Four postdoctoral researchers have been writing their diaries over the past year in NatureJobs. In the first 2009 issue of Nature, they offer parting thoughts on a year of personal and professional milestones.
NatureJobs editor Gene Russo writes:
At a time when financial markets are shaky, science career opportunities uncertain and the plight of the serial postdoc as much of a concern as ever, this year’s Postdoc Journal keepers offer hope. In the past few months two of them have earned permanent positions. One has embarked on the challenge of motherhood. The fourth has found a research position that, although immensely challenging, always enthralls her. Each sums up their experiences and future ambitions in online essays (free to access).
Jon Yearsley, a veritable postdoc-aholic of ten years’ experience, managed to live up to one of his New Year’s resolutions from last year: to have a permanent position or no position at all. He recently landed a lecturing job in Dublin and was joined by his partner after much time apart. Of course, challenges remain: will his brand of interdisciplinary research attract funding? What about students?
New responsibilities have proven daunting for Zachary Lippman, who has just moved to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York as an assistant professor after a postdoc in Israel. He knows he must generate preliminary data and write grant proposals, but he remains wistful about his past experiences and colleagues.
Aliza le Roux started the year with a research trek of epic proportions. She went from her native South Africa to her new principal investigator’s lab at Michigan State University before, in short order, heading to Ethiopia for her new postdoc. She is fascinated every day by the natural soap opera performed by a troop of baboons she studies there. Le Roux loves her job, she says unabashedly. She gets to play with animals and chase her own intellectual questions. But she worries that her work might make a ‘normal’ life a difficult prospect.
Amanda Goh, on the other hand, has taken a step towards that so-called normal life. Goh became quite frustrated with her lab work this year; she contemplated starting a completely new project. Now, as she prepares for the birth of her first child, she already recognizes that the careful planning she strives for in the lab may be even more difficult to carry out in the nursery.
NatureJobs archive of articles for postdocs and students.
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