, but just being smart and working hard isn't enough to ensure you a job.  Writing a grant with solid science and important questions that is in the 90th percentile of all grants submitted might not get funded. Being perfectly qualified for a position might not be enough where there is a list of lay-offs hoping to get rehired.  For someone in my position, I don't just need to get my first job to make it- I will probably be fighting for a job for the next couple decades.

This was really the final piece I needed.  I've seen the unemployed researchers, I've seen the openings I have no hope of scoring, I've seen the work histories of people on LinkedIn who have a handful of different positions for every decade they stayed at the bench.  I just don't think I am going to be a scientist who works at the bench ever again.  Or maybe it's better to say I don't have to work at the bench- I've got other opportunities to be paid to work hard and be smart. That OK.  My last experiment was making alginate worms for the Science Center, and that's a high note I am happy to go out on.  I'm feeling quite at peace with that.

Why do I want to be a Medical Writer?

One of the email lists I've been subscribed to for a long time is the Hitt List, a listing of open positions for medical writers across the country.  It's been interesting to see the types of roles that qualify as medical writers, everything from writing CMEs to filing regulatory documents.  It's intimidating, because some of this I clearly something have no business doing, but there is a lot out there that I could do with a little guidance.  I've had the pleasure of speaking with some medical writers, and frankly the position appeals a lot.  You write documents, based on other peoples work.  Sometimes this is copy editing, sometimes this is pulling together bits of other documents into forms, sometimes this is working from raw figures.  The deadlines are often short (days to months) (which I've decided I like much better than very long deadlines, where you can be haunted by your early, naive choices), and the specific work environment can be incredibly flexible.  People do this anywhere from freelance to part time to full time.  And did I mention that it is well paid?

Great, there is some magical job out there that I am still not qualified to get.  I've joined AMWA and try to keep an eye on the listservs, but that hasn't yet helped me figure out how to "be a medical writer."  However, Emma Hitt (of the Hitt list) offers a 6 week course to get people (PhDs and MDs) up to speed on starting this freelance career. I'm working on my application right now.  The part that is hard is trying to explain why I want to go into medical writing.  Clearly, it is a good career path that would take advantage of my education.  It would challenge me to keep up with trends in my field, and I really enjoy writing so this seems like a good fit.  I applied for the course, and was accepted.  Interestingly, this is about to conflict with some other opportunities, so now I need to start making some of those choices about what I want to do with my life.  More on that later.

Scientists don't have just a PhD

I don't want to be pessimistic about my job hunt. I have been learning a lot about careers, employment and how to get there over the last year, however, and it is quite obvious that Seattle does not support a job classification for people to be employed as scientists who have a PhD but no post-doc. Of course, if you know someone really well, if your PI is part owner in a start-up, maybe this can happen for you.  But I've met a lot of people who work here, working as a scientist (at the bench) requires a post-doc.  (For the record, working as a tech with a PhD is regarded as a very bad idea.)

For the last year, I've been quite confident that I could find something that wouldn't require a post-doc, and here is what I've come up with. 
You don't need a post-doc to become a medical writer. 
You don't (always) need a post-doc to teach, particularly at non-research schools.
You don't need a post-doc to get into patent law, or that arena of intellectual property, but you do need to pass the patent bar or have some significant business savvy. 
And you don't need a post-doc to just have a job- many positions (again, not at the bench, but administration springs to mind) don't actually require that PhD in the first place, but if you can make the case that you are well qualified it shouldn't preclude you working. 

So if just a job is the goal, a PhD is great- it shows you can work hard, learn challenging things, juggle multiple projects with changing priorities.  But you might not use your science at all. And frankly using that science is what people will pay the most for.

Now I am wondering, it's been a year, and I still don't have my dream job (although I am a lot less dissatisfied with contract work), and I don't actually know what that dream job looks like (I've found fixating on a single position has not been that good for me). Perhaps I should keep trying things to see what sticks.  Right now I am looking at medical writing.

Mentors and Mentoring

Much has been said about the importance of mentors helping trainees navigate their career, provide opportunities and offer guidance and encouragement. Ideally this person is an adviser, someone more senior with both experience and influence. Perhaps they even help us see ourselves in a way that we can't, by recognizing our latent talents, strengths and interests. But most of us don't navigate our careers with the fairy godmother of mentors looking out for us, I think it is much more common for us to cobble together the role of the perfect mentor from the offerings of people around us. 

