Why a Postdoc is basically needed in Academia
I’ve been totally swamped with proposal writing over the past few weeks, hence my erratic posting schedule. Also, right as I was going to sit down and work on a post, I found out that I was denied for another proposal, totally sapping any motivation to do anything useful. For those of you keeping score, I’m 0-5 in the my first 6 months with a bunch pending. That’s not what I would call a stellar start to my academic career. Needless to say, I’ve contemplating career choices and shoulda-woulda-couldas, but I think that’s only natural at points when things aren’t going the way you envisioned. It’s not all bad; I did get very good reviews from my Chair, which means in the Chair’s eyes I’m doing some things right even though I don’t feel like it is. One of the proposals that rejected was in a Young Investigator/Young Faculty category. For those of…
Would a postdoc have helped?
This week at Engineer Blogs, we are discussing the worst mistake we’ve ever made. However, that theme is somewhat difficult for me as I am a perfect human being who has always been right, or at least argued my point successfully until my opponent has been convinced I am right. Actually, I’m completely joking and I have make more than my fair share of mistakes. However, I’m going to refrain from discussing them for political reasons. Instead, I thought I would discuss something that I’ll never know if it was a mistake until it’s too late: Skipping the postdoc stage of an academic career. First, some short background. Unlike many academic engineers, I did my UG and MSc at the same university and then moved on for my PhD at a different university. It seems like the norm is to do UG at one place and then move on for your…