I for one, am impressed with Sarah Boomer and her posting and the
responses I have seen thus far. The thing that amazes me is that until
actually faced with the rejections from job applications, I suspect each
of us thinks those job-searching problems relate to other people and that
we ourselves, always over-achievers, will have no trouble finding a job.
And then when it happens, I think we all wind up being a little
shell-shocked. I am preparing to exit the fox-hole as we speak, and am
starting the job searches now myself. The thing is, there has only
recently been the realization on the part of faculty members, the people
who are training us, that they themselves have also suffered from this
head-in-the-sand attitude---that they convinced themselves that THEIR
students would find jobs, these problems pertained to other people, people
not as well trained as their own people.
The man who is my excellent mentor has taken these trends and reports of
trends, to heart---despite his own remarkable success (due to his
remarkable abilities, I might add. I know I will never be as good as he
is, and that is something to consider too--how well DO we stack up
compared to the absolute best?) he has begun xeroxing articles that
address the job shortages and the articles that suggest alternative
careers and has been forcing his students and technicians (not his
post-docs, though, assuming, I guess, that it's too late to suggest
alternative careers for us, that we better have our eyes open by now!) to
read these articles and to very carefully and CONSCIOUSLY plan for their
futures.
I don't know what I am going to do next. I doubt very much I will be able
to get the kind of job I have always hoped I might get---tenure track
faculty position at a research institution. But we'll see. You DO have
to leave the foxhole eventually, so it's now just a question of luck, I
guess. I find myself STILL trying not to think about it. it seems just
too darned depressing......
Aloisia (Alice) Schmid