Fortunately, I had some experience with this earlier in my career.  My graduate project was in a field (virology) that is only tangentially related to my adviser's core interests (yeast genetics and quality control). We worked closely with a collaborator who is a world class virologist, and I often thought of him as my scientific adviser.  My graduate adviser would help me design experiments in terms of "this is how we will show this figure, we need these controls..." and my scientific adviser would help me get those experiments to work. So I am open to the idea that often there isn't one person who has all the answers.

As I started thinking about my career in graduate school, it became pretty clear that while both of my advisers wanted me to succeed, the only path to success they knew was their own.  Since I don't want to be a R1 faculty member, I didn't get a lot of specific career advice from either of them. Still, it was nice to know that when I was writing applications for policy fellowships or getting phone interviews with state agencies, they were pleased. After my defense, I left the bench prepared to do this battle on my own.  It surprised me a little that these guys (or any faculty at Pitt) weren't more involved at this point, but I felt prepared to be independent.  When I moved to Washington, I found it easy to find and meet people who were willing to share what they know about the job scene here and how it should be navigated.  Again, no one ever had all the answers, so it seemed important to get wide perspectives.

A fellow AWIS board member sent me this link recently, to the Science Mentor blog, which is full of great tips for figuring our how to find your own (internal) resources to navigate your career.  It breaks my heart a little to think that Self-Mentoring might become en vogue (are so few people willing to help each other?  Do we really think we are an island unto ourselves?), but if the people serving as your mentors have gaps in their ability to help you, sometimes it is easier to fill those yourself.

And yet, there have been a couple times when I have had a fairly objective question about where I stand in my career that I need some external, engaged but disinterested party to help me answer.  Is it a bad idea to take a job as a tech? Should I leave my unpaid internship for a paid internship? Or the very common, is this cover letter ok?  Without a real community here, it has been a challenge to answer some of these on my own.  Fortunately, my colleagues at AWIS have served as great ad hoc mentors, because they have local knowledge and a variety of experience.  I have been really pleased with how valuable getting involved with this group has turned out for me. 

I still think I need more help. When I consider what my barriers to finding a real career are, I think lack of focus and indecision have really held me back. And although I know this, I don't know how to overcome it. Sure, everyone wants the fairy godmother scientist to make their dreams come true.  At this point I would settle for any type of enduring support.  This is why I've signed up to join the Seattle AWIS mentoring program next year.  It should be a good opportunity to build my professional community and spend some time thinking about my professional goals.

Is this enough job?

There are lots of things to like about my current gig.  It's never boring, I'm paid between fine and well depending on who I am working for, and it's really gratifying to have work.  But I continue to blog and look for other opportunities because this doesn't seem like enough, somehow.  Don't get me wrong, I am busy as all heck.  Two of my contracts are committed to about 40 hours a week, and I have another with regular weekly deadlines, so I'm working lots.  I just can't really see this working out long term.  Am I going to be 35 and juggling 3 clients every week?  The sensible thing to do is keep multiple clients, when one doesn't need me as much, I can still get paid.  But maybe the magic number there is two.

And then there is the bureaucracy.  I should figure out a better system for keeping track of my invoices, so I don't spend 30 min trying to submit an invoice for $350.  It really eats into my effective hourly rate.  For some irrational reason, I loath signing contracts too, which is a pretty regular feature of my work.  I don't mean to complain, but these were problems I didn't really want to have when I got "a job." 

An opportunity has come up that I should think about, but I am really having a hard time making the comparison.  My internship (at the surface chemistry company) needs a part-time tech.  They like me, and I think the company has a lot of promise if they can be well managed.  Although, is a part-time tech position in a chemical company a step up from making fine money in my living room?  Is this the opportunity I have been hoping for to get "industry experience," or is being a tech going to be a black mark on my CV that will create a life-time of hurdles for me?  Is inventorying monomers and validating SPR results better than writing about IT and Biology and thinking about how kids learn? 

A parallel to this entry, I'm going to write soon about mentors. 

