Friday, November 7, 2008

Lately

Lately, I just have not felt like posting.

My friend who is trying to defend in December is on the (industrial) interview circuit and having little success due to hiring freezes. It doesn't help my mood any that he's AWESOME and really good at what we do.

My advisor has reached out to a friend at another institution to see if there is any room for me there as a postdoc. Have not heard back yet. That's how postdocs work - no one does them, so it's not an advertise/hire type thing. It's generally done the way I just described. We'll see.

I'm working my ass off on a paper that I really really really need to get in. This could be the big paper that I would need to make me a slightly more credible academia candidate in the future.

Fin.

4 comments:

Transient Theorist said...

Sounds rough. Why do they interview people if they're under hiring freezes?

Good luck!!!

PhizzleDizzle said...

I don't know!! I guess the manager did a phone interview, and then later talked with the higher-ups and found out they are under a total freeze. so then they just told my friend they'd file away the resume for future review, and thanks for talking.

it's rough out there :(. stay in school! better yet, plan your graduation when the economy is on the up and up, that way you can actually look for a job at the peak. i planned to graduate at a peak, thus my job search will occur at the burst. sigh.

Transient Theorist said...

Alas, if I could predict the economy 5 years in advance, probably I wouldn't need to go to graduate school... I guess I might as well get started though; working temporary research jobs at ten an hour isn't much of a long-term career plan.

This is, perhaps an ignorant question, but is the research you do within advancing computer science, or have you thought about applying your knowledge of csci to a different discipline? (eg, I'm an ecologist, but most of my research involves computer programming/modeling systems).

PhizzleDizzle said...

I have sort of thought about it...I don't want to become "technical support" though, that's important to me, and because I don't really know the terrain of other fields that rely on computing, I don't know that I can be sure that won't happen. Besides, my expertise is not in algorithmic computer science, which is what I imagine is important when doing scientific modeling.

But sometimes I still think about trying something else. Except that lately I'm super excited about what I'm doing...if I weren't a senior grad student I'd totally stick around and keep working on it...But I need to graduate and move on with my life. Sigh.