The whole report makes interesting reading, although it is likely to compound your frustration with
life as a postdoc because it makes many recommendations to universities on supporting your career management that you may not have experienced!
Coming soon: In the final instalment of his story, Ben reflects on how the niche he has created for himself differs from his working
life as a postdoc and why his new lifestyle has made him happier.
Although this level of compensation might have been sufficient for the brief training period of the 26 - year - old postdoc of the 1970s, it proved a poor match for the reality of
life as a postdoc in the new millennium.
Not exact matches
(It's also worth noting that, according to the 2010 SDR, 11 % of
postdocs in the
life sciences and 17 % in the physical sciences reported lack of other employment
as their primary reason for doing a
postdoc.)
After several years
as a
postdoc, I became weary of the perversely hypercompetitive, and somewhat fickle, nature of
life as a biomedical researcher.
As she contemplated a
postdoc, Nath decided she couldn't see herself spending her
life ploughing through computer - generated data.
«We had high - school and college - age students with grad students and
postdocs in the lab, and they were each sharing experiences, educating each other
as to how to go from that specific part of their
lives and move on to the challenges of the next phase, both scientifically and personally,» she says.
While completing her
postdoc, Murphy began to study C. elegans mutants that could
live and reproduce twice
as long
as normal worms.
Next Wave: Many administrators in the
life and physical sciences see the
postdoc as an extra training phase beyond the Ph.D..
His
life in tatters, one former UMass
postdoc sues his college and his adviser
as postdocs on three UMass campuses unionize
«I returned to take another
postdoc in the U.K., knowing that I would feel uprooted from the
life I had built in the U.S. and miss my friends, but I never expected the transition to be
as hard
as it was,» Meek says.
I decided to focus on
postdocs because most
life scientists identify the
postdoc period
as the crucial time to succeed or fail, a major bottleneck on the academic career trajectory.
So why would anyone want to spend this precious, career - building time at a small liberal arts college where,
as Binney Girdler, a
postdoc at Middlebury College in Vermont, says, «
life revolves around the undergrads?»
So we read with great interest the Working
Life story in which Michelle Gabriele Sandrian, an American, shared her experience working
as a
postdoc in Austria while starting a family.
In addition to serving
as a career - planning resource, the OACD is also poised to handle the needs of
postdocs» daily
lives in the laboratory.
Not only were mentors — with a few notable exceptions — absent from the meeting; but effective mentoring appears to be absent from the
lives of many
postdocs,
as speaker after speaker noted.
von Fricken spent a year
living in Ulaanbataar
as a
postdoc with Duke University, under Dr. Greg Gray, working alongside veterinarians from the Institute of Veterinary Medicine and the National Center for Zoonotic Diseases.
«It's common now in France that you do two
postdocs,» explains Jonathan Weitzman, a British
life scientist just appointed professor at the University of Paris 7, after completing postdoctoral appointments in the United States and France and working
as a senior research scientist at the Pasteur Institute.
But on balance, Long sees working with undergraduate students, instead of graduate students and
postdocs,
as an advantage: «Because their
lives aren't dependent on it if a project fails, we can do all kinds of crazy stuff here.
Between 1987 and 1999, there has been a large increase in the ratio of
postdocs to faculty positions
as well — a change primarily affecting the
life sciences.
Quality of
life as a whole was really important to him, so much so that he declined an offer from a renowned professor who was expecting his
postdocs to work 7 - day weeks.
From its first - rate programming series to its emphasis on career development
as well
as personal development, BPP works to enhance the
life of biomedical
postdocs.
This year was no exception,
as a multitude of activities were held for
postdocs that served to enhance their professional and personal
lives.
This results in a glut of postdoctoral trainees who, even though they are aware that only 14.3 % of PhDs in the
life sciences end up in tenure track position 5 years after receiving their PhDs, still strive to become academic researchers themselves (44 % of
postdocs in the
life sciences name faculty - research
as their preferred career outcome - see below).
To understand why this might have happened the way it did, King began studying choanoflagellates, the closest
living relative to animals, nearly 15 years ago
as a
postdoc at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.