My Publication Record

My manuscript got accepted!  Anytime a manuscript gets accepted, it's gratifying, and this one is especially so.  As a grad student, I wrote a draft of a manuscript in my 3rd year that continued to be developed until shortly after graduation.  I submitted this just before I stopped working.  At the time, it seemed like the missing piece- the paper will get out, I'll update my CV and get a job.  So simple! This paper went through 3 journals and was finally accepted on its 6th submission.  It's about time!

There is lots of time to think during 6 submissions.  Can you really believe you are a good scientist if your peers won't publish your work?  If your 'peers' only ask dumb questions about your science, do you really have to respond?  How many submissions would it take before you'd just scrap the idea all together.  Fortunately, before I came up with answers to those questions, we were able to address the actual issue with most of those rejections.  My super specialized/limited-audience work wasn't ideal for a general Biochemistry type journal, we really need a specialized journal.  Antiviral Research gave us legitimate feedback that was reasonable for us to respond to (Thank you!), and now I've got my second first author publication.  Phew!

As long as this process has drawn out now, I'm not sure it is going to be the fix-all I imagined.  Other papers came out in the field (it figures that drug discovery in polyomaviruses is trendy now), so my work isn't exactly seminal.  But more than that, it has been a long time since anyone asked about my publication record.  I told a industry scientist once that I've got a couple papers to my name, and he gave me a sort of patronizing look.  I've gotten less interested in bench work, where it might come up more often.  Neither internship asked about papers.  I've tried drafting resumes to technical writing positions that include my papers, but they seem like a cumbersome way to demonstrate "I have communication skills."  I'm still figuring out the best ways to use these.

This also raises a few questions.  I no longer have a semi-regular excuse to communicate with my old adviser.  We had discussed writing a review, based on the intro to my dissertation.  That's easily a year out of date now, so it would require significant effort to update, and there was some doubt anyone would publish such a thing (and after this ringer, I'd love to write something that could get published).  But would it make a difference?  I don't think I've had a hard time finding a job because my Antiviral Res paper wasn't out yet, I think it's because I don't have preclinical experience or a background in immunology.  Would publishing a review change my prospects as all?  Is it a good idea to require semi-regular updates with my old adviser while I am looking for a position?

"So what ARE you doing now?"

I just got back from a trip to Pittsburgh to see my classmate, labmate and scholastic role model defend her PhD.  In the last year I've really come to value being able to support and care for people that I care about, so it was awesome to celebrate this big moment with her.  It was also perfect timing for me to dig through my notebooks regarding the resubmission of my primary manuscript, and to catch up with tons of people in the department. 

I've been struggling for a long time to explain what I am doing and how it is going, and it felt even harder to drudge up the words and confidence to discuss it with faculty who have seen my career develop.  Some people can take "I'm self-employed" as a reasonable answer, but my letter writers cut me off with a skeptical "What does that mean?" And then I mumble about having some contracts, and networking.... even though this is an arrangement I am reasonably happy with*, I can tell no one else is impressed.  Or understands.  It's hard for that not to undercut my fragile confidence.

Fortunately, I was staying with a good friend who reminded me that the reason I've having a hard time describing what I am doing is because I have so many things going on.  I can't figure out which is the priority at this point (contracting?  interning?  being a board member? seeking out new training?).  Of course, I should work on this.  Being able to tell my story in a way that helps people connect, asks for help or implies confidence is important.  But until I can get that story streamlined, it's ok if I don't feel like a failure anyway.

*I turned 29 recently.  I'm not normally a very age focused person, but realizing that I'm not yet thirty and I don't have my career in order seems ok.  Normal even.  I would LIKE to get my career in order, but I've got time.

What I should have said to my high school science teacher

I went home for a visit recently.  I grew up in Juneau, Alaska and I don't get there often.  The timing of this visit actually seemed quite lovely, here I am wondering what I am doing with my life, and I get to revisit my roots to reflect.  I got to spend some time at low tide looking at sea cucumbers and digging in tide pools, which reminded me why I enjoyed science when I was younger- it legitimized my curiosity.

