Academic Job Offer

Well, that was fast. And really slow, all at the same time.

I have received a job offer for a professor position. A week or two ago, wasn't I just asking myself if I wanted this?  And now the offer is sitting there in my email, sparkling and shining and singing and generally making a big thing of itself.  Professor Zil. Who'd o' thought.

Next step - something I'm terrible at. Negotiating. You see, it's not a great offer. In today's academic job offer, it is very precious indeed, but it requires a bit of tweaking or I'll enter into it all set up to fail. They expect the negotiating though, so I guess it's okay. Maybe they even downgraded it to allow for the negotiating process. Luckily, academics like to talk about themselves, so there's much advice to be had from my good friend Google.

The location of this position? Let's just say it's not the tropics. It's so not the tropics that I can only see it as a 3-4 year plan, a stepping stone toward a better position that will be.... well.... still not the tropics. But a tiny bit closer. In my dreams.

I have to move across the country to get to it. That implies 1) hassle, 2) house hunting, 3) expense, 4) more negotiating, 5) starting from scratch again on my social life - which is also something I'm terrible at.

I moved here to develop my social life, but alas, I'm moving away shortly after to pursue my career. When does the life trump the career, I wonder?

Climbing, climbing, climbing.... Arms up high over our heads... and WEEEEEEEE!  And so the roller coaster ride begins.

(ends?)

(continues?)

Fact and fiction, fantasy and reality

I wrote in my last post about connectedness, or my lack thereof. You see, it seems to me that an academic should be connected to the world around him/her. Actually, it's not just academics. It seems to me that any mature person should be connected to the world. We should know what's going on around us, in our work worlds, our broader communities, and our even our international communities. We should talk about news and events, social issues, economic challenges affecting our industry. It's just what a responsible person does.

I'm a researcher. My work is all about trying to try to find that nebulous “truth”, the answer, the way of the future. I look for fact, I debunk myth, I explore reality.

But in my free time? I live in a world of fantasy. Whether I'm reading mountains of fiction or losing myself in an online game, I am hungry for fantasy. I don't read books – I read series. If it's not at least four books long, it's not another world where I can lose myself. My books, my games, my online worlds... they all are fictional, and they all are rich, complex other worlds. I spend my personal time wrapped up in fictional past worlds, future worlds, worlds of magic and wonder.

...so, as UNconnected as possible to the Real World around us.

So, when I ponder how to become more connected to the world around me (and more like the type of person I wish I were), the question that quite naturally come to mind are...

...can I be connected while bravely wielding a longsword, while casting a spell over spoiled lands, while boldly exploring uncharted universes?

I guess “connected” just ain't me.

Academic Impostor Syndrome

I like working with people who aren't very smart.

There, I said it.

When I work with people who aren't all that, I feel competent, good at what I do, insightful, and a lot of other good things. But there are people out that who don't leave me feeling quite so warm and fuzzy. I'm not talking about the people who think they're so much superior to me and put me down - I can handle those people.  I'm talking about the more humble types who, who are just obviously so much more connected, more competent, more interested and more interesting, more engaged and more engating, and just plain smarter than I am.

I encountered one of those today. I was presenting something work related at a place this person runs. She was fabulous. She greeted and catered me, the visiting researcher. She discussed her site and her work in a way that shows she's passionate about what she does. And here I am, inside my stuffy little head, thinking "who cares". Then she talks about some other projects she's working on and it's just so clear that she has so much more... potential... than I do.

She's less educated than I am, but she's a more educated person, if that makes any sense.

And so, I go back to look at my education. You know, I did it the easy way. I did the shortest Ph.D. you can get in the country in my field - and I finished it a full year ahead of schedule. I often felt, as I went through the program, that it wasn't a "real" Ph.D.  I was a superstar there. The other students struggle and don't finish on time. I finished early with double what I needed.  I ain't no genius though. It was a remedial Ph.D.

I moved away from that area, to a place where the Ph.D. takes years longer to complete. Sometimes I'm okay with everything, because while I know my program was *ah-hem* below par, I was such a superstar in the program that I know I could have done a longer, harder program, and all it really would have earned me was more years of my life sunken into school, more debt... I did the right thing by taking a legitimate, recognized, fast-track. It is a recognized degree, from a high-ranked recognized university. I'm just not so sure it should be high ranked and recognized.

