Vancouver vs. Durham, part II

Last month I posted about some of the things that I had to get used to upon moving from Canada to the USA. Now, while I sit at the airport waiting to leave Canada at the end of my vacation, I have a few additional thoughts about my home and native land:

1) It's cold here! Given that I'm in the warm part of Canada it is obvious that I have become a complete wuss in the two years I've been gone. Apparently my body can no longer tolerate temperatures even remotely close to freezing? I need my sunshine and warm weather! However, the rental car had heated seats, and having a toasty-warm ass did help.

2) The speed limit is so. damn. slow. After doing a road trip on the US highways last week, the difference between 80 mph and 80 km/h is painfully obvious. It's took a lot of effort to not be that annoying asshole that weaves in and out of traffic to pass everyone.

3) Strangers aren't just polite, they're actually helpful. When I was on the ferry, a group of strangers worked together to help get a woman out of the bathroom when the door got stuck. My mom and a group of people helped a man who fell outside the grocery store and waited with him for an ambulance.  (Note to all people regardless of country of origin or residence: if you see someone in need of medical attention and you do nothing, you are a douchebag).

4) Mountains are freaking awesome. I realize there are many very beautiful, mountainous locations in the US, but I do not live in one of them. I took a lot of photos of mountains and the ocean on this vacation.

Canada, I love you, but you are just too damned expensive. So now I will return to my large affordable apartment in North Carolina, where I can indulge in cheese and wine for half the cost.

Anatomy of an Interview: The Morning After

The interview proces was so exhausting, I had no energy left to post updates during the trip. Now that I'm back home and have had a decent night's sleep, here's the recap:

Day 1:
Meetings. So many meetings. I think I had individual meetings with 13 different faculty members. I'm pretty sure by the time I reached dinner I was no longer witty or charming, and perhaps no longer completely coherent, because I was just so damn tired. Upon returning to the hotel I intended to do a run-through of my talk, but I was so exhausted that I barely mustered up the energy to put on my pj's before falling into bed.

Day 2:
More meetings, although far fewer (only 8!) and broken up by my job talk and a tour of the new building that will house the new faculty. A little backwards, as my meetings probably would have been easier had my job talk already happened. But I will say that I didn't really have the chance to get nervous before my talk because I was so busy with meetings. The nerves hit a little when I noticed the camera in the corner of the room filming my every move. There's something about knowing that your talk will be recorded that ups the anxiety.

Miscellaneous notes:
Because I was fortunate enough to drive to my interview instead of fly, I was able to pack a ton of stuff so that I could be prepared for any situation (the weather has been changing pretty rapidly here lately). I packed granola bars in case I needed a snack, and had a pair of flats in my laptop bag in case my heels got to uncomfortable as the day wore on. But there were things I didn't think to bring that I will now know to take in the event that I get other interviews in the future. 1) A nail file. Maybe I was extra clumsy due to the sleep deprivation, but somehow I managed to break three nails during my trip, which is usually a rare occurrence for me. 2) Throat lozenges!!! Basically it was two days of non-stop talking. My throat is now so sore and by day 2 (when I had to give my talk) my throat was already feeling pretty croaky. Next time I'm taking a jumbo-sized bag of lozenges with me to save my voice.

So, is interviewing for a faculty position stressful? Hell yes. But at least I think I managed to not make an ass of myself and impress a few people, so it could have been much worse.

Anatomy of an Interview: T-minus 12 hours

I think I have discovered the solution to pre-interview jitters:

1. Be very, very sleepy. It is hard to be anxious when you are having trouble staying awake.
2. Drive into an unfamiliar city at night, in the middle of a thunderstorm/torrential downpour, complete with lightning, power outages, and tornado warnings. Trying to find your hotel in these conditions will distract you from any anxiety you may be feeling about dozens of people judging you and your work to determine if you're worthy of a faculty position.
3. Actually get your job talk finished and in a state where when your supervisor asks how your talk is coming along you can reply, "My slides are f--king awesome!" and actually mean it.

That last one might be the real reason I'm more relaxed.

Anatomy of an Interview: T-minus 36 hours

And so begins the countdown to my first interview.  I have decided that this period of the interview process must be the obsessive phase. The ability to sleep eludes me now. Oh sleep, how I miss thee! My ability to eat, however, has not diminished at all. A lot of ice cream and cookies have gone into this talk preparation. There is a lot of list-making, and double and triple checking that I have packed everything I will need. There has also been much ironing, something I rarely do but was necessitated by having to spend two days in clothing that isn't jeans and a sweater.

The job talk is... mostly done? It still needs tweaking. There are citations to insert and a few images to perfect, and a summary slide that says "write something here" that I should probably fill in with actual information. Although I'm sure I will be tweaking my slides until the last minute, the bigger panic comes from feeling the need to prepare for the 20 or so individual meetings I am scheduled for. I keep reading on websites about how you should read at least one paper by each person you are meeting with to familiarize yourself with their work. Ummm, given that I only got the schedule today and my first meeting is in 36 hours, I'm probably not going to be able to read 20 papers by then. I think a gander at their websites to get a general idea about their research is going to have to suffice.

Now, off to re-assess my outfit choices and re-pack my suitcase a few more times!

Job talk prep... and valuable life lessons?

In late summer, I started thinking about what I would need to prepare to go on the job market this fall. With the dawn of the new academic year began the CV updating and tweaking of research statements and the gradual accumulation of a list of current job postings (I really do enjoy making lists). In late September, I started sending in my first batch of applications, which I've dealt with in waves around the 1st and 15th of each month ever since. I've spent countless hours researching departments and customizing cover letters, not to mention harassing my supervisor, with little success, to get his reference letters in by the deadlines. 

I was so focused on putting together a good application, however, that I neglected to spend any time thinking about what to do if any of these places actually wanted to interview me! So when I was phoned last week and asked for an interview I went into shock a bit and immediately thought to myself, "F--K! I have two weeks to prepare a job talk!" The next few hours involved a lot of panic and wandering around muttering profanity to myself. After overindulging on celebrating with Thai food and wine, the panic subsided a bit, at least enough for me to come up with a title for my talk and put together a pretty awesome title slide.

Anyway, the upside was that once I started thinking about how to convince an entire department why my research is important and they should pay me large sums of money to keep doing it, it was kind of reinvigorating. The day-to-day stresses of work had really been sucking all the enjoyment out of research for me lately. The endless meetings and revisions and lab drama (*cough* people not cleaning equipment properly *cough*) was really wearing me down. But by spending some time trying to sell my research to other people I kind of re-sold myself on it. I had started the day thinking, "how am I ever going to make this interesting to a diverse department that includes people who care nothing about cognitive neuroscience?" and ending the day thinking, "damn, this sh-t is cool! I would totally hire me"

So, the moral of this story is that sometimes you have to take a step back from the monotony and daily frustrations and remind yourself why you love your work so that you can continue to love it. And also, that you should probably start preparing your job talk a whole hell of a lot sooner than I did.