At the end of the week, I ran into my high school oceanography teacher.  He was the drummer for the wedding band, so I had some time to think about if I should talk to him at all, and if so, what should I say.  In the spirit of revisiting my past, I said something like "Mr. ____, I'm not sure if you remember me.  I took your Oceanography class as a 5th year senior.  I just wanted to thank you, and let you know I earned my Ph.D. in Molecular Biology."  He laughed a little, and said, "And you owe it all to me?" He continued with pleased congratulations (he only vaguely remembered me), and then said, "In class you never can tell who is going to make it, and who is going to be a bartender for the rest of their life."  It was a sore point with me for a long time that getting out of high school was such a struggle to finish- I did a year of foreign exchange for my first senior year, and came back to finish a credit and a half and collect my diploma- but I my teachers were very supportive.  Obviously, I liked science before this time, or I wouldn't have taken Oceanography as an elective.  I didn't really need to thank him for helping me be interested in science, but after our conversation I realized what I should have said.

By the time I was a senior in high school, I understood that to get ahead academically, I had to work hard.  I worked on good study habits, and took a lot of courses that emphasized problem solving.  However, this oceanography class encouraged curiosity for its own sake.  Every day, we had to turn in 5 questions about the ocean.  They could be totally lame, or incredibly thoughtful, we got the same grade.  At first, I didn't really know how to pose questions.  How deep is the ocean?  How many kinds of fish are in the ocean?  As the course went on, and there was more content to pull from, my questions got better, How do fish sense brakish water?  How does low oxygen levels affect bacteria? But more importantly, I stopped needing to be a know-it-all.  We were just asking questions to ask them.  They almost never got answered, and it was still fun to pose them.  And that turned out to be a huge key to shaping my temperament for science.  Science is a field where curiosity is essential for driving success, but rarely rewarded directly.  I'm glad I had a chance to develop that separately in the supportive atmosphere of the high school science classroom.

Business Development Intern

While I was thinking about productive, lucrative, ways to spend my time, I ran across a whole  new arena to spend time in.  I'm currently working as the business development intern for Zwittertech, a start-up that can put non-fouling polymers on a variety of surfaces.  The technology is fairly well developed, but they are at that strange point in a start-up's life cycle where is it is time to decide what they are going to make, and how that is going to make money. 

Before I started working at the C4C, I'd never given much thought to how you convert good ideas (example, cure for the common cold) to profitable businesses (curing colds).  At some point, some savvy entrepreneur decides how that idea can make money, and puts all the pieces in place to get it made, on the market and used by people.  I'm starting to realize this is a unique problem in biotech- well, not unique but incredibly expensive.  Imagine, if you will, trying to turn any assay you developed in grad school into something as reliable as a mini-prep.  AND reagents are expensive, AND distribution is monopolized AND your clients are worried about their funding and uninterested in taking a risk on new products.  This might explain the stagnant growth of the biotech industry in the last few years. 

All that aside, my task for the next few weeks is to help Zwittertech decide on thier first product, of the minimally viable product (MVP).  The sooner they can get something on the market that makes some revenue, it will add stability to their balance sheet, which can allow them to develop more of the products they are interested in long-term.  To figure out what the MVP is, I am using a text book called The Startup Owner's Manual.  I'm developing business canvases, and hope to be moving into customer discovery next week.

I'm self-employed

When I stopped working, I felt like I lost an important part of my identity.  I had been working for years and years in the pursuit of my PhD, and once I earned it, I had nothing left to replace that project with.  People always ask, "What do you do?" and I would cringe and mumble about being 'between things,' or apologize for being a new grad.  Even knowing that I had a pathetic response to that question, repeated rehearsals of a better answer always sounded canned and false.  Sure, I can say I am a freelance writer/editor/marketing intern, but it's such a weird arrangement that I never see that look of understanding from the questioner and I abruptly change the subject. 

Recently, I've had a fair amount of contract work.  I've started a new (paid) internship (stemming from my contacts at the C4C).  It occurred to me that I don't have time to look for a real job for a while, I'm too busy making money.  I'm still making up my mind if what I do now is worth the taxpayer investment in my education, but after a year of seeking a little self-respect, it feels righteous to make a sold paycheck. My phone rang this morning with someone asking if I would be interested in a two month contract, and I got to say I am booked solid for the next two months. I would rather be worried about how I am going to get all this work done than how I am going to get work.

This morning, I was asked, "What do you do?" and without hesitation I said, "I'm self-employed."  How cool is that??  I'm still looking for a long term solution, but I'm so happy to have a short term solution that seems to fit really well.