Until I meet people like the one I met today. Today, I feel like an impostor. I'm not the smart, educated, connected person I'm presenting myself to be. I'm a fast-tracker.

Connectedness. That's the one that really gets me though. It's not really one you learn, either. A second and a third Ph.D. would not teach me to be more connected. It's just who I am. I live in my own little world that isn't quite so attached to the world around me. It works for me, I like it, I belong here, it's all good.... until I meet someone like the woman I met today.  She has the..... connectedness... I feel like I should have, to present myself legitimately as Dr. Zil. I'm searching for another word to describe what it is I'm missing, but I can't find one.

And that, dear Internet, is another thing I will have to grapple with as I make the transition I have ahead of me.

Onward.

Academic Job Interviewing - The Transformation

Yesterday, I was an insecure recent Ph.D. graduate who had been put down as an incompetent "trainee" for years. Today, I'm a confident, professional prospective professor.

The transformation that is required when making this switch is unbelievable. All through grad school, we're taught to bow down to the gods that are the professors. Then, suddenly, we have to become one. Stand up in front of the selection committee and act like a well-trained student? You'll never get the job. You've got to convince them that you're already a professor, just waiting for the paperwork to be signed.

Last week I was considering a "job", that would be a good one, but would take me out of academia. Today, I am the proud owner of a (draft of a) five year plan describing the development of my academic career and my new (would-be) research platform.

I was never interested in an acting career, but I feel like that's what I'm working at right now. The odd thing though? "Fake it til you make it," they say. But already it is feeling right. I DO belong in academia. Academia is where I am most at home -- it is where I feel like ME.

This job I'm soon interviewing for?  It's not the greatest one, not by a long shot. It's not the one I want. I'm not the right fit for this position, not because of a lack of skill, but because of an odd match between the university and me. That's okay, though. It's an excellent first try. It will be a trial run for the next one.

Y'all know what?  I love a challenge. My challenge here will be to convince them that I am right for them, even though I believe I'm not. My challenge will be to get an offer out of them, but an offer I may turn down, because there's still time for me to get interviews for positions that fit me better.

Let's get this party started (...after I proof my plan one more time...)

Me, My Life and I

Look at this - I have a blog! It just happens that I've been needing a place to ramble, and someone reminded me that this was a place I could do such a thing. I have no idea if I'll continue. Apparently I opened the blog years ago and it never went anywhere. But it is here tonight, so I shall use it to soothe my troubled soul.

----

Academia. Apparently I'm an academic. How the hell did that happen? It seems to me it was just yesterday that I was serving soda at McDonalds. Now I'm Dr. Zil, Ph.D., trying to figure out the whole "career development" thing.

I talk to my academic "mentors" and they explain how they got to be where they are. They talk about how their parents were Dr. this or Dr. that, and how they struggled to choose medicine or psychology over engineering or finance or whatever the family trade was. How hard that was for them. The questioning they went through. But how they came to figure out they could do something (slightly) different from their highly educated families and still fit in the family line.

I, Dr. Zil, am the child of two people who struggled to finish high school. The child of a part-time secretary and a mechanic. People who truly believe that if you can get a job and hold on to it, you've achieved success. People who truly believe that my getting a Ph.D. is just ridiculous and arrogant and conceited and all the rest. So, here I am, trying to figure out the career development thing, and I have no frame of reference whatsoever to draw on. I've been swimming against the current all the way through. My academic mentors don't understand why it's such a struggle for me to make the decision and to commit at each stage of the game, but I have voices in my head telling me to just Get A Job.

I had a job interview this week. It was for a good job - good pay, great benefits, intellectually stimulating, everything I moved to this city for. A job, in the corporate world. I could do this. I could enjoy it.

I'm preparing for another job interview this coming Friday. Academic. It's a tiny university, but it's a professor position. This school would not be my career. But it would be a stepping stone to the prestigious academic career I'm supposed to be striving for.

Assuming, of course, that I get an offer on both.... Which do I want? The good, stable, interesting job in the city I want to live in? Or the quasi-professor position in a tiny university that would move me forward on a path toward academic prestige?

When is enough enough? Have I done enough academia? Can I just get a job now? Does the fact that I consider the first option to be "just getting a job" mean it's wrong for me? When do I get to lighten up on the whole academic drain and develop... I don't know... LIFE? People tell me there's more to live than work. Academia begs to differ.

Questions, so many questions... and nobody to turn to for